Talk:SheepShaver

Restored article, deletion

@RW Dutton, thank you for improving this article. As a note, the original deletion of this article wasn't improper; none of the sources at the time were very good, and there is no restriction on temporary accounts proposing deletion. -- Reconrabbit 14:18, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind words @Reconrabbit. However the deletion of SheepShaver really was improperly conducted, in a number of respects.

First there was the use of WP:PROD, "a way to suggest an article or file for uncontroversial deletion" (emphasis in original), rather than an WP:AfD application, for the obviously controversial decision to delete a fairly extensive, twenty-year-old page with multiple editors about a popular and important piece of software on notability grounds.

Second, as you are aware, the standard for deleting an article for lack of notability is not whether RSes appear in the article in its current state (viz. WP:ARTN), and in fact editors must go through a WP:DILIGENCE process to find "a lack of sources in the real world (not in the article)" before even submitting an AfD request. And the SheepShaver 26 March 2026 proposed deletion almost certainly badly failed to meet even the really very lax minimum required WP:DILIGENCE standard, with its Google Books and Google News searches. I can prove this in boring detail if you or anyone else think it necessary, but the undeletion request on 2 April gives a fair idea: three of the four RSes added while the article was in Drafts came straight from the https://www.google.com/search?udm=36&q=sheepshaver+emulator search mentioned there.

This is all made worse by finding these claims in the proposed deletion's complaint: "Fails WP:GNG and also not found any WP:RS". SheepShaver did not fail WP:GNG (WP:ARTN again). Further, it is almost certain that no properly conducted search that met even the basic AfD DILIGENCE criteria would have failed to find RS for it.

Of course it's possible to argue that the AfD DILIGENCE standards shouldn't be applied to a PROD, rather than AfD, request to delete an article on notability grounds. And actually this is true. Again, DILIGENCE is the minimum standard to start another notability brawl on the public streets of Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log. The standard of evidence that would be needed to actually make it so uncontroversial to delete a generally fairly decent, twenty-year-old article on notability grounds that no-one would mind you skipping AfD and just going to PROD is much higher, assuming for the sake of argument that any evidence could meet it at all. Evidence that doesn't meet DILIGENCE is right out. RW Dutton (talk) 13:58, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

While all true, there are plenty of editors who patrol open PROD requests. I would say the majority judge the article as it is at that point rather than looking around the net for better sources. In my tenure (a couple years) i have seen much more diligence on the behalf of patrollers. Maybe that wasn't the case this time. The definition of "uncontroversial" only extends as far as "nobody contests this deletion notice in a week". -- Reconrabbit 14:30, 4 April 2026 (UTC)