What that means is that Ruby simply wasn't very notable until 2000. Trying to make obscure things more notable is not a legitimate use of Wikipedia. It's already struggling against a tide of marketing abuse. And there can't possibly be any objective measure today of what independent sources in the future may be writing about.
> It's already struggling against a tide of marketing abuse.
I'm sure. And that's why deleting the pages of languages with peer-reviewed literature is a vital and useful way to prevent marketers from abusing Wikipedia.
> Trying to make obscure things more notable is not a legitimate use of Wikipedia.
Consider a person P who doesn't know about X but would benefit from X if he/she did know about it.
I hypothesize that for each P there is on average more than one X. This suggests to me that making things more notable can aid overall welfare, and therefore ought to be a goal of a universal encyclopedia project.
Ruby lacked verifiable evidence of notability from independent secondary sources. Wikipedia strenuously avoids making subjective judgment calls about whether anything is notable despite somehow failing to have been noticed.
