Talk:Comparison of BitTorrent clients

Entries without articles

The article refers to a dispute about inclusion criteria. To repeat my comment from February 2010 (now archived): The convention is to remove entries from lists such as these that have no articles. This article is currently riddled with useless and spammy entries for the reader, many of which have no source and no useful information. The only objective way to decide if an entry should be added is whether it is notable, and therefore has an article. If not, any pet projects (and there are numerous unsourced entries with no information, or clients that haven't even reached version 1) can be added, and the list becomes unmanageable for the reader. See WP:WTAF. There was no response to this comment in February, but I forgot to come back and clean the article, so I'm repeating it here on the active talk page before starting to clean the article. Greenman (talk)

From my experience, it's very difficult to publish new software on Wikipedia. They tend to reject based on "Wikipedia isn't a software repository", or "written like an ad" or lacking notability (all valid reasons). Several existing client's wikipedia pages are even marked as such. Some client pages have only a paragraph or two and haven't been updated in years. My suggestion would be to allow entries that have no wikipedia articles if they are being actively developed and have been around for more than a year. COI Disclaimer: I'm a BiglyBT developer; Someone other than myself would have to make this decision. --TuxPaper (talk) 19:56, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Only this year the program was removed four times. Every time added by an IP or an SPA. This sounds like spamming to me... The Banner talk 23:09, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm not arguing for BiglyBT to be allowed to have its own wikipedia page, that's entirely a different issue and process, which has already run its course. What I'm advocating for is to allow any clients that do not have wikipedia pages to be listed on the comparison charts on this current wiki page. I've suggested an "actively developed" criteria instead of "entries with articles", which I think would be a good start for a discussion amoungst the maintainers and re-occurring non-COI viewers of this page. I have no intention of making edits to this page due to COI, but I think I read somewhere that I'm allowed to raise ideas like this in the talk page as long as I mention my COI. TuxPaper (talk) 09:15, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Why should we add programs that are deemed to be not-notable?

But the rules are simple: write an article that, backed up with independent & reliable sources, proves the notability of the program. The Banner talk 09:23, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Two reasons why notable/non-notable isn't a good criteria: (1) Notable clients that haven't been actively developed in over 10 years clutter the existing list and provide nothing for people using this list to choose a client (2) Wikipedia has increased its standard over the years for notability. Proof of this is the many of the existing torrent client wikipedia pages being only skeletons or flagged as "written like an ad". Since these client's wikipedia pages were added before the higher notability standards, they get a "free pass" to live on (either because no one bothers to request they be deleted, or stays in limbo for years because they have the "hey, someone fix this article" header on them). To use my COI as an example, I can't create a Wikipedia page about my client because it doesn't meet notability, and may never meet that standard. The clients that have skeleton wikipedia pages therefore have an unfair advantage using the "must have a wikipedia page" criteria.TuxPaper (talk) 18:42, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

A good reason for the notability requirement is the prevention of advertising, what is contrary to the guidelines of Wikipedia. The Banner talk 23:50, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Seems BiglyBT is getting more notable, in 2020 it was most used client at 10/13, even referenced in a Wikipedia article 185.186.143.61 (talk) 18:50, 13 January 2021 (UTC)OccasionalPasserby

More notable? Used in 0.3%? The Banner talk 20:43, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

There are article pages of clients with a lower share. This looks totally like personal bias. 2A00:BD80:A929:0:38C:0:0:1 (talk) 18:13, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

I have been researching bittorent clients, and just replaced Vuze with BiglyBT. It is listed as having more than 100K downloads on Google Play just as an Android client, and is listed by my VPN, ProtonVPN (which is highly respected) as one of the Five best torrent clients for your privacy 2023, which is why I chose it. The fact that it has no Wikipedia page is incomprehensible to me. Shouldn't the direction of causality be that articles, such as Usage share of BitTorrent clients that cite sources that deem a client notable (which includes BiglyBT) should leave a red link, and enough red links in well-sourced articles should be proof of notability? Or are you arguing that statistics about clients without Wikipedia pages should simply be left out, because clients can never become notable? Reversible Physicist (talk) 18:47, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

You can read about what constitutes 'proof of notability' at Wikipedia:Notability. It has nothing to do with number of red links or usage share, both of which are easily game-able metrics. MrOllie (talk) 18:56, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

You're right, it's tricky to weight evidence of notability such as usage statistics or citations. In academia we do exactly that, but there's a prominent review process and human editors of prestigious journals make sure there aren't random citations added to their product. Whatever criteria we use, though, it cannot be that lack of a Wikipedia page for some product or idea requires that evidence of importance be suppressed from other pages, as the initial post above seems to claim is the Wikipedia convention! Reversible Physicist (talk) 21:42, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

That is exactly what this list article requires. It is the most common inclusion criterion for lists of software on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia community has settled on it as the best way to restrict scope to those entries that are compatible with the content policies of the encyclopedia. And if it encourages some people to write a few more articles that is a very welcome effect, since writing articles is the purpose of this encyclopedia project - not making promotional lists of software. MrOllie (talk) 21:46, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

I understand, and I completely agree that is exactly what you must do for a generic list article. But certainly not for a list based on an external source, such as the Wikipedia article Usage share of BitTorrent clients, which does include BiglyBT. In that case you can't claim an external source for the list and then leave out part of it. Now what if you made a list of the clients currently recommended for their users on the websites of notable VPN s (ones with Wikipedia pages), summarizing why they say they recommend each? (Links to archive.org might be useful here). This list would exclude some bad and obsolete clients with Wikipedia pages, and would include some newer clients without Wikipedia pages, and would encourage the creation of Wikipedia pages for them. Would this not be a useful and allowed list? Perhaps more useful than an out-of-date generic list? Reversible Physicist (talk) 23:04, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

This list is not 'based on an external source', and your proposed list would be swiftly deleted since repeating the recommendations of VPN operators is contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia. MrOllie (talk) 23:07, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I don't think my idea is very workable because most of the VPN's don't seem to make detailed recommendations about torrent clients. I was a bit fooled by ProtonVPN, which strongly recommends five open-source apps that support privacy well, and can themselves be audited for privacy. Since these are unpaid apps unaffiliated with the company, I see no conflict with the purpose of Wikipedia. For other companies, though, they mostly just have guides on how to setup the most widely used apps, and so the list you'd get from them would just be the most common apps. Still not much conflict with objectivity, though. Reversible Physicist (talk) 01:50, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Blog posts by VPN vendors do not remotely meet Wikipedia's sourcing requirements. Attempting to base a list on marketing materials like a vendor blog would in fact be contrary to the purpose of the encyclopedia. MrOllie (talk) 02:27, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

It is interesting to see how many people have already tried to write the article, usually by copy and paste. And not one managed to prove notability by using reliable, independent sources.Most of them were clear promo pieces. The Banner talk 23:23, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that Wikipedia editors have to spend a lot of time beating down self promotion. The article on VPN Services does seem to manage to glean quite a bit of objective information from their websites, so it doesn't seem to be impossible! Reversible Physicist (talk) 01:55, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Then good luck in writing a draft-article and submitting that through the AFC-process (the article is protected against recreation, so you have to follow that route to get the article approved and the protection lifted). For such an important program (as is claimed) it should be possible to write a neutral article with reliable, independent sources, don't you think? The Banner talk 09:34, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not planning to write an article. Thank you both for better educating me about how editors protect the integrity of Wikipedia! I'm used to writing academic papers, which are original research and you only need to convince the reviewers that it is interesting and correct. This is a very different situation. I'm not even sure that reviews on popular technology sites would be useful citations, since there may be questions about editorial independence. I'll leave it to someone braver and less busy to sort this out! Reversible Physicist (talk) 17:47, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

References

WebTorrent and WebTorrent feature support missing

WebTorrent (js) and WebTorrent Desktop are missing clients. Also the supported features section is missing a column for WebTorrent support. Some libs and clients can talk to WebTorrent (js) clients, as can be seen here: Add WebRTC support to popular torrent clients --PeterTheOne (talk) 12:02, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

BiglyBT missing

The recent fork of Vuze by the former Vuze core developers is missing. It can be found here: (link to website removed, as it is currently on the Wikipedia blacklist, request for whitelisting was filled) https://torrentfreak.com/former-vuze-developers-launch-biglybt-a-new-open-source-torrent-client-170803/ https://www.github.com/BiglySoftware/BiglyBT — Preceding unsigned comment added by Agowa (talk • contribs) 03:02, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

See the section titled 'Entries without articles' above. - MrOllie (talk) 03:04, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

BiglyBT should most definitely deserve its own page and entry on this list.

Its exclusion seems totally arbitrary, and reading the comments above a matter of personal bias.

Please go ahead and make it happen. 2A00:BD80:A929:0:38C:0:0:1 (talk) 18:12, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Hash Web Seeding vs HTTP Web Seeding

I assume the Hash Web Seeding feature refers to BEP 17, and HTTP Web Seeding feature refers to BEP 19. If so, this should be clearly and explicitly stated on the page. Crozone (talk) 04:38, 14 December 2020 (UTC)