[DiogenesKynikos]

I tried looking for reliable secondary sources that discuss the Odin programming language. I couldn't find any.

That's not Wikipedia's fault. It is a bit weird that people are insisting that Odin is such a big deal that it must have a Wikipedia page, but apparently no tech website of note has ever mentioned it.

[fmajid]

It's funny. Just last week I was trying to figure out what this ODIN thing is, and naturally searched Wikipedia, and found nothing. I then did a web search, and found nothing particularly illuminating, and gave up trying to figure out what it is and just added a filtering rule to filter out any further mention of Odin in my RSS feed reader.

[dismalaf]

> tech website of note

Does anyone care about "tech websites"? Like what, one of those weird websites that thinks they're a newspaper whose revenue collapsed 10 years ago so they only publish clickbait no one reads?

Does anyone actually get tech news, especially about programming languages, from a space that's not X, HN, YouTube, GitHub, Codeberg or a user group?

[DiogenesKynikos]

Do you want Wikipedia editors to start citing YouTube videos?

I'll tell you what will happen if sourcing standards are loosened in that way. You'll get tons of editors arguing, "So and so said this at 21:45 in this podcast." And then someone else will say, "But he said this other thing that contradicts that at 22:30." And then a third editor will come along and say the person was just joking. The signal-to-noise in the sources will go way down, and you'll have editors acting like detectives and investigative journalists with a mass primary sources. It will be a mess, and it won't work.

Those "weird websites" have a reputation one can track. One can look at whether they have a history of correcting errors, citing sources correctly, etc.

That's why Wikipedia relies on secondary sources with a history of reliability. It's a simple rule that works for a website with tons of anonymous editors.

And guess what? There are tons of secondary sources that cover every major programming language. It looks like Odin is highly niche, which is why it has no secondary sourcing. Maybe it doesn't need a Wikipedia article.

[dismalaf]

> Those "weird websites" have a reputation one can track.

Do they? I mean, I don't track them.

But as an example, let's use CBC. They've published nearly a redaction per day on their stories... https://www.cbc.ca/news/corrections-clarifications-1.5893564

They're a government run, public broadcaster and they're this poor... But they're an acceptable Wikipedia source.

Meanwhile, someone like the Primeagen has 1.15 million followers and has used Odin. That's not notable?

JangaFX products have been used by creators that cumulatively have millions of subscribers, on top of a website that says they use Odin, on top of the CEO and others X accounts, but that's not enough to convince people JangaFX is a real company with real products?

Remember, CNN and all the "trusted" news outlets also have YouTube accounts.

[DiogenesKynikos]

Publishing retractions is a sign of reliability. Wikipedia is actually more concerned about sources that don't publish retractions.

If Odin is so notable, why haven't any of the normal tech publications ever mentioned it? One company using it does not necessarily make it notable.

> Remember, CNN and all the "trusted" news outlets also have YouTube accounts.

And those YouTube accounts are not considered reliable sources by Wikipedia. In fact, basically only CNN's published articles are considered reliable.

[dismalaf]

> the normal tech publications

Name 1 "normal tech publication" that anyone reads that covers programming languages.

[DiogenesKynikos]

This took me approximately two seconds to find: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/linux-leaders-pave-a...

[throw-the-towel]

> Do you want Wikipedia editors to start citing YouTube videos?

If 4chan is good enough for math papers, surely Youtube is good enough for Wikipedia.

[econ]

This is the entire debate in a nutshell.

I looked at the php article and it's notability is pretty much taken on faith. No one is silly enough to question it.

I pick that one because there are countless programming articles about less popular topics.

A really good source on wp is an article from a major news outlet that talks exclusively about the topic. It gets more hilarious where a tech news website requires the same.

For example, I never read hackernoon but it's big, old and it has a redaction. What it doesn't have is so called reliable sources. Therefore it was deleted and isn't considered a good source.

If some big newspaper would write about hackernoon it would immediately be worthy of an article and it would be usable for articles about things like Odin.