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Further article cleanup

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G'day. Wikipedia newbie here. Thought I'd put in my 2c worth for this Exetel article. My thoughts upon reading this article, the attributed sources and this discussion page are:

  • The entire "Residential Services" and "Small/Large Business" seem superfluous and I would have thought that the quality of the article would be improved by removing them. Some very specific criticisms include:
    • Explanation of ADSL = 8Mbits/s and ADSL2+ = 24Mbit/s seem redundant and can be accomplished more succinctly by simply linking to the Wikipedia ADSL and ADSL2+ articles
    • The fact that Exetel offers two specific types of ADSL2+ plan (bundled vs unbundled) does not seem to add much value (i.e. the exact form of Exetel's ADSL2+ offering does not seem significant to me)
    • SMS Via ADSL (and now, Fax via ADSL) are extremely minor service offerings
    • "Telephone : Provides for users who do not already bundle their phone with ADSL2+" - Again, the exact form of bundling of telecommunication services could be deemed insignificant
    • "Allows users to keep existing phone numbers from other providers" - This is incredibly minor and completely insignificant
    • "Mainly used for Long distance calling but does local also" - Reads in a much too casual tone
    • Small/large business contains many redundant dot points essentially stating "same as for residential"
    • Corporate Employee ADSL Service includes mention of "lower cost" which may border on advertising / promotion of Exetel
  • Online Gaming Services seems to devote too large of a contribution. I would think that Exetel's history and policies should contain the bulk of the information in this article, not gaming services. Again, specific criticisms:
    • Again, the exact form and structure of the gaming services does not seem significant
    • "friendly/tight nit type atmosphere" - bordering on non-NPOV
    • "This has made the network one of the more popular services" - definitely not NPOV
    • The list of gaming servers and services provided seem incredibly minor and below the threshold for significance for inclusion in a Wikipedia article
  • Policies:
    • Traffic shaping 50% of P2P traffic and 40->48Gb offpeak limit seem to be separate policies and could be separated
    • In fact, "off-peak" download limits don't seem to be an "atypical policy of Australian ISPs" at all and could be removed
    • The atypical policy relating to off-peak is the unique shaping protocols in place (i.e. 48Gb to 72Gb = restricted pool, 72Gb and over - charged). So this may require a new subheading under Policies
  • Clean up of cited sources
    • Items 4, 5 and 6 (dealing with Traffic Shaping) to be replaced with the original and official Exetel source of http://forum.exetel.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=17721. 2 of the 3 cited sources in question each reference the official Exetel source anyway, so why not replace with the original?
      • Item 4 states "According to a post by Exetel..."
      • Item 5 states "In a letter to customers posted on its user forum, Exetel said..."
    • Removal of items 10, 11 and 13 as they cite blogs
    • In fact, complete removal of the sentence linking to these footnotes: "In June 2007, this policy was reported on after a post was made on Boing Boing.[10] [11] [12] [13]"
    • Item 12 is entered as a footnote to "Boing Boing" and should be relocated to be next to [9].

CoreyPlover 14:16, 23 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've done some work on the page based on the above and posted the following at User talk:CoreyPlover

I'm trying not to edit the Exetel talk page or the Exetel article for a while because of the edit wars but I wanted to comment on some of the things you said.

Essentially there's a lot of merit in what you've suggested and I've taken it on board. I've completely revised the Exetel article correcting links, rewriting text etc and I've incorporated a lot of what you've suggested. You can see my proposal at User:AussieLegend/Exetel/Article. (Ignore the header icons etc. They only exist on my user pages.)

The following are some specific comments.

"The entire "Residential Services" and "Small/Large Business" seem superfluous and I would have thought that the quality of the article would be improved by removing them."

I agree but I felt there should be something about EGN and with the two sections removed the article didn't look right so I combined the two and just listed all of the options in bullet point format. I've also left out a couple of items as you suggested.

"Corporate Employee ADSL Service includes mention of "lower cost" which may border on advertising / promotion of Exetel"

Since it is a service that's offered I think it's valid to leave it in but I've shortened what was there so it's just listing the service and describing what the purpose of the service is since it may not be clear to some (a lot of?) people.

"Online Gaming Services seems to devote too large of a contribution."

That's an understatement. I've reduced it considerably.

"Traffic shaping 50% of P2P traffic and 40->48Gb offpeak limit seem to be separate policies and could be separated"

Agreed. Unfortunately our Texan friend seems to believe they're related so I've added some citations that prove they aren't and separated them into two sections under "Bandwidth Management" rather than "Policies".

"In fact, "off-peak" download limits don't seem to be an "atypical policy of Australian ISPs" at all and could be removed"

I've reworded the section as an introduction to bandwidth management practices.

"The atypical policy relating to off-peak is the unique shaping protocols in place (i.e. 48Gb to 72Gb = restricted pool, 72Gb and over - charged). So this may require a new subheading under Policies"

Agreed. Also done.

"Items 4, 5 and 6 (dealing with Traffic Shaping) to be replaced with the original and official Exetel source of http://forum.exetel.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=17721. 2 of the 3 cited sources in question each reference the official Exetel source anyway, so why not replace with the original?"

Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires that sources be from "reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". Exetel's original post is a primary source so it's not acceptable. It seems weird but the idea is that it prevents somebody creating a website for the sole purpose of creating a source used to support their own view. What I've done is used the sources provided and included the Exetel post so you can compare all evidence in order to verify the claim.

"Removal of items 10, 11 and 13 as they cite blogs"

I agree. Policy says they're not acceptable sources so they're out. Interestingly, I posted a request for some information about reliable sources at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Exetel and have yet to receive a reply of any sort.

"In fact, complete removal of the sentence linking to these footnotes: "In June 2007, this policy was reported on after a post was made on Boing Boing.[10] [11] [12] [13]"

Definitely. That sentence is unnecessary. All that is needed is to mention the policy. Whether it was reported anywhere is really irrelevant and adds nothing to the article. The Age article (item 12) is all that is needed to verify the claim. It also verifies that Exetel has a policy of exempting files from the scan so I've relied on just that and the original notice.

"Item 12 is entered as a footnote to "Boing Boing" and should be relocated to be next to [9]"

That's exactly what I've done.
Let me know what you think.--AussieLegend 13:08, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This resulted in further discussion at my user pages which is reproduced below.

What I've done so far

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  • Replaced infobox with the version in the template
  • Repopulated the new infobox
  • Corrected all wikilinks.
  • Rewritten "Exetel service offerings" removing a lot of unnecessary data.
  • Reduced the size of the "Exetel Gaming Network" section to just a summary of what is offered.
  • Replaced the "Policies" section with "Bandwidth management".
  • Separated Off-peak downloads and P2P deprioritisation section into two subsections of Bandwidth management and rewritten some of the text.
  • Added information on leechers pools and the new process of charging >72GB downloaders for downloads exceeding 72GB
  • Promoted the "Copyright Issues" section since it isn't part of Bandwidth management
  • Expanded the copright issues section to include infomation regarding exclusions from the policy based on information already in the references.
  • Removed "boing boing" and 3 of its 4 references. None of these are essential to the article and the references were from unacceptable sources (blogs)
  • Added an external link that is useful to editors and people just reading the article because it adds to the history of Exetel without cluttering the article.

diffs --AussieLegend 14:55, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Changes look fantastic. Only one I don't agree with is not replacing items 4, 5 and 6 (now 9, 10 and 11) with the official Exetel source of http://forum.exetel.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=17721, but that is more of me not agreeing with the Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia's Wikipedia:Verifiability#Sources Verifiable policy says:
I think the forum post fits all these items, but in order to counter the last item, and to also include so called third-party, reliable sources, maybe there should be a dual footnote, one to the original source forum post and another to one of The Age (probably item 9, as it's date and content is more relevant to the single issue of 50% deprioritisation)
I would also still remove "Corporate employee ADSL Service". It is no different to ADSL as an offering, just bundled and priced in a different way
Minor item: Revenue in the infobox needs a line break
Otherwise, it reads fantastically. I may come along later and pad out the History section to be a bit more formal, and maybe some other small things too. Should I directly edit the User:AussieLegend/Exetel/Article version with my suggestions?
CoreyPlover 23:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're right regarding sources. The Exetel item seems to cover everything in more detail which makes it a better source to use. Item 11 only briefly mentions the policy on page 3 making it hard to find and therefore item 11 is not a good source, even though it confirms the policy. Item 10 at least puts everything on one page but all it does is confirm that Exetel has a policy making it a very weak source. Item 9 is the best of the three third-party sources and covers everything that 10 and 11 cover so there seems little point in including them. They just don't add anything to the article.
I can also see your point regarding the "Corporate employee ADSL Service" and yes, a line break is needed. All of your suggestions have been incorporated.diffs
Since you seem to agree with the proposal it seems more logical to edit my page for now rather than try to fit them into the main article so feel free to edit away. --AussieLegend 01:28, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've just noticed that 203.213.56.184 removed a category. Justification for this seems to be quite valid under WP:SUBCAT so I've removed it from this version too. No other Aussie ISP has this cat in their articles. --AussieLegend 18:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've now incorporated the changes above into the main Exetel article. It's now more factual with less unnecessary "fluff". --AussieLegend 10:21, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Archiving this page

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This page is now getting a bit long and older conversations (probably everything prior to September) should probably be archived. Does anyone have any objections to this? --AussieLegend 10:21, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since there have been no objections I've archived the page to Talk:Exetel/Archive 1. --AussieLegend 22:09, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

John Linton passed away

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John passed away february 1. 2012:

This article reads like an advertisement or published by the companies PR dept.

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Whilst I do not want to offend anyone here for their wonderful work. this article does appear to be an advertisement for the company it is about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.92.208.17 (talk) 01:57, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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