Talk:EasyChair

Speedy deletion?

Hi, I pointed out that this is the most widely used system for managing conferences (not only) in computer science, as confirmed by the statistics on the homepage. Isn't that a proof of notability? --Langec (talk) 11:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

• The guideline on Notability requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." JohnCD (talk) 11:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Indeed, but the conferences that use EasyChair exist independently from EasyChair. Thus, justifying EasyChair's "claim" that they use EasyChair would require citing lots of conference homepages and their reference to EasyChair, which I don't consider practicable. --Langec (talk) 11:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Justification of notability

I'll add evidences that some of the most notable computer science conferences use EasyChair to the article, give me a few minutes, please. --Langec (talk) 11:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

done --Langec (talk) 11:50, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

• It's nothing to do with notability. WP doesn't usually carry articles that, in effect, simply advertise software whether commercial or freeware. There's nothing about this product to distinguish it from other abstract management software or indeed from thousands of other products. It happens to be very popular but that alone doesn't merit a place in an encyclopedia. andy (talk) 11:41, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I see, but doesn't a large user base justify an article? Why does, e.g., Microsoft Word have a Wikipedia article? One might say, everybody knows Word, and Microsoft is a large company, but actually it's because lots of people are using Word. -- Hmm, it might be more appropriate to compare it with other web-based applications such as Google Docs. --Langec (talk) 11:50, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Now I've provided a scientific paper about EasyChair and related systems; hope that helps. --Langec (talk) 12:14, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Reasons for stubbing

I've cut down the article into a stub because it's overblown and misleading:

1. No independent evidence for any of the claims made about usage and functionality
2. Some of the claims made about usage are wrong and misleading - see below
3. The article goes beyond what's on the website, for example saying that it's definitely "the most widely used conference management system" while the reference merely says "probably".
4. The software functionality is no different from many rival products.

I checked a random selection of "users" claimed by the website for 2008 onwards. About half were unverifiable because the conference is no longer accepting abstracts or abstract submission has not yet started. Of the remainder almost all that were in the field of computing were correct but several non-computing "users" were wrong. For example:

QUIS 11 - software provided by OpenConf

VIRSU 2010 - no online submission service used

IAD 2008 - no online submission service used

ISCD - no online submission service used

CPA 2008 - no online submission service used

AFS08 - software provided by Oxford abstracts

TPRC-08 - software provided by Microsoft

It looks like the policy of the website is to take any enquiry as a firm order. On this basis we can't trust any claims that are made about this product. Hence the stubbing.

andy (talk) 15:41, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Reasons for unstabbing

• This is not a business or a (commercial) product for sale, so business-stub is not really applicable
• The original stubbing was in March; check the conf pages again now in mid-July -- it is common for many academic and scientific conferences, workshops, etc. to remove or add the link to the submission page when the deadlines are over
• There is enough neutrality, more than enough notability if you ask scientific community at many Universities
• I have personally used it in my academic work to submit papers for publications to at aleast 10 different conferences
• This is a free software tool for conference management; it is worthy to be compared to other conference management systems
• Other reasons would come as if I get time to write them or in response to responses :)

--Mokhov (talk) 16:07, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

• Response

It's used as an alternative to commercial products so it's appropriate to list it as a business

I checked several active or recently active conferences and it was clear that in some cases "rival" software had been used and in other cases no software was used - submission was by email. The EasyChair list of users is inaccurate and unreliable. It's also of course not independent.

Editors don't have to send out mass emailings to investigate notability - it's up to the article's authors to provide the evidence in the first place. There is no independent evidence of notability.

The fact that one editor has personally used a product is not evidence of notability.

This article is not a comparison but is about this particular product. It makes exaggerated and unproven claims.

The fact that there might be other reasons if you had the time to think of them doesn't help very much.

andy (talk) 16:19, 14 July 2008 (UTC)