Bitcoin is an implementation of Wei Dai's b-money proposal
http://weidai.com/bmoney.txt on Cypherpunks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunks in 1998 and Nick Szabo's Bitgold proposal
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.htmlThe timing is strange, just as we are getting a rapid increase in 3rd party coverage after getting slashdotted. I hope there's not a big hurry to wrap the discussion and decide. How long does Wikipedia typically leave a question like that open for comment?
It would help to condense the article and make it less promotional sounding as soon as possible. Just letting people know what it is, where it fits into the electronic money space, not trying to convince them that it's good. They probably want something that just generally identifies what it is, not tries to explain all about how it works.
If you post in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Bitcoin please don't say "yeah, but bitcoin is really important and special so the rules shouldn't apply" or argue that the rule is dumb or unfair. That only makes it worse. Try to address how the rule is satisfied.
Search "bitcoin" on google and see if you can find more big references in addition to the infoworld and slashdot ones. There may be very recent stuff being written by reporters who heard about it from the slashdot article.
I hope it doesn't get deleted. If it does, it'll be hard to overcome the presumption. The institutional momentum is to stick with the last decision.
The last comment (--American Antics (talk) 10:28, 20 July 2010 (UTC)) mentions that the theory has been around for years and that Bitcoin is the first implementation, but it doesn't provide sources. You or somebody should add those two sources to the discussion to back up the claim.
Concerning the timing, one of the comments in the discussion makes it sound like it's a regular occurrence. Article gets written and nobody notices it, even to delete it. Then it starts to get some publicity and the editors notice it just enough to say it's not notable enough. And then they delete it until it really becomes notable.
The comment I mentioned just a moment ago points out that according to Wikipedia's guidelines, something being special is reason to ignore the rules. But the comment has already been made, so I agree that additional comments of 'Bitcoin is the best thing ever' are probably more detrimental than useful.
It seems that some people have been listing some occurrences in the news within the article itself. It might be useful for someone who articulate and charismatic to write to some news organizations and review sites to give them the idea of writing news articles about Bitcoin or just reviewing it. Writing a short opinion article to your local newspaper might also result in a news story. Come to think of it, I know two people who work in Journalism. I think I'll mention it to them and ask them to tell me if they publish a story about it.
Edit: Added additional text.