Esolang talk:Policy

What to do with non-esoteric languages
Processor/1 and FURscript both have comments on the talk page that people believe them not to be esoteric programming languages. The question is, what to do in such cases? It's technically possible for administrators to simply delete them (and they can be undeleted again if required), but I'm not going to delete non-spam/vandalism/copyvio pages without an agreement that that's a good idea. Some other possibilities are to remove the pages from the language lists and language categories, to move the pages elsewhere (into some sort of 'limbo' space, such as Limbo/Processor/1), or to do nothing. What do people think? --ais523 17:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

P/1 is the architecture that inspired my instruction set for my brainfuck 'assembler' (that emulate a RISC machine similar to a P/1 on a brainfuck VM). I wanted to add an article for FRAK, and since P/1 had definitely a major impact over the design of FRAK (the braifuck asm), I though it was the right place to write an article. Since I was (until the last day) the only people on earth knowing the existence of this architecture, I was not going to add a wikipedia article (where genuine research is not allowed, contrary to this wiki).--Sigfb05 19:15, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe Processor/1 and FURscript belong in the quasi-esoteric category. --Zzo38 00:41, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd say that P/1 is, at least, related to esolangs.--Sigfb05 03:02, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * There should be room for non-esoteric (and unintentionally esoteric) languages on this wiki, if for no other reason than encyclopedic content and referencing. On the Rosetta Code wiki, we have a category for encyclopedic articles which are used to annotate the main topic articles (programming languages and example code). For example, although Forth is not an esoteric language per-se, its simple stack model has influenced many of the languages here, and a Forth page would help describe those languages it influenced. --IanO 15:24, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Deleting abandoned esolangs?
'' * (Deletion log); 22:39. . Keymaker (Talk | contribs) (deleted "NMISC": Was requested to be deleted due its abandonment.) ''

Do people here think it's a good idea to delete pages here just because the project has been abandoned? Should this page remain deleted, or should it be restored? (Before the deletion, the article said "Due to other commitments, this project has been abandoned in its early stages. Editors, please feel free to delete this article.", and all its contributions were by the same person.) Personally, I think it might be better to undelete the article, revert its penultimate edit, and add a note that the project had been abandoned, just in case someone else wants to pick it up, or look at the article for historical reasons. What opinions do other people have about this? What should be our deletion policy for non-copyvio non-spam pages? --ais523 13:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, good question really. I didn't think much about it, I just deleted it as the author (I hope!) requested that. Perhaps a good rule might be that the projects that don't get done are left if their authors suggest no otherwise. (Or if the project is really exceptional -- but who is to define which is or isn't...) --Keymaker 14:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I think that a good measurement of what "abandoned" a project is is the time and audience a project has. How many people had posted comments or modified the article about the project? In wich time lapse? If the project have too much time of be published with no change and there is too few people interested in, I think there is not problem to delete it. This is precisely the case of my BrainSub article: after it was published it receive just 2 comments in the first 4 months and zero additional comments after 1 year. If the author request to delete it, who else cares about it? Aacini 11:34, 11 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with you ais523. Moreover, if abandoned projects are ever to be deleted, it should be done only after they have been marked as abandoned for a significant length of time, whether by the original author or by a random user noticing that it hasn't been worked on in ages.  Moreover, I think that projects that have reached a certain stage of development should never be treated as abandoned. -- Smjg 17:52, 11 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I think the policy should be that it is deleted only if all of these conditions are met:
 * The author of the page requests it to be deleted
 * It does not contain a lot of significant information
 * Nobody objects to it being deleted (you can wait a few weeks or so to find out)
 * --Zzo38 19:56, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think anything should be deleted, unless it obviously has no value at all (no commands, no info, something like that). Even if the language only has basic features, someone else can be inspired by what the language has. poiuy_qwert 20:20, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Language authors
Here's one of the current policies:


 * General links to language authors should be to standard namespace articles under their real name, if available, rather than to user pages. When linking to a user page, the User: prefix should be visible on the link.

I generally agree with this, but I have two specific objections. Firstly, I think user page links are fine; there's no point in creating an article for someone who's only created one or two languages and has no particular prominence or activity in the community. Linking to user pages in language articles is common practice, so I don't think this is controversial.

Secondly, I don't think requiring articles on people to be under their real names if available is a good idea. Here are some reasons for this:


 * Even if someone's real name is known, it might not be what they are commonly referred to as. For instance, I don't know User:Keymaker's real name, but for all I know it could be available; yet, since Keymaker is generally known as just that, an article on him should be named just that. Similarly, I know User:ais523's real name, but at one time he preferred to keep it fairly private, and his middle name is not common knowledge; again, in the esolangs community, he's known as ais523, so that's what any article on him should be called.
 * Someone's real name may be known, but they may wish their esoteric programming work to be attributed to another name; most likely the same name as their wiki user account. This should not be an impediment to creating an article on them.
 * "Real name" is a fuzzy concept; usually, it is used to mean "legal name". But there are plenty of people who go by names other than their legal name in day-to-day life. Google, in their controversial real names policy for Google+, define a real name as the name people are commonly referred to in everyday life. Not only is this an incredibly difficult standard to judge, but "everyday life" is irrelevant; the esoteric programming community is based on the internet, and so online personas are what matter to us.

Accordingly, I'd like to adjust the policy to not require real names, and to allow linking to user pages when an article doesn't exist.

Does anyone have any comments on these objections, or what wording would be preferable? —ehird 22:02, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I am of the following opinions on this:
 * If someone does not commonly go by their real name for esolang-related activities, there is no reason for their main-namespace page to be under their real name.
 * If there is a main-namespace page for a person, that page rather than a user page should be linked to for attribution of language creation.
 * The previous points do not mean that we need a main-namespace page for everybody.
 * —Maharba 22:15, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed on all points. —ehird 23:09, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * No objection to your objection. Isn't that what we were de facto doing already? --Ørjan 22:17, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The user page linking is common practice, yes, but I don't think we have any articles on people under something other than their real name right now. —ehird 23:09, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I point you to Catatonic Porpoise and Revcompgeek. —Maharba 23:12, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Good point. If nobody objects in a day or two, I'll update the policy. (Wording suggestions welcome.) —ehird 23:34, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Expand article scope
I'd like it if the article scope included Esoteric Algorithms and Esoteric Data Structures, which can be useful in Esoteric Programming Languages (a language's built-in sort might be a Bogosort, or we might have a language that stores data on an ). Anyone care to second me?


 * I think that's already included under the "subjects relevant to these" phrase. --Ørjan (talk) 05:39, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

American vs British English
Is there any convention on the usage of either AE or BE? I'm asking because of this edit. Would it be fine to roll it back mentioning that those aren't typos in BE, or is AE preferred on the wiki? --Martin Ender (talk) 08:31, 25 June 2016 (UTC)