[SkyBelow]

If a bulldog clip is notable, why wouldn't an open source project that hundreds of companies use not be?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldog_clip

s/bulldog clip/many other random office supply items/

Edit: Swapped to bulldog clip as a better example of a less notable office supply.

[tptacek]

This seems like an argument that says that Apache Arrow is as important as the paper clip, which would be an extraordinary claim.

That paper clip article is itself extraordinary. Go look at it again. It delves into the history of the paper clip, covers different designs, has excerpts from paper-clip-making-machine patents, and describes an actual controversy(!) over its invention, all carefully illustrated (illustrating things on Wikipedia is a bitch, by the way, because of IPR rules). People went through a lot of effort to make a good paper clip article.

And Wikipedia considers the paper clip article to be a "C-class article" (C here means approximately what it means in school), and the topic of "low" importance. Just so we're clear on what the bar is here.

Compare that with the author's attempt at an Arrow article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Apache_Arrow

It's a paragraph of promotional material, a brief comparison to other systems, and a citation to a blog post saying "I do not see any reason not to embrace the Arrow standard".

Come on.

I think there probably should be an Arrow article. The authors have found a bunch of reliable sources covering it; they just haven't distilled from them a defensible claim to Arrow's notability. I think it's a matter of putting the work in.

[SkyBelow]

>This seems like an argument that says that Apache Arrow is as important as the paper clip, which would be an extraordinary claim.

I picked the first office supply object that came to mind. There are better examples.

For example, why have the bulldog clip as it's own article when you already have binder clip?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldog_clip

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binder_clip

I highly suspect that with some actual effort I could find an even less deserving office item.

And you may be right that Arrow needs to do more to be notable and ready for its own page. But ignoring some objective standard and instead looking at a relative standards of other articles, it does feel like there are some unequal requirements in this regard.

[tptacek]

The binder clip article has many of the same merits as the paper clip article. The bulldog clip article is more interesting: it's a "stub" article (its authors are explicit about the fact that it's not a complete article), and still it manages to track down some of its history and cite interesting uses from books – someone had to read those books and fish the bulldog clip cites out of them.

I think it's pretty clear to anyone why bulldog clips are in the encyclopedia, and it is only clear to subject matter experts with strong opinions why Arrow would be.

If your topic requires subject matter expertise in order to recognize its importance, the standards are unequal: you are going to need to do more work to establish its notability, because you cannot reasonably expect the layperson volunteers in the Wikipedia project to do that work for you.

[username90]

An item which almost every office worker has seen or used is definitely notable enough to get an article. Yet another data format among hundreds which has yet to reach a wider audience could be, but it is not obvious.

[nemothekid]

I'm sure an order of magnitude more of "hundreds" of companies use paperclips.