Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer Security

Article alerts

The Computer Security article alerts have been running for the past couple weeks. They provide a useful tool for staying on top of what's happening in the project. You can add Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer Security/Article alerts to your watchlist and you'll get an entry every day.

I modified the alert subscription so it shows Category:All Computer Security articles. Before it included those tagged using {{WikiProject Computer Security}} but omitted those tagged with {{WikiProject Computing}}.

That category should be populated shortly. It seems to be stuck in some kind of backlog. --Pnm (talk) 03:08, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

aXXo GA reassessment

One of the articles under this project, aXXo, is having its good article status reassessed, and may be delisted. Feel free to comment on the review at Talk:AXXo/GA2. Swarm ^X 21:00, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Billion laughs

A portion of the article Billion laughs—the second paragraph in the 'Summary' section–closely paraphrases (basically copies from) the source that is cited in the article. It is unclear to me, however, whether IBM developerWorks is a non-free source and, thus, whether the section needs to be rewritten. Furthermore, I do not think that I could effectively rewrite even if I tried to, as I lack the technical knowledge to fully understand the topic.

Would someone please have a look at the article and, if necessary, rewrite the paraphrased portion? Thank you, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 20:16, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I see no claim of notability. Speedy Del under A7. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sephiroth storm (talk • contribs) 23:48, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your quick response. I am generally hesitant about applying A7 to articles with references, but the premise underlying your deletion proposal seems, to me, to be solid. It may be worth noting that there are some other sources which touch on the topic (e.g., here and here), though I can't discern whether they are reliable. Thanks again, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 00:17, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Update: the speedy deletion was contested by another editor. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Citation templates now support more identifiers

Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as {{citation}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite web}}...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place |id={{arxiv|0123.4567}} (or worse |url=http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567), now you can simply use |arxiv=0123.4567, likewise for |id={{JSTOR|0123456789}} and |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789 → |jstor=0123456789.

The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):

• John Smith (2000). "How to Put Things into Other Things". Journal of Foobar 1 (2): 3–4. arXiv:0123456789. ASIN 0123456789. Bibcode 0123456789. doi:0123456789. ISBN 0123456789. ISSN 0123456789. JFM 0123456789. JSTOR 0123456789. LCCN 0123456789. MR0123456789. OCLC 0123456789. OL0123456789. OSTI 0123456789. PMC 0123456789. PMID 0123456789. RFC 0123456789. SSRN 0123456789. Zbl 0123456789. |id=____. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=0123456789. 

Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:38, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Hacker Toolkits?

Do we have any articles related to exploit toolkits? Like "Black Hole" Anyone want to make one? Sephiroth storm (talk) 01:59, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

ArcSight SmartConnector/FlexConnector Product Review

After working with this product for OS and Application auditing for several years I would like to hear some open discussion of technical issues, limitations and reliability. Mepowers00 (talk) 11:49, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

English Martyrs virus

I have left a comment on the "List of computer viruses (E-K)" concerning the "English Martyrs virus". Seems to be redirecting back to the list and not the article itself if the link has an article. Could someone have a look at this? Adamdaley (talk) 12:57, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

The name is redirected there because English Martyrs does not have its own article. Doesnt appear very notable. In fact google has no reports on it... Sephiroth storm (talk) 13:31, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

What is "cyberethics"?

The lead to cyberethics didn't define the subject, so I rewrote it. It's better than it was, but it still seems a bit off. Something's lacking. Please take a look. The Transhumanist 06:50, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

CESG Listed Advisor Scheme page

This page needs to be 'moved' or simply renamed = it should be "CESG Listed Adviser Scheme" (adviser, not advisor).

Peter Bance (talk) 07:56, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Move discussion re "Firewall"

Readers here may be interested in contributing to a discussion at Talk:Firewall (computing)#Requested move. Cheers. -GTBacchus^(talk) 16:13, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject restructuring

Compared to some other WikiProjects, the WikiProjects related to computing in a broad sense have been split into a large number of small projects:

Project	Watchers	Page views (main / talk, 2010)	Revisions / Contributors (talk)	GA/FA	Articles (stubs)	Assessments
WikiProject C++	59	3680 / 464	few	None	224	{{WikiProject C++}}
WikiProject Computational Biology	32	did not exist yet	87 / 20	1 / 1
WikiProject Computing	223	23488 / 8738	1429 / 480	62/17	27,409	{{WikiProject Computing}}
WikiProject Computer graphics	0	did not exist yet	2 / 1	None	634	{{WikiProject Computer graphics}}
WikiProject Computer music	0	334 / 74	24 / 12	None	?	No
WikiProject Computer networking (now a task force of WikiProject Computing)	54	6593 / 569	164 / 68	2/0	1,517	{{WikiProject Computer networking}}
WikiProject Computer science	390	23739 / 2848	1369 / 288	9/1	3,360 (4,047)	{{WikiProject Computer science}}
WikiProject Computer Security	33	3693 / 1230	173 / 53	7/2	1,555 (84+82+179-3)	{{WikiProject Computer Security}}
WikiProject Computer Vision	0	did not exist yet	1 / 1	None	12	{{WikiProject Computer Vision}}
WikiProject Cryptography	102	8957 / 903	402 / 83	None	599	{{WikiProject Cryptography}}
WikiProject Databases	37	1885 / 456	53 / 24	2 / 1	649	{{WikiProject Databases}}
WikiProject Free Software	44	4425 / 1024	353 / 97	7 / 1	1,223 (313)	{{WikiProject Free Software}}
WikiProject Internet	34	4636 / 2614	84 / 50	16/3	? (478)	{{WikiProject Internet}}
WikiProject Java	31	5588 / 819	75 / 26	1/0	1,474	{{WikiProject Java}}
WikiProject Programming languages (merged with WikiProject Computer science)	80 (before merge)	2507 / 357	130 / 56	None	?	No
WikiProject Software	82	6773 / 1443	540 / 143	13/5	8,747	{{WikiProject Software}}
WikiProject Systems	45	4377 / 691	626 / 70		6	{{WikiProject Systems}}
Not (yet) included: WikiProject Cyberlaw (check redirect!), WikiProject IRC, WikiProject KDE, WikiProject Linux, WikiProject Nortel, WikiProject Apple Inc., WikiProject Malware, WikiProject Websites, WikiProject Microsoft Windows, WikiProject Microsoft, WikiProject .NET, WikiProject Method engineering, WikiProject RISC OS, WikiProject Systems Engineering Initiative
WikiProject Logic
WikiProject Mathematics (for comparison)	661	19534 / 27375	22711 / 1185	33/23	27186	{{maths rating}}
To compare: WikiProject Astronomy, WikiProject Biology, WikiProject Chemistry, WikiProject Philosophy, WikiProject Physics, WikiProject Military history

I believe this fragmentation of the community is not productive. In essence a WikiProject is just a shared talk page where people with similar interests can meet each other. This project is fairly small and inactive. Would anyone object to it being merged (as a task force) into Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing? —Ruud 10:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

At the moment I'm inclined to leave this one alone because the topic has a strong cultural focus. I've done some editing in this area, and I can see some advantage in bridging the cultural perspectives with more rigor, but think this is a topic where the "feel" might be important. Neutral for now. --Pnm (talk) 20:28, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Although I'm not opposed to the idea itself, I don't see how this is going to be anything but a bureaucratic thing. How will merging with Computing bring new vigor, new energy to this Wikiproject? Isn't that just hiding the statistics in a larger pile of numbers? I think it'll actually get *worse*: if we're just a taskforce, I'd say less people will join to help out. So, for now: Oppose because (to me) the rationale makes no sense. --DanielPharos (talk) 21:23, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I actually avoided the term "task force" in a previous merge proposal for the reason you give here: it seems like an arbitrary bureaucratic term. More concretely, I would like to see the following things happen:

• This talk page becomes a redirect to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing. Less talk pages to keep track of will hopefully result in more active participants in discussions.
• {{WikiProject Computer Security}} gets properly merged with {{WikiProject Computing}}. Computer security articles will show up on the related changes list of WikiProject Computing, but there will sill be a separate recent changes lists covering only the computer security related articles.

Some additional reasoning can be found at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing#WikiProject restructuring. —Ruud 21:59, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

So the proposal is basically to get rid of the Talk-page (redirecting all discussions to Computing)? Which leaves this wikiproject useless (just a lousy page gathering statistics), so I can already forsee the merge to Computing being suggested sometime afterwards. Which leaves my original comment fully intact, and in fact strengthens it. A wikiproject like this is *defined* by its talk-page. So: strong oppose. Again, not against the idea for a merger, but because this proposal clearly hasn't been thought fully through (yet). This appears to be just a sneaky way of getting rid of this wikiproject entirely! --DanielPharos (talk) 23:10, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this proposal is primarily intended to reduce the number of talk pages of computing-related WikiProjects (I absolutely do not want to be "sneaky" about this). There are a number of good reasons to do so:

1. The multitude of different talk pages belonging to different, but related, WikiProjects can be confusing and intimidating to new contributors.
2. Long time editors have an upper bound on the WikiProjects they can keep track off and actively participate in (perhaps as low as two or three?)

I strongly believe the mantra "less is more" applies here: fewer talk pages result in a higher overall activity, especially if the WikiProjects are partially overlapping and effectively competing for the attention of editors. This approach has worked effectively in the past for WikiProjects such as WP:MILHIST. Think about it this way: a message posted at this talk page can be seen by at most 30 editors, a message posted to the talk page of WikiProject Computing by over 200. On which talk page do you think a relatively new or even experienced contributor would most likely be better served?

That said, I do want to preserve or even improve and promote any other infrastructure these smaller have in place (article assessments, related changes, etc.) as these are essential tools for some editors. I hope to have convinced you that I did in fact gave this matter a great deal of though over the past few years. —Ruud 00:06, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I can indeed see now you've giving this a lot of thought, but I cannot see how this can result in anything else than the complete destruction of this wikiproject. A wikiproject is a clearly defined thing, as is a task force. Removing the talk-page sends us into limbo, and makes the wikiproject useless (as a gathering place; it's defining characteristic). A few months later, somebody will suggest an outright delete, and at that point, it makes sense to do so. You'll have to convince me your proposal doesn't end up with the deletion of this wikiproject, because that I do oppose. --DanielPharos (talk) 09:56, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

If merged then the nature of this project would already radically change. Afterwards any further deletion would imply removing the remaining part of this project, which would mainly consist of the article assessment infrastructure (please let me know if I've overlooked any other aspects that define this project in my analysis). WikiProject Computing already has a task force with separate article assessments and I can't think of a good reason why anyone would like to remove those.

I completely agree that the defining characteristic of a WikiProject is its gathering place, the talk page. The really important question here is whether current community that has gathered around this project is large and vibrant enough to be able to be of assistance to editors writing in the area of computer security, or whether they are better served by a somewhat more diverse and larger community. My analysis of some of the statistics related to this project and a look through the talk page archives lead me to believe the latter, but in the end people who have actively participated in this project are a better judge of the situation. —Ruud 10:56, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you can show me that analysis of the stats, and why you think this wikiproject would be improved by what you're suggesting, AND if you can prove to me we will be better of without our own Talk-page, then I'm all for it. But right now, I haven't seen any convincing evidence. --DanielPharos (talk) 12:35, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

This isn't an exact science, so I'm certainly not going to claim to be able to prove anything. The evidence is is given by activity statistics - such as the numbers in the table above or the "Top 50 Editors" table here, which indicate this project only has two active editors (one of which is semi-retired) - and past experiences. —Ruud 13:06, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Then I'm simply not convinced this is the right thing to do, and I'm not willing to sacrifice this wikiproject on that basis, sorry. --DanielPharos (talk) 15:15, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Historical note: This project seems to have originated from Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing/Computer and Information Security task force. —Ruud 18:29, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

It's a merger of that and Wikipedia:WikiProject Malware --DanielPharos (talk) 18:45, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Any idea why it happened? Not the merge, which makes sense, but the change from task force to a separate wikiproject. --Pnm (talk) 18:54, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I was in the Malware wikiproject at the time, so from my point of view, there was no change from task force to wikiproject. It was noted that there was a significant overlap between the two, and neither had a large active set of members, so it was decided to split the task force (pure information things went one way, computer security thing went towards Malware) and Malware was re-branded to Computer Security, to increase the span to something more useful. (The Malware=yes tag on the Computing template for instance gives you a "Computer Security" instead.) --DanielPharos (talk) 19:27, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Got it. A task force was merging with a wikiproject, and the result was a new wikiproject. So what we're considering now isn't so much the reverse move as a retargeting of that original merge. --Pnm (talk) 23:19, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• Neutral Since some people have taken a liking to deleting inactive Wikiprojects, I think morphing smaller Wikiprojects into task forces and placing them under umbrella wikiprojects makes more sense... at least as long as we have people who think that processes can be improved by destruction of idle wikiprojects, at any rate. Jclemens (talk) 02:33, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

• Strong support per Ruud. "Less is more" summarises the arguments pretty well. By my own experience, smaller WikiProjects are so inactive that it makes no sense to use their talk page for questions or centralized discussions. So what's the point for keeping a separate WikiProject then? Restructuring the WikiProject as a task force under an umbrella of a more active one is a sensible solution, since the issues in the talk page get more exposure, but the editor tools such as assessments and such are left intact. 1exec1 (talk) 18:02, 3 December 2011 (UTC)