Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing

Forensics expert needs regarding possible COI editing

I reverted some possibly-useful but seeminly-WP:Conflict of interest-editing on Computer forensics. Please see the discussion on Talk:Computer_forensics#Conflict_of_interest_editing.

Please read the editor's contributions and if appropriate, undo my reverting of his edits. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:07, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Also this edit on Digital forensic process needs scrutiny. The revert was complex due to 2 subsequent edits. Feel free to revert to the version right before mine if the COI content should be kept. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:24, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Titan (supercomputer)

Hello,

I performed a brief FAC review of Titan (supercomputer) at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Titan (supercomputer)/archive1, but it could do with some more input. Is anybody here interested?

Thank you. Praemonitus (talk) 23:01, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Documenting the 1980s, an information "black hole"

According to GNG and NOTE, Wikipedians generally look for references in 3rd party materials. As we go back in time, such mentions were increasingly expensive to product, print and archive. I recently heard that the entire recorded history of mankind prior to 2002 is equal to 2 years of current output.

I bring this up because it seems we repeatedly come up against examples of things that are very well know and widely used, yet are almost undocumented. The early history of video games is a good example. Many games that were widely played do not appear to have ever been documented in a form that meets normal GNG. Many of these are documented today, but only on self-hosted pages. These too fail GNG.

In the current era of rampant deletionism, this presents a problem. The net is alight with examples from this era in history being brought to AfD and killed off by bureaucrats who are unaware of the history (nor should they be) and apply the letter of the law. I ran into this myself with the Star Trek (text game) article, which quickly turned sour for no apparent reason. In that case I was able to find mentions in snippets in magazine ads, but had that not happened, the article would have been deleted. This is a game that ran on millions of computers and is know to practically anyone that used a computer from about 1975 to 1985.

Has anyone put any thought into this issue? I am vaguely aware of efforts to allow a wider selection of materials in support, ones that would otherwise fail GNG, but I am unaware of the specifics or whether or not they have been successful. Are there any mainstream efforts in this area? Any other advice that might be offered?

Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:39, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

My advice is to become familiar with WP:AfD procedures monitor the following:

• Technology AfD
• Computing AfD

-—Kvng 17:58, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I was going to blow this off Kvng, but in practice this appears to be entirely practical. The list on tech, for instance, was only a few pages long. Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:14, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Any other similar lists I might want to look at? I'm not sure how to find the list of all these sub-lists of AfD Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:23, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I've run into this myself and can sympathize. I think third party materials are important and it is reasonable to require independent sources, but as long as they are independent, the sources don't necessarily have to top-tier like Byte or Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia. Gamer's magazines will sometimes run articles on historical video games. Role-playing mags can have articles on RPG video games. Institutions like the Smithsonian and the Computer history museum have had retrospectives on the most popular games and sometimes amass a good archive in the process of creating these retrospectives. I know in the late 70's and 80, there were a whole host of hobbyist magazines and newspapers, like the Silicon Gulch Gazette, that reported on hardware and software topics. But where those hoobyist pubs would be archived, I have no idea. Thoroughly searching those self hosted sites will sometimes reveal scans of magazine articles on the game in question. --Mark viking (talk) 20:07, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

But the problem is that AfD is policed by bureaucrats who tend to strictly apply book requirements for meeting GNG. The rule of thumb I've always used, and you espouse above, is never good enough. What do we do in those cases? Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:09, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I have sympathy with the issues, one particular related discussion being Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cyber Chess. This is a '90s game but on a minority platform. Obviously there were plenty of RSes available in the day but getting archived copies isn't always easy. I think that Mark viking's suggestion of scans on WP:SPSes is useful. There's always the risk that such sites won't be available in the future, but if an editor has read and incorporated (as a source) content in a reliable source then others should assume good faith and not question such inclusion from printed sources without good reason. -- Trevj (talk) 00:25, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

I certainly don't mind the SPS's as a solution, but I've actually seen them argued for rejection because they are copyvio! Maury Markowitz (talk) 00:59, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like nonsense! I don't see how a copyvio on Wikimedia servers would be caused by an external link to a site including a scanned magazine article. Are editors rejecting such citations able to link to a policy showing that such linking is unacceptable? -- Trevj (talk) 13:05, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor is coming

The WP:VisualEditor is designed to let people edit without needing to learn wikitext syntax. The articles will look (nearly) the same in the new edit "window" as when you read them (aka WYSIWYG), and changes will show up as you type them, very much like writing a document in a modern word processor. The devs currently expect to deploy the VisualEditor as the new site-wide default editing system in early July 2013.

About 2,000 editors have tried out this early test version so far, and feedback overall has been positive. Right now, the VisualEditor is available only to registered users who opt-in, and it's a bit slow and limited in features. You can do all the basic things like writing or changing sentences, creating or changing section headings, and editing simple bulleted lists. It currently can't either add or remove templates (like fact tags), ref tags, images, categories, or tables (and it will not be turned on for new users until common reference styles and citation templates are supported). These more complex features are being worked on, and the code will be updated as things are worked out. Also, right now you can only use it for articles and user pages. When it's deployed in July, the old editor will still be available and, in fact, the old edit window will be the only option for talk pages (I believe that WP:Notifications (aka Echo) is ultimately supposed to deal with talk pages).

The developers are asking editors like you to join the alpha testing for the VisualEditor. Please go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and tick the box at the end of the page, where it says "Enable VisualEditor (only in the main namespace and the User namespace)". Save the preferences, and then try fixing a few typos or copyediting a few articles by using the new "Edit" tab instead of the section [Edit] buttons or the old editing window (which will still be present and still work for you, but which will be renamed "Edit source"). Fix a typo or make some changes, and then click the 'save and review' button (at the top of the page). See what works and what doesn't. We really need people who will try this out on 10 or 15 pages and then leave a note Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback about their experiences, especially if something mission-critical isn't working and doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar.

Also, if any of you are involved in template maintenance or documentation about how to edit pages, the VisualEditor will require some extra attention. The devs want to incorporate things like citation templates directly into the editor, which means that they need to know what information goes in which fields. Obviously, the screenshots and instructions for basic editing will need to be completely updated. The old edit window is not going away, so help pages will likely need to cover both the old and the new.

If you have questions and can't find a better place to ask them, then please feel free to leave a message on my user talk page, and perhaps together we'll be able to figure it out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:10, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Correction: Talk pages are being replaced by mw:Flow, not by Notifications/Echo. This may happen even sooner than the VisualEditor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:43, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

File:CPT 4200 Cassette Tape Selectric Word Processor.png

File:CPT 4200 Cassette Tape Selectric Word Processor.png has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 03:52, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

liblogging article

Hello, I am relatively new to Wikipedia and wanted to help improve the information on Computer data logging. I had written an article on liblogging, but it is not sure if it meets the notability requirements. User Deb helps me avoid creating a bad article, but he is not sure on the references I could provide. So he suggested I try asking here. As usual for logging-related projects, there is not much public discussion and mentioning of them, even though the drive very important applications. Liblogging is the only active project providing a simple API for RFC 3195 logging and is included in all major distros. There are some other BEEP libraries (RFC 3195 is based on BEEP), but they offer a much larger scope and support RFC 3195 as an "example", which means they are heavy for someone just interested in implementing RFC 3195. This as some quick background. I have listed some of the more important references to it at User_talk:Deb#liblogging_deletion (the posting with the URLs). I would appreciate if you could tell us what you think. Many thanks in advance! Logfreak4712 (talk) 11:11, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

First of all, thanks for your efforts in adding material about computer logging infrastructures. Logging is not considered 'exciting' by many, but it is essential. I took a look at the references you mentioned. The osdir link is a dead link; the content was apparently deleted. The beepcore link just lists liblogging, and following the link gives a short description. The comments on RFC 3195 lists liblogging. The M. Schuette presentation lists liblogging. I consider the M. Schuette presentation, the comments on RFC page and possibly the beepcore.org page as reliable sources. But unfortunately none of them go into any detail about the library. Given the general notability guidelines, per WP:GNG, for an article to survive AfD, multiple in-depth independent reliable sources are needed. Thus my best guess is that these sources would not be enough, because they are not in-depth.

However, the library is verifiable and the fact that it is listed as an example implementation in comments for RFC 3195 makes it somewhat notable. I'd suggest adding liblogging to the Implementations section of the article Reliable Event Logging Protocol as a useful open-source example of an RFC 3195 implementation. I agree that BEEP is not a good fit. For what it is worth, I think this is a worthy library and agree that infrastructure projects like this don't get much press, which leads to systemic bias against inclusion in WP. Still, those are the notability rules these days and we have to work with them. Thanks, --Mark viking (talk) 17:04, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

WP Computing in the Signpost

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Computing for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. –Mabeenot (talk) 21:20, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Revive Proposed Change: Add "Repository" Field

See proposal on infobox talk page:

This proposal was made, and not done previously: Template talk:Infobox software/Archive 3#Source Code Repository Field. I'd like to revive the change, which I have commenced through opportunity for discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Software, as well as with a specific diff of the proposed edit.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattsenate (talk • contribs) 17:57, 16 May 2013‎ (UTC)

File:LG-WebOS.png

File:LG-WebOS.png has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 07:14, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Category:Computer pioneers

Category:Computer pioneers has been nominated for deletion. This has subcategories, which is not discussed in the nomination -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 07:59, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Touch user interface

I went to the page Touch user interface, expecting to see content about, say, touchscreen oriented interfaces (such as say, Android, iOS, Windows 8), but instead see this strange article about haptic feedback that seems disjointed and all over the place.

Given how important these types of interfaces are becoming, am I the only one thinking that this clould be a candidate for a total re-write, with your help of course? ViperSnake151  Talk  18:58, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

The article seems to cover a different concept: interfaces that communicate with users using touch, rather than interfaces which use touchscreens as an input method. Having said that, it does seem to be a bit short on references, and a bit all over the place. The TUI concept isn't really covered all that well.  — daranz [ t ] 19:37, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Machine code

An important concept which definitely needs more eyes. I have an impression that I talk mainly with myself and IPs at talk: Machine code for last three years. But I actually did not deal with the topic for about twenty years. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:30, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Removal of categories by Dekart

I am concerned about recent drive-by recategorization of articles by user:Dekart (notified), who did not appear to be collaborative earier. Especially damaging thing is a mass removal of Category:Operating system technology. One instance, which was obviously wrong on its both sides, I opted to revert. But there are many others which require a review. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:30, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Please check Wikipedia:Categorization#Categorizing pages: "...This means that if a page belongs to a subcategory of C (or a subcategory of a subcategory of C, and so on) then it is not normally placed directly into C." This was the reason why I removed Category:Operating system technology from several articles. For example, article Shell (computing) belongs to Category:Command shells, which in turn belongs to Category:Operating system technology. This is why Shell (computing) shouldn't be present in Category:Operating system technology directly, so I removed it from there. Dekart (talk) 15:46, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Some of your edits are of this type and are within policy, but none of your recent edits have any edit summary, and that is not OK. Please explain your edits in each article you change. And as Incnis Mrsi pointed out, you made an obvious error in Operating system shell. In writing an edit summary, you could have likely caught this bug. Thanks, --Mark viking (talk) 16:01, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I know what is over-categorization and cope with it frequently at Wikimedia Commons, as well as (formerly) in Russian Wikipedia as early as in 2006. The important word is is not normally placed. You should think, not push, in such cases as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Device_driver&diff=556850846​. Even if it is included to category:Linux drivers which is a sub-sub-subcategory of category:Operating system technology, “driver” is a part of the latter on its own right. Not because some driver are Linux drivers, which is a subcat of Linux kernel, one type of kernels, which finally is a subcat of “technology”. Just think whether do you improve things or break them. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:20, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't agree with this. The article Device driver belongs to Category:Device drivers, which in turn belongs to Category:Operating system technology. So, Device driver don't need to be itself in Category:Operating system technology. As an example, please see Applied mathematics, it belongs just to Category:Applied mathematics, and not to Category:Mathematics Dekart (talk) 20:15, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Oops, I missed that. As Mark viking said, edit summaries could avoid this misconception. HotCat has the manual save mode, activated with (+⁺) link, where you can add an own text to the (precomposed) edit summary. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 05:33, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for information! I will do this in my future categorization changes. Dekart (talk) 19:57, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

+1 for edit summaries! ~KvnG 02:07, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Saw your signpost

A while back Cisco ASA got deleted. I followed the rabbit hole of suspicious AfD participants and found a somewhat large conspiracy to reduce, discredit, and eliminate coverage of Cisco products and boost Avaya/Nortel products. Some of you might have followed the controversy at the time I made my findings public, which resulted in the deletion of the mostly-defunct Wikiproject Nortel. In any case, I have a userfied draft at User:Gigs/Cisco ASA. One of the issues with a product such as this is that even though it's a very popular and important flagship product for Cisco in the SMB space, there isn't a whole lot of in-depth coverage that's easy to find on the web. Anyway, help would be appreciated bringing that draft back to article space, with improvements in its scope and coverage. Gigs (talk) 15:29, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for willing to help, although I would say the proposed article is borderline. Most of the proposed article is a table of detailed product specs sourced to a Cisco promotional web page listed as retrieved in 2008. Wikipedia is not a buying guide. One can always get the latest specs directly from the company site, so these product litanies are either just redundant or out of date. Have they really not improved in five years? And stating that it is "popular" "important" or "flagship" is an opinion, which generally does not comply with Wikipedia guidelines (and "flagship" is idiomatic, to be avoided). Cisco is a public company, so if these products really are so important, then you should be able to, say, dig out some of the annual reports from Edgar and say "this product line accounted for $37 bazillion in revenues in 2008 and $47 bazillion in 20012" <ref>{{Cite ...}}</ref> What we need more in my opinion, is the historical narrative saying how the products evolved over time. Those go best in an article of a combined product line, which can always be split apart when it gets too big. One approach would be to do this with the Cisco PIX article, updating the ASA section there and adding citations until it needs to be spun out. Although that article itself could use much help with the inline links and uncited assertions.

Also not sure of the exact events to which you refer, but perhaps what some might call a "conspiracy" might be called "consensus". There was indeed some fans of Avaya and those pages still could use some cleanup. And yes, gaps in other coverage also need filling in. Need to get as much collaboration as we can, thanks. W Nowicki (talk) 17:41, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

iOS 7

Hi! I know it's not really in your remit, but I'd appreciate a little extra input into what is now becoming an edit war on the iOS 7 article regarding the inclusion of a proportionally large criticism section. I have opened a talk discussion there, yet IP editors keep re-adding the section despite a lack of reliable sources, and the fact that it causes extreme bias. I don't know whether semi-protection is warranted, but it'd be good if some people could help back me up; I don't want to fall foul of 3RR, so I can't protect it myself any more. Thanks!  drewmunn  talk  10:24, 14 June 2013 (UTC)