Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Date (Unix command)

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 redirect‎ to System time#Retrieving system time.. —Ganesha811 (talk) 01:07, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Date (Unix command) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an indiscriminate colleciton of information, not a guide, and not a man page. There's no evidence (including what I could find from WP:BEFORE) that this command has been covered in reliable, independent sources – except for 'Linux for beginners'-style books that tutorialize its usage but offer no encyclopedic context. I know that a lot of these kinds of articles exist like env, but that's a notoriously bad argument for keeping or deleting an article. They entirely contravene long-established Wikipedia policy to make something that exists between a man page and a GeeksForGeeks page. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 15:00, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When I first saw this article it reminded me of the Wikipedia Manual of Style which says: "Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not an instruction manual, guidebook, or textbook" (WP:NOTHOW). So I tried to find information elsewhere about date (unix command) to see where the idea came from, who wrote the code, how has it developed over time etc etc but I didn’t find anything. There are articles for echo (command), dirname and pwd, amongst others. They are less about teaching readers the syntax, and more about explaining the context, so I can see why they are there. If this article stays, then it needs far more background information to turn it into an encyclopedia article.
I'm very sceptical that more background information will come to light, hence my !vote to delete. --Northernhenge (talk) 22:13, 29 April 2025 (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.
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