Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing/Archive 10

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FAR

I have nominated Macintosh for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Many otters • One bat • One hammer) 22:26, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Project Monitor

I suggest adding Project Monitor by Virage Group [1] to the list. Project Monitor is well known in France and Moroco and used by big companies and public services. Project Monitor is different of other portfolio management softwares because it is simple to use (like Base Camp for instance) but powerfull and BI minded with drill functionalities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pilote44 (talk • contribs) 11:20, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Is it possible to filter large tables in mediaWiki?

Does anyone know of a way to add a drop-down style filter to the tops of tables? Some of these articles that list different software and compares the features seem clumsy, I was just looking at the List of content management systems,and thought I'd put a note here to see if any of you awesome folks could think of a brilliant answer. Could HTML5 just make the browser do it? 71.195.228.116 (talk) 01:56, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

No, not with MediaWiki's limitations. Gary King (talk) 03:45, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Review of EICASLAB requested

User:Caporaletti (or Gabriella), the creating editor and most prolific contributor of the article, has politely asked me to review the EICASLAB article for advertising tone. She approached me because I nominated the article for deletion back in 2008 on the grounds that it failed notability criteria and that it read like an advertisement. I withdrew my nomination due to Gabriella's efforts to address the issues and several subsequent discussions that I had with her during which time she proved to be extremely cordial, civil and understanding of what the concerns were. She has been working on the article ever since and would now like a second opinion. I am not well versed in this field of knowledge so I'd like to refer this issue to your WikiProject if anyone would like to look over the article and offer their thoughts about the issue to Gabriella. Big Bird (talk • contribs) 12:56, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Glossary of computers

I have created a basic Glossary of computers page as well as the related Category:Glossaries on computers. A related Glossary of computing should be created to describe terms relating to software and Glossary of computers should be reserved for hardware terms. The creation of these glossaries is well overdue especially considering that some of the lesser known computer topics already have glossaries. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:25, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Computer hardware

Computer hardware could do with its own article rather than being a redirect. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 10:05, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

What other sections are you thinking about? What format? What scope? Computing hardware also redirects there but the abacus is a computing hardware item. That is already in History of computing hardware. Do we count cell phones because they run computations? I'm brainstorming and following the implications. You make a good point and I agree and it needs some planning. It would be possibly be a huge article. Alatari (talk) 10:43, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

How about Modern computer hardware/History of computing hardware or (Historical computer hardware) contains the entire realm.Alatari (talk) 10:47, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Some people will think that "modern computer hardware" is only stuff after 2005. Peter Flass (talk) 18:28, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

WikiPedia Ads

Here is the Wikipedia Ad for This Project:

Wikipedia ad for Wikipedia:Barnstars
Wikipedia adsfile info – show another – #1

Andewz111 (talk · contribs) (typo intended) 01:42, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't that heavily favour Windows instead of Computing (there's things like Linux, and Macintosh out there)? 76.66.193.224 (talk) 23:35, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
I can animate the ad to rotate through the various logos. OpenTheWindows, sir! 22:31, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Close to finishing. The end result has some more logos too. I'll update the ad soon. OpenTheWindows, sir! 23:09, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Done! OpenTheWindows, sir! 00:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Nice -- Tinu Cherian - 13:27, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Hey, what about OS/2? Peter Flass (talk) 18:30, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary X Window System

FYI,

someone is questioning wikt:X Window System as a term.

76.66.193.224 (talk) 07:53, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Several points:
  • It is a common term
  • There's not talk page, much less an explanation of what the issue is
  • On the flip side, X11 and X Window System reference each other but neither provides any real information about X11.
My take is that the two articles should be merged and one of the names made a redirect. The article is a stub, but concerns a reasonably important topic, so I don't believe that it should be simply deleted. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:26, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Help: Save the Operating System

The term Operating System is now endangered, and needs your help to save it! Every OS vendor now wants to avoid the term operating system like the plague. Instead, all vendors want to use the term 'Platform' instead, as it gives the impression it is something more than a disk operating system. Makes it feel like a suite of tools, rather than just a DOS. Even though traditionally, a computer platform referred to the combination of hardware and software together. Using the word 'platform' to describe an OS is marketing fluff. But that doesn't stop the marketing people at every OS vendor from wanting to call their OSes a platform. Google calls Android a 'platform'. However, that argument is now over, and the article has finally settled nicely at Android (operating system). However, other OSes are fighting to be renamed 'platforms', and the debate is currently going on at those articles. See Talk:Bada (operating system), and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Symbian platform. The public generally thinks of Bada, Symbian, MeeGo, and Android as operating systems, despite what other terms the vendors try to use. Thanks for saving the old-fashioned world 'operating system'.--Lester 21:51, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


In what follows there may be no answer to your question. Can you provide detail so that a true answer might be given?
In my opinion the definitions taught in the 1970s and 1980s have not changed. Confusing marketing terms and technical terms can be a capital mistake. Nevertheless, today's businesses go out of there way to do exactly that. (In some cases this can make a deficiency more difficult to see. In other situations, an genuine lack of understanding is the reason. To those who don't appreciate just how difficul is technical writing, such prose may appear dry or boring. To someone who seeks to understand, there are times when well-written technical information is pure beauty.
The term "Operating System (OS)" refers to the lowest-level of code. The term "deepest" may be more appropriate than "lowest" since the former is analogous to use when describing anatomy. (Superficial being on the other end). Another term refers to how the OS contrasts with other code and identifies the OS as having the highest degree of detail. OS code is dedicated to making resources (often hardware) available to other code. It typically includes other functionality for memory management (unless there is no memory management as in an MMU-less device) and a job scheduler. To be useful as a multi-use OS, it usually runs a shell. The shell parses command line input. A graphical interface, or GUI, provides a pictorial interface to the command line. The "platform" refers to the hardware. (This is why the term "Android" is not a correct reference to a telephone.)
The term "platform" can be found in marketing literature and in other non-technical documents. The ease with which non-technical people can manipulate a network node (a device) has given rise to documentation that is considered "technical". Unfortunately the term "Technical Writing" is what is being obscured. Vendors used to employ (and some still do) someone with an engineering degree (or say, An Associate Degree in engineering) as a Technical Writer. The because the nature of technical writing varies substantially from other writing forms.
More people are willing to write than in earlier decades but the quality of that writing has dropped. It is easier to improve writing skills than it is to elicit the technical information so this problem may correct itself. Technical writing isn't really "creative" but "Creative Writing" is creative. There seem to be more tech writers who maintain a creative writer's ego, so improvement may be hard to come by. Software design (and hardware design) require creativity. Adhering to the facts created by a designer, is the job undertaken by a technical writer. Or, so it seems to me.
Kernel.package (talk) 02:34, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Request for Feedback

Your expertise are requested!

A user is Requesting feedback on an article related to computing, if you can help out please do so here: Wikipedia:Requests for feedback#Input/Output Control System.

WP:FEED provides general feedback about the quality of articles, helps users add references and such to get new pages higher on the quality ladder. Best regards, Captain n00dle\Talk 08:40, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

The topic Input/Output Control System is a programming interface for early IBM systems. Knowledge from someone familiar with those systems would be helpful. I posted comments on what I could. --Pnm (talk) 00:04, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Help cleaning up Features of Skype

I've done some work on this article and I'm looking for advice on how to proceed next.

Should articles about rapidly evolving products provide detailed back story about features? I can't tell if recentism needs to be avoided here, especially for something evolving so quickly.

For example, under Subscription calling plans:

On 19 December 2006, Skype announced that there would be a new pricing structure in 2007. Details on a new scheme were released 18 January 2007. The initial press release was vague about the new scheme, but it did reveal that there may be a new connection fee.

In January 2007, Skype launched a prepaid Unlimited call subscription service for North American customers. Skype's Unlimited calling offers a full year of Unlimited calls to anyone, on any phone, within the U.S. and Canada for a one-time (i.e., annual) fee. This plan which was called Skype Pro only allowed the unlimited calls that were made from inside North America. As of April 21, 2008, these plans were changed to the new calling subscription plans, which don't require the calls to start from a certain country. Under the current plans, there is a Unlimited US & Canada plan for $2.95 or €1.95 per month, an Unlimited Country plan for $5.95 or €3.95 per month, and an Unlimited World plan for $12.95 or €8.95 per month.

I'm inclined to condense the history into one sentence.

There's also Skype#History.

Any thoughts?

--Pnm (talk) 02:30, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Category for lists of popular pages

I propose that there be a category for the following pages and others like them.

-- Wavelength (talk) 23:41, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

  • Support—I have no objection to the creation of this category. It couldn't hurt, but will need updating. Could a bot read the WP namespace pages and update the articles accordingly along with the lists? Airplaneman ✈ 23:49, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I am considering the name Category:Lists of popular pages by WikiProject. It would be a subcategory of Category:Wikipedia.
-- Wavelength (talk) 15:15, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

That sounds good. Do you know of a bot that can update articles? Airplaneman ✈ 17:56, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
The system uses bidirectional linking. When one adds a category to a page, that page is automatically added to the category. It is somewhat similar to editing an article by adding to it an internal link to an second article, and the second article automatically having a link to the first article in "What links here". -- Wavelength (talk) 19:54, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I know. I'm asking whether we should have a bot update pages, placing or removing the category as necessary, as I'm sure what pages are regarded as popular will change over time (top 1500 for computing and environment, top 500 for mammals). Airplaneman ✈ 20:07, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Each of the three lists says, under "Lists", "Period: 2010-05-01 — 2010-05-31 (UTC)". It seems to me that a software program will automatically update each list after the end of June, and monthly after that. For placing the category, more of such pages would have to found, and for removing the category, I can not think of a reason. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:01, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
What I'm saying is that it is highly unlikely that the top 1500 most popular pages will invariably be the same 1500 pages after each update – some pages will drop out of the top 1500, while some will join the ranks. Every time the list changes, pages will need to be updated. Airplaneman ✈ 22:04, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Oh, I must have misread – if you are creating a category for the lists themselves and not the individual pages within the lists, then a bot update will not be necessary. Sorry for the confusion! Airplaneman ✈ 22:06, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Would a personal bibliography be of use to other project members

I've been compiling a personal bibliography of sources that I might want to cite in articles that I edit or write. It currently has sections on IBM program numbers, IBM Selectable Unit numbers and (mostly IBM) manuals, with {{cite manual}} markup for the manuals. Is this a resource that would be of use to other project members, and, if so, should I move it somewhere in project space? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:22, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Dispute resolution process?

The Wiki page on dispute resolution suggests obtaining assistance from Wikiproject prior to posting an RfC, but I haven't located anything that explains how to request that assistance. The article in question, IBM System/360 is within the purview of this project. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:31, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

What is the nature of the dispute? --Kvng (talk) 02:40, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
There were several disputes, mostly resolved, e.g.,
  • Listing 2361 as a peripheral
  • Name of 2361
but I'd like to know the proper procedure for future reference. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:48, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
Congratulations on working it out. If good diplomacy does not work, one of the next steps is to involve other editors through various means. Have you read WP:DR? --Kvng (talk) 18:59, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
Yes, that's what sent me to Wikipedia:Requests for comment, which contains the text

If the article is complex or technical, it may be worthwhile to ask for help at the relevant WikiProject.


Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:18, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Exactly. You did well. You'll get better help with a more specific request (e.g. reference a section on a talk page in your request). --Kvng (talk) 16:25, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Are you saying that the proper procedure is to start a new section in the project talk page, summarize the issue and provide wikilinks to the discussion on the article talk page? Thanks. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:05, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Yes, that's the best way to do it IMO --Kvng (talk) 18:32, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Astrology and computers

On the fringe theories noticeboard we've been discussing the above article. We've decided that an article probably is justified, because horoscope application software is a notable topic. But you people may want to review the article title, as well as its structure and sourcing. So, handing it over to you, if we may. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:46, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

GNU

There is a content dispute on the GNU article -the problem is basically where and how to put the current usability status of GNU in the article lead. There is a long discussion between me and User:Yworo on the talk page about that and it seems we're unable to reach a compromise. Expert attention would help. Thanks. --Cyclopiatalk 00:36, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Articles covering IBM I/O channel architecture

I plan to expand Count Key Data to provide an overview of how it works from a programming perspective. The text will require an understanding of the Channel I/O on the IBM System/360. Ideally I would like to just use a Wikilink to an existing article, but I haven't found one with the requisite material, so I will need to write it myself. I raised a question in User talk:Chatul#IBM System/360 I/O channel description as to the proper placement of the new material on S/360 I/O channels, and Chzz (talkl) suggested that I ask on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing. Tom94022 (talk) suggested that I either add it to Channel I/O or write a second article on S/360 & 370 I/O Channel with a link therefrom.

If I had time I would write a series of linked articles on

  • IBM 7000 series 6-bit channels
  • IBM 7000 series 8-bit channels
  • IBM S/360 and successors common channel architecture
  • IBM S/3x0 S/370 mode I/O
  • IBM S/370 Extended Architecture I/O
  • IBM S/3x0 Bus and Tag Channels

As it is, I've committed myself to too much already in User:Chatul#My contribs and User:Chatul#To do, so I only plan to write the material that I need to refer to from Count Key Data. So my question is whether to do it in an incomplete new section of Channel I/O, a new section of Count Key Data or a seriously incomplete new stub. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 01:44, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of VGASAVE

This is to notify members of this WikiProject, within which scope this article falls, that VGASAVE, has been listed for deletion. Editors interested in the deletion discussion, are invited to participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/VGASAVE (2nd nomination). Thank you. - Ahunt (talk) 11:37, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Cvision Technologies

This is to notify members of this WikiProject, within which scope this article falls, that Cvision Technologies, has been listed for deletion. Editors interested in the deletion discussion, are invited to participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cvision Technologies. Thank you. - Ahunt (talk) 19:39, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Kane karu

This is to notify members of this WikiProject, within which scope this article falls, that Kane karu, has been listed for deletion. Editors interested in the deletion discussion, are invited to participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kane karu. Thank you. Empty Buffer (talk) 21:21, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

What happened to the auto-sequencing memory page?

WTF? Auto-sequencing memory is a very important concept in computing and computing science. And it's the crucial center-stone to non-von-nuemann architecture and data-centric processing. I'm pretty sure there was a page on it before. WTF happened? Kevin Baastalk 19:43, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Deleted under WP:CSD#R1 as a redirect to deleted page Anti machine. Airplaneman ✈ 05:48, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
Okay, then what morons voted to delete anti-machine? Did they just think "duh, that sounds like some geek's pet project. delete."? thanks for the info. Anycase, there are a lot of pages that link to it and a lot of content that discusses it or is very relevant to it. (e.g. Zero-copy, systolic array, reconfigurable computing...). but right now there's just this big black hole where a half-century old idea used to be. ("anti-"machine, oh, ironic!) and something needs to be done about it. and i don't think deleting THOSE articles too would be a proper solution. Kevin Baastalk 20:39, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

What the heck is this on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computing/Collaboration

I initially thought someone had vandalized this page when some random paragraph editing. I now believe it was done on purpose by our own key member and contributor Tinucherian. I certainly hope I don't offend you, but the text that appears on the main Computing project page linked to the Collaboration page really does not appear to belong there. Even though you have it on the collaboration page it automatically rolls up to the main Computing page. I would like to vote that you remove that content. I believe you even mentioned it yourself that you were not sure where to put the content. What about on your talk page? I see no problem giving people a link to that, but it really appears out of place here in the encyclopedia (even thought it is the editors' sections). Again I certainly have no intention of insulting anyone. Thanks for considering this change. § Music Sorter § (talk) 08:56, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I noticed this too (it's hard to not!) and assumed it was simply an accidental use of {{ instead of [[. After reading this, I've now realised what Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computing/Collaboration is supposed to be used for. Nevertheless, my edit solves the problem of the project page being trashed. --kikumbob (talk) 16:19, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Where in Virtual memory article to discuss CCW translation

I would like to add some material to Virtual memory that explains Channel Control Word (CCW) translation in, e.g., IBM's flagship operating system. As the article is currently structured, I don't see any good place to put the new material.

Note that the UCB is not an appropriate place to discuss I/O, and that the relevant systems do not use an I/O Memory Mapping Unit (I/O MMU).

Suggestions? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:23, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

New subcategory for Category:KDE

Hi, you might be interested in my suggestion for a new subcategory of KDE here. --Schuhpuppe (talk) 01:42, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Dining cryptographers problem/protocol/whatevah

There are two articles, dining cryptographers problem and dining cryptographers protocol, that have been tagged for a proposed merger since last November — as well as a sandbox rewrite of "protocol", which has existed since 2005 without ever getting seriously merged into its target. (Further, that sandbox page was sitting in articlespace, where sandbox pages aren't supposed to be, but since the user who created it hasn't been around since 2006 I've moved it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing/Dining cryptographers protocol/Rewrite instead.) Could somebody take a whack at merging the articles if appropriate, or removing the tags if it's not? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 18:41, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Software archaeology

This is to notify members of this WikiProject, within which scope this article falls, that Software archaeology, has been listed for deletion. Editors interested in the deletion discussion, are invited to participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Software archaeology. Thank you. - Radagast3 (talk) 01:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Computer aided presentation

The article Computer aided presentation has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No incoming links, content is covered in The Mother of All Demos, subject phrase is not encyclopedic does not need an article any more the walking with shoes

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:38, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

This strikes me as an interesting topic. I see that User:Radagast3 extensively cross-referenced the article. Article seem legitimate, even if User:Radagast3 may have been overzealous with links. Wxidea (talk) 03:50, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

New page: SpicyNodes -- Is it notable?

Hi. I am the initial author for SpicyNodes, an article on a relatively new web-based radial mapping tool, which has been published in peer reviewed journals, including the well-regarded InfoVis2009. I am also a key team member on the project. I felt that we have enough peer reviewed background, 2 other academic works that cite our work, a few undergraduate courses which use our work, a userbase of over 20 thousands users, and growing blog coverge -- that we might be notable enough to warrant inclusion. If not, there is a proposal to merge our project into a page about our nonprofit organization (but I think that's a bad idea since the software is much more broadly interesting to the public than our organization is). I would like to request review by someone who has more of a computing background. In the meantime, I have left the COI and notablity flags -- but if you have time to take a look, and think it is notable, please remove them. Wxidea (talk) 02:28, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Triangular array

I've created a new article titled triangular array, concerning such things as Pascal's triangle, Stirling numbers, Narayana numbers, Bell polynomials, etc. It is severely stubby. Currently 17 articles (not counting redirects) link to it.

So:

  • Expand it.
  • Add any appropriate new links to it from other articles.

Michael Hardy (talk) 21:54, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

writing a new article

Hi, we are running a non-profit humanitarian project from the university and we would like to write a small article describing what the project does. This would be my first article at wikipedia, so thought a bit of guidance would be great. The project is called Labdoo; I have written a sample article under my personal domain User:Jordi.ros/Labdoo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jordi.ros/Labdoo). I was wondering if it would be proper to put this article under your category and if you would be willing to accept it. Our intention is only to be informative of the type of work the project does. Some of the concepts the project is based on, sit on what economists call commons-based peer production, or open source project. Labdoo is actually a project similar to the wikipedia project but with the goal to mobilize laptops for the developing world and to promote recycling. --Jordi.ros (talk) 20:44, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

connect card

i wrote this article but i do not know how to rate it in its talk page. thanks --Pierpao (talk) 10:36, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

History of Computing, Australian conference proceedings

I ran across some conference proceedings that might be interesting, especially for adding information about the history of computing in Australia. online at springerlink and also published as a book with ISBN 978-3-642-15199-6: History of Computing. Learning from the Past, IFIP WG 9.7 International Conference, HC 2010, Held as Part of WCC 2010, Brisbane, Australia, September 20-23, 2010. Proceedings Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 14:00, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Help with an article?

Hi. The article PlusCal was listed at the copyright problems board as an unusably close paraphrase of its source, [2]. Rather than delete it, I made an effort to replace it, but I am so over my head in this field. :) If somebody had an opportunity, I'd be very grateful for a quick review in case I've misunderstood something, because I don't even really know what the text I wrote means. :D (I lack the background, alas.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:46, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

 Done --Kvng (talk) 17:26, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you so much! :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:27, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Computing articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Computing articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 22:18, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposed merge to Middleware

I would appreciate comments on the proposed merger of Enterprise service bus, Message-oriented middleware and Message broker to the Middleware article at the merger dicussion. -- prat (talk) 07:04, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Hyper Algorithmic Logic 15

I don't know enough about supercomputers to but a hoax template there, but it does look fishy. Could somebody have a look at it? Thanks, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 16:41, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I just googled HAL-15 and come up with this: [3] . it looks legit, and the stuff on the website is all technically correct. and while i can't confirm their purchase orders / customers / partners / claimed circuit density, it's all plausible. the only thing is what they call a "hypercomputer" is not a hypercomputer as defined on wikipedia. also, that article is definitely a stub and needs more sources. Kevin Baastalk 17:28, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Also, NASA isn't very well funded, so it's questionable whether they could afford that. DOD or DARPA, on the other hand, sure. Kevin Baastalk 17:47, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
I've copied this discussion to the article's talk page and added a couple tags to the article itself. --Kvng (talk) 17:53, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. when i said "the stuff on the website is all technically correct", i meant "all the technical stuff on the website is correct". and by "all" i meant, of course, what i considered a reasonable sample size. i.e. "the technical stuff looks correct." (sorry, wasn't enough left-brain there.) Kevin Baastalk 18:12, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Memory hole (computing)

I recently run into a term "memory hole" (and "memory hole remapping") in my BIOS. I tried looking it up on wiki, but the closest I can find is the disambig at Memory hole (disambiguation) directing me to Slab allocation (and with a confusing sub-bullet point in the disambig). Perhaps somebody more familiar with the area could either stub or redirect memory hole (computing) (and if possible, add an explanation of the memory hole remapping somewhere)? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:30, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Comparison of software articles

Just tossing an idea out here and seeing what you folks think of it. Being the geek I am, when I want to download some software for a specific task (i.e. notetaking software) I like to do some research to determine which specific app will tailor to my needs and wants best. Naturally, I turn to Wikipedia for my research purposes. This will eventually lead me to some article titled "Comparison of xxxxxxx software" (i.e. Comparison of notetaking software). The tables in the article allow me to filter the software by certain features I want, and can provide various different technical details. I would like to know how you guys would feel about adding a "Most Downloaded" or "Most Popular" table as well? Sometimes there are several different applications that would fit my needs based on their features, but I would like to know something subjective...Which one is the best? I think having a "Most Downloaded" table would provide useful, factual information about popularity that could also be used to suggest which one of the applications has the best quality for the average user. Tell me what you think! 24.118.174.244 (talk) 03:45, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Stuxnet

I have requested that the article Stuxnet be assessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computing/Assessment#Open_requests. I am hoping we can get some eyes on this, being that it is a popular subject. I think it is a good candidate for FA class, eventually, if not already. Sephiroth storm (talk) 15:14, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

It looks like it has already been evaluated by Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer Security. The rating looks reasonable. There are potential WP:NPOV with all the political content in this article. I don't think you'll get a lot of competent help with that in the technically-oriented WikiProjects. --Kvng (talk) 13:09, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I have to disagree with a start class rating. The article is well referenced, better than half the WP:COMPSEC articles. The citation style is in line with policy. NPOV should not be an issue because it is well sourced, all of the news information is mostly limited to the appropriate section. Looking at the criteria on Computing assessment, i'm moving it to B class, with a GAN.Sephiroth storm (talk) 16:21, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the article is well cited. I feel like there is technical detail missing, that organization should be improved and some internal contradictions addressed before I'd give it a B rating. --Kvng (talk) 16:40, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
I am not an expert wikipedian be any standard, feel free to contribute. Sephiroth storm (talk) 02:06, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Collaboration page?

Is the content of Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing/Collaboration/Current really supposed to be there? Ipsign (talk) 18:26, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Page (computer memory)

A discussion is underway on this article's talk page which could benefit from input from knowledgable editors. Thanks Tiderolls 00:52, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Request for comment (eHarmony)

Please visit eHarmony's discussion page for a discussion regarding the use of a citation that is critical of eHarmony. Some feel that it is a commentary by a notable competitor and should be presented as such, but others consider it too biased to be reliable. Shawnc (talk) 07:22, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Input sought on Computer water cooling article

Hi all, I joined in here after perusing Wikipedia's vast expanse of computer-related articles, only to be surprised that there is not an article that adequately covers the subject of PC water cooling.

I've done a bit of digging, and have found a substantial set of WP:RS (mainly books and magazine publications) covering this topic in detail, and as a result I want to start a new article on the topic. Before doing so, I have two questions that I'd like to get your thoughts on:

  • As it stands, computer water cooling is mentioned as subsections of two broader articles:
  1. Water_cooling#Computer_usage
  2. Computer_cooling#Water_cooling
Both of these articles warrant a good bit of revision to be brought up to Wikipedia's own guidelines; however I feel that either one would become imbalanced if I expanded upon computer water cooling within one or both of them. Is this fair justification for creating an article of it's own on computer water cooling?
  • Which name would best fit this potential new article: PC water cooling, Computer water cooling, or Water cooling of computers?

For additional background, see this discussion that I've attempted to revive at Talk:Water_cooling#This_article_is_much_too_focused_on_water_cooling_of_computers. Looking forward to hearing your ideas on how to best move forward. Cheers, Carthan (talk) 16:39, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I would go with Computer water cooling: This title is a bit more inclusive. If you find anything about water cooling of mainframe computers it should really be discussed in the same article for comparison. This will be a common subarticle of water cooling and computer cooling, and computer cooling is currently getting way too much weight in water cooling. Therefore the article will fit nightly into the encyclopedia and solve real problems of content duplication and undue weight.
Nevertheless, when you start the article be sure that there are references from your very first edit. That way you can probably an unnecessary AfD or other complication due to some overeager editor. Hans Adler 17:45, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
Although I personally would spend my time improving Computer cooling it is not a problem to start a new article. We can always do a merge later if the topic turns out not to merit it's own article. --Kvng (talk) 18:46, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
Solid. I'll look to compile a draft on the side over the next few weeks (making sure to reference WP:RS from the start), and I'll fill you all in on my progress as I go along. Also if any others have an interest in collaborating with me on this topic, drop me a line here or on my user talk page, and we can go from there. Best, Carthan (talk) 23:01, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
I agree that PC water cooling is overly specific, and agree with suggestion of Computer water cooling; and also one link for reference (just in case if you didn't see it): http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13278_na/13278_na.HTML ; I think information that not only home-made water cooling solutions exist (which is a common perception), but that a major manufacturer (HP) produces this kind of stuff for their flagship workstation, is certainly important for this kind of article. Ipsign (talk) 04:34, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
Personally I think this is certainly not one of our core topics, but if Carthan wants to extend the stuff that is already in water cooling even further then that's certainly permissible and must go to a separate article to avoid giving undue weight to the topic. Hans Adler 07:04, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
Given that mainframes have been using water cooling since at least the late 1960's, it would be inappropriate to limit the new article to PC's.
BTW, there's an irony here. One of IBM's selling points for the 9672 was that it did not require water cooling. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 07:15, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

System bus model

FYI, System bus model was prodded for deletion. I deprodded it, since I think it deserves atleast an AfD, and it seems to describe how a computer is configured, with a bus, CPU, memory, and I/O devices. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 04:52, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. This was not an uncontroversial delete proposal. --Kvng (talk) 15:55, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation of common terms used with specialized meaning for computers

I recently proposed[1] a move of Architecture to clear the way for a disambiguation page, and it occurred to me that there may be other common terms with specialized meanings for computers where articles have used the ambiguous term in their titles and failed to provide for disambiguation. Is it within the scope of WikiProject Computing to identify such articles? Is there already a project doing that?

  1. ^ I originally just added a hatnote, but after the second time it was deleted decided to go a more formal route.

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:46, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

A quick search indicates that Architecture shows up in the titles of numerous computer-related articles. Architecture (disambiguation) may need a little work but it does already hit the high points. I don't think that it needs to be exhaustive (see WP:PTM) --Kvng (talk) 20:14, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Marking article on CLI as needing examples?

Talk:TSS/360 has an inappropriate {{Reqscreenshot}} tag; it has no GUI. I could simply delete the template, but is there an alternative means to indicate that the article needs sample commands, scripts or outputs? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:46, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

"Thinking in"

FYI, Thinking in C++ and Thinking in Java have been nominated for deletion. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 06:05, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Deleting of minor Linux distributions

Currently deletion of Santa Fe Linux and SLAMPP is being discussed, input on respective AfD pages is appreciated. Results of these two AfD discussions are likely to affect many minor Linux distributions. Ipsign (talk) 06:46, 4 November 2010 (UTC)


Merging from "Automated code review" to "List of tools for static code analysis"

Hi, just wanted to inform you that I have been doing several merge activities from Automated code review to List of tools for static code analysis. Summary of what I have done is given here Talk:Automated_code_review#Rename_or_merge_summary. I have also rescued some content which qualified as "linkspam" (or so) here Talk:Automated_code_review#Rescued.2Fsaved_information_which_was_only_using_external_http_links. Feedback is welcome here Talk:Automated_code_review. Thanks, Ptrb (talk) 17:19, 4 November 2010 (UTC).


Please provide feedback on refactoring proposal for Coding Conventions related pages

Hi, just wanted to let you know that I have made a proposal for some bigger (but straight-forward) refactorings for the articles on Coding conventions, Programming style and Naming convention (programming). Current proposals are documented here Talk:Coding_conventions#Refactoring_coding_conventions_and_programming_style_articles. Preparational changes are documented here Talk:Coding_conventions#Refactoring_coding_conventions_and_programming_style_articles_-_Summary_of_preparations_and_changes_made. I had some QA on this with admin User:HelloAnnyong, as you can see here User_talk:HelloAnnyong#Comment_re_change_by_Ptrb (see my question from "08:28, 4 November 2010 (UTC)"). I will not do any bigger changes there in the next (few) week(s). Any feedback/input is appreciated here Talk:Coding_conventions#Refactoring_coding_conventions_and_programming_style_articles, at the respective proposal. Thanks, Ptrb (talk) 17:32, 4 November 2010 (UTC).

WikiProject cleanup listing

I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 19:35, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

sr.wiki and old computers

Hi. Few months ago we automatically created ~900 articles using data from site oldcomputers.com. Now we have many orphans. Are you interested in doing same thing here? Full list of generated articles you can see here. Cheers. -- Bojan  Talk  10:20, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Are Supervisor Call instruction and System call the same thing?

I would have initially thought no, but from this ref: http://www.answers.com/topic/supervisor-call I am not so sure. Note that apparently Supervisor call is the same as Supervisor call instructions (according to the redirect). Any clarification on this would be great. If you are knowledgeable in this, either merge the two or remove the merge request/etc. Kind regards.Calaka (talk) 01:55, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

No, they are not the same thing. A Supervisor Call instruction simply causes an interrupt; any further processing is up to the SVC interrupt handler. Contrast this with, e.g., the behavior of the Program Call (PC) instruction on the IBM System/370, where the operating systems role is limited to initializing control registers and control blocks; the actual PC instruction does the context switching and dispatching without OS involvement.
Note: the protocol for {{merge}} calls for creating a new section for discussion of the merger on the talk page of the target article. Since you didn't do so, I created one and quoted the subject of your updated. If you decide to retract your {{merge}} request, please delete the discussion section I created or mark it dead. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 06:56, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
On the ICL mainframes, now defunct, users could set up their own access levels and do calls between them. Whether the call and exit instructions could be considered as system calls in this context is really up to your way of looking at it. Dmcq (talk) 12:29, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

AfDProposed deletion of Number cruncher.

There is a proposed deletion n AdD in progress for the article Number cruncher.

My feeling is that we should have an article on this topic - but the article that's there right now is really pretty terrible - and as such I don't feel justified in opposing the deletion. It would be A Very Good Thing if someone with some time on their hands could remove the AfDWP:PROD template and give it some TLC.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:42, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

FWIW: a) it is not an AfD, but another process, WP:PROD. Within this process, anybody can simply remove {prod} template to stop this process (to indicate that there is no consensus on deletion) - then it might be submitted to AfD. b) personally I don't think that having this page is a good idea, and would support deleting it on AfD, though if you can find another article where to put a section on it and make a redirect from Number crunching there, I certainly won't object. Ipsign (talk) 15:27, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Sorry - I don't follow all the technicalities of WP processes - the fact is that the article will be deleted unless we do something to improve it. The grounds for deleting it are claimed to be that "Number cruncher" is jargon - but then what computing pages aren't?! Byte is also jargon - we're not contemplating deleting that! SteveBaker (talk) 14:14, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
The grounds for deletion don't matter at all. So long as the article merely gets deleted by prod, everybody is free to recreate it. So long as nobody can be bothered to write a real article, this deletion without prejudice to recreation, is the best thing that can happen. If you remove the prod it will probably go to AfD and be subject to the usual inclusionist/exclusionist battles. As a result, it will likely be either deleted with prejudice, or will have to be improved immediately. Hans Adler 14:55, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
Oh great! Don't you just love Wikipolitics? You have to allow an article that you think should stay to be deleted in order that you'll be able to recreate it. <sigh> SteveBaker (talk) 18:31, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Deletion of Comparison of MPI, OpenMP, and Stream Processing

Please comment on AfD for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison of MPI, OpenMP, and Stream Processing (3rd nomination) (2nd nomination didn't get any feedback, so it got re-nominated). Ipsign (talk) 10:46, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Modular computering cluster

For your information: Modular computering cluster has been proposed for deletion. -- Crowsnest (talk) 00:00, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

BeeCard

Hello, my friends: A group of us are working on clearing the backlog at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_lacking_sources_from_October_2006. The article in the above header has been without sources for the past four years and might b e removed if none are added. I wonder if you can help find one or two good references. Sincerely, and all the best to you, GeorgeLouis (talk) 22:43, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

 Done Good luck with your project. --Kvng (talk) 17:52, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Help on new article

Hi, could somebody help me verify if this article can be published? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jordi.ros/Labdoo). I was wondering if it would be proper to put this article under your category and what needs to be done to do so. Thanks. Jordi.ros (talk) 11:10, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi there, and welcome to Wikipedia! Labdoo sounds like an interesting and worthwhile project. I can't tell yet whether the project meets Wikipedia's notability criteria for websites. You may want to start by reading that, and then seeing if you can identify some reliable and independent sources that provide substantial coverage.
I also encourage you to read these:
--Pnm (talk) 08:21, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
In general, to satisfy criteria of WP:NOTABILITY, references to some third-party coverage in reliable sources should be demonstrated. IMHO, currently such coverage is not demonstrated at all. Ipsign (talk) 12:33, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Linearizability and atomic operation

Does anyone else want to weigh in on the best title for the Linearizability article? I'm fairly convinced that Linearizability is not it and I think there's a weak consensus. So far there have been only two of us involved in the discussion and this has apparently been bouncing around for years - Talk:Linearizability#linearizability_and_atomic_operation --Kvng (talk) 20:57, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Deletion discussion for Connectivity (computer science)

I just nominated Connectivity (computer science) for deletion. If you're interested, please participate in the discussion. --Pnm (talk) 00:11, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Another: Cohort (computer science) (Discuss) --Pnm (talk) 01:45, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Another: Clumping (computer science) (Discuss) --Pnm (talk) 02:22, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Another: Inversion (computer science) (Discuss) --Pnm (talk) 02:27, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
A PROD: Sequel (computer science) --Pnm (talk) 02:43, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Afd: Adaptability (computer science) and Adaptivity (computer science) (Discuss) --Pnm (talk) 03:28, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Merging Category:Computers and Category:Computing

Please comment on the Cfm proposal at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_December_9#Category:Computers. Thanks! --Pnm (talk) 04:56, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

deletion of Category:Computing navbox templates

Category:Computing navbox templates has been requested to be deleted 64.229.101.17 (talk) 05:50, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

External links to implementations (cross-posted from Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science)

A number of users affiliated with Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam are removing external links to implementations of algorithms (including those implementations that are part of academically developed frameworks which have been described in academic literature). In my opinion this is setting a bad precedent and contrary to usual practice on articles related to this project. Could anyone interested in this issue, pro or contra, join the discussion at Talk:Particle swarm optimization#External Links to Source-Code. Cheers, —Ruud 15:27, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Set up automatic archiving

There are 64 threads on this page – it's getting very long. I set up this talk page to auto-archive after 30 days. It will also auto-index. --Pnm (talk) 01:17, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Restarting the computing collaboration

I'd like to restart the computing collaboration in January. We can choose one article and edit it for two weeks, then move on to another. I posted a list of nominations based on the former good articles and the popular stubs needing expansion. If there's enough interested in participating I'd like to get started on January 1.

I invite you to check out WP:COMP/C to comment on what's there, nominate more articles, and sign up to join in! --Pnm (talk) 15:22, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Bytes vs. octets

A discussion is happening at Talk:IPv6#bytes_instead_of_octets. I assume we've been down this road at least once before. Articles are not consistent in usage of these terms however. --Kvng (talk) 15:25, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposed move of two groups of articles

I'm posting this here because it affects so many articles and WP:RM seems unwieldy.

Proposal (1): Rename the articles below from Article (computer science) to Article (computing).

Reason: Computing is a broader topic than computer science, and these topics apply to computing broadly, not just to the study of computing. Authors who are unfamiliar with computer science will feel more comfortable editing a computing article.

Barrier (computer science)
Binding (computer science)
Branch (computer science)
Coalescing (computer science)
Concurrency (computer science)
Default (computer science)
Design pattern (computer science)
Fiber (computer science)
Field (computer science)
Function composition (computer science)
Garbage (computer science)
Garbage collection (computer science)
Instruction (computer science)
Integer (computer science)
Lock (computer science)
Macro (computer science)
Namespace (computer science)
Node (computer science)
Offset (computer science)
Overwriting (computer science)
Persistence (computer science)
Polling (computer science)
Pool (computer science)
Record (computer science)
Recursion (computer science)
Reification (computer science)
Relocation (computer science)
Replication (computer science)
Resource (computer science)
Robustness (computer science)
Scale factor (computer science)
Self-management (computer science)
Session (computer science)
Set (computer science)
Slipstream (computer science)
Swap (computer science)
Synchronization (computer science)
Thrashing (computer science)
Thread (computer science)
Value (computer science)

Proposal (2): Rename the articles below from Article (computer science) to Article (computer programming).

Reason: These topics apply to computer programming broadly, not just to the study of computing. Authors who are unfamiliar with computer science will feel more comfortable editing a computer programming article.

Action at a distance (computer science)
Aspect (computer science)
Assignment (computer science)
Blind faith (computer science)
Callback (computer science)
Class (computer science)
Closure (computer science)
Cohesion (computer science)
Concern (computer science)
Containment (computer science)
Coupling (computer science)
Covariance and contravariance (computer science)
Declaration (computer science)
Destructor (computer science)
Generator (computer science)
Hot spot (computer science)
Literal (computer science)
Marshalling (computer science)
Method (computer science)
Parameter (computer science)
Poltergeist (computer science)
Range (computer science)
Reference (computer science)
Reflection (computer science)
Side effect (computer science)
Skeleton (computer science)
Subclass (computer science)
Superclass (computer science)
Trait (computer science)
this (computer science)

--Pnm (talk) 05:28, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

What's basically missing here is a description of the scope of computer science as opposed to computer programming or computing. The only reasoning I can see here is that authors would feel uncomfortable editing an article with 'science' in the title and therefore you want to move anything you can to some other title. Would that be correct? In that case we have to decide
Firstly: Should we avoid titles with science in the title and try and rename current articles to something more 'friendly'.
In either case what is computer science and what would be classed as tgat as opposed to computing or computer programming?
For instance to take the first entry in each section. Why is Barrier (computer science) more general computing rather than a computer science or programming term? Why is Action at a distance (computer science) more a programming term than a computer science term? Dmcq (talk) 09:15, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Well... I clearly agree with some, disagree with some others and am fairly sure that for most one can make an as convincing argument to put it into one category as in the other. The disambiguation tag should probably correspond with the category the article is placed into. E.g. "covariance and contravariance (computer science)" is really a topic in type theory/programming language theory and should therefore probably be disambiguated with "computer science" instead of "computer programming". Similarly the "concurrency (computer science)" article is (should) mostly be about the theory of concurrency, not a list of all applications of concurrency in computing systems, and therefore be placed in computer science instead of computing. For "garbage collection (computer science)" I could probably make an equally convincing case for all three the disambiguation tags. —Ruud 19:07, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
I think editors will be uncomfortable editing articles that they think should be academic in nature. It isn't the word science per se, but computer science's academic denotation. Though computer scientists of course study computer programming, programming is primarily a practical, non-academic topic.
In response to User:Dmcq's question defining computer science, perhaps it would be helpful to propose a guideline:
  1. Use (computer science) to disambiguate computing topics whose primary context is academic.
  2. Use (computer programming) for topics whose primary context is computer programming.
  3. Use (computing) for topics which are used widely by academics and non-academics, and aren't specific to programming or a more specific subdomain.
By analogy, consider religion and theology. The "study of religion" is broad enough to include any religion topic. But the meta-topic Schism (religion) isn't named Schism (theology) – and I think appropriately not. --Pnm (talk) 17:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I disagree with most of your reasoning and conclusions here. I'll discuss them point by point:
Most of these topics should in fact be discussed from an "academic" point of view as this really is the only point of view that is supported by reliable sources. For example, Covariance and contravariance are well known and studied topics in academic literature but this theory has only really be applied and very recent languages such as Scala. Clearly these issues have plagued Java programmers, but the issues should be discussed firstly from a theoretical point of view only later moving on the what can go wrong in particular programming languages. I do not believe the disambiguation tag "computer science" will scare away any potential contributors, but if it does I doubt they would have been fit to contribute in the first place.
My guidelines would be:
  1. Use (computer science) to disambiguate computing topics which are studied academically and mainly "abstract" concepts.
  2. Use (computer programming) (and perhaps also (software engineering)) for topics whose primary context is computer programming, programming language theory and software engineering.
  3. Use (computing) for anything else, which will mostly be "concrete" concepts such as particular computer programs or communication protocols etc.
If we apply your reasoning to other field you would suggest most articles from (mathematics) to (calculation), (physics) to (engineering), (philosophy) to (thinking), etc. —Ruud 19:09, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I removed Concurrency (computer science) and Covariance and contravariance (computer science) – and all the contentious articles except Action at a distance (computer science) -> Action at a distance (computer programming), which I think may still have a consensus to move.
Ruud, you may not have noticed that I made those changes after my last post, and I'm sorry I didn't bring your attention to it explicitly. Comparing your proposed guidelines to mine, it sounds like you would support proposal (2) as amended. Is that correct? --Pnm (talk) 01:02, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I'd be in favor of any proposal that reduces the number of parenthetical disambiguation thingies we use. It appears we have (computing), (computer science) and (computer programming). Are there others related to computing? Is it too bold to suggest that everything becomes (computing) and we let categories do the rest of the work? --Kvng (talk) 14:21, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Here's a sampling (see also this list):
I strongly oppose merging them all into (computing), though I'd like to avoid parenthetical disambiguation whenever possible (per WP:NCDAB and in some cases WP:COMMONNAME). For example IOS (Apple) -> Apple iOS, Calculator (Windows) -> Windows Calculator, Mail (application) -> Apple Mail. --Pnm (talk) 17:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Disagree with reducing it to just "computing" as well. But looking at the examples you gave reducing the tags to "computing", "computer science" and "computer programming" (and possible "software engineering") might well be feasible. I believe there are quite a few articles disambiguated with "data structure", those could be placed under "computer science" but I'm not entirely sure if that would be an improvement. —Ruud 19:09, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Then it seems that we'll either leave titles alone or assess each individually. Developing criteria for disambiguation categories and applying them will apparently take patience. I don't feel strongly about this so I'll bow out. --Kvng (talk) 21:24, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
There appears to be weak consensus to move the computer programming-related articles listed in proposal (2). (See my December 7 comment above.) --Pnm (talk) 15:03, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
I moved the articles listed in (2) from (computer science) to (computer programming) as a more accurate parenthetical disambiguation based on weak consensus (Ruud: "Use (computer programming) (and perhaps also (software engineering)) for topics whose primary context is computer programming, programming language theory and software engineering."). To be conservative I excluded the contentious articles (including Action at a distance (computer science)). --Pnm (talk) 18:45, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Exceptions:
--Pnm (talk) 19:26, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Good article nomination

Fastra II was listed as a good article nominee. --Pnm (talk) 16:04, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

"Binding" in computing

I suggested that Binding (computer science) might be better as a disambiguation page, and questioned the notability of binding in computing in general. I'd appreciate input on that article's talk page. --Pnm (talk) 04:42, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Help my Glary utilities page

I will need some help on my Glary Utilities article I will need a screenshot and an icon and some refrences Anish9807 (talk) 08:28, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

This Google News Archives search seems to have some results which are in reliable sources. I also encourage you to review the general notability guideline, which explains a standard for inclusion, and the guideline on citing sources. Good luck with the article! --Pnm (talk) 18:16, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Steve Chen

the usage of Steve Chen is under discussion, see Talk:Steve Chen (YouTube). 65.94.45.160 (talk) 05:00, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Change Control Board comments

(Apologies in advance for any improprieties; this is my first attempt to engage)

I thought to post these comments in a discussion rather than to attempt to edit the article, since this is my first attempt.

My comments refer to article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_control_board

I acknowledge first of all that "Change" Control Board is the vernacular, but the formal term for decades has been "Configuration" Control Board among Configuration Management professionals. There are historic reasons behind this, but that strays from what I want to focus on.

The article says a CCB is a committee. That is certainly one implementation, but it is not the only one or necessarily the best for a given situation. E.g. IEEE Standard 828 (2005) "Standard for Software Configuration Management Plans" says in section 3.3.2.3 "A CCB may be an individual or a group".

The critical feature of a CCB is not its size but the recorded delegation of management authority to approve what changes will and won't be made to a system under its jurisdiction.

The trade offs regarding the membership of a CCB include speed and evidence of enforced collaboration. Generally speaking, it is faster to delegate management authority to an single individual, who is accountable to gather input informally from multiple roles before pronouncing the binding decision. Automated systems can be implemented so that automated baselines/builds/deployments can be initiated as soon as the individual records an approval in a tracking tool.

On the other hand, if: - senior management wants to delegate a level of authority for some aspect of a system - senior management wants to be assured that full consensus has been sought without being personally involved

...then it may be preferable to charter a CCB as a committee. The charter could constrain committee to perform in such a way that supports auditing that the authority has been discharged as delegated. A multi-member CCB might be important for large, expensive, high impact (e.g. system failure has unacceptable consequences such as the loss of human life) applications engineered by entities with separate agendas (e.g. separate corporations or silo'd organizations within a single corporation with separate management trees).

I hope these comments are helpful,

Bill Buie (talk) 17:36, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Your arguments make sense. If no others object, go ahead and edit the article with your changes. JLRedperson (talk) 23:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The more appropriate place to initiate discussion on this is on the article's talk page. It sounds like you have some referenced material to contribute to the article. I recommend you be WP:BOLD and add the material to the article. Discussion beforehand is not always necessary. --Kvng (talk) 15:37, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Instant messaging as an example of a B-class article

Does Talk:Instant messaging#“citation needed” en masse mean it can remain as an example of a B-class article? --Trevj (talk) 10:39, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Could really use comp/tech help at Wikipedia:Requests for feedback

Greetings, as of the last month or so I'm the main guy holding down the fort at Wikipedia:Requests for feedback, and I could really use some additional help. RfF has been an outstanding experience in providing editing help to new editors who really want help and, in the majority of cases, are quick to incorporate feedback and really add to the value of their articles. We've had a number of requests for feedback on computer/programming/robotics/technology articles, and I'm not really familiar with that world or with that aspect of Wiki.

RfF doesn't require any fixed time commitment, and many feedbacks can be knocked out in literally five minutes or less, so even dropping by once or twice a week for five minutes would aid considerably in answering as many requests as possible, and consequently both encouraging new editors (who may become long-term serious editors) as well as maintaining high Wikipedia standards.

If anyone is willing to step up and drop by even a few times a week for just a few minutes, I would be profoundly grateful, as that would allow me to answer more requests for topics I specialise in (history, art, religion). Thanks! MatthewVanitas (talk) 20:23, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

C sharp

C Sharp (programming language) has been requested to be renamed to C♯ (programming language) ; see Talk:C Sharp (programming language). 64.229.100.153 (talk) 04:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Notification of nomination for deletion of GNU/Linux naming controversy

This is to inform the members of this Wikiproject, within the scope of which this article falls, that this article has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/GNU/Linux naming controversy. - Ahunt (talk) 12:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Request for check of correct data on memory speeds at DDR4 SDRAM

Hi,

I just wrote DDR4 SDRAM. As with most DDR and SDRAM, the article has to carefully distinguish clock rates and data rates. I notice someone has edited the article replacing sourced data by unsourced data and MHz by MT/s. I've reverted this and checked it to source, but as I'm not an expert I would like to ask that someone checks my revert and that the data in the article is correct (and per source).

DIFF

Thanks! FT2 (Talk | email) 00:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

System bus model

System bus model has been nominated for deletion, however on the talk page, there is a suggestion that it be merged instead of going to AfD. 184.144.163.181 (talk) 01:41, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

There was no consensus, but we agreed this area needs work. I took the step of expanding the system bus article from a redirect, trying to give some historical context. Help would be appreciated if anyone is here. W Nowicki (talk) 20:56, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Music Beta by Google

Hi. New article, Music Beta by Google (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - would this come under your remit?

The hope is, as more news comes out, to expand it for a DYK at least (over the coming days).

Cheers,  Chzz  ►  17:48, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Edit conflict at AFD

The "Edit conflict" article is at AFD, as it falls under your WikiProject I thought I would inform you. --81.164.215.61 (talk) 16:38, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to remove example program from ANTIC article

In reference to ANTIC#Display list example program: I want to propose that we remove this example program from the article. The example is written in BASIC and just writes a whole bunch of numbers one-at-a-time to what appears to be an arbitrary address space. It takes specialized knowledge that the average reader isn't likely to have, even with the rest of the info in the article, to know that the starting address is within the ANTIC's default memory space and that the data being written is a properly formatted display list. The DATA numbers by themselves are meaningless and do not actually illustrate how a display list works.

I wrote in Talk:ANTIC that if we need to have this sort of technical data in the article, a disassembly example of the ANTIC's memory space would be much more useful, as the standard assembly format would clearly show each instruction and its corresponding data, and is easy to annotate appropriately. However, even then, this information would really only be useful to technical enthusiasts and programmers, while the average reader would likely find it just as confusing and irrelevant as the BASIC program. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 18:19, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Just as an FYI, I went ahead and did this a couple days ago. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 22:09, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Update PL/0 links to compiler

Can someone please review:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:PL/0#Update_links_to_external_PL.2F0_compiler

Thanks Ioquatix (talk) 14:46, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

General purpose computer?

A personal computer is described as "a general-purpose computer [...] useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator". The ENIAC is the "first general-purpose electronic computer". We have a history of general purpose CPUs. But I can't find any article that describes what is a general purpose computer and what a specific purpose computer, what are the differences, the advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, searching "general purpose" ends in the article on Jeep! Can anyone do one or two following this example? --NaBUru38 (talk) 22:30, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

System bus model - up for deletion again

System bus model has been nominated for deletion again. The last deletion discussion was closed on 22 May, this discussion was opened on 1 June. 65.94.44.141 (talk) 04:35, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

And then closed speedily, sigh. Seemed a bit premature, since some of the arguments for quick closing are not based on actual facts. I will make another proposal on the talk page. W Nowicki (talk) 17:38, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Interactive tutorial help

I'm working on a project for an interactive tutorial for new editors and we're trying to mock-up the first units/levels (http://enwp.org/User:Ocaasi/The_Wikipedia_Game). I need a few good images of the Wikipedia interface, and some dialogue boxes and basic interface shots for the alpha version which will be done in Adobe Flash. Does anyone have basic photoshop skills and a few hours? Any help would be much appreciated. User:Ocaasi c 00:34, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I've created an article on Lulz Security

Lulz Security has been in the news so I created an article about them. It is currently up for speedy delete. I would love input on the article, and help if you think the topic is worth pursuing. Polyquest (talk) 00:49, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

No longer under speedy delete.Polyquest (talk) 00:53, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Copyvio cleanup

A large number of computing related articles were recently listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 May 26 after being identified as having potential copyvio issues. These articles have been edited to remove the copyvio material, but many such as Fibre Channel over IP, Multicast Open Shortest Path First, etc now need to be properly expanded. Some articles such as High-Performance Parallel Interface (HPPI) will need to be rewritten from scratch. --Tothwolf (talk) 21:49, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

How useful is Category:Machine code?

How useful is Category:Machine code? Should it be sent to WP:CfD for deletion? The category looks like that it is an example of over-categorization; the articles are "relevant" to the category, but are either separated by some distance or belong elsewhere in categories that are more relevant and intuitive to the reader.

To elaborate, there are currently 15 articles in the category:

  1. Machine code
  2. Addressing mode
  3. Code generation (compiler)
  4. Code injection
  5. CPUID
  6. Halt and Catch Fire
  7. HLT
  8. Illegal opcode
  9. Indirect branch
  10. Interrupts in 65xx processors
  11. MLX (software)
  12. NOP
  13. Opcode
  14. Operand
  15. SEX (computing)
  • Article #2 is a more intuitively categorized as a compiler topic.
  • Article #4 is more of a computer security topic; the question is not whether machine code has relevance, but whether it is characteristic of the topic.
  • Articles #5, 6, 7, 12, and 15 are instructions that are specific to an ISA or are mnemonics common to several ISAs. While instructions are expressed as machine code, it is far more useful to categorize them under the ISA they belong to; or if they are common to several ISAs, in a general category about generic ISA features.
  • Articles #2 and 9 are ISA topics. #9 is also a type of instruction. Both are only relevant to machine code if we view them from the perspective that if such concepts are implemented in instructions, we would get machine code.
  • Article #8 is about how ISAs encode information in an instruction to convey to the computer what action should be done; and article #13 is about what processors do when such an undefined opcode is encountered, which is an ISA and implementation issue.
  • Article #10 is about how interrupts are handled in the 6502 ISA and its derivatives. It belongs in Category:65xx microprocessors/
  • Article #11 is a program for typing machine code. It is no different from a hex editor or another utility that can manipulate machine code. Hex editors are not categorized under this category.
  • Article #14 is data. Programs contain data, but to consider this fact a distinguishing feature that makes it relevant to machine code might be crossing the line separating relevance from irrelevance.

Rilak (talk) 06:33, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

The category is a bit odd, although there might be other more pressing issues with the project. For example, the machine code article itself has most paragraphs lacking any citations at all. The whole article seems to conflating the topics of instruction set architecture, assembly language, and object or executable file. "Machine code" is almost just slang, with one of the more specific technical terms usually intended, I think. Almost should be a disambig page? The categories might have the confusion.

Articles can certainly have more than one category, but perhaps the issue is that Category:Machine code is now classified as being in both Category:Instruction processing and Category:Assembly languages, while most articles are already in one or the other already? For example, Addressing mode right now is in the top-level Category:Computer architecture, as well as Assembly languages already. So moving it down into Category:Instruction processing would probably make more sense, when it would be redundant with being in Category:Machine code. I would also agree that putting it in Category:Compilers or a subcat would also make sense. So in general I would agree with you, especially if you are volunteering to do the category clean up. W Nowicki (talk) 20:05, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the oddness of the machine code category is because the articles are there because of trivial intersections. I'm not disputing that articles can and should belong to other categories; but that it is unnecessary to have a category like machine code. Articles are included without any consistency. It looks completely arbitrary to me. For example, why isn't software categorized under it? Anything that isn't source code, byte code, or some intermediate representation is machine code after all. But I think that would just be pedantic and not useful. The category would be too broad in scope. Categories are for navigation, not for building a giant web that links everything to everything else. I think most people don't think of the topics in machine code like the category does, and I don't think anything resembling the category exists outside of Wikipedia. About what I intend to do; I would like to remove all members of the machine code category out, make sure they are categorized in relevant categories, and have the category deleted.
Regarding Machine code, it does indeed look like synthesis (and that's maybe why it is poorly referenced). I don't have any idea what to do with it. A disambiguation page might be appropriate, but I question whether anyone really confuses ISA with programs in a machine usable form. Rilak (talk) 01:53, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Maybe you nor I would confuse ISA with Machine code, but the article makes it look like an editor did, since the Machine code#Example section is really an example of how the MIPS ISA is encoded. I think the concept might be writing code using numeric instructions instead of assembler? If so, missing the important point that this was the common practice before assemblers were invented (and still done for a while with really early minicomputers, microcode or simple state machines, etc.). MIPS probably a bad example because assemblers were clearly in use by then. Sadly, Object code redirects to Object file, which in the first sentence of the lead defines it as sequences of machine code. Then the rest talks about file formats. Maybe the thing to do is get the category cleaned up (remove articles from it etc.), propose its deletion, and just rewrite machine code to include more cited historical examples, clarifying for example how front-panel switches, binary/decimal/octal/hex etc. was used, and then mention the transition to assemblers at the end with the {{main}} that is there now. Might take some time. W Nowicki (talk) 23:58, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Neural network

The usage of neural network is under discussion. See the requested move at talk:biological neural network and the discussion at talk:neural network. As neural nets are a big topic in AI, I thought you'd like to know. 65.94.47.63 (talk) 05:37, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

The discussion was consolidated at Talk:Neural network, with a proposal to merge biological neural network into it. 65.94.47.63 (talk) 05:13, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Deep Web

Deep Web has been requested to be renamed, see Talk:Deep Web . 65.94.47.63 (talk) 10:21, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Network computer

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Thin client#Network computer. Trevj (talk) 13:58, 24 June 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

WikiProject Microsoft is up for deletion

I have nominated WikiProject Microsoft for deletion at WP:MFD. Please comment here for any concerns. Thank you for your time. JJ98 (Talk) 01:28, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Consensus seems heading to making it a sub-project ("task force"?) of this one, but still not sure what the actual logistics are, besides maybe moving the page to Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing/Microsoft or somesuch. W Nowicki (talk) 16:14, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Notability of books

Discussion on the notability guidelines for specialized books, such as programming or math is going on at Wikipedia talk:Notability (books)#Criterion out of context. Some editors maintain that book that have not been covered in-depth in venues for a general audience, such as the New York Times, should be deleted from Wikipedia. However, recent AfD discussion on math and programming books ended up with such books being kept if they pass the less restrictive WP:GNG, for example Learning Perl or Perl Cookbook. Please voice your opinion in that guideline discussion. There is a balancing concern that probably most books by O'Reilly publishes for instance would qualify under GNG, making Wikipedia catalog of such books. However, closing administrators in those discussions chose to ignore WP:NOTCATALOG. FuFoFuEd (talk) 01:42, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Inherited importance assessments

Several templates like {{WikiProject Software}} and {{WikiProject Microsoft Windows}} automatically list the article in the Computing categories. They also provide a general computing importance assessment even if it's not explicitly provided. This inherited assessment is often misleading: something high-importance in Windows might be low-importance to computing. Similarly, something high-importance in computing might be only in a small way related to Software, Windows, etc.

I'd like to remove the automatic inheritance and change to this behavior: articles retain their Software or Windows importance, but are listed as Unknown-importance for Computing unless a general computing assessment is explicitly provided using computing-importance=.

This will help in three ways:

  1. Encourage making a better importance assessment for general computing
  2. Avoid unexpected changes to the Computing importance that result from changing e.g. the Software or Windows importance
  3. Bring attention to the parameter for general computing importance, reducing the likelihood of articles accidently being listed in multiple Computing importance categories. (This causes false entries in the Computing reassessment log – see discussion at WP:COMP/A – and likely other problems as well.) --Pnm (talk) 22:55, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea to me. —Ruud 02:09, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
I support this. --Kvng (talk) 14:38, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
Agree --trevj (talk) 08:38, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Support. Questions:
  1. Did we already make this change Pnm?
  2. What happens to all the current articles that have importance= set?
  3. Do those automatically get renamed to computing-importance= or do we have to do something manually?
§ Music Sorter § (talk) 08:04, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

International Space Station

Are there computers on the ISS ? or is it all run by clockwork ? Just asking, a month ago you could read the entire international space station article and never know. Cool! ... NOT Lads_Pawn_Missn_Cntrl_butt_In_Cntr_Strike.jpg from the page here.

We could use some help here. Anyone got 10 minutes ? Please come to the ISS talk page to help. Penyulap talk 15:50, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I have nominated International Space Station for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Please understand, this is about an effort to improve the article, and get some new blood and new ideas into this article. Penyulap talk 15:50, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Path and "relative path"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_path says "A relative path is a path relative to the working directory of the user or application ...". That is correct regards paths used on a computer but is not a complete definition. There is a third case, for example when writing documentation, when relative paths are paths relative to any known directory. Nh5h (talk) 03:09, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Nh5h, if you can help find a source referencing that 3rd case we can add that information to the article. If you like you can even give it a try yourself and ask someone here to look over your changes if you are a new editor at WP. § Music Sorter § (talk) 07:19, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
Even if you don't have a source, it's probably worth a mention at Talk:Path (computing) for the benefit of future editors of the article. --Trevj (talk) 10:24, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Opinions on keyboard pictures needed

Recently, a user has added some photos to IBM PC keyboard#Keyboard layouts. I totally fail to see how those add value to the article. On the contrary, I think they turn a good gallery of illustrations for the standard key layouts (as described in the text) into an unsorted list of keyboard pictures that could pretty much contain any photo of a PC keyboard ever, without any inclusion or exclusion criteria. (Plus, all the ™s and ®s add an irritating advertising flavor.)

But my arguments don't seem to convince the user., so I'd appreciate some additional comments/opinions about the suitability of those photos. Thanks --Berntie (talk) 23:14, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with the photos per say, but I think they would be better suited in a new subsection of the article which discusses programmable key keyboards. --Tothwolf (talk) 23:40, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
I made a recommendation on the IBM PC keyboard#Keyboard layouts talk page with my idea for an improvement that will also ultimately help decide what should get added. § Music Sorter § (talk) 05:45, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Software Lifecycle Management - extending current entry or starting a fresh stub

re Software Lifecycle Management (SLM) and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

Hi all - I propose to extend the SLM entry or create an alternative one for the following reasons: 1. The current wikipedia entry on SLM discusses solely software licensing issues. 2. The wikipedia entry for ALM requires a new perspective which I propose to be titled SLM. SLM is an abstraction of ALM. 3. SLM covers all software not just applications. Thus it covers in addition: 

3.a embedded software in products.
3.b integration software used to glue components - such components may be Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS).
3.c configuration scripts used to build and deploy software releases.
3.d software testing scripts.
3.e software supplied by external parties (partners, offshore, near-shore, contractors, COTS, open source, etc).
3.f anything recognisable as software and not necessarilly a stand alone application.

4. ALM is also highly tool oriented as a concept - to many in the IT industry, ALM means an ALM system/solution. SLM places processes and people above tools - tool selection is made to fit the process and people, which in turn are chosen on the needs of the development project. 5. Who am I: I need to declare an interest as I work as an IT industry analyst for one of the larger analyst firms. My employer has not branded SLM in any way but my research articles have been the first to use SLM as an alternative to ALM (these articles are available to our subscribers). My intention with the wikipedia entry is to flesh out the above comments 3.a-3.f.

Finally, I'm aware that wikipedia is designed to reflect the world rather than to pioneer new concepts. My view is that SLM does reflect an evolution of ALM and the current SLM wikipedia entry is a rather narrow definition (with limited usage by others in my experience).

I'm interested to see this community's opinion on the SLM question and whether you believe: i) SLM is a valid wikipedia entry ii) if i) yes then should it extend the current SLM entry, extend the current ALM entry, have a separate entry of its own, or a mix of these options.

Cheers Emazoff (talk) 15:27, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

The current Software Lifecycle Management article is totally unsourced, and only incoming links are from an acronym and Lifecycle management. The acronym SLIM points to Putnam model, which does not mention the SLIM acronym nor link to Software Lifecycle Management. It looks like it was started in 2007 as an ad for SecureLM, which is why it only mentioned licensing, and never expanded. I would say expand (or replace) the existing one to describe the more broader term. SecureLM does not even link back to it. Application lifecycle management also seems to overlap, so maybe even a merge might be in order. The direction would go towards the "more common" form. Also the convention is to use lower case except for proper names (even if normal jargon acronymizes it), so Software lifecycle management would be the correct title if it were to remain separate. Software lifecycle and Software development life cycle redirect to Software development process which might make sense, while Software life-cycle redirects to Software release life cycle which is what I would expect a Software Lifecycle Management product to handle, not just licensing. I cannot think of any reason to start yet a another article. An article has to be a new "topic" which has multiple independent sources, not just a new term for an old idea.
Be careful of course to consider the conflict of interest guidelines and especially Wikipedia:No original research. In rare cases you might be able to cite your own reports, if they are easily accessible (e.g. do not require purchase) to be verified. Better might be to cire the sources you use in your reports, or other easily verifiable ones. Thanks for volunteering to improve these. W Nowicki (talk) 16:47, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Nowicki for your response. My tardy reply is due to holiday. Given your view I'm inclined to rewrite the existing SLM entry with pointers to all the existing other entries that are relevant, most especially the ALM entry. I'm loath to tamper with the existing ALM entry as this would be akin to a three letter acronym war - though an edit in ALM to loop back to SLM would be in order. Thus my proposed SLM entry is to establish the evolution taking place in the IT world, especially around embedded software and its lifecycle management, and cover the points 3.a-f above. I can also reference some open access material using the term. Emazoff (talk) 10:51, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Link to the model VW Bug?

Hi, I'm looking for a link to the 1972 3D model VW Bug created by Ivan Sutherland. I need it for the page List of common 3D test models and I thought that somebody here might know where to find it. If you know of other models that you think should be in the list, feel free to add them to! I am also looking for images to the models Dragon, Armadillo and Happy Buddha. There is also an image of a 3D test scene in the gallery on the page (it's also in the article global illumination) which I don't know the name of, where it's from or where it can be found. It would be good if someone here could help me find that out to. —Kri (talk) 17:05, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Unreviewed article template on Disk drive performance characteristics

I completed the new article Disk drive performance characteristics based on content from 4 other articles. I added the template for {{New unreviewed article}}, but have not gotten anyone to actually double check my work and remove the template. If one of my fellow editors from the Wikiproject Computing team can take a look and make sure I did not leave off anything obvious, that would be great. Then you can also remove the template. In hindsight since all the content is from other articles and I have experience creating other articles, I suppose I should have just listed a message here for the group to check it rather than post that template that currently makes people wonder if the data is accurate. Maybe I am wrong and the template is doing exactly what it should. Thanks in advance. § Music Sorter § (talk) 06:48, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Mathematical optimization

People may be interested in the recent edits and discussion at Mathematical optimization. Jowa fan (talk) 00:56, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Who determines an article's importance and class?

I noticed a user changing the importance and class of some WikiProject Computing articles. [4] [5] [6] [7] Are those set by ordinnary users? I was under the impression that WikiProject Computing assigns those. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:32, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

A WikiProject is an abstract entity and would have a pretty difficult time editing Wikipedia. Anyone who want to help classifying articles is free to do so. "The project" only needs to get involved is there is some kind of dispute or if there is a larger interest in determining which articles should be Top-priority and which ones not. The diffs you pointed to all seem quite uncontroversial and helpful to me. Cheers, —Ruud 10:18, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! I didn't have an issue with the actual edits; it's just that I imagined some sort of committee making that decision -- something like Wikipedia:Good article nominations or Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. Thanks for the clarification. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:13, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Followup: Here is the page that explains everything: Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing/Assessment#Quality assessment procedures -Guy Macon (talk) 11:39, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Well, calling it a "department" is a bit grandiose in my opinion. We are jall ust volunteers who do many other things. At least what I do is whenever visiting an article, I try to take a quick look at its project and assessment. Often there is none, so pick one. Default to "stub", and then "start" if there are a few cited sources and some actual content. As the levels get higher the criteria get more particular as you noted, and involve more formal processes. In the Talk:Floppy disk example, the editor accidently added a second one and then subtracted it after noticing the duplication. It looks like you then downgraded importance. Generally I agree there is a somewhat of an "importance inflation" because there is less restriction of the higher levels. So everyone tends to think of their own pet article as "top" because of course it is top importance to them! Certainly if nobody has upgraded an article from "start" state in years, it would not be "top" in my book. What I tend to do is give a task-force priority often one-level or two higher than the project priority. For example, Floppy disk might rate, say "high" priority or even "mid" for computing overall, but "top" for hardware. It does seem to be getting attention. It also seems you changed the importance with no discussion nor even an edit summary comment. Generally explaining why you are over-ruling someone else shows respect for their work, even if you have a different opinion, but this is a nit in this case. Thanks for any help. W Nowicki (talk) 16:38, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
It's always a bit for subjective, yes. For Floppy disk I would say high or perhaps even top would sound appropriate. Assigning priorities is best done in comparison to other articles. It might be worth going through Category:Top-importance Computing articles and Category:Top-importance Computer hardware articles and putting approximately 100 articles in there of similar importance. I did this for Category:Top-importance Computer science articles a while ago. —Ruud 18:26, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:IOS#Requested move

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:IOS#Requested move. Trevj (talk) 10:36, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Reconfigurable supercomputing

Would it be possible for someone from this project to take a look at our Reconfigurable supercomputing article, and then either (a) translate it into comprehensible English, or (b) banish it from Wikipedia entirely, never again to confront us with a "hurdle on the way to new horizons of cheap highest performance" with "CS-related educational deficits causing the configware / software chasm and a methodology fragmentation between the different cultures of application domains"? If there was a Nobel prize for grammatically-challenged metaphor-mangling gobbledygook, this article might be in with a chance, but as encyclopaedia content, it seems to me to have 'deficits' which no amount of hurdling over fragmented chasms separating cultures and domains is ever going to solve. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:49, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

I vote for the "banish" option, so added the proposed deletion tag. Article created by User:Rainier34 December 31, 2005, who only made five more edits on the related article that got moved to Reconfigurable datapath array and should also go. That one mentions "...coined by Rainer Kress in 1993 when having been at TU Kaiserslautern", so sounds like neologisms: one person adding articles on Wikipedia to make it sound like a term has become notable. Certainly not "new" if it is that old in the computer world. Material already covered a bit in High-performance reconfigurable computing which is also horrible, and Reconfigurable computing which needs tons of work but at least has some sources. If the prod fails, I would say convert to redirects to one article, perhaps Reconfigurable computing, and then clean up with citations and removal of jargon. But that will take time. W Nowicki (talk) 17:35, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, thanks. I suspected as much, but this isn't really my field, and I thought it best to check that I wasn't about to delete the next 'big thing' or whatever. Bury it deep in its own chasm... AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:43, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Well the "next big thing" usually is the one for which a given researcher's proposal is trying to get money, or so they say. Not clear how many believe their own hype. It seems my proposed deletion only lasted three hours, and was converted to a redirect to High-performance reconfigurable computing which at least has three references and at least more readable hype. Seems reasonable. I will take a pass at it. W Nowicki (talk) 18:34, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. The High-performance reconfigurable computing article seems to make sense to me (not that I could tell a field-programmable gate array from a cattle grid), so a redirect may well be the solution. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:09, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

LaFarr Stuart at AfD

But I can imagine that off-line sources on the history of computing might have something appropriate, additional eyes/sources appreciated. --joe deckertalk to me 00:16, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Address space and memory address

Please, look at articles, which have a link "address space". Most links suppose that "address space" is the primary memory address space or, more generally, something which can be addressed by CPU memory accessing instructions. Then, look at the article itself – it is about a concept, not restricted to memory or CPU.

Should the CPU address space be described in details together with memory address article and have these links pointed to it, instead of more general "address space"? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:31, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Well the majority of them do seem to mean memory address space, but several do refer to the larger concept or at least the network address version of the term. To me it is not so bad to have both general and specific articles, although often the citations on the general ones are harder. If we did, say, convert address space into a disambig page it would cause quite a bit of work fixing all the refs. Merging to memory address would also be non trivial (although perhaps easier). At the least, I will try rewording it a bit to make it clear for example that IANA has nothing to do with disk sectors or x86 segmentation! W Nowicki (talk) 21:37, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Why disambig? Certainly, links to a general article are useful where the text should emphasize that some computing system uses an abstract space with easily encoded addresses. But it is not so good to link every occurrence of CPU address space to [[address space]], although many users do so, including two times myself[8][9]. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:50, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Metadefinition

The article Metadefinition has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Article consists of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH building on a computer science concept better discussed at Metamodeling.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. 202.124.73.181 (talk) 02:38, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Request for review: Edit to Data Center page

I have posted some new text to the Talk page for the Data Center page (Add to the [of modern data center] section). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Data_center#Add_to_the_Requirements_for_modern_data_centers_section Please review and let me know what you think. Many thanks, Sfiteditor (talk) 22:04, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I didn't see reviews so I posted my proposed text to the main Data Center page. Sfiteditor (talk) 23:07, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

new daisy players for IPad/IPod/IPhone

New Daisy players are available for IPod/IPad/IPhone next to the existing Daisyworm. These are InDaisy and Voice of Daisy. I have tested all three for my 11 years old dyslectic son and the two new ones are much more easy to use. Could you please add them to the list? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.92.27.36 (talk) 08:54, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Discussion on AfD guidelines for articles containing content unlikely to be merged

(Maybe there's already a guideline in place for this: if so, I must've missed it - sorry.)

Articles for deletion/Auto Detection Auto Configuration asks the question (which has been answered there) How do we accomplish a redirect during an -afd? and discusses merging. For those closing AfDs, a merge outcome is of little use IMO if there's nothing worth merging; e.g. Should introduction dates, tech specs etc. be merged into a host article? I therefore propose the following as a starting point for discussion here:

  • If a merge will necessitate extensive formatting/copying/pasting within the host article (e.g. data from a wikitable) and no one !voting for a merge is volunteering to do this work, there is little point in arriving at a consensus of Merge
    • Yes, by not deleting, the edit history of the article in question will be retained for future use by all editors per WP:CWW
    • But if this copying isn't undertaken close to the time of the AfD closure, who knows when (if ever) it will be done?
    • Therefore, perhaps a decision of Delete would be more appropriate
  • In such cases, it may be useful to have a guideline available which argues the case for deletion if a merge decision is likely to result in a redirect without any content being copied
  • The above must also apply to articles outside of computing, so perhaps the discussion will be taken elsewhere in due course (unless it's already covered within existing guidance, in which case I apologise for wasting people's time)

Please note that I wouldn't consider myself to be a deletionist, but for the reasons above I question the usefulness of a merge decision if the merge may never be carried out. Please also note that I'm certainly not criticising the actions of editors who undertake such redirects. In many cases (such as [10], [11], [12]) an actual merge of content into the host article could widely be considered impractical. Thanks for reading. --Trevj (talk) 11:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I now see that the instructions for this include use of {{Afd-merge to}} and {{Afd-merge from}}. This is helpful. Has anyone observed whether it's generally followed or not? --Trevj (talk) 17:31, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
Not everything happens at once. If stuff is marked to be merged as the result of AfD then either someone will eventually take the initiative to merge it or someone else will nominate it for deletion again. It is an invalid argument to say that it needs to be deleted as opposed to being fixed because nobody will ever get around to fixing it. Have patience. --Kvng (talk) 20:38, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Cloud database entry

Hi, I'm new to Wikipedia, please let me know if this is not the right place to discuss this (I've also posted this note on WikiProject Databases). I'm thinking about writing an entry for cloud database - see for example Amazon Relational Database Service and NoSQL. A subsection with this title already exists on Database and deserves an entry of its own. I have some experience with these types of solutions and I have a lot of sources on hand, but I need some guidance, and wanted to consult with folks on the project if it seems to be a notable subject. What's the best way to proceed? Can I put together a suggested outline for the entry and show you for feedback? Anne.naimoli (talk) 17:13, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The term gets enough Google hits that we shouldn't have a red link for cloud database. As the term is often used as a shorthand for "NoSQL database systems used in cloud computing" there might be too much overlap with the article on NoSQL, but on the other hand there are relation cloud databases services as well. I would just try starting an article (either directly in main space or at User:Anne.naimoli/Cloud database) and see how it develops. Cheers —Ruud 17:24, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Add your material to the Database article. If the article becomes too long, which it probably will, then summarize it in the database page, moving the full articulation to your own article. See also WP:New article. — CpiralCpiral 01:54, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
Actually, Database already is a summary style article, and it is way too big. So just write your article, even if it just a stub, and use the {{Main}} template at the beginning of the database cloud section, when your contribution is fairly well along on the wiki. (It will say "Main article: Database cloud".) Happy editing! — CpiralCpiral 00:54, 24 September 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)

Discussion at Talk:Bundled software#Redirect

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Bundled software#Redirect. Trevj (talk) 11:08, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Bitsquatting

Bitsquatting is a new article about an implausible topic: "Bitsquatting is a form of cybersquatting which relies on random bit errors in the memory area that stores the domain name of a given Internet address." Bizarrely, there is an impressive looking source, although I did not study enough of it to gauge why they think their observations were due to random errors in computer hardware. Is that single source suitable for such an unlikely topic? Johnuniq (talk) 02:41, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Blackhat papers probably can't be expected to be of the same quality as academic papers. After skimming the paper I would say their experimental methodology is inadequate and they don't seem to explain why they see so many more bit-errors than even their very rough calculations would predict. Some of the log entries seem very convincing but there's no statistical analysis to rule out other causes. The paper should stand up to peer-review and be followed up by independent publications first. So, the source is not very reliable and the topic probably not notable (I did find a mention of this research in Forbes.)—Ruud 08:57, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps it's best to just shortly mention this research at Typosquatting and redirect this there? —Ruud 09:59, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
That's a good idea, and I agree that there is not proper attention in the paper to investigating interpretations other than random bit errors. I was wondering if it was a joke, but that paper is a lot of trouble for nonsense. At any rate, if there is no further plausible source (I can only see gossipy and uncritical rehashing of the original paper), a redirect would be good. I'm reluctant to propose some text as it really seems implausible to me, but I might give it a go. Johnuniq (talk) 11:55, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
I call "Bullshit". Just what is the error rate of RAM memory these days? Our article Dynamic_random-access_memory#Error_detection_and_correction says that the error rate is of the order of one bit of error, per century, per gigabyte of memory. So if you're going to register the name Yikipedia.org in an attempt to catch errors in the second bit of the first byte of the Wikipedia DNS entry...then that will work (on average) only once in eight billion centuries...assuming that the ECC chip doesn't catch (and fix) it first. So every 0.8 trillion years, this trick would work...that's like 50 times the life of the universe! ECC chips can seamlessly correct single-bit errors and only fail to do so for double-bit errors in a single byte...which puts the actual mean-time-to-fail for any particular bit in memory to some utterly ungodly impossible number of universe-spans. Ridiculous...not worthy of our consideration...in short: Bullshit. SteveBaker (talk) 19:45, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Kinematics

Kinematics is a detailed study of motion with respect to velocity,acceleration,time,displacement and speed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yash Poojary (talk • contribs) 06:37, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, as per the Kinematics article. Nothing to do with this project? W Nowicki (talk) 18:06, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Deletion precedent

Mbrlen was recently deleted. If this was the right thing to do, there are a bunch of similar articles covering C standard library functions that are now candidates for deletion. --Kvng (talk) 01:31, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Following the WP:NOTMANUAL argument, this makes sense, and there are surely other wikis/sites including this information. Conversely, we have Span and div, which could be merged with HTML element. And as well as articles contained in Category:C standard library, we have Category:BASIC commands. WP:Notability (programming statements and functions) doesn't exist and I've no idea how difficult it would be to achieve consensus on such a guideline. I confess to not knowing a great deal about C programming, but in BASIC it could reasonably be argued that GOTO satisfies WP:GNG, for example. --Trevj (talk) 03:09, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
I would strongly oppoose that merge of span & div to HTML. This is one of those cases where the "standard library" documentation is quite inadequate and the real significance of the use of these elements deserves expansion, which can all the same stop short of WP:NOTHOWTO. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:43, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh sure, most of those should go, except anything like goto that has been independently discussed in a source. At first I thought they were from long ago, but then I ran across Atan (c) for example, which is only a month old. Perhaps it is time to point out there is a Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computing which was previously the work of one brave editor. I made a recent addition, but it needs more discussion to reach a consensus. Like most things on Wikipedia, it should never be considered "done", but adding one clause for each issue as we run into it might help bring up the quality and consistency of these articles. W Nowicki (talk) 16:40, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I ran across Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Strxfrm and Wikipedia:India Education Program/Courses/Fall 2011/Data Structures and Algorithms. This seems part of a plan that was well intended to help with computer-science related articles, but needs some guidance on what is appropriate. Having a more complete Manual of Style might help this situation. W Nowicki (talk) 17:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I suggested most of the "manual-style" articles to be WP:TRANSWIKIed to an WikiBook. They are useful, but not appropriate for an encyclopedia. It seems that (unfortunately?) most of the articles created in the IEP program linked to by W Nowicki above seem to fall into this category. —Ruud 17:39, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Can we just suggest to the Indians that a WikiBook is simply a better host for this? Their students carry out the same exercise, the content ends up where it ought. Does annyone know the organisation(sic) of this Ambassador program? It does seem to be instigating lots of projects, perhaps exceeding our ability to organise their ongoing editing. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:57, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
We should look if there already exists an appropriate book on the C programming language or otherwise create one. These article would be nice material for an appendix to such a book. I wonder whether this project is connected to the Ambassador program as well or whether it has just been setup by a few entrepreneuring lectures/Wikipedians. It would be great if future effort where coordinated with Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing and/or/ Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer science. Although I suspect it won't be too much effort for us to cleanup/copyedit/transwiki afterwards. I've looked at few articles and some would make good additions to Wikipedia with only a bit of minor copyediting. —Ruud 19:58, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
The WikiBook: b:C Programming —Ruud 20:01, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
There's also Wikiversity's Topic:C. --Trevj (talk) 08:50, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree that it is a good idea to move most of them elsewhere, but I think it is simply WP:GNG and not WP:MANUAL which should be basis for deletion. WP:MANUAL prohibits "how to" guides, manuals and tutorials, and merely function description doesn't qualify as such. On the other hand, most of not-so-important functions will fail WP:GNG (as "man" is certainly not a WP:RS for notability purposes), and can be removed on that basis (keeping important ones, like 'select()' or GOTO - for which it will be easy to find non-trivial coverage in major books). Ipsign (talk) 10:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Another one Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Genetic algorithm in Mechanical engineering. Was nominated for deletion only 2 hours after creation. I'm inclined to ask the nominator to withdraw the nomination to see if the students intends to develop this article further. (Although if the material is worth keeping it will likely end up being merged into an "Applications" section in the Genetic algorithm article itself. —Ruud 15:46, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

See also Talk:C standard library#Pages for each function and WP:NOTMANUAL. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 13:03, 5 October 2011 (UTC).
See also Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Limits.h. 1exec1 (talk) 09:40, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:India Education Program/Courses/Fall 2011/Data Structures and Algorithms

In a related note: we should probably review the contributions created by this project after it has come to a close. For example the article memory fragmentation seems to most duplicate fragmentation (computing). I have seen this happen a few times before with school and university projects: the students are often required to start a new article instead of improving on existing ones. —Ruud 17:55, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Acorn Archimedes/RISC OS games

Further to previous discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing/Archive 11#RISC OS coordination, you are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games#Acorn Archimedes/RISC OS games.

This relates to the (non-)inclusion of computer games articles within WP:COMP via {{WikiProject Computing}}. Thanks. Trevj (talk) 14:18, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

List of rapid application development tools

Shouldn't MS Visual Web Developer 2010 Express be listed under the Web Development section? Just asking, I'm new to this world of ASPX and trying to sort it all out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.234.150 (talk) 02:12, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Requesting peer review of my new page: converged storage

I have posted a draft of a new page I've created for "converged storage". Please could you review and let me know if this meets the standards? The draft is in the talk page of my user page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sfiteditor Many thanks. Sfiteditor (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

How is it decided whether a page is within the scope of this project?

The page Digital Negative is claimed to be within scope, see Talk:Digital Negative. But this is a Raw image format used in digital photography. It doesn't appear to fit anywhere in the "Scope and goals" of WikiProject Computing. (Note: I am a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and worked before retirement as a Chief Engineer in the computer industry). Had there been such a project, I would have put it as Science (really Engineering) > Technology > Photography. Should there be such a project? This page is rated "sub class". If it is judged according to its contribution to "Computing" then I can see that it isn't contributing much. But (have a look) it's contribution to "Photographic Engineering" is certainly not summarized as "The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to become a meaningful article. It is usually very short, but if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible, an article of any length falls into this category." Barry Pearson 09:45, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I have found Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Photography. There is significant inconsistency. Raw image format is in Project Photography, where I think it should be. Digital Negative is a type of Raw image format and should be in the same project, not Computing. Tag Image File Format / Electronic Photography is another type of Raw image format and isn't in any project. dcraw is in Project Computing, yet exists solely to process Raw image formats. I think what is important is "domain knowledge". The domain knowledge needed for these is "top end digital photography", not "computing". Barry Pearson 12:18, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

To answer your question in the subject: Someone boldly places the relevant template on the talk page, though often only once the talk page exists. A simple answer to where you think another project is relevant is to add the alternative project's template yourself. If you feel a page has been wrongly attributed to a project, highlighting that at the project talk page, like you have, or asking the user who added the template if you can locate them from the history of the talk page, would be best, but again you can boldly delete the wrong template if you're very sure. Mark Hurd (talk) 12:33, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes, like anything else on Wikipedia it is done by consensus of volunteers. An easy solution is to put it in both projects. This is very typical: for example, software that does physics calculation can be in both computing and physics projects, etc. As you say, Digital Negative is more important to the photogrphy field than the computing field, so that might merit, say, an mportance=low for computing. It looks like photography does not have importance ratings (importance is even more subjective so not as valuable to many editors). It is a file format used in computer software, so does sound relevant. Many new editors forget to put project templates on their articles, so any help you can provide would be appreciated. They usually need improvement anyway; for example, the Digital Negative article has some dated language that seems to indicate it was last updated around 2009, talking about the "future" beyond two years ago. W Nowicki (talk) 17:35, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks to both of you, and to whoever added an extra Project template in the Talk:Digital Negative page. I am considering becoming active within the Photography Project. (I am new to Projects here. And in spite of my career in computing, I am so out-of-date I would be no use in the Computing Project). Yes - the Digital Negative page has got a bit out-of-date. I think my first task will be to fix broken links. Barry Pearson 18:47, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Articles can be in more than one project and large numbers of them are. I would consider raw format as of interest to computing and have a book on 2-D image file formats and it is expressly aimed at programmers. Dmcq (talk) 18:31, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Is there a special emphasis that a page in the Computing Project should have, in additon to what it would say in the Photography Project? In the case of Digital Negative, I note it has statements about avoidance of need for reverse engineering, and the existence of a SDK. I struggle to think what else the Computing Project would expect. Barry Pearson 21:06, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Not sure what you are asking. An article should cover its topic as completely as possible by paraphrasing verifiable reliable sources. No matter what project it is in, cover the topic from all sides. One thing to be careful of is keeping language neutral. That uncited "Rationale" paragraph for example sounds like advocacy. Certainly conflict of interest guidelines need to be followed, if you have any connection (even just "like" the subject). Certainly dead links to your site are useless; if you are careful to not inject your personal opinions, then citing your own pages can be done - at least fix the broken ones. But going to more independent sources would be best. Adobe press releases are not independent (and their promotional language needs to be filtered out), but public companies generally vett their information enough I at least consider it reliable. And if you ever want to contribute directly to computing, we do need work on historic articles too, not just trendy curent stuff. I guess the main guidence I would give for computing articles is to never use words like "currently", or recently or future tense, since things change so quickly it will be almost guaranteed to be out of date by the time people read the article. W Nowicki (talk) 23:35, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Web information system

I came across Web information system just now, and it seems like a sorry article. I'm not sure if it is a good topic for an article. Chris857 (talk) 02:57, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Expert attention needed at an AfD

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Machine design in game engines Voceditenore (talk) 07:59, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Seems the deletion nomination was already closed and article moved to User:Ankurjay007/Machine design in game engines. It reads like a rambling essay without citations. Seems it is about Video game development? Not clear how it would be a spearate topic, and does not match the title at any rate. Just another example of why programs encouraging new editors to create new articles before they learn wikipedia conventions end up causing us more work. W Nowicki (talk) 17:44, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

libxslt article

Many technical and scientific articles on Wikipedia are jargon-ridden, seemingly addressed only to other professionals in the field. An example is the brief article on libxslt. I know that it is possible to define the subject of an article in terms communicable to any educated reader, and I wonder why this is so often apparently not part of the goal of those contributing to an encyclopedia for a general audience. Wikipedia is not a professional journal. This does not mean that the full technical explication of a technical topic ought not be supplied, but only that more attention should be given to communicating what it all means. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.225.200.167 (talk) 19:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Merging WikiProject Computer science and WikiProject Computing

Please see my question here. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 01:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

MIVA

I ran across Miva Merchant today and it lead me to MIVA Script. Both articles qualify for WP:G11 in my opinion. Miva Merchant is currently in AfD and from my searching, appears to be notable. MIVA script was surprisingly created in 2004 and appears to be controlled or at least edited by someone promoting the company. I think both articles could use some work and thought this project might be interested in doing it. OlYeller21Talktome 22:10, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

As you can see from one red link, one of the articles has been deleted. Can someone take a look at MIVA Script and get back to me? I'm hoping that your knowledge of the subject and/or its category might help verify notability. OlYeller21Talktome 17:45, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
Miva Merchant seems to have been recreated. It does sound possibly notable, e.g. [13], [14] but more reliable sources specifically discussing the company would be desirable IMO. MIVA Script may be a copyvio but I can't tell. If the company article is kept as being notable, then perhaps the Script info should be merged in, provided people are satisfied that it's not a copyvio. -- Trevj (talk) 19:25, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Pages for each function and WP:NOTMANUAL

Hello, you might find this discussion interesting.1exec1 (talk) 10:48, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

You might also find #Deletion precedent above interesting, where I already linked your NOTMANUAL discussion :) Vadmium (talk, contribs) 12:19, 23 October 2011 (UTC).

Links to an external reference

Hello. I think you might find this discussion interesting. Thanks! 1exec1 (talk) 11:54, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Unisys OS 2200

Could someone have a look Unisys OS 2200 communications, Unisys OS 2200 databases, Unisys OS 2200 distributed processing, Unisys OS 2200 operating system, Unisys OS 2200 programming languages, Unisys 2200 Series system architecture and suggest what needs to be done with them? —Ruud 22:49, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Pointer (input device)

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Pointer#Mouse cursor. -- Trevj (talk) 11:00, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposed rename of C library articles

I proposed to move the following articles to less bizarre names: C mathematical functions → Mathematical functions in C, C file input/output → Input and output in C, C program control operations → Process control functions in C, C character classification → Character classification in C, C date and time operations → Date and time functions in C, C dynamic memory allocation → Dynamic memory allocation in C, C data types → Data types in C. A heated debate currently runs at Talk:C standard library#Move request through WP:RM. Please express your opinion. Thanks! 1exec1 (talk) 16:06, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Gnome proposal

I've proposed the creation of WikiProject Gnome. Please comment. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:09, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah, that would be GNOME and not the little guys with the pointy hats and fishing rods that infest certain people's gardens. Shouldn't the project name also be capitalized? SteveBaker (talk) 14:26, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 Fixed It should. Sorry, my fault. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:43, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I moved the rest of this discussion to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals/Gnome#Discussion. Please continue it there. Thanks! --Pnm (talk) 18:48, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Lenna.png

There is an ongoing dispute between the image police and imaging specialists over the iconic Lenna test image at File_talk:Lenna.png. The anti-Lenna side does not understand the concept of a test image, they think its only a picture of a foldout, and that a 300x300 version of the test image is an adequate representation of the test image. They have requested a RFC at the Wikipedia policies and guidelines page, which I think will only attract those of a like mind. I don't know if this is the proper page to request comment from the imaging community. If it is, great, but if it is not, can someone suggest a more appropriate page? Thanks for any help - PAR (talk) 21:04, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Dude - get with it. We're not "anti-Lenna". It's about whether the image should be sized down to meet WP:NFCC#3b or whether the 512x512 size is acceptable. SchuminWeb (Talk) 23:08, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

As somewhat obscure member of "imaging community" I'm ok with 300x300. IMHO original 512x512 test image don't necessarily have to be present in the Wikipedia. It's definitely should be present in open-access research databases, research wiki's and accompany the paper if necessary, but Wikipedia is not a storage for open-access research materials. Serg3d2 (talk) 15:00, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Criticism of Google

The article Criticism_of_Google appears to continue a lot of WP:OR, WP:UNRELIABLE sources, WP:UNDUE material and WP:SYNTH throughout. I've been doing with clearing it up. Is there anyone interested in looking through this article to help fix it? IRWolfie- (talk) 16:08, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Augmented Reality article need clear guidlines for linkspam

Because Augmented Reality is considered to be mildly ascending tech trend the corresponding article is under the constant barrage of self-promoting edits or outright linkspam. The problem is it's sometimes difficult to say if the entry is spam or legitimate encyclopedic information. The problem is especially hard for the "applications" and "examples" sections. For example (pan not intended) there is already example of Nissan outdoor AR advertising. Somebody link blog entry with similar advertising for Volvo. Is this a spam or legitimate information? The same goes for Nintendo 3DS game cards, PS Vita etc. It would be more easy if there are clear guidelines: two samples per application, first appearing in some major news site, more notable or earliest, or some combo of it get precedence. Would it be possible to develop such guidelines? Serg3d2 (talk) 14:41, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

The Applications section should not contain a bunch of links to applications which meet the definition, rather, it should summarize reliable, secondary sources which discuss applications of augmented reality. I suggest excluding primary sources from that section. The content of the Examples section seems OK to me as it stands at the moment. --Pnm (talk) 02:30, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Uniblue

This is the company that produces RegistryBooster which has over 2 million downloads a week and is the 11th most downloaded file in the world. I have created the article Uniblue however it is being contested for speedy deletion as an advert. Could you please help out on this? I feel that it should definately be in wikipedia . thank you Keithmonti (talk) 10:09, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

There does seem to be a bit of a problem finding any sources talking about computer products or companies in reliable sources which aren't just reviews. I was just looking at an article about a cheese company in Ireland and it has no problem on this account because a whole chapter has been written about it in a book. Dmcq (talk) 11:04, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Part of the problem here is that the article actually does read like an advert - or at least a corporate press announcement. The "Criticism" section really soft-balls the whole thing. Sentences like: "Coverage...provided Uniblue with a taste of acknowledgment and global recognition." really do read like a sales pitch to stockholders or something. So I have to say that as it's written now, I'd want it to be rewritten almost completely - or, failing that, simply deleted. I agree with User:Dmcq that finding reliable sources is difficult - but that's only a reason not to write the article - not an excuse for writing a bad one. SteveBaker (talk) 16:44, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Testing in data mining applications

The article Testing in data mining applications has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Very muddled article right from the lede. It's unclear which meaning of Wiktionary:Application it is referring to (software or usage) (I suspect IEP student doesn't realise word has >1 meaning). A Data mining applications article (or something with a less ambiguous title) would probably be needed before this article. The cite for "Lift chart" just shows that "Lift Chart" is the name of a tab/graph in a particular piece of software. I could go on ...

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. DexDor (talk) 08:48, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

A handy link which I think should be put in some visible place, but I don't know which

[15]. It lists recent changes on talkpages belonging to this WikiProject. It will be useful if WikiProject members take a look at it from time to time. No more people waiting three years for an answer! Well, less of them, anyway. Ian (212.87.13.73 (talk) 19:10, 12 November 2011 (UTC))

Thanks for this. --Kvng (talk) 15:38, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Merge into Package management system

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Package management system#Merger proposal with Application Packaging. -- Trevj (talk) 11:58, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Unix commands consistency

After the unix command conversation at talk:dd, I investigated the ABCD's of the wiki's Unix commands. For consistancy, do we capitalize the first word of the article? Do we brand a command as "originally from Unix"? These commands have been ported to every operating system. I bring up the subject so there might be some consistency. My personal opinion is to cut the branding and advertizing from the first words. We all know Unix is a great OS. Need we advertise it? Here are the opening words of Unix-command-related articles that start with the letters A-D.

  • In computing, alias is a command in various command line interpreters (shells) such as Unix shells, 4DOS/4NT and Windows PowerShell ...
  • The archiver (also known simply as ar) is a Unix utility ...
  • In Unix-like computer operating systems, the at command is ...
  • The AWK utility is ...
  • basename is a standard UNIX computer program.
  • In Unix-like computer operating systems, the at command is ...
  • bc, for bench calculator, is ...
  • bg is a job control command in Unix and Unix-like operating systems ...
  • cal is a standard program on Unix and Unix-like operating systems that ...
  • The cat command is a standard Unix program used to ...
  • cd, sometimes also available as chdir (change directory), is a command line command to ...
  • The chgrp (from change group) command is used by unprivileged users on Unix-like systems to ...
  • The chmod command (abbreviated from change mode) is a Unix command that lets a programmer ...
  • The chown command (abbreviation for change owner) is used on Unix-like systems to ...
  • 'cksum' is a command in Unix-like operating systems that ...
  • clear is a standard Unix computer operating system command which is used to ...
  • cmp is a command line utility for computer systems that use Unix or a Unix-like operating system.
  • The comm command in the Unix family of computer operating systems is a utility that is used to ...
  • compress is a UNIX compression program based on the LZC compression method, which is an LZW implementation using variable size pointers as in LZ78.
  • cp is a UNIX command used to ...
  • Cron is a time-based job scheduler in Unix-like computer operating systems.
  • The csplit command in Unix is a utility that is used to ...
  • Ctags is a program that ...
  • In computing, cut is a Unix command line utility which is used to ...
  • The Unix date command displays ...
  • In computing, dd is a common Unix program whose primary purpose is ...
  • df (abbreviation for disk free) is a standard Unix computer program used to display ...
  • In computing, diff is a file comparison utility that outputs ...
  • dirname is a standard UNIX computer program.
  • du (abbreviated from disk usage) is a standard Unix program used to ...

— CpiralCpiral 23:17, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

There has been no good argument made for starting a sentence with lower case. These can easily be edited to change the first word. Starting sentences with a capital improves readability and reduces awkwardness. --Kvng (talk) 13:36, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes, and the MOS for math says "In the interest of clarity, sentences should not begin with a symbol.— CpiralCpiral 00:15, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Consistency would also recommend a transclusion template to be included in the Unix commands, which would address the ongoing and serious concern that "Wikipedia articles are intended to be narratives, not guides or places for stockpiling information, as explained at What Wikipedia is not (shortcut: WP:NOT).". How do we implement the following transclusion?

The examples used in this document are conceptual. They are not meant to be used, as given, on a computer, but are given here for the purposes of explication in a narrative concerning the understanding the nature of <insert Unix command here> in general. Thus an important parameter for an actual computer operation may be missing in any given example, despite the appearance of, or comments embedded in, the actual code given.

— CpiralCpiral 23:37, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this is necessary. If the article is properly edited, it will not need a disclaimer. If it is not, it needs to be reworked, deleted or at least receive a {{Howto}} banner. --Kvng (talk) 16:14, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Standard libraries: proper nouns or not?

Currently we capitalize most of the articles about standard libraries as if they were proper nouns (per WP:CAPS). Examples of such pages: C++ Standard Library, Java Class Library, Standard Template Library, Base Class Library. There was one exception though: C standard library. When I initiated a discussion regarding the capitalization of the title of that article, I received quite a lot of resistance. However, I think that if there are reasons to leave C standard library as is, then there are reasons to decapitalize all the articles mentioned above (to e.g. Java class library or C++ standard library). Consequently, it seems that the outcome of that discussion pretty much defines how the other articles about standard libraries should be named, so I invite to express your opinion there. Thank you. 1exec1 (talk) 17:35, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

File comparison article

I have recently become quite interested in the subject of file comparison and so turned to the article on the subject. I have made a few improvements based on what I know, but thought I would post here because I think it could do with someone with more knowledge on the subject looking at it. There are a few bits that look like they were written by someone with a partial understanding... I could just dive in... but I might make a few mistakes of my own.

Yaris678 (talk) 16:25, 4 December 2011 (UTC)


Hi.. thanks for posting your comment and it' glad to see your comment and you are intrested in file compression if you want to do more modifications once you go to the "Information Security" subject their you can find the file compression techniques.. Thanking you.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashu0606 (talk • contribs) 05:51, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Cloud technology

I don't know much about this wikipedia and i am trying to learn about wikipedia i think we maximum IT companies,business admins,etc are depending on cloud technology so, why don't we guys will work on this cloud technology projects through wikipedia. Wwikipedia helps to knowing the all information about any topic then why we can't expand this using cloud technology... as we know IBM MICROSOFT TCS AMAZON.COM and all most of the companies are depending on it. we can provide users as it as a "Plat form as a service" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashu0606 (talk • contribs) 05:45, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Microsoft SQL Server Compare Tools

I'd really like some comments on this article. It is largely unsourced and basically consists of a lot of external links for organisations the majority of which are not notable enough to have articles on Wikipedia. If these links were put into another article they would be reverted as Spam but they sit here unchallenged. I did start a discussion on the talk page but the only response was from an IP editor who admitted having put his own company's product on the list, quoting WP:IAR. I'm tempted to start an AfD or at the very least strip it down to only sourced notable additions but I would really appreciate some more comments. I admit I do have an aversion to red links and external links in the body of articles - and that is my only real interest here. Vrenator talk 15:33, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

FCRAM (Fast Cycle RAM)

I was surfing the web and noticed that the Nintendo 3DS apparently has a type of RAM known as "FCRAM", "Fast Cycle RAM." I got curious for what kind of RAM this was, that I hadn't heard about, and decided to check Wikipedia. However, I got very few search hits, so I figured perhaps it's some very new and generally non-notable technology. But when I searched some more I found that apparently it's at least as old as 1998 or 1999.

I think FCRAM qualifies for a separate article, or at least should be mentioned in another article such as RAM, with proper redirects being set up. What do you think? —FireFly~ 18:04, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Edit request

Hello! I have noticed that there are two pages (LLVM and Low Level Virtual Machine) that are almost the same article. It looks as as if someone who didn't know how to move articles copied and pasted one article into the other. Unfortunately, no one nipped it in the bud, so they are slightly different, so making one redirect to the other would result in lost information. I have tagged the articles requesting that LLVM be merged into Low Level Virtual Machine, and normally I would do the merge myself, but I know absolutely nothing about this subject, it would be better for someone in a project that supports the article could do it. Could some member of this project do the merge for me? Thanks and happy editing! pluma♫ ♯ 18:11, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I imagine someone else will do this before I do, but I'll take a stab at figuring out the differences between the two using a sandbox. If the changes are trivial, should be pretty easy to do. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 04:10, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
Update: The two articles are identical. I opened both pages in separate windows, copied all the wiki markup from LLVM first, pasted it to a sandbox and submitted, then copied the wiki markup from the other article and pasted it into a new revision on the sandbox, then diffed the two. Aside from a quick note at the top to mark which version was which, the contents are character-for-character identical. I'll redirect the acronym now. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 04:17, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
Oh, duh. No wonder they're identical - someone already did the redirect. I should pay more attention. :) — KieferSkunk (talk) — 04:18, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

System healthchecks

Hi. I was looking for an article on the subject of IT system healthchecks and couldn't find one. What are the views of members of this project on whether this topic is significant enough to warrant an article? SP-KP (talk) 09:48, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

The best way to find out is to start looking for sources. Once you have the best sources you can find which meet the guideline on reliable sources, if they seem sufficient for an article, evaluate them against the notability guidelines. If you post sources here I'd be happy to give my opinion. – Pnm (talk) 22:50, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Class project

Hi Does anyone have an idea if a class project (along the lines of Wikipedia:United States Education Program) can start for Talk:Message_passing? Or any other means of rescue? Thanks. History2007 (talk) 22:00, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh sure, please do. So far the "ambassador" programs have focused on creating many new poor quality articles which we then have to spend our time deleting. See above discussions. So it would be great if you can get anyone to help actually provide some lasting improvement to WIkipedia instead. Thanks. W Nowicki (talk) 22:51, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
Gosh, just seeing this now. I'm sorry for the rude response you got. Publish/subscribe (rename proposed to Publish–subscribe pattern) strikes me as a significant topic with a lot more to say about it. If it were understandable to a general audience, I think people would read and enjoy it. As far as Message passing, it needs more citations, a lead section which summarizes the contents while still providing context, and some better historical narrative. You could also review the external links and further reading, and consider whether they belong (see WP:ELINK and WP:FURTHER) or whether the content should be simply added to the article. If you decide to take up either of these, post here and start a thread on the article's talk page, too. --Pnm (talk) 17:00, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
It will be a while before I can even look at message passing. There are so many other things to fix. All of distriibuted computing needs serious help really. But there are not enough editors. History2007 (talk) 11:29, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Nominated iPad for FA

In case anyone has any comments - see this. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:30, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject restructuring

Project Watchers Page views (main / talk, 2010) Revisions / Contributors (talk) GA/FA Articles (stubs) Assessments
WikiProject C++ 59 3680 / 464 few None 0 {{WikiProject C++}}
WikiProject Computational Biology 32 did not exist yet 87 / 20 1 / 1
WikiProject Computing 223 23488 / 8738 1429 / 480 62/17 62,754 {{WikiProject Computing}}
WikiProject Computer graphics 0 did not exist yet 2 / 1 None 1,149 {{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 3,499 {{WikiProject Computer networking}}
WikiProject Computer science 390 23739 / 2848 1369 / 288 9/1 9,545 (0) {{WikiProject Computer science}}
WikiProject Computer Security 33 3693 / 1230 173 / 53 7/2 3,805 (147+83+143-3) {{WikiProject Computer Security}}
WikiProject Computer Vision 0 did not exist yet 1 / 1 None 116 {{WikiProject Computer Vision}}
WikiProject Cryptography 102 8957 / 903 402 / 83 None 1,734 {{WikiProject Cryptography}}
WikiProject Databases 37 1885 / 456 53 / 24 2 / 1 0 {{WikiProject Databases}}
WikiProject Free Software 44 4425 / 1024 353 / 97 7 / 1 0 (0) {{WikiProject Free Software}}
WikiProject Internet 34 4636 / 2614 84 / 50 16/3 ? (352) {{WikiProject Internet}}
WikiProject Java 31 5588 / 819 75 / 26 1/0 1,347 {{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 24,999 {{WikiProject Software}}
WikiProject Systems 45 4377 / 691 626 / 70 4,485 {{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 31444 {{maths rating}}
To compare: WikiProject Astronomy, WikiProject Biology, WikiProject Chemistry, WikiProject Philosophy, WikiProject Physics, WikiProject Military history

Compared to some other WikiProjects, the WikiProjects related to computing in a broad sense have been split into a large number of small projects: 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. Would anyone objects to merging all the smaller projects into the two largest projects (Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing and Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science)? —Ruud 10:33, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

The last time we proposed something like this, the Wikipedia:WikiProject Microsoft, we hit no consensus, so perhaps if there is one or two active editors in each group they might object. Although that seemed to be a "deletion", so not sure what you mean by a "merge"? Propose deletion of the others? Turn them into a "task force"? It is never clear to me what a "task force" is vs. a subproject anyway. Since we should be focused on quality of the articles, not number of members, I took the liberty of adding the number of "good" and "featured" articles. This does seem to follow a similar pattern. You could try, say, picking one project at a time to merge and see how far you get. The ones with zero good articles might be a start. But still not clear, for example, would Databases belong under "Computing" or "Computer science"? So it might be easier to just agree on some policy, like adding some notes to the project pages or an "edit notice" on the talk page saying that discussions more often happen on the parent pages.
I also added Wikipedia:WikiProject Websites which might be related, but perhaps not. And started to put WikiProject Internet in the table, but could not figure out what the second number was under page views. W Nowicki (talk) 19:51, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
I am in no way related to any of these projects, but as a writer for the Signpost's WikiProject Report I've watched a lot of projects reorganize. Take a look at the structure of the old behemoth WP:MILHIST and the newly reorganized WP:USA for ideas. If you are planning to turn some of these projects into task forces, I'd suggest consolidating a few of the talk pages like WP:MILHIST currently does. For example, if WP:C++ and WP:Java became task forces of WP:Programming languages, all of the talk pages would redirect to the talk page for WP:Programming languages. This helps attract as many eyes as possible to comments posted on the talk page and should increase the likelihood that someone actually responds. -Mabeenot (talk) 01:31, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
My primary motivation for restructuring would indeed be to have as few talk pages as possible. I would suggest retaining the old WikiProject's article assessment infrastructure if that is already in place. If that's the definition of a "tak force" (I'm not sure?) than that would be a good approach. —Ruud 12:17, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Support suggestions to approach projects with a view to redefining them as task forces, providing that they can retain their named identity as WikiProjects. I agree that fragmentation is not productive. It would be helpful to entice members of smaller projects to participate in larger ones, although places for specialist areas of interest do also remain important. I've not looked at the WP:MILHIST talk page consolidations but would expect that this may not always be desirable or appropriate - depending on what members of the individual projects think. A clear rationale should be forumulated before approaches are made. --Trevj (talk) 05:05, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Personally I wonder, if it wouldn't be more helpful to (better) structure the Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing. I for instance am surprised, the term "Software" ( -> "Scope and goals" -> "8. Software" --- etc., etc.), isn't linked promimnently on top to Wikipedia:WikiProject Software, not small little on the side; and over there, it is not on top linked back to WikiProject Computing, saying something like "WikiProject Software is part of the WikiProject Computing" or something like that, making it easier working on either, so more work might actually get done. I for instance really wouldn't mind, System Center Configuration Manager be correctly (de)referenced (forward and backward, three-way, multi-way, and so on -> how and where appropriate) in Software deployment and Software distribution (not that it would actually help with my actual problem, but it would be a nice start). That surely applies to whole lot of a big bunch of Computing (wow, it doesn't reference the WikiProject Computing (prominently on top)) in Wikipedia, doesn't it? --Alien4 (talk) 14:01, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

  • Support consolidation and introduction of task forces. One could argue about which of the above projects should be included, of course. --Boson (talk) 11:33, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong support. One very active WikiProject is much better than a lot of WikiProjects with much less attention from editors. 1exec1 (talk) 18:59, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Status update

I've proposed to WikiProject Computer networking and WikiProject Computer Security to be merged into WikiProject Computing as a task force. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer networking#WikiProject restructuring and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer Security#WikiProject restructuring. —Ruud 11:01, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I think Software should be merged and eliminated. It's a hodgepodge of topics and it's hard to imagine people wanting to work particularly on that collection of articles. I think Databases should be converted to a task force at WP Computing. As for the others, I see problems with many of them, but don't have a clear idea how to leverage what's there, and am not inclined to delete what I don't understand.
Malware is already gone. Maybe we can clean up after the move a little better by archiving and redirecting the talk page, and perhaps blanking and even redirecting some of the project page. --Pnm (talk) 17:15, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
I've now tried to further tidy up the malware related stuff, if you meant something like this: [16], [17], [18], [19]. If the discussions are to be archived to WT:COMPSEC, discussion prior toWikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing/Computer and Information Security task force#Merge with WikiProject Malware to form WikiProject Computer Security could be moved but those closedown discussions should maybe be retained where they are (with the addition of {{Archive top}}, {{Archive bottom}}). -- Trevj (talk) 14:25, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
I absolutely don't want to rush anything. This is only going to work if executed carefully and with support of existing participants of those projects. I agree that WP Software is a good next candidate (clearly a subcategory of this project, but with what seems to be a much smaller community). Databases is a bit problematic as it covers topic both relevant to WP Computing and WP Computer science and a lot of data sets (such a bibliographic) seem to have been tagged by/with this project. —Ruud 18:02, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
I see what you mean. Articles like Fourth normal form belong in Computer science and probably not in Computing (likely in scope, but I'm inclined to exclude them). Articles like Gmelin database are definitely not CS, and again, only marginally relevant to computing (certainly in scope, and I'm inclined to include them). For comparison, there are a lot of library science articles in this category too. They're obviously about using computers, but they're very domain-specific, and I'd say barely worth including. Websites, same deal.
Regardless of what you do with talk pages, are you thinking you want a Database theory task force in CS for the purpose of article tagging? --Pnm (talk) 18:50, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
WikiProject Logic is a joint taskforce of the mathematics and philosophy projects, and I think there are other, similar examples as well. Hans Adler 20:04, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
Does anyone know where the portals come into all of this? For example, WP:COMPSEC comes under Portal:Computer security, WP:COMP is listed at Portal:Information technology but is not backlinked. There's also Portal:Computer science, of course. -- Trevj (talk) 13:11, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

New proposal

I posted a new proposal for a method to merge Wikipedia:WikiProject Databases#Restructure_proposals into WP:COMP as a task force. Please edit it there, or discuss on that talk page. Hopefully we can reach consensus and knock off another one of these. – Pnm (talk) 20:52, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Free software categories

There is a rather problematic categorization pattern that I've come across several times, most recently in Category:Computer algebra systems and Category:Theorem proving software systems. For Computer algebra systems the tree looks as follows:

The result being that Axiom (computer algebra system), GAP computer algebra system, Macaulay2, Maxima (software) and PARI/GP are "missing" from Category:Computer algebra systems. The license under which this software is distributed and the platforms they run under are some of the least relevant properties to categorize them by (as opposed to say, the domain of mathematics they specialize in, or in case of theorem proving software systems, the algorithm they employ.

If someone would want to categorize them by these properties, the correct way would be:

With all still listed under Category:Computer algebra systems (which aren't that many articles to begin with). I'm somewhat inclined to nominate categories such as Category:Free computer algebra systems for deletion, simply because this would be the easiest way to upmerge the articles to the parent category. —Ruud 15:01, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Without knowing much about the domain, I'd rename Category:Linux computer algebra system software to Category:Linux mathematical software and populate it further. In my experience it's hard to get categories deleted at WP:Cfd but I think there's a good case for expanding the scope of the Linux category. Unless software is dual licensed (both free and non-free) I don't like double-listing entries in categories like Category:Computer algebra systems and Category:Free computer algebra systems because it removes half the benefit of the subcategory, which otherwise would segregate the free and non-free items. – Pnm (talk) 16:25, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
If you want segregate free and non-free items, create two categories: Category:Free computer algebra systems and Category:Proprietary computer algebra systems. But they have to be listed together in a single category as well, or segregated by a more relevant property such as the domain (general purpose, number theory, group theory, ...). (Non-)freeness might be important for most free software/open content zealots here at Wikipedia (myself included), but it's a quite arbitrary of mostly irrelevant property for the people (mathematicians in this case) who actually use this kind of software. —Ruud 16:45, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
The articles can be multiple-listed in e.g. Category:Group theory. In my opinion the categories are more useful for assisting contributors than for supporting browsing by readers. Maybe expanding and refining {{Computer algebra systems}} or creating a stand-alone list would work better for helping readers browse a collection like this. – Pnm (talk) 17:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
No, it would not be appropriate to list those articles directly under Category:Group theory (it would be appropriate to list them directly under Category:Free software though). I'm afraid you're still missing the real point here though. There are several different properties by which these pieces of software can be segregated: domain of mathematics they support, platform they run on, license they use, etc. The current (rather prominently used) categorization scheme/pattern only allows for segregation by a single of these properties. The chosen property often turns out to be (non-)freeness and this is in a lot of cases the least relevant property to segregate by. (Of course, there exists a huge systematic bias towards free software on Wikipedia, so I'm sure you can find some people would want to disagree...)
Secondly, the current scheme is ambiguous and difficult to use for editors (which include me). By only having Category:Free computer algebra systems, and no counterpart for proprietary software, you vaguely imply that Category:Computer algebra systems should only contain proprietary software. The actual situation is that Category:Computer algebra systems contains proprietary software, some dual-categorized free CASs while missing other free CASs.
Thirdly, the current scheme makes the category useless for readers (which also include me, I disagree with the claim that categories are only there for editors). Many may not be aware that, once arrived at Category:Computer algebra systems, they also have to look Category:Free computer algebra systems to find all articles on CASs.
See my proposal above how the scheme could be altered to support multiple properties. My personal opinion remains that this category is too small to warrant a further subdivision and that the easiest way to resolve this situation would be to simply upmerge and delete Category:Free computer algebra systems. —Ruud 17:51, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
I agree there is a problem when it comes to multiple categorization. However, I think your proposal is too rigid. It works well when a reader or editor wants to examine or classify the computer algebra systems, but it doesn't address how to subdivide Category:Free mathematics software by domain – which would merit a subcategory for computer algebra systems. The upmerge your propose would remove those articles from Category:Free mathematics software, and if you were to add them to that category too, its 46 articles would become 69.
I support double-listing or subdividing Category:Computer algebra systems by domain. You mentioned some possibilities above, but if categories like Category:Group theory software or Category:Computer algebra systems for group theory make sense to you, I completely support using them. (Again I don't know the domain. Those specific titles might not make sense.)
I generally support double-listing articles in pairs like these:
I generally oppose double-listing articles in pairs like these:
I started to write some guidelines to propose but ran into surprising examples. For example: Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer are not in Category:Word processors. That seems odd to me, but it's a similar situation to the problem you see: e.g. Axiom (computer algebra system) not being in Category:Computer algebra systems. I counted at least 20 types of categories in which a single software article could be placed, which reinforces that some flexibility is necessary. I'll keep thinking about it. – Pnm (talk) 22:37, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
I fully agree this is a difficult ontological questions and unfortunately their are rarely clear answers in philosophy. Let us follow the Socratic method. From you pairs of supported and opposed double-listings it follows that if we would subdivide CASs into free and non-free then we would have to subdivide CASs by their domain as well. I'd argue that:
  1. The premise and the conclusion should in fact be independent choices for us to make.
  2. There are so few CASs that I'd value them all being listed together in some category.
From this we must conclude that either:
  1. You disagree with both arguments I just gave.
  2. We should should not subdivide CASs into free and non-free (but dual-listing them in Category:Computer algebra systems and Category:Free mathematics software might be consistent as I cannot infer whether you support or oppose this.)
  3. Your support or opposition to one or more dual-listings needs to be revised.
Which is/are true or where did I make a mistake in my reasoning? —Ruud 00:04, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
If you assign something the categories "computer algebra systems" and "free software" the intersection gives you "free computer algebra systems". Peter Flass (talk) 22:42, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
If only MediaWiki supported Category intersections... Unfortunately it turns out that the required joins would bring down the database server. This is how the category system on the German Wikipedia is set up (again minus the ability to actually compute intersections). —Ruud 00:04, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm sure I'm not using the form quite right here, but here goes:
  1. I hear that you value having all the articles in one category. I do agree they should be available in one place. But you haven't explained why, as a reader, you couldn't meet your needs just as well (or better) with a comparison-style list.
  2. "From you pairs of supported and opposed double-listings it follows that if we would subdivide CASs into free and non-free then we would have to subdivide CASs by their domain as well." Not so. How do you reach that conclusion?
  3. The number and diversity of articles in Category:Free mathematics software suggest subdividing it by the type of software. That's my argument to keep Category:Free computer algebra systems.
  4. Given that, the only alternative which produces the result you want – all the CASs in a single category – is double listings in Category:Computer algebra systems and Category:Free computer algebra systems.
  5. It's correct to say that I oppose redundant double-listing.
  6. A more apt technical solution is category flattening, which applied to Category:Computer algebra systems would produce a list of all the CASs without a change to the existing category structure. – Pnm (talk) 15:35, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Plan 9 from Bell Labs nominated for GA

Plan 9 from Bell Labs article was nominated for GA review (at WP:GAN#COMP). Comments (and the review itself) are welcome! — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 23:34, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Cloud computing needs some love

Cloud computing is a very hot IT topic and yet our article has serious accessibly issues. Is anyone able to give it some love? 16,000 readers per day would appreciate it. --Kvng (talk) 17:07, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Kibibyte, kilobyte and template: Information units

May be this question was discussed many times, but the current state with article pairs kibibyte–kilobyte, mebibyte–megabyte and so on is unsatisfactory. Almost all examples with 210B resides in kilobyte, and the article kibibyte describes the usage of the term, not the unit itself. This is comparable to the situation with "hydron (chemistry)" a year ago, when there was actually no article about that substance and almost all links went to incorrect targets; happily now there is an article. The {{Information units}} navbox adds even more confusion with its label of "Traditional units". Probably, somebody thought something like "binary units now denoted as KiB, MiB and so on were traditionally referred as ‘kilobytes’ and ‘megabytes’", but such arrangement suggests that the information was traditionally measured in 103B and 106B which changed only after "IEC invented binary prefixes", which is opposite to the truth.

I think, there are only two permanent solutions: either to merge "kibibyte" with "kilobyte", "mebibyte" with "megabyte" and so on, or to put a dab hatnote to all these "kilobyte", "megabyte" and "gigabyte" that the article is about a decimal unit and that there is another one about a "corresponding" RAM unit. Existence of such article pairs but without hatnotes will result in readers' confusion and edit wars over change Kilobyte|KB to Kilobyte|kB or Kibibyte|KiB based not on how many bytes contains a unit, but what is its name in the sources. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 10:51, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't see a good reason to have all those articles. They should all be merged with Byte. —Ruud 10:28, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
The Ruud’s proposal would make the "byte" article eventually flooded by the same controversy that now constitutes most of the binary prefix article (so, there is little to read about binary prefixes). But the definition of byte, apart of k–K–Ki flamewars, is a very notable topic. Let us to dump all byte multiples to something like Systematic multiples of byte? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 10:49, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
Binary prefix and the summary of that article in Byte#Unit multiples already cover the prefixes adequately, I don't think we need to create yet another article on the subject. With merging I referred mostly to any material not related to the prefixes. —Ruud 14:06, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
Does anybody see much of "material not related to the prefixes" in, say, Gigabyte? I do think we need to made yet another article on the subject, by merging all these "megigabibytes" and parts of current "binary prefix" flame box. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:30, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
I didn't claim there was much material to be merged, but some of them have a few examples and history not yet mentioned in Byte or Binary prefix, other could indeed simply be redirected. It's not clear to me how you proposed article "Systematic multiples of byte" would not simply end up being an exact duplicate of Binary prefix. Could you elaborate on this? —Ruud 02:14, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

WikiWomen's History Month

Hi everyone. March is Women's History Month and I'm hoping a few folks here at WP:Computing will have interest in putting on events (on and off wiki) related to women's roles in computer science history, society and culture. We've created an event page on English Wikipedia (please translate!) and I hope you'll find the inspiration to participate. These events can take place off wiki, like edit-a-thons, or on wiki, such as themes and translations. Please visit the page here: WikiWomen's History Month. Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to seeing events take place! SarahStierch (talk) 00:54, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Ambiguous wikilinks to Cache

There are over 1000 wikilinks to Cache which has recently become a disambiguation page. Hundreds of them should be changed to Cache (computing) or one of the more specific articles web caching, database cache, CPU cache. Please take a look at Special:WhatLinksHere/Cache and fix a few if you're so inclined. – Pnm (talk) 20:14, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done. There were about 250 pages, now one page left: List of French words and phrases used by English speakers (I believe it should indeed point to cache, though cache (disambiguation) may be even a better target). BTW, I noticed a significant amount of notices about hardware memory caching that are not related to CPU caching directly. May be the CPU cache article could be generalized in order to become a good target? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 12:21, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Website about Zuse gone

I notice that a link http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~zuse/Konrad_Zuse/en/rechner_z1.html by Konrad Zuse's son Horst Zuse in the page Z1 is now defunct. I guess because he's retired as the Wikipedia page about Horst says he's 66. It was a really good site, is it anywhere around or what can be done about it? It also seems a shame if stuff by his son about him is lost. Dmcq (talk) 17:57, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Looks like the site's robots.txt is set up to disallow archiving so there are no copies of it held in the usual places. --Kvng (talk) 22:01, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

RfC on a WikiProject home for Unicode articles.

There is a Request for Comment at the Writing Systems WikiProject on the home for articles and templates concerning the Unicode Standard / ISO/IEC 10646. As the main article on Unicode is tagged as part of the Computing WikiProject, we request the input of all members of this WikiProject and other interested parties to participate in the RfC. VanIsaacWScontribs 08:23, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Article split to Novell DOS (from DR-DOS)

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Novell DOS#Split from DR-DOS. -- Trevj (talk) 07:00, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Renaming discussion regarding the article Programmed Data Processor

The proposed renaming being discussed at Talk:Programmed Data Processor#Requested move may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Favonian (talk) 17:13, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

SQL:2011

Please help expanding SQL:2011. --Ysangkok (talk) 14:27, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Re: RfC: What is the difference between information technology and computing?

There's no way to tell these subjects apart by reading their articles.

Please take a look at them to see if you can fix the problem.

Or join the discussion.

Thank you. The Transhumanist 16:18, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Merge input needed

Please comment on a potential merge at Talk:Electronic quantum holography. Thanks, D O N D E groovily Talk to me 16:56, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Vendor spam

There seems to be no shortage of thinly disguised vendor spam. User talk:LarryEFast may be an example. Is there an effort to curb these? History2007 (talk) 22:03, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Introduction to Cloud computing

Introduction to Cloud computing popped up on a new article list, and whilst I appreciate the huge amount of work that has been put into it, I think it might infringe the WP:NOTGUIDE or WP:NOTTEXTBOOK guidelines. The title alone seems wrong for an encyclopedia. But as this isn't my area of expertise, I thought I'd raise it here for those more involved to decide whether it's a useful article or not. -- The-Pope (talk) 16:18, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, "Introduction to..." articles are not unheard of for several high profile topics (we even have a template for it). As long as it doesn't try to teach "how to build your own cloud service" and keep itself with defining the basic terms, it should be fine. What strikes me is that Introduction to Cloud computing may actually be a better basis for an encyclopedic article than Cloud computing, because it actually explains things. Diego (talk) 17:11, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I disagree in this case and have proposed to merge Introduction to cloud computing into Cloud computing. See Talk:Cloud_computing#Introduction_to_Cloud_computing for further discussion. --Kvng (talk) 23:16, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Makefile macros

You might want to give these some consideration. Uncle G (talk) 22:43, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

EXE and APP

The following discussion has concluded. Please do not modify this section. Result of discussion: No merge.

Hi all,

I think that the articles APP (file format) and EXE are so similar that they should be merged into a single article, EXE and APP. They're both formats for program files, but on different platforms. What do you guys think?

Thanks,

The Doctahedron.EXE, 21:55, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree there's some work to do but don't support that specific merge. APP (file format) should be converted to a disambiguation list and merged into APP. Its Symbian info box should be merged to SIS (file format). EXE could be merged into Executable and redirected there. – Pnm (talk) 22:09, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Except for the fact, that they both describe executable file formats, they have really nothing in common, different operating systems, different platforms, completely different formats and calling mechanisms. There's alot of stuff (that is, dozens of pages) that could be added to EXE (and probably will be added eventually) that would be totally out of scope in an APP or a generic Executable article, and vice versa. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 22:40, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
The average Joe wouldn't know the difference. The distinction between .exe and .app could be discussed within the article. Cheers, The Doctahedron.EXE, 00:48, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose - the average Joe does not care. The distinction is as obvious as an apple is not an orange.Jasper Deng (talk) 00:50, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
I'll create a draft here. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 00:58, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
A better title would be "Comparison of .exe and .app", but I feel that there is not enough information to warrant covering this. However, a link in the See Also sections of the existing articles to each other with the explanation like ".exe, a comparable file format used with Microsoft Windows" would be great.Jasper Deng (talk) 01:03, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose. These are specific to different operating systems and differ in details. There is already an article (Executable) about the general concept. -R. S. Shaw (talk) 04:09, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose: first, I really strongly oppose the title (if these were synonyms, we should have chosen one of them). Also I see no sense in picking two of formats and joining them. A better way to catch all of them (including a.out, ELF and many more) would be an article "Executable format" (currently a redirect to object file), but I really see no need for such merge. For now I would merge EXE to Portable executable and APP (file format) to APP. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 08:44, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Are we ready to remove the tag from that page?
    24.50.159.185 (talk) 15:21, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I Oppose merge. I support R. S. Shaw's suggestion to create an Executable article if there is enough material. I have taken down the merge banners. --Kvng (talk) 21:56, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I agree all these articles should be merged with byte--167.30.56.22 (talk) 05:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Closing discussion per WP:SNOW. Conclusion: No merge. History2007 (talk) 02:06, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

RISC

Reduced instruction set computing needs some help. Not a major rewrite, but touch up, error removal, etc. per talk. I do not have time for it now. Is there some type of "hardware expert" and "software expert" list for this project? History2007 (talk) 22:48, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Never mind, it looks like after discussion I am going to have to fix it myself. But let me instead nominate Processor register for help. It has a multi-tag on the top and as a basic hardware item should be fixed sooner than later. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 14:22, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Assessment on an expanded article?

Would someone be kind enough to look at Internet relationship and see if it merits more than a "Start" rating now? A bunch of student have been working on it. Thanks,Invertzoo (talk) 18:25, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Not a "computer science" article really. History2007 (talk)

Merge comment needed - Organic search engine

Should Organic search engine and Human search engine be merged? Please comment at Talk:Human search engine#Regarding the Merge with article 'orgranic search'. Thanks, D O N D E groovily Talk to me 12:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Referer vs. referrer

Would anyone like to comment at Talk:HTTP referer#Reverted move concerning whether the titles and wording of three articles should use "referer" (a misspelling which appears in the specification), or "referrer". There is currently a very minor dispute, but the matter will probably arise again and it would be useful to have wider input (perhaps even an RfC although I haven't bothered with that at this stage). Johnuniq (talk) 02:59, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

How To See List Of Recent WikiProject Edits?

This link broke in the past months, and I was wondering if there is a solution to see a web page of the most recent edits for all "WikiProject Computing" articles?

• Sbmeirow • Talk • 04:22, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

"App" or "Application"?

In articles about application software, is it desirable to use the word "app", or is "application" preferred? - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:59, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

AFAICS the modern sources use nearly exclusively the word "app" when referring to mobile software and "application" for desktop software. As historically the word "app" was mainly a jargon word, I think that sticking with "application" would be a good choice when in doubt. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 22:49, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
Sounds right to me. Thanks. - LuckyLouie (talk) 22:51, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
I would say that an app was a particular type of application software. Dmcq (talk) 23:19, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
Which one? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 23:33, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
I was saying that it wasn't a binary split between the mobile and desktop but that application software was an overall term for a number of types of software. Dmcq (talk) 00:01, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
Noticed some of the articles in Category:Mobile_software interchange the terms. - LuckyLouie (talk) 01:44, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
From my experience I agree with Dmitrij: the term "app" is generically used to describe mobile applications (this may have been caused by the emergence of AppStores promoted by mobile device makers like Apple). As part of my work I've done a lot of keyword research, and it seems that the majority of search queries that include "app" are tied to an clear intent to find mobile applications. Therefore I would go for "app" for mobile and "application" for desktop or web application. Of course, these terms will always be used interchangeably but we should try to keep consistence in Wikipedia at least. Mozzello (talk)

Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act

Please, help me to expand and improve the article. Thank you! --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:35, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Merge comment needed - TOS/360

Please comment on a merge proposal at Talk:TOS/360 D O N D E groovily Talk to me 04:02, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Electrical Engineering

FYI, there's a new wikiproject proposal, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Electrical Engineering

70.24.248.211 (talk) 08:57, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Merge comment needed - push email

Should Mobile email and Wireless email merge into Push email? Please comment at Talk:Push email#Merge discussion. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 04:15, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Merge comment needed - Quality of modelling languages

Please comment at Talk:Quality of modelling languages as to whether this page should be merged and where. Thank you, D O N D E groovily Talk to me 04:37, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Memory architecture

The stub created to fill a gap is now a couple of messy paragraphs with the long tail of almost random "See also" links. I do not think that it has a perspective as a separate article. But with what to merge it: volatile memory? semiconductor memory? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:30, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I think it could easily be a separate article. It just needs work. Peter Flass (talk) 19:38, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Just try to find a definition of "memory architecture" anywhere. Everyone takes it for granted, and it seems to mean at least two different things. Peter Flass (talk) 12:15, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
It is an absolutely notable topic that encompasses many concepts such as distributed memory arch, shared memory architecture etc. The obstacle, as usual, is shortage of editors familiar with the concepts to write about it. History2007 (talk) 14:02, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Excellently: Distributed shared memory is another piece of junk. BTW which topic encompasses many concepts such as distributed memory architecture, the article about internal design of memory chips? Words "memory architecture" are ambiguous (cf. memory model), and this topic apparently has to be disambiguated. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:54, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Merge input needed - Nested stack automation

Please comment on a merge proposal at Talk:Nested stack automaton D O N D E groovily Talk to me 15:06, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

List of disastrous articles

How about a list of articles that need serious help. That may get them some attention and help. I suggest only key articles with multiple tags should be listed blow. History2007 (talk) 13:55, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Good idea. Our quality statistics can help us find these... --Kvng (talk) 12:44, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

The firefox article needs repair!

Hello WikiProject Computing! The Firefox article is really outdated and in need of repair. It would be great if we could put together a team to help maintain it - or at least bring it up to date. Thanks ҭᴙᴇᴡӌӌ 15:13, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Firefox currently has a B rating which is comparatively good. If it is outdated, part of the problem may be that the article appears to contain much more volatile detail than is necessary. The fix here is not to update that info but to edit it out. --Kvng (talk) 12:49, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

New article assistance

Evi (software) Any assistance given or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks Jenova20 15:22, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Formal retrospective approval sought for RISC OS coordination at WikiProject Council

Further to previous discussions, I'm taking this overdue discussion to WikiProject Council/Proposals/RISC OS. Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 11:45, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Legality of ad filtering

There is a discussion at Talk:Ad_filtering#Is ad filtering legal? - would be nice to have more opinions and more eyes on it. Richiez (talk) 12:35, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

FAR notice

I have nominated Search engine optimization for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Dana boomer (talk) 18:24, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Peer review of Folding@home

Just wanted to let everyone know that I've opened a peer-review on the Folding@home article. It's already achieved GA status, but I'd like to take it further, maybe even meet FA standards if I can. Comments and suggestions would be very much appreciated. Thanks. Jesse V. (talk) 22:51, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Helix Board 12 FireWire

I belive this article comes under your wikiproject but has no references and is untagged. Just bringing it to your attention. Thanks Jenova20 10:57, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

 Done I think it does, but there might be better WikiProjects out there, I don't know. I added quality and importance ratings which I think are fair at this point. Jesse V. (talk) 17:38, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Disputed: Cambridge Ring/AppleTalk

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:AppleTalk#Disputed: Cambridge Ring. -- Trevj (talk) 14:59, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Globalization

The article Globalization has undergone major re-structuring. WikiProject Computing members are invited to review and comment on the article and add relevant missing information or sections in which your project may have an interest. Also, you may be interested in reviewing the updated Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Globalization proposal for a new WikiProject. Regards, Meclee (talk) 15:07, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Merge - High performance cloud computing

Just cleared a stale merge proposal from High performance cloud computing. I think it would benefit from a merge somewhere, but I am unfamiliar with the broad scope of the subject to know the best place. If someone could take a look at it and determine if its worth salvaging that'd be great, thanks! --DarkCrowCaw 14:39, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that is a somewhat hapless page. Should probably also look at High-throughput computing - no gem either. The page is notable, so should not really be merged, however. But most of the content needs to be revamped and replaced. Unfortunately many of these far flung articles have serious quality problems. I have now cleaned up the basic clustering and supercomputing articles but there are so many of these that it will take years to clean them up - by which time some may be outdated... History2007 (talk) 18:50, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

TedderBot/AlexNewArtBot for new articles

The current article alerts cover nominations, etc. but not new articles. Could we consider trying to set up TedderBot for this task? (Or is this duplicated elsewhere and I've missed it?) Use of the bot could maybe be adapted to specifically cater for the various task forces and descendant projects too. Setting this up would possibly be a case of contacting Tedder, unless anyone knows any different. Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 08:13, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

RFC for sub wikiproject - Server Operating Systems

Assuming that client server model is as old as computing, I suggest we create a separate project for Server Operating Systems such as UNIX, Linux, Windows Server OS series, SPARC, Sun Solaris etc. The architecture, functionality, resource utilization etc. of these OS's is different from that of the Desktop Operating Systems and may need experts who specialize in that field. creating a separate Wiki-project might help attract editors and articles of that category. -Wikishagnik (talk) 02:23, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Proactive Cyber Defence

Hi. Any ideas what can be done with Proactive Cyber Defence? Cyber defence is currently a redlink! -- Trevj (talk) 13:57, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

MS-DOS and multitasking

There's an argument running over at DOS as to whether MS-DOS was "multitasking" or not (and whatever "multitasking" means). It's far from the most civil of content disputes either. There's a lot of section blanking going on too, often on the basis that if a feature was implemented (or partly) by the BIOS, then that makes it irrelevant to an article on DOS, rather than DOS building upon this and it still being relevant to our DOS coverage.

It would be a useful thing if some of those with long memories could perhaps take a look at it. I used to know this stuff, but many bottles of brain bleach and throwing away most of my library from that era mean that I've now forgotten most of it, and have little real wish to refill my head with memories of pink shirts.

Thanks Andy Dingley (talk) 15:46, 6 June 2012 (UTC) Sorry, my memory extends as far as the existence of "the pink shirt book" but not the details of its contentASVero (talk) 11:30, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

MCSE

Acronym does not stand for Micrsoft Certified Solutions Expert the correct deisgnation is Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.54.214.178 (talk) 12:30, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Ah. According to this Google search, so it is. I assume you are referring to Microsoft Certified Professional, which is a total mess and has been so for quite some time. I've fixed the issue, thank you for bringing it to our attention here. Jesse V. (talk) 17:52, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

But unfortunately the Google-fu was slow to catch up with the news. MCSE used to stand for ..Systems Engineer, but in some countries the unions/ professional bodies of 'real' engineers complained it violated a protected term which requires a degree and membership of an institute or chartered body (same issue affects "architect" in some places). So when it was re-branded as MCITP the issue partly went away. Now MCSE has been re-imagined and given new life, but this time without the controversial term. So now it *is* Solutions Expert (and Solutions Administrator), which also reflects the narrower technology focus - like MCITP there will be an MCSE for Windows Server, a separate one for Messaging, SharePoint, SQL etc. So each one is an area of "expertise".

So, I think in the context of where this showed up in the article, you were right to revert to the previous name. To simply replace the new name above a paragraph about the old style MCSE for NT, 200, 2003 was wrong. The old heading and paras should stand, but a whole new bunch of content is needed to explain the new version. If I get time...ASVero (talk) 11:11, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

GameFAQs Featured Article Review

Hello, I have nominated GameFAQs for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Mark Arsten (talk) 02:22, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Grooveshark

This article needs some work.

A section describing the site and its interface would benefit from copy-editing by an editor with familiarity with music sites.

An IP editor and now a new editor have removed all mention of the legal controversies of Grooveshark from the lede, and second opinions would be helpful to stop edit-warring. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 17:40, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

C++ Programming Textbook

Hello all! I’m working with the Saylor foundation to create a series of original, crowd-sourced textbooks that will be openly licensed and freely available on the web and within Saylor’s free, self-paced courses at Saylor.org. We are using Wikibooks as a platform to host this project and hope to garner the interest of existing members of the Wikibooks and Wikipedia community, as well as bring in new members! We thought that some of your members may be interested in contributing to our book Saylor.org's C++ Programming. Azinheira (talk) 18:57, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Cloud computing articles

There are now two articles on cloud computing: Introduction to cloud computing and Cloud computing. There appears to be consensus that only one of these is required but the primary author of Introduction to cloud computing disagrees. Please review the discussion at Talk:Cloud_computing#Introduction_to_Cloud_computing and help us come to a reasonable resolution on this. --Kvng (talk) 15:03, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I nominated the fork for deletion, please discuss the issue there. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 17:23, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Possible self-promotion

While reviewing uploads to commons I became aware of Dusanh (talk · contribs), who may also be Dhrist (talk · contribs). His contributions seem to be entirely to his CV-like userpage and to computing machinery he was involved in designing (e.g. CER Computer). I don't have the technical background to evaluate whether these computers are noteworthy or not and I'm hoping someone here might. All the best, Mackensen (talk) 19:43, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Eyes on Database, please

There's a dispute over on Database regarding the scope of the article that could use a few more eyes to determine consensus. Thanks. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:15, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

RfC about wording and links in template:infobox software

The request for comments regarding recent changes in template:infobox software is filed at Template talk:Infobox software#RfC: natural and programming languages labels. Input would be very appreciated. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 11:57, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Who invented the microprocessor? Need for a consistent timeline 1969-1973

Dear Computing Project team, hello, I hope that this message finds you well! I got involved in the AFD debate for deletion of the article on Victor Poor, and resultantly improved the article. However, what became clear during the article improvement, and then referencing across our other existing articles on the same subject, is that we don't have a consistent timeline for the period 1969 to 1973 re invention/development of the microprocessor. The result is that the existing Poor article and a number of other clash on both the timeline and the who/when/what/where/why. In part that's because the associated external references that we have access to claim that a series of people invented it: from Ted Hoff and Stanley Mazor in 1969, to the major physical/chemical breakthrough of Federico Faggin in 1971. The only thing I can make out so far, is that in 1969 the Datapoint 3300 RTTY was blowing up TI chips every 30mins, to that in 1973+ the microprocessor was invented by a team mainly in Intel and the 2200 was reliable and selling like hot cakes. Should we be surprised by this confusion? No, like any invention if you tell the story from one person's perspective, then you'll get a different answer. When the underlying ref's disagree, I am not surprised by our current article confusion. But Poor does have a significant contribution in there, and as that's referenceable he passes WP:NOTAB and deserves an article. I'd suggest within the AFD debate that a work group within a Project takes this problem away, and as their first task creates a consistent timeline. Until you have, you have conflict and confusion and nothing encyclopedic. I would much appreciate your thoughts and inputs into the AFD, and the present associated article conflict. If you need any help, happy to joint any spin-out projects. With Best Regards, --Trident13 (talk) 16:03, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Can we collect what we have so far into the Origins section of the Microprocessor article? --Kvng (talk) 13:57, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Computer architecture

As a non-technical reader, I found it particularly hard to gather what a brief definition of computer architecture was from this article. Could anyone with some (any?) knowledge in the subject have a go at cleaning it up? I have made an attempt at shortening the lede and adding a referenced definition but the rest of the article is fairly haphazard. -Zynwyx (talk) 14:30, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I looked at your edit, and saw it did not change much, aside from formatting and arrangement of content. But it's okay. I agree that references are needed badly. As for "cleaning up", can you elaborate on what exactly do you think needs to be worked on? Keφr (talk) 19:01, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
Mainly, the subcategories list (which seems like it could be condensed into one list) and the definition in the lede, which alludes to a building architecture analogy. There is also another definition further down the page under Role/Definition, maybe this could be integrated into the lede also, but computing is not something I'm familiar with so I didn't want to tinker with the page's content much. -Zynwyx (talk) 17:36, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

User:Matthew Anthony Smith

It seems Matthew Anthony Smith (talk · contribs) has been making a bit of a mess on CPU related articles for the past few days. Should we coordinate a cleanup effort?

—Ruud 21:08, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

  • excuse me a mess up? I made it by far better then it was before. you should be blocked for blatant bashing, as you can CLEARY see I have been the one cleaning up those articles. the users over at TechPowerUp! forum love what I have done for Wikipedia. Matthew Smith (talk) 21:36, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
Ruud, we need more than just a "has been making a bit of a mess" claim with no details. Please point to a couple of specific edits and why you think they are a problem, so we can evaluate your claims.
Also, Please provide a link to the Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations case that supports your "one of his other accounts" claim.
I am not assuming that your claims are false or that they are true. I am requesting evidence so I can determine that. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:36, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
No offence, but the evidence is pretty obvious. Nevertheless, it's a bit late in the day for sanctions relating to a three-year-old block. As for Matthew Smith's comments regarding the TechPowerUp! forum, it appears to concern this thread. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:10, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
Apologies. The now deleted user page of the other account unequivocally confirms this is the same user. For other evidence, I assumed the links to some relevant articles, their talk pages and the TfD debate (together with a look of the contribution list of the user would be more informative than repeating the arguments here. —Ruud 10:38, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
Where is this "evidence that is pretty obvious"? Where in the history of the deleted page is the material that "unequivocally confirms this is the same user"? I took a quick look at the contributions and histories and I did not see any evidence. If it is there, why am I not seeing anyone posting any diffs to it? I am not going to spend a lot of time searching. The person who makes the claim should provide evidence to back up the claim. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:55, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
User:Fantasy Game Productions is, as of the last revision before deletion, largely identical to the current revision of User:Matthew Anthony Smith (save for a large amount of additional content regarding his game). Furthermore, Matthew Anthony Smith's page plainly states that he is the owner of "Fantasy Game Productions Inc". The account was created one month after FGP was blocked. Everything other than looking at the deleted user page can be done by non-admins, and took about thirty seconds. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:12, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
(Edit Conflict) Opened SPI at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Fantasy Game Productions --Guy Macon (talk) 12:10, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
I think this whole thing is ridiculous, I've spent hours organizing all of these articles with an improved template and most articles re organized for example the P6 microarchitecture... and the Nehalem microarchitecture those articles were a complete mess before I got there, I cleared confusion between Pentium M and Enhanced Pentium M architectures by splitting the template up and I made westmere its own pages which was Definetly an improvement and most certainly cleared up some confusion. If I get blocked for this then you will lose a very dedicated contributor to cpus and gpus. its absolutely minds boddling that I am now getting accused of sock puppetry, look at it from my perspective, I went straight to the user page after they made a template change *from mine to generic* without any notification first, I wrote a few comments "you are welcome to improve the template but can you please add the blue border" he refused and it went on, from then he merged and deleted some of the templates without notification. Matthew Smith (talk) 12:07, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
(Edit Conflict) I have opened up a case as WP:SPI (see above post) to get to the bottom of this. I am not a big fan of accusing people of being sockpuppets without filing a SPI. I have not seen a diff of any any particular edit that is claimed to be "a bit of a mess", so I had to search and guess about what they were referring to. This edit is problematical; listing the 8085 and 8087 as variants of each other is just wrong. --Guy Macon (talk)
Just to be clear, I'm not accusing MAS of sockpuppeting, but merely pointing out that he had apparently already caused some trouble in the past while using a different account.
I'm not able to point you to all the diffs of problematic edits, as I haven't look through all his contributions yet. This post was intended as a request to the community to help with that. —Ruud 12:49, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
(Edit Conflict) I guess, Ruud didn't really meant us to start a formal investigation now, but just give us a "heads up" to have a closer look at this guy's edits of the recent past for reasons of quality control, that is, to ensure that the stuff removed by him was actually faulty and the stuff added is correct. Matthew did a huge amount of mini-edits with no edit summary whatsoever. Not knowing the editors intentions for a specific edit makes them difficult to check sometimes. Since various of his bold edits were reverted already and a tendency for edit warring could be observed as well in some articles, I think, it is only natural to systematically check the other edits as well now. As I see it, Matthew was certainly acting with much enthusiasm and in good faith, but has been "over the fence" in some cases. He should have asked for community input before mass-renaming articles or mass-replacing long established info templates with his own new ones (and thereby removing / hiding some information). Carried out the way it was done, it's created unnecessary work for other editors, if only to ensure the quality. That's unfortunate, but not a real drama, for as long as he shows to be cooperative and helps any necessary clean up. Regarding socks and blocks, I think we shouldn't come down hard on him now after all these years - a young editor can certainly learn from past mistakes. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 13:27, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
I agree that this is an unfortunate situation and this has probably gone too far. I am not the one who argues for the sockpuppet investigation; in fact, since your edits, even if misguided, appear to be well-intentioned, and the former block reason no longer seems to apply, I'd even invoke WP:IAR and disregard the sockpuppet investigation.
What I am personally asking for is some cooperativeness, actually addressing other editors' points, and keeping the standards set by other articles, policies and guidelines, especially Verifiability, Neutral point of view and the Manual of Style. Keφr (talk) 12:30, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I have no idea why Guy Macon insisted on forcing the issue at SPI. For now, the best thing would be to concentrate on the actual issues: the infobox edits (which will hopefully be resolved at TfD) are the main ones for me. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 12:47, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

When someone has been blocked with an expiry time of indefinite, they don't get to just create a new account, deny being the same person, and continue editing. They should appeal the block and show that they understand what got them blocked. So if they are the same person, a SPI seems appropriate. On the other hand, if they are not the same person, two of you just made a false accusation of sockpuppetry. If that is the case, don't you think you should know that you made an error? On the third hand, continuing on with you accusing him of being the same person but never filing a SPI and him denying it seems likely to poison the discussion. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:20, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
As I suggested at the SPI case, the issue of the old account could have been dealt with by a quiet word to the editor had you not suddenly decided that it was a major incident. This has been blown all out of proportion at your instigation. And with that, I'm bowing out of this discussion. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:41, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
one of the things that I have done wrong was changing the titles to (microarchitecture) without discussing it, but it was all in good faith because all of the other pages were listed that way, also the predessor and variant thing, I fixed al lthat with the template, I made coprocessor, predecessor. variant, and successor, I realized that placing a co processor in the category of variant was wrong so that's when I adjusted the template, but this really is ridiculous, sometimes *am referring to the template now* its nice to have a change. Matthew Smith (talk) 19:57, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
Here is what I have seen so far:
Accusation: "Making a bit of a mess on CPU related articles". No examples or evidence given. I am told to find the evidence myself, and when I look all I see are a few small problems like the coprocessor/variant issue above, with Matthew not disputing the correction.
Accusation: "Probably violated 3RR". I looked, did not see any 3RR violation. I didn't bother asking for evidence, because by now I know what the answer will be.
Accusation: "Apparently already caused some trouble in the past while using a different account". Here I am supposed to just accept the accusation at face value without going to the place where Wikipedia resolves such accusations and getting an answer.
I agree with Matthiaspaul's assessment above: Matthew Anthony Smith is acting in good faith, made some errors, and is being completely cooperative about fixing those errors and helping with any necessary clean up. I do not think that the three accusations I listed above were an appropriate way to deal with this, and I do not agree that I should have just shut up and let the accusations stand unchallenged. Ruud saying "I'm not able to point you to all the diffs of problematic edits, as I haven't look through all his contributions yet. This post was intended as a request to the community to help with that." is unacceptable. Don't make an accusation against another editor unless you know that the accusation is true and are willing to back it up with evidence.
I propose that we all drop this right now and move ahead as if the accusations were never made. If anyone still wishes to defend the practice of making accusations without evidence, let's just say that your opinion is noted, my reaction is noted, and agree to leave it at that and get back to improving the encyclopedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:26, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
Matthew's note above suggests a resolution. On the other hand, your continued insinuations of "making accusations without evidence" are certainly worth pursuing, and you can expect that to be considered in future. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 22:34, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
As will the above threat. If you think I have misbehaved, report me now or leave me alone. I did nothing wrong and am prepared to defend my actions. I have no desire to get into a pissing contest with you, and I am asking that you drop this now without any further threats or accusations of misbehavior on my part. If you are not willing to do that, I ask you to report me and let an uninvolved admin tell me whether I have misbehaved (and, of course, I will accept and comply with any such determination). If you are not willing to do either, I will give you one more free accusation (which I will not respond to) and will request assistance if you do it a third time. I hope that I am making myself clear. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:22, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
  • I'm a bit late into this discussion having been busy with other things, but I have to agree that some of these user's actions have been problematic raising issues of ownership[20] and gratuitous insults[21]. Attempts at discussing issues with the user in question have proved less than fruitful while this ownership attitude continues. I note most of the above have concerned the name changes, and I concur that they are not an improvement (a 386 is a chip, not a "microarchitecture") but most of my interactions with the user have been with ill-considered template changes that destroyed information, prevent direct comparison between contemporary processors, and generally attempt to impose modern concepts on processors that never even considered them. The 80186 is a single cored processor? Really? Does the data sheet say so? No... it doesn't. Probably because it was not remotely relevant at the time or to anyone actually interested in these devices. In the event of a contentious change it is responsibility of the editor seeking change to show that there is consensus. While there is a stubborn pattern of reversion that completely ignores that principle and certainly steers very close to 3RR the editor's actions have to be considered problematic. Crispmuncher (talk) 18:48, 27 August 2012 (UTC).
I fixed everything you have asked, its already nominated for deletion, and if it does get deleted you can change the templates but until then they stay. Matthew Smith (talk) 18:58, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
I gave one example of something which you wedged in. This "they stay" attitude is precisely the ownership issue I was referring to. The deletion discussion on the templates is a separate issue: to use them on any page you need to show that there is consensus for their use. Where have you sought this? Crispmuncher (talk) 19:19, 27 August 2012 (UTC).

how do I add to the AFD list

I don't see anywhere to add to it. Someone should have a link to instructions. The following computer graphics related articles are up for deletion now. Dream Focus 00:01, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

  1. Asymptotic Decider
  2. Image-based flow visualization
  3. Lagrangian-Eulerian Advection
  4. Local maximum intensity projection
  5. Skin friction lines
  6. Streamlet (Scientific Visualization)
  7. Streamsurface
  8. Tensor glyph
  9. Texture advection
  10. Vortex Core Line
  11. Worley noise
Instruction is WP:AFD § How to nominate multiple related pages for deletion. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 01:04, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
I think he means the article alert list? You can add {{WikiProject Computing}} and/or {{WikiProject Computer science}} to the talk pages and it will show up on the respective article alert lists in a day or so. —Ruud 01:23, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
In a day or so? AFDs only last a week. For a Wikiproject dedicated to computers, surely someone here has a better system they can make. Perhaps have a button someone can press to scan through everything and do it instantly. Someone got with bots or something could go around looking at things in various categories, and adding this everywhere it isn't already added. Dream Focus 10:43, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
That's precisely how the existing bot works. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:02, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
There's nothing to stop you transcluding WP:COMP/AA onto your user page if you like. Would that help? -- Trevj (talk) 14:07, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

InfoWorld

A few months ago I notices all back issues of InfoWorld are available on Google Books. These could be very useful as references on (older) computer hardware and software. —Ruud 12:52, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

IIRC, they frequently covered security threats, and published over a period of years when the malware scene changed a lot. They should be a good resource for security issues. Dementia13 (talk) 15:22, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Oracle Exadata

Not up to my standards, let alone the Wiki's. A decent article about Oracle Exadata ought to hit on the distinctive features of the product such as offloading, which enables the database software to filter data at the disk level to fulfill the query. I'm going to mark this as a Stub-class Computing Databases article unless anyone objects. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 02:00, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Folding@home is a FA candidate

I just thought I'd let everyone know that Folding@home is now a Featured Article candidate. Please feel free to leave comments and voice your opinion one way or the other. Hopefully together we can proceed through the nomination swiftly. Thanks, • Jesse V.(talk) 14:25, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Women in technology and engineering edit-a-thon 2012

An event at London's Royal Society to celebrate Ada Lovelace's legacy is taking place on Friday 19 October 2012.[22] Some journals will be freely accessible online from 19 October 2012 to 29 November 2012. -- Trevj (talk) 09:39, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

On-wiki details now here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's History/Royal Society Andrew Gray (talk) 09:10, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

List of hackspaces

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Hackerspace#List of hackspaces is WAY too long. -- Trevj (talk) 10:29, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Computer command in title and body

There seems to be no consistent style for computer commands, in MOS:TITLES or in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(article_titles)#Article_titles, MOS:CAPS and the like for DOS or Unix:

  • DOS: Do we put DOS commands in all caps in the title of articles such as in the edit summary on this history page (where the edit summary begins 'Swapped "Subst" and "SUBST" pages'? Now But the reality is there is no consistent style for computing command titles. (Is there?) Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don't: Dos_commands#CHOICE
  • Unix: See my research into and query about the lack of consistency concerning Unix commands capitalization when they are the first word of a sentence.

Wikiproject mathematics has there own MOS:MATH style guide because of the difficulty of typesetting equations. There is some easier, but obvious difficulty with computer commands. Am I missing MOS:COMP something? Is consistency important? Is it a low priority?  :-) — CpiralCpiral 05:06, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, consistency is important, and there is Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computing to help in this regard. — CpiralCpiral 22:41, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
I agree that there is no consistent style for computing command titles in Wikipedia. I think this is down to different conventions used in different environments. In the Unix world most commands are written in lower case and consequently it is also found this way in the literature - and we should reflect this in Wikipedia as well, of course. In the DOS/Windows world, commands are traditionally written in all-uppercase and this is how the built-in help texts and the printed documentation etc. refers to them as well. Also, this is how external commands look like in the FAT filesystem (even when Windows manages to display "File.ext", it actually stores "FILE.EXT" on FAT disks, and this is how non-VFAT-enabled environments show it). The style conventions in the literature reflects that as well (there are a few exceptions, though).
Personally, I prefer the all-uppercase convention for anything DOS/Windows commands related and all-lowercase for Unix. What I don't like at all (from a stylistic point of view) is mixed forms like "Time" or "SmartDrv" or such, that's simply wrong, as it's "TIME"/"time" or "SMARTDRV" etc. The all-uppercase convention has the advantage of letting commands or directives stand out in the normal flow of text, so that they cannot be confused with normal English words, as is easily possible with the low-case form unless they are tagged to be displayed in teletype style or such. I have come to the habit of seeking a consistent style at least within an article, and in the case of DOS commands, I consistently use the uppercase form only, and I would like to encourage others to adopt the same style as well. Obviously, we cannot do this with Unix commands. The difficult question is what we do with the few "mixed" articles, discussing similar DOS and Unix commands in the same article. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 12:32, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
Unix commands are case-sensitive, and most of them are written all-lowercase; typing them in wrong case is an error. WP:MOSCAPS#Items that require initial lower case is clear that therefore they should be written all-lowercase. And since for DOS case does not matter, we might as well extend this convention to DOS commands, since there are other formatting choices available (like a <code> or <tt> tag). Or we may use uppercase when referring to DOS commands specifically, to save some disambiguation in the text. I have no strong preference. I like Unix style, personally. Less distracting if you have to use the command name every few sentences. Keφr (talk) 13:18, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
I would note that in most sources Unix commands are typically spelled as the way they are invoked, DOS commands are spelled in CAPS and Windows-specific commands are normally spelled in lowercase. I didn't notice inconsistency on Wikipedia, though I wouldn't bet on it. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:59, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

It seems obvious to me that there are only now, and have ever been, various opinions floating around. There are inconsistencies in WP, and I have pointed them out. Here's my two cents: If the command is in the special font, indicating it is being emmulated, then the emmulated capitalization should go into effect. Otherwise, they are just words (the map, not the territory), and as such have some WP MOS applied to them in title and body. No one has said there is any style guide. Therefore, there could be WikiProject developed for the computing articles that would result in a style guide in the MOS. — CpiralCpiral 02:58, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

What does "emmulated" mean? Even Urban Dictionary fails me. (And I am not sure what you mean even if it is supposed to be "emulated".) Keφr (talk) 12:21, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
I should have said "simulate" not "emulate". The Simulator tries to duplicate the behavior of the device. The Emulator tries to duplicate the inner workings of the device. (stackoverflow.com)
Here's what I meant to say, Kephir. When the font that simulates the terminal is used, surely then the command should appear as it does on the terminal, caps and all. However, when the command is used in the title, or as the first word of a sentence, we don't use the terminal font, and the literary aspect of the command, the name of command, the symbol for it, comes into play. It just happens to be the same letters. The map is not the territory. We use little trees on the map to indicate a park. We use special font rather than "command" or command, but we have to use something. It most both follow the grammatical rules of the natural language that is talking about the command, and read effortlessly.
Please compare this distinction I'm trying to make with the use-mention distinction, how they use double quotes for one and single quotes for the other. Ya gotta do something, and we use terminal font. We temporarily allow the new word SUBST and it's temporary metalanguage word "Subst". Subst, just for the articulation at hand, effortlessly magically subst for SUBST, but in another language, ours. Finally, there is this subtle and effortless realization that sets in when the first word of a sentence is what the sentence is about: Notice the italics: Five is a four-letter word. but One four letter word is five. Ya don't really have to say Five is a for letter word. Five is the first word. Since five is the first word, it resolves the way any sentence resolves as you go along, and becomes fully resolved at the end. The first word doesn't need the emphases or font, and yet remains lucid and clear with no possibility of misunderstanding. Similarly we shouldn't say "cmd is a DOS utility." because "Cmd is a DOS utility" is perfectly clear."
If I may go so far, please compare this comparison I'm trying to make with the way a computer language (a formal language) is used alongside another language to form truth statements about it: 'Snow is white' iff snow is white. The two independent clauses in the sentence are in a different language. The quoted one is the object language analogous to the command that is the object of our articulation. The unquoted one is the metalanguage, analogous to the natural language we speak and write in about the formal language and formal commands and formal statements in it.
Now look at the title, and first word of our DOS and Unix articles. I will pick some at random until we've seen the spectrum of possible styles I'm concerned about either standardizing somehow, or explaining why not:
Page title First word(s) {{lowercase title}}
Cls (command) cls No
dirname dirname Yes
compress Compress Yes
cut (Unix) In computing, cut Yes
Print (command) In computing, print No
echo (command) In computing, echo Yes
grep grep Yes
link (Unix) The link utility Yes
SUBST SUBST No
There seem to be enough challenging questions to come up with a style-sheet, cheat-sheet, or list article pointing to all the relevant computer article recommendations.
  • How do we disambiguate article titles, and when? By the Usual Environment?
  • Should we disambiguate all article titles, so we can start all command pages with "In computing, ..."
  • Should we use {{lowercase title}} in all cases? no cases?
  • Is there any ideal context for <code> verses <tt> tags?
  • Should we start a sentence with a lower-case letter?
  • What will look best, read best, per other constraints such as English grammar and the fact that the page title needs to be able to be cut and paste for use in making links, per WP:FAQ/Editing#How_do_I_make_links.3F? — CpiralCpiral 09:15, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Review of FA status for Microsoft Security Essentials

I have challenged the decision to award this article FA status over what I allege is a lack of balance and neutrality in the article. Fresh opinions and input are encouraged here. Quantumsilverfish (talk) 01:40, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Updating "Backend as a service" article

Hi all. I've been working with Kinvey, a backend as a service provider, to improve the Backend as a service article, and have prepared a draft of a new version of the article. Given the COI, I've posted a message on the Backend as a service Talk page asking for editors to take a look at the article I've drafted and, if appropriate, replace the existing article with my draft. You can find the draft of the article at User:ChrisPond/Backend as a service. Given the knowledge base in this project, it would be great if someone here could take a look and check my draft not only for neutrality, but also for technical accuracy. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reply to my post on the Talk page over at Backend as a service, or my user Talk page. Hopefully one of you will have a chance to take a look at this. Thanks! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 19:36, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

  •  Done Handled on COIN Gigs (talk) 02:16, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Storm botnet FAR

User:Cbrittain10 has nominated Storm botnet for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. JJ98 (Talk) 00:09, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Rainmeter desktop customization tool. Shouldn't we have an article on that?

Saw some discussion of the Rainmeter desktop customization tool (http://rainmeter.net/cms/), came to Wikipedia looking for info, don't see an article about it. AFAIK the thing is reasonably popular / notable. Am I missing something? -- 186.221.135.235 (talk) 22:00, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

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