Talk:Protocol Wars

Notability

I placed a notability template on this article. It may be notable (after all, I remember the issues and they seemed important at the time!) but it will need more WP:RS. At the very least it appears the article is misnamed. Only one of the current references mentions a "protocol war". That is ref 7, the Roger Scantlebury interview. The first three refs don't mention wars at all, and refs 4, 5, 6 and 8 all speak of the "standards war" which seems a more appropriate title to me, but should probably contain a qualifier too, to show which standards war we are talking about. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 22:55, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

This topic is covered is several reliable sources and commonly known as the Protocol Wars. It cuts across several existing articles and is currently not covered on Wikipedia. Let's see how the article develops. Improvements welcome. Whizz40 (talk) 04:05, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi Whizz40, per WP:DEMOLISH, I am indeed happy to watch how this develops, and indeed to help if I can. I won't be taking any precipitate action to undermine what you are doing, but I do think the title needs more thought. A rename is an easy thing to do at any time, so we should think carefully about what is the most approriate title.

You say the topic is commonly known as "the Protocol Wars". Although it is referred to by that name, my analysis of the sources you had yesterday was clear that "standards war" was the more common term, and is the one I would generally use. Protocols are part of the standards, of course, but they are not the only part. There is also a whole ideological war about the standards themselves, particularly at layer interfaces. Additionally, I am not sure this article should necessarily take the unqualified name "Protocol Wars" when there have been many protocol wars, both within the networking community and without. Another protocol war is described in a 2015 article in the IPJ, describing which transport layer protocols should be used in TCP/IP, and that article is titled TCP protocol wars. That is disambiguated from this article's topic by people generally referring to this as the "Internet-OSI Standards War". That would be my preference for the page title, but if you think it is not WP:CONCISE then how about "Standards war (networking)"? I wonder if kvng (talk · contribs), as another subject specialist, might have a view? -- Sirfurboy (talk) 12:18, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

My question would be which WP:THREE reliable sources indicate notability of the subject. ~Kvng (talk) 14:31, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestions Sirfurboy and Kvng. Happy to go with consensus and cover this on the existing article, per Talk:OSI model#Protocol Wars, which may be brief as you say. If no objections I'll delete this article. Whizz40 (talk) 18:12, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

No objections to deletion. I did not object to keeping it either if you can establish the notability. Thanks. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 18:54, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

I hope I haven't been misunderstood. Mine was not a rhetorical or snarky question. I don't have a formed opinion about whether this is notable. I was requesting someone highlight evidence supporting notability; bthere are a lot of sources cited. ~Kvng (talk) 13:39, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

I too am happy to keep discussing if you wish. There was a standards war - I was just checking that (a) it was notable and (b) we are calling it the right thing. So happy for you to withdraw the deletion if you wish, or we can allow deletion but maybe come back and try again to create the article in the future. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 14:21, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

There is some discussion of a standards war in OSI model and that is clearly the topic being covered by this article. My assumption at this point is this is a notable subject. I will find time later to do a WP:BEFORE-style assessment. If protocol wars is not the right title, we can always rename. ~Kvng (talk) 14:27, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Three sources for discussion: Whizz40 (talk) 15:09, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

• Andrew L. Russell (30 July 2013). "OSI: The Internet That Wasn't". IEEE Spectrum. Vol. 50, no. 8.
• Russell, Andrew L. "Rough Consensus and Running Code' and the Internet-OSI Standards War" (PDF). IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
• "Standards Wars" (PDF). Student project at Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington. 2006.

Thank you for these. Citations 1 and 2 are both very good, but they have the same author. Is there perhaps one more we can find? Sorry! -- Sirfurboy (talk) 15:14, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

See for example, case studies below. Whizz40 (talk) 16:09, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

• Esmailzadeh, Riaz (2016-03-04). Broadband Telecommunications Technologies and Management. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-99565-5.
• Davies, Howard; Bressan, Beatrice (2010-04-26). A History of International Research Networking: The People who Made it Happen. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-3-527-32710-2.
• "12.13 Interop (TCP/IP) Trade Show - September". www.historyofcomputercommunications.info. Retrieved 2020-02-05.

Ok, Riaz, 2016 does not seem to mention protocol wars or the standards war and the last ref is more of a passing mention, But Davies, 2010 has a significant section, and speaks of Protocol Wars (plural, stating there was more than one war). That is a good ref, but then it suggests something subtly different to the first three refs which are all focused on the OSI-Internet standards war. Should this article be about that standards war in particular, or about the protocol wars in general (which include the OSI standards war?)

As I said, the IEEE sources are good. Ideally we would have sources from different authors, but either of the Russell sources are good because the IEEE is a respected source and these are secondary sources. Wikipedia, as a tertiary source, prefers secondary sources, so I think they are good. Not sure if kvng (talk · contribs) agrees, but hopefully we all agree on that.

The paper from University of Washington is interesting. It is a student's final project. It is not clear to me the basis on which it is published though. Is this a submitted and corrected paper that the University published? Is it a sample project that they put up for student guidance? or is it published in some other way? A student project may contain errors, but the paper does do two things: (1) it supports the view that this subject is notable, and (2) it provides a bibliography so should lead to more sources (although whether those will be secondary sources is unclear).

So I think we are getting closer. Something does appear to be notable here, but we need to be clear on that question of whether this article focuses only on the OSI standards war or whether it is a description of a series of wars as per Davies, 2010.

Thanks again. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 20:27, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

My view would be to take a broader scope for two reasons, firstly to provide the context for the Internet-OSI standards debate and secondly to avoid the other aspects being left with no where to be included. See also discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Protocol Wars‎. Whizz40 (talk) 23:20, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

One possible approach to get started, perhaps we can define an outline of the topic area and then identify the scope for this article and the article title? For example:

• Standards in computer science

• Protocol Wars

• Internet-OSI Standards War

Open to other approaches as well. I'm still open to deleting this article on the basis the content is better covered in other articles to which it is relevant. Is there a concern this article will become unwieldy and poor quality, duplicating other content or orphaning content that would be better found on other articles to which it relates? Whizz40 (talk) 08:58, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

It could be discussed in Internet protocol suite or OSI model but since it pertains to both, it would be hard to decide where and hard to avoid duplication. As long as we're happy notability requirements are met, I think it better to cover it in this separate article. ~Kvng (talk) 18:16, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Okay so thinking about the article title. I think what started as datagrams vs virtual circuits ultimately became the Internet-OSI Standards War. If the latter is the main topic and the former can be covered in the article as background then I can see no reason not to rename the article to Internet-OSI Standards War or something else. Any other views on the best article title? Along the way there were pioneers (RAND, NPL, ARPA, CYCLADES) vs PTTs (X.25), Open (TCP/IP on Unix) vs proprietary (IBM and DEC), US DoD/NSF/NASA/DoE (TCP/IP) vs Europe (X.25), IP over X.25 vs either/or, culminating in Internet-OSI (including the US Dept of Commerce supporting the latter). Whizz40 (talk) 08:53, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. I think that is a good plan. Thanks. — Sirfurboy (talk) 09:13, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I would leave the title alone for now and concentrate on developing the article. When we're happy with the content, it should be clear whether the title needs to change. Changing the title once is not a big deal. It can get messy if we end up changing it multiple times. What we have now is a good working title. ~Kvng (talk) 18:21, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Made a start, welcome editing from others and views on quality and approach. I am short on time and there is plenty to cover but if anyone thinks it is heading in the right direction and wants to help improve and put it up for DYK then please do (might just make the criteria with input form others, started on Feb 5th or 5x expansion). Whizz40 (talk) 11:48, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion

Hi there, you put the article up for AfD instead of speedy in error. No big issue. AfD takes a week but otherwise it should be uncontroversial. If you want a speedy deletion, the following tags need to be placed on the page, replacing all the page content with these:

{{Db-g7}}, {{Db-author}}, {{Db-blanked}}, {{Db-self}}

As this is an author request deletion, I don't think I can do it (the Db-self template not being correct for me), so if you want a speedy deletion, just paste those onto the page. Thanks, and thanks for all the new information at History of the Internet too. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 11:25, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Let's finish the discussion above before deleting. ~Kvng (talk) 13:47, 7 February 2020 (UTC)