This argument happens so often there's a shorthand for it on WP:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS (ie, WP:OSE).

The short answer is, those other articles without references should also be put up for AfD.

The intended outcome of the AfD process isn't deletion; it's "delete unless we can find better sources", and proponents of the article are asked to find those sources. Here, the only external source found was a conference presentation by the author of the language, who was himself not WP-notable, at a conference in which most of the other presentations were also about prima facie non-notable languages.

    en·cy·clo·pe·dic
    enˌsīkləˈpēdik/
        adjective
        1.comprehensive in terms of information.

I personally think that an online encyclopedia should err on the side of being, er, encyclopedic. If an article is clearly cited, the citations are valid, and the quality is sufficient, I don't see a reason to delete. It's not like disk space is prohibitively expensive.

Well, that's the whole crux of the matter. Since truly comprehensive is not possible, where do you draw the line?

Ward Cunningham, who invented the wiki, said this [1] about the fight, which I think provides a pretty good way of deciding what stays, what goes:

"I think that Wikipedia has been handling that [issue] fairly well. We could talk to people who are a little closer to the day-to-day Wikipedia and they could probably even correct me on this, but I think the more important notion is notable. The community has to agree upon what the criterion of notability is, and that's only because, there are forms of abuse that arise from non-notable people feigning notability. And that's the fight. And once you start fighting that fight, you find all kinds of stuff that doesn't pass muster that wasn't hurting anybody. And you say, well, in the sense of fairness, I've got to delete it too. And that's a tough thing."

[1] http://www.drdobbs.com/240000393?pgno=2

> and that's only because, there are forms of abuse that arise from non-notable people feigning notability.

I'm not understanding why this is important. If someone wants to write well cited articles about their personal exploits, I see no issue.

The Wikipedia project has been explaining for over a decade what the problems are here. Meanwhile, writing a "well-cited article" about ones "personal exploits" isn't actually a problem: if you have reliable sources, you can defend an article on Wikipedia easily.

And what is a reliable source? Often times blog posts don't count, and the Delitionists want publications, which won't exist for many issues.

Why not just put the "This article isn't well cited" banner on the page? why not delete it?

> and proponents of the article are asked to find those sources.

Strictly, people putting the articles up for deletion are also asked to find sources first. Some of them do, and delete as a last resort. Others, not so much, and they want to delete a lot.