The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Consensus has only hardened after the relist and the badgering of voters is getting painful. Spartaz ^Humbug! 09:01, 9 June 2020 (UTC) reply

Traefik

Traefik (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)

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Non-notable software with no in-depth reliable independent sources to pass WP:GNG or WP:NSOFT. None of the sources in the article are independent -- every one is tied to the software/developer -- either directly to documentation, tutorial, to their company website, or as press release. The closest are two interviews from medium.com and frenchgo.fr, but again, not independent. Web search does bring up a lot of mentions, but I don't see any significant coverage like independent reviews or achievement discussions for WP:NSOFT, mostly tutorials and directory entries. "Used a lot" is not a criteria for notability.

The article was accepted from AfC (albeit not by a reviewer), so bringing to AfD instead of moving back. —   HELLKNOWZ   ▎ TALK 09:39, 18 May 2020 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. —   HELLKNOWZ   ▎ TALK 09:39, 18 May 2020 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Dps04 ( talk) 13:43, 18 May 2020 (UTC) reply

I was unable to find any reference to "used a lot" in the link you included, the section you linked mentions popularity and word-of-mouth, but doesn't specifically address actual references to the subject being utilized - which I would argue does imply notability.

I did a search using google books and news, and found several independent sources of Traefik being presented as subject matter in printed material, in addition to a number of use cases, tutorials, and explanations of what Traefik is and it's relation to modern software development. Would citing more of these sources increase the legitimacy of the article? Kcmastrpc ( talk) 14:09, 20 May 2020 (UTC) reply

Yes, you can cite or just link sources. If they satisfy WP:GNG, then they can be used to establish notability. —   HELLKNOWZ   ▎ TALK 15:11, 20 May 2020 (UTC) reply

I've added some additional references establishing notability, as I felt these met the criteria set forth in WP:GNG and WP:NSOFT. I'd like to hear feedback from you along with any other editors also if there are other improvements which can be made to this article. Thank you for your feedback and contribution to the discussion. Kcmastrpc ( talk) 13:36, 21 May 2020 (UTC) reply

I cannot access the papers. In what capacity do they discuss it? Simply referencing is not really enough, even though it can indicate a wider use and potential notability. But it still has to be shown with sourcing. None of the other ones are significant coverage of the subject. They don't discuss the subject, they are using it as part of their own work. Kind of like if the subject was a "shovel", but the source was about "how to dig with shovels". It's not a commentary/discussion of the subject. But that's my interpretation, and other editors can comment further. —   HELLKNOWZ   ▎ TALK 19:21, 21 May 2020 (UTC) reply

I've added multiple references to books and research articles which include Traefik in the subject-matter and discuss the software capabilities and use-cases. Many of these references have been included in my most recent edits. To clarify the inaccessible research/acedemic articles and further notability as defined by independent reviews please see below:

· Traefik [5] is a reverse proxy that hiding internal services, and route a specific traffic to a pre-designated local server that behind of firewall or gateway. In addition, this makes it possible to balance the load, and under development within an open source community. ^[1] · Traefik is the subject of multiple verified reviews ^[2]

I believe notability has been met under the requirements set forth in WP:GNG and WP:NSOFT Kcmastrpc ( talk) 16:36, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply

• Delete despite the belief of the article's creator and primary editor, not a notable software. Fails WP:GNG and WP:NSOFT. Even the material that I did find deals mostly with the Docker platform. A brief summary of what's in this article could easily be included as a section in Docker (software). Article creator should probably do that now. JimKaatFan ( talk) 14:57, 3 June 2020 (UTC) reply

• Keep The criteria set forth in WP:GNG and WP:NSOFT is met by the following:

This reference is from a printed book on Mesos / Marathon, which isn't at all related to Docker:

"Traefik is a load balancer, a.k.a. proxy, working on layer 7. It works on a very simple concept that has been around since Apache and PHP. Traefik parses HTTP requests and passes them to matching services. We can achieve similar functionality with Apache, nginx, or HAProxy, but only Traefik comes with built-in Marathon support" ^[3].

There are books published on Kubernetes as well, which include references to Traefik:

There is a book written in German which has an entire chapter dedicated to Traefik, I am unable to find a translator where I can extract a reliable quote, however, it's worth a mention considering the breadth of the coverage in the book, and my basic understanding of German recognizes they describe Traefik in a manner which meets the criteria for reliable and independent secondary sourcing. ^[4]

"Traefik (pronounced Traffic) is a reverse HTTP proxy which has been designed to work from the ground up with container orchestration tools like Kubernetes. It not only provides load balancing but also supports basic HTTP authentication and SSL termination. To find out more about Traefik, see its website at https://traefik.io" ^[5]

"Traefik is a reverse proxy implemented in Go that can also function as an Ingress controller. It has a set of features and dashboards that are very developer-friendly." ^[6]

I am including these references to books on Docker, which cover the subject of Traefik as well:

"Traefik is a fast, powerful, and easy-to-use reverse proxy. You run it in a container and publish the HTTP (or HTTPS) port, and configure the container to listen for events from the Docker Engine API ..." ^[7]

"Traefik is a cloud-native edge router and it is open source, which is great for our specific case. It even has a nice web UI that you can use to manage and monitor your routes. Traefik can be combined with Docker in a very straightforward way, as we will see in a moment." ^[8]

There are books written independently of container platforms which cover Traefik in-depth:

"Traefik is an open source reverse proxy and load balancer. Originally, these two features were handle by different components ... But quite recently, several open source projects emerged that implemented both features in software. Traefik is one of those tools, and it leverages several new technologies ..." ^[9] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kcmastrpc ( talk • contribs) 14:21, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply

These references clearly meet the requirements listed in WP:GNG, as explained below:

• "Significant coverage": The references listed above describe what Traefik is, such that no original research is required. These mentions are more than trivial, and there is no requirement for the subject matter to be the primary topic of the source material.
• "Reliability": The referenced material mentioned above are books published by reputable publishers, including Packt Publishing, O'Reilly Media, and Heinz_Heise in addition to meeting the criteria for secondary sources.
• "Secondary Sources": The authors of these materials are explaining what Traefik is in their own words, and are independent of the subject. There are no less than 7 verifiable sources from different authors providing in-depth descriptions and use-cases of the subject.
• "Independent of Subject": The books, publishers, and authors are not associated in any way with the subject.
• "Presumption": The subject matter of Traefik does not meet the criteria of WP:PLOT, as the subject is not creative work, lyric database, statistics, or changelog.

As to the matter of WP:NSOFT:

• "discussed in reliable sources as significant in its particular field.": I believe the references which are outlined for notability as per WP:GNG covers this requirement.
• "subject of multiple printed third-party manuals, instruction books, or reliable reviews,[2] written by independent authors and published by independent publishers.": Again, the material I've referenced which meet the criteria covered in WP:GNG meet this requirement, in addition, I've included references to independent reviews below.

ThoughtWorks Technology Radar reviewed Traefik in Nov. 2018 and Apr. 2019, which included the following description:

"Traefik is an open-source reverse proxy and load balancer. If you're looking for an edge proxy that provides simple routing without all the features of NGINX and HAProxy, Traefik is a good choice. The router provides a reload-less reconfiguration, metrics, monitoring and circuit breakers that are essential when running microservices. It also integrates nicely with Let's Encrypt to provide SSL termination as well as infrastructure components such as Kubernetes, Docker Swarm or Amazon ECS to automatically pick up new services or instances to include in its load balancing." ^[10]

There have also been verified reviews published on g2crowd ^[11], most of which have no connection to the subject. There are references to notability in these reviews, such as:

"It's a great piece of software, written in Golang and open source. Let me explain what it makes so unique compared to Nginx/Apache/Haproxy. traefik provides different way for configuration. You can feed it with YAML, JSON or TOML. There is no custom format, like in Nginx." ^[12]

In summary, there are several books that have been published, on a variety of different topics, which include Traefik in a notable capacity. I believe the subject unequivocally meets the criteria set forth in both WP:GNG and WP:NSOFT and I'm open to hearing why the sources I've included above would not.

— Kcmastrpc ( talk) 14:46, 7 June 2020 (UTC) reply

*Keep There is definitely notability in this article, and there is definitely significant coverage of it. There is significant context in the article and it passes both WP:GNG - the sources meeting reliability guidelines, and WP:NSOFT - with many reviews for the software. RedRiver660 ( talk) 16:39, 7 June 2020 (UTC) reply

• • @ RedRiver660: What "many reviews" are you referring to? The only reviews linked are from g2.com and are all WP:USERG and most definitely not acceptable for sourcing, let alone GNG. And which sources specifically pass the GNG requirements? None have any significant encyclopedic content about the software, it's all brief descriptions, tutorials and manuals. —   HELLKNOWZ   ▎ TALK 22:22, 7 June 2020 (UTC) reply
    • @ Hellknowz: I was talking about the reviews on https://stackshare.io/traefik. As for the notability, while some sources have errors, the books in google books are trustable enough to prove notability. RedRiver660 ( talk) 22:54, 7 June 2020 (UTC) reply
      • These are user reviews and not acceptable for GNG. Books being "trustable" is only one requirement for GNG. All the books linked above are tutorials/manuals and not encyclopedic content. —   HELLKNOWZ   ▎ TALK 09:22, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply
        • The guidelines in NSOFT require “reliable” reviews, there is no exclusion of user reviews from what I can tell. Many of the reviews found in g2crowd, thoughtworks, and stackshare can be considered reliable and verifiable. If you have an issue with NSOFT, perhaps take it up on their talk page? As far as the books establishing notability, I expressed how each one of those sources met the criteria set forth in GNG, and I don’t see anywhere in GNG where the content must be considered “encyclopedic”. Again, if you have an issue with GNG and it’s criteria, you should take it to the talk page. — Kcmastrpc ( talk) 11:53, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply
          • User reviews are never reliable or acceptable; see specifically WP:USERG. Similarly, WP:NOTMANUAL is a core policy and there isn't any significant content in those sources besides tutorial/manual material that is not suitable for Wikipedia. You are free to interpret GNG how you want, but please refrain from telling me to "perhaps take it up on their talk page". —   HELLKNOWZ   ▎ TALK 12:11, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply
            • WP:USERG also mentions review aggregators as potentially being reliable, both G2 Crowd and Stackshare fall into those categories. Also, Thoughtworks Technology Radar is an independent, non-user aggregated review source that you've ignored. While the aggregation of those reviews may not be accepted for inclusion in the article (as WP:USERG points out), authenticity and reliability can be confirmed for purposes of meeting the criteria of notability. I don't understand how WP:NOTMANUAL bears any relevance to the requirements for notability set forth in WP:GNG, can you please elaborate? My understanding is that WP:NOTMANUAL is a guideline on how to properly write an article for an encyclopedia, and what to avoid. If there is an issue with how the article is written, that isn't a reason for AfD, but rather clean up. Also, I'll ask this again since I believe you're deflecting, for the purposes of establishing notability, where is the requirement that the content be "encyclopedic" mentioned in WP:GNG? Apologies for subtly suggesting you take these issues elsewhere, I am frustrated from what appears to be a lack of objectivity and the inclusion of what I consider arbritrary requirements. — Kcmastrpc ( talk) 12:43, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply
              • I'm sorry you're frustrated. The draft should not have been accepted by the editor above (they are not a reviewer, nor do they pass the requirements to be a reviewer (even though it's not a requirement to be one to accept drafts)). The draft would most likely have been declined on GNG grounds so that it would never get to the point of AfD with an explanation and an option to review and ask questions at a help desk.
              • I'm sorry if I'm dismissive, but I cannot adequately explain myself briefly. GNG exists to establish the bare minimum of source coverage so that there is enough content to write an article. The books that are tutorials/manuals do not provide such content. Such content would violate WP:NOT, which is a policy above GNG. Why does it have to be encyclopedic? Because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia as per WP:PILLARS, which is above everything else. We do not collect information simply because it exists. A source survey on a topic should show that there is significant content that we can use to write an encyclopedic article. But, as I said, this is my interpretation and I only responded to points that I consider incorrect and other editors can express their thoughts. —   HELLKNOWZ   ▎ TALK 14:19, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply
                • The content in the books I've referenced establish those bare minimums, by explaining what Traefik is, and in some of them why it differs from existing products which have their own respective wiki pages. Please see the quotes I've included in the arguments I made for keep above, there are seven of them. The article which was created is not a tutorial or manual, but a reference to the software described in the cited references - which is exactly what makes Traefik notable and why the page should exist. Software is a tool, the vast majority of publications on a piece of software is going to be a manual or guidebook of some sort. GNG does not exclude printed manuals or instruction books from the purposes of establishing notability, and in fact, NSOFT suggests that the presence of published books on the subject is required to establish notability. — Kcmastrpc ( talk) 14:52, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply
                • It's entirely unclear to me how this requirement in NSOFT – "subject of multiple printed third-party manuals, instruction books, or reliable reviews,[2] written by independent authors and published by independent publishers." can be met if those materials violate WP:NOT, and by extension, are not qualified for WP:GNG. Can you elaborate exactly on how that would work? This seems like a contradiction. — Kcmastrpc ( talk) 15:20, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply
• Delete promotional article inappropriately "accepted" through AfC by a newbie posing as a reviewer. The sources provided above are passing mentions, how-to guides or unreliable. Fails NSOFT and GNG. Note that per his userpage, Kcmastrpc was paid to write this article. WP:PAYTALK is relevant here. Spicy ( talk) 19:01, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply

@ Spicy: Can you elaborate on how the article is promotional? I feel like this argument is getting a little contradictory. Honestly, this whole discussion is starting to make me seriously confused. RedRiver660 ( talk) 19:29, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply

Honestly, this whole discussion is starting to make me seriously confused. Well, that's why it's a bad idea for newbies to review AfCs. Promotional aspects of the article include ad copy-like phrases such as "designed to serve as a dynamic software load balancer capable of running on multiple orchestrators including Kubernetes and cloud platforms while handling over 20k requests per second", "providing scalability, high-availability, and additional security features combined with support agreements for enterprise customers", an exhaustive list of features which is relevant to potential customers but not to encyclopedia readers, stating that it has been used or mentioned in various publications rather than summarizing the contents of those publications as an encyclopedia is supposed to do, and use of the dreadful word "solution" ( WP:SOLUTIONS). As well as the fact that it was created by a paid editor for the express purpose of advertising the software. Spicy ( talk) 19:42, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply

On the subject of notability, it's still unclear to me how the coverage in multiple published books can be considered as trivial, as they describe the subject matter such that it requires no original research, and as already stated the publishers and authors have no connection to the subject. It's still unclear to me how those references do not meet the criteria set forth in GNG. I suppose it doesn't have to be clear to me, there just needs to be consensus in that regard and I accept that. With regards to PROMO, it sounds like you have some issues with the quality of the article, as such, it can be cleaned up. — Kcmastrpc ( talk) 19:49, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply

If all of the promotional and unencyclopedic content were removed, there would be nothing left. I am a volunteer and I would rather not argue with someone who is being paid for their posts, so I won't be responding to your comments any further. Spicy ( talk) 19:59, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply

@ Spicy and Kcmastrpc: I must admit, the article is slowly sounding more and more promotional. I am having second thoughts about this... RedRiver660 ( talk) 19:58, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply

No need to continue arguing, @ Spicy:, I've cleaned up the article and if you still believe the article is promotional and the sources don't meet GNG, there is nothing I can say that will convince you otherwise. I appreciate your time, nevertheless. — Kcmastrpc ( talk) 20:54, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply

After rereading the article, I am leaning towards delete. This article is becoming more promotional every week. When I accepted this article, it was moderate in terms of promotion. Now, it’s ridiculous how promotional it’s become. User:Spicy raises a good point. It was a mistake to accept this article. RedRiver660 ( talk) 20:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply

The edits were made in an effort to pull in the published sources. I just made several edits removing the language which was considered promotional. Kcmastrpc ( talk) 20:25, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply

• Delete I know that I originally said keep, but this article is getting worse and worse in terms of promotion. I think that it was a definite mistake accepting this at AfC. I’m going to be honest and take the blame for even accepting it in the first place. RedRiver660 ( talk) 20:38, 8 June 2020 (UTC) ( reply
  • Diff between what was accepted and current. @ RedRiver660: The edits I made were in earnest to include the publications which met the criteria set forth in GNG. I recognize that promoting the sources was not the correct course of action. I've removed what has been considered promotional, even content that was originally accepted, and updated the feature summary to include what makes Traefik notable by using the material contained in the sources cited above. — Kcmastrpc ( talk) 20:47, 8 June 2020 (UTC) reply
• Delete per Spicy. And yes I have reviewed the most recent version of the article. I would also suggest that RedRiver take a step back from AFC reviewing for a bit until the user has more experience. Recognizing ones mistakes is good, but that does not change the fact that all this back and forth never needed to happen in the first place. ZettaComposer ( talk) 00:56, 9 June 2020 (UTC) reply
• Delete: should never have been accepted at afc in the first place. I echo ZettaComposer's advice, and note that RedRiver has already been warned for this very thing on their user page by an admin, albeit the day after this was so unfortunately accepted. —— Serial ^# 08:30, 9 June 2020 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.