Talk:Paul Graham

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[edit] Merge from Arc programming language

Content from Arc programming language has been merged here and that article redirected here. This was the result of a Vote for Deletion on that article. The discussion can be found here.-Splash 02:11, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Beginning this year the redirect on the Arc page Splash put in place in 2005 was removed and that page was expanded. Because the reasons for the VfD remain valid (Arc still doesn't exist in any public form, and is notable only that it is promoted by Paul Graham), I believe that the removal of the redirect was made in error. On the 25th of October I put a notice on the talk:Arc_(programming_language) page that I intended to re-merge that page with this one and re-institute the redirect. I've done so this evening. Jorbettis 05:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
The reasoning on the VfD is that WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_a_crystal_ball, but that paragraph says:
"Wikipedia is not a collection of unverifiable speculation. All articles about anticipated events must be verifiable, and the subject matter must be of sufficiently wide interest that it would merit an article if the event had already occurred."
This seems to me to warrant an article on Arc that is verifiable, which the article was AFAIK. Moreover the article was a small stub at the previous time of merge/redirection unlike it is now, so that VfD does not apply to the article in its current state. Please revert your changes. --MarSch 13:50, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
The information in the original article was verifiable as well. The issue for that vote was that the existence of the article was predicated on the unverifiable and speculative existence of the Arc Programming language, since nobody outside of Paul Graham's small group has ever seen what he has produced. There is nothing that you can say about the language without first saying "according to Paul Graham" because, due to PG's desire to not release it (for reasons unknown), to be able to say *anything* about it is to just take his word for it. By giving it an article, wikipedia gives the impression that it is now something real and tangible. That may be true someday, but is not now. That a notable person speculates on something that he may produce someday does not make a wiki article about it, although it may make it valid to put the relevant information in his article.
Whether or not to create a separate article should be guided by organizational principles. I think that enough can be said about Arc already to warrant its own article.
As to the second part of your quote from WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_a_crystal_ball, until *something* of the Arc language is released publicly, how is it of interest to anyone outside of those who are interested in Paul Graham's current and future projects?
That is not relevant.
I would like a further explanation of why you think that the importance of the subject matter is not relevant in deciding if a subject should have its own wikipedia page. It seems to me (and it's central to my argument that this needed to be re-merged) that non-notable things should *not* have their own wikipedia pages. Further, I believe that the decision in the original VfD was based, if not solely, then mostly on the fact that Arc is "vaporwear" that is completely non-notable *except* that it is something promised and promoted by Paul Graham.
I've looked through the documentation on VfD and it doesn't say anything about VfD only being appropriate for stub articles. On the face that's a bit absurd. If I were to make a biography of myself and fill it out to be a large page before anyone notices, is it now immune to VfD even though the topic shouldn't be on Wikipedia? Anyway, originally I thought that perhaps there should be a new VfD, but I asked in #wikipedia and they responded with WP:BOLD, saying that the old VfD was still valid, and that a VfD isn't even required for an article merger.
You misunderstand. I'm saying the old VfD discussion was about a completely different article, so you shouldn't apply its conclusion so blindly to the current article. Of course no VfD is required for a merge, but if you do not have a consensus your changes may be reverted. That's why we're discussing this. I'm informing you that I disagree with the merge and that you can't bring some old consensus from VfD here to back you up.
The VfD was about a stub for a topic that does not deserve its own Wikipedia article. The article I merged was barely a non-stub about the very same topic.
Now, when it comes to the question of a stub versus a fleshed-out and well-written article, the current article was longer than the one originally merged, but it was still substantially redundant with the information already in Paul Graham (which I removed from the biography section), and of what was left, the majority of the information was in that poorly formated list, which could easily be processed down into a smallish paragraph. Jorbettis 16:07, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Even now the paragraph about Arc is more than half of the article on Paul Graham. And all the links and references are intermixed. My feeling is that there is too much information on Arc to keep it neatly on this page sharing with the actual information about Arc. I think it is important to keep the links and references for each separate and that is most easily done if they are spearate pages. --MarSch 13:26, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
I will concede this to you. The articles are currently poorly integrated. But this is often the case after a merge. I will commit to try to make it better. I do think things can be integrated much better. For instance, the paragraph on bayesian filters has precious little to do with Arc (except that Paul Graham claimed in the paper to have written such a filter in Arc, which nobody has ever seen). Given the aftermath of that paper though, it's probably true that popularizing bayesian filters for spam is one of the most notable things PG has done, and that might even be worth splitting off into its own section that discusses bogofilter, et al.
I think that list that makes up the majority of the current Arc section needs, at the very least, to be reformatted into paragraphs. A larger problem with it is that it essentially is a summary of Graham's essay, which is itself a collection of his thoughts on what a language "should be", most of which are tautologies. It could be shortened into a paragraph that says one or two things that are actually indicative of what Arc might actually be if it is ever released. Jorbettis 22:26, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Portrayal of Paul Graham is extremely unfavorable

Almost every link in the "About Paul Graham" is extremely unfavorable. The focus of the article is not NPOV, painting Paul Graham in a one-sided, negative light. I would not expect to see this sort of trash in a published encyclopedia, (nor would I expect to see this in Wikipedia) even on entries of extremely unpopular individuals. Critique links should be moved to a critique links section. (since almost all of the links are of that nature) General links should be less subjective. It's not as if the man is a bad person, and in fact many people who don't like his opinions try to undermine the fact that he has authored some exceptional computer science texts. (OnLisp and ANSI Common Lisp, for example) I think the criticism in "Dabblers and Blowhards" and "Paul Graham is Wrong" provide a reasonable critique of some of his more mediocre writing, but "Paul Graham is a Tedious Windbag" is by a person who fails to be objective, and resorts to petty name-calling of Paul Graham in several of his entries. The blog author does _NOT_ deserve this sort of attention, (this "yani" person uses his blog as essentially a soapbox for his poorly defended arguments) so I'm removing his link if I can. (please _DO NOT_ revert it back) That aside, I do not believe that most blogs are up to wikipedia standard, and shouldn't be linked to anyway because they are constantly changing.

I believe that there are people out there who seek to use the web to ruin the reputations of people more famous than them; Yani's blog is a good example of such behavior.

[edit] Born in Weymouth, England

Interesting he was born in Weymouth. I can't find any other source that confirms this. And references known? Any extra information, e.g. did his parents emigrate or were they holidaying in Weymouth at the time.  :-) -- Ralph Corderoy 22:02, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comment in references

I found the following comment in the references section. I'm moving it here. Michael Slone (talk) 16:05, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

(Yes, but I undeclared that major just before graduating, so I don't have a degree in it. --pg) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.95.134.237 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Arc summary

Seeing as Arc now has its own WP page (and it seems like most of the arguments in favor of merging it have been assuaged), I think the Arc section on Paul Graham's page should be shortened, since currently that section and Arc's own page are too similar (obviously looks copied). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kngspook (talk • contribs) 10:31, 28 May 2008 (UTC)