Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boa (JavaScript engine)

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. Essentially, those advocating deletion make more persuasive arguments. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 08:59, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Boa (JavaScript engine)

Boa (JavaScript engine) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Not notable Uwsi (talk) 19:03, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Uwsi (talk) 19:03, 19 September 2025 (UTC)
    Keep – I am the creator of Boa, so I have a conflict of interest and will not add these sources to the article myself. However, there are multiple reliable, independent sources that cover Boa in detail, which helps satisfy WP:GNG:
    The New Stack: “New Astro Releases Incorporates Sessions, New Astro Actions Tools” – coverage from a respected industry publication, mentioning Boa as part of a major release.
    Medium (JavaScript in Plain English): “Boa v0.20 — A Major Leap for the JavaScript Engine” – detailed write-up of the engine’s progress, development history, and significance.
    Academic paper from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (PDF) – cites Boa in the context of JavaScript engine research, showing its relevance in scholarly work.
    These are independent sources providing substantive discussion, not trivial mentions, which helps establish notability per WP:INDEP.
    I am only participating here to make sure editors are aware of these sources, not to influence article content. JaseW (talk) 13:09, 20 September 2025 (UTC)
    The article from The New Stack is just a "release roundup" of JavaScript Rust tools that summarizes information found in the various projects' release notes. The article has no information not found in https://boajs.dev/blog/2024/12/05/boa-release-020, which it heavily quotes from.
    The JavaScript in Plain English article is not a "detailed write-up of the engine’s progress, development history, and significance", but plagiarizes the aforementioned 0.2.0 release notes, even to the extent of occasionally copying the first person pronouns ("our", "we", etc.) that the release notes use.
    The masters' thesis (about a project that uses Boa) is a single paper referencing Boa which does not (on its own) convey or confer notability. Martey (talk) 20:07, 26 September 2025 (UTC)
Keep — There are some things going on that make Boa notable, including the recent work going on to support the ECMAScript Temporal APIs, of which Boa's temporal_rs forms the underlying basis. Chromium Tracker
While a more minor player, I don't see this as falling below the notability threshold that would suggest deletion is appropriate. Neoeinstein (talk) 15:13, 25 September 2025 (UTC)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 19:18, 26 September 2025 (UTC)
  • Delete - This does not meet the notability guidelines outlined in WP:GNG. As I commented above, the sources that the project's creator provided are not enough to establish this project's notability. When I look at List of JavaScript engines, Boa does not have the high-quality (i.e. reliable) sources that other engines (even niche engines like Espruino) have. Martey (talk) 20:25, 26 September 2025 (UTC)
    So you looked at JerryScript in that list and decided they have higher reliable sources than this article when there’s only 3 references and one of them is just a link to their GitHub repository?
    I’d be curious to understand how that passes JaseW (talk) 23:24, 26 September 2025 (UTC)
  • Delete I have found no reliable, in-depth, non-primary sources that establish notability. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS like jerryscript is not a good reason to keep this article. As of now, the best place for this is in a list of Javascript engines. Anonrfjwhuikdzz (talk) 01:26, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: No consensus here yet. Opinion is divided between Keep and Delete.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 22:36, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
  • Comment Is there a single reliable/independent source for this that can establish notability? Right now the keep votes are from the creator which raises COI concerns and a vague argument that the package is somehow notable with a link to a chrome update page. This is my analysis of sourcing provided in this discussion:

  • Programmer website that has user-submitted content. Cannot tell if there is any editorial oversight.
  • Medium is a blog hosting service and unreliable WP:MEDIUM.
  • A master's thesis. Per WP:THESIS: "Masters dissertations and theses are considered reliable only if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence."
  • A link to a chrome/chromium feature addition. Chrome/Chromium may be notable but notability is not inherited WP:NOTINHERITED and while a changelog may be reliable it offers no indication of notability.

Some of these sources are included on the main article now (2/12). The article also has these additional sources:
  • 4/12 references are non-independent references to the boa dev site and don't establish notability.
  • A link to an archived javascript engine test page
  • A video and a transcript of a conference presentation. I don't think technical conference presentation confer notability but correct me if that is incorrect.
  • Mozilla blog post that has no mention of Boa.
  • Presentation slides from another technical conference.
  • A github dev page which is primary/does not establish notability.

Unless other sources can be brought to the table, I don't think this article passes the requirements for WP:GNG as there are no sources that meet WP:SIRS to establish notability. Anonrfjwhuikdzz (talk) 02:13, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Delete A FOSS project certainly isn't expected to be covered in NY times or the Guardian. But there doesn't exist anything even in lesser sources that would be compatible with WP:NSOFT. This does sound like an impressive project and congrats to the JaseW for building it and getting a part of it into V8. But Wikipedia notability just isn't there, for now. – SD0001 (talk) 15:26, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Keep I agree with Neoeinstein (talk) that there are goings on that make Boa notable, especially the Temporal work at the moment. In response to Anonrfjwhuikdzz (talk) there is a New Stack article which mentions Boa that wasn't on your list: https://thenewstack.io/xslt-debate-leads-to-bigger-questions-of-web-governance/ i believe the New Stack are independent. The presentation from https://webengineshackfest.org/slides/cross-engine_contributions_at_scale:_how_newcomers_accelerated_temporal_and_upsert_in_spidermonkey,_v8,_and_boa_by_jonas_haukenes,_mikhail_barash_&_shane_carr.pdf is also independent from the project and doesn't include content from anyone who works on it (whether that confers notability or not is a different question). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.82.26 (talk) 20:01, 6 October 2025 (UTC) — 82.32.82.26 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
  • Delete. Fails WP:GNG. None of the sources rise to the level of independent significant coverage. Just a note to the closer. A number of the editors voting keep have been dormant for a long time. It's possible, although not provable, that these are Wikipedia:Sleeper accounts or some sort of off-wiki Wikipedia:Canvassing was happening. 4meter4 (talk) 15:22, 10 October 2025 (UTC)
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.