Talk:Microsoft Security Essentials

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Microsoft Security Essentials is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on November 23, 2012.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
July 19, 2009	Peer review	Reviewed
October 5, 2009	Good article nominee	Listed
May 18, 2012	Peer review	Reviewed
July 14, 2012	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
September 20, 2012	Featured article candidate	Promoted
October 23, 2012	Featured article review	Kept
Current status: Featured article

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Frequently asked questions

Q: The subject of this article is of low quality. So, why is this article featured?

A: The featured article status is awarded to those articles that exhibits professional standards of writing, presentation, and sourcing. The nature of the subject of the article has no effect on the criteria. For more information, please see Wikipedia:Featured article criteria.

Q: Why does the article lead not say "this product is awful" or "steer clear from it"?

A: Wikipedia's mission is to introduce verifiable facts about its subjects fairly and objectively, without issuing orders or giving advices. Therefore this article avoids subjective words like "good", "bad" and "awful" and imperative sentences like "steer clear from it". Instead, the article presents the test results of various reputable independent test labs, which as of June 2013, show a protection score as low as 1 out of 6. When it comes to subjects related to Microsoft, maintaining objectivity and avoiding imperative sentences are very important. Saying "Microsoft product X is superb" probably infuriates a hard-boiled Microsoft critic, who already thinks it is quite to the contrary. Likewise, saying "steer clear of product Y" merely antagonizes a Microsoft fan.

Proposed changes regarding OS compatibility and feature definition[edit]

The article currently states that it runs on Windows XP. However, on official Microsoft pages, Windows XP is not listed at all. Citation 3 and 4 on the article in the Features section do not make reference to Windows XP at all. See this page as well: [1]. In addition, MSE on XP no longer receives updates since 14 July 2015 [2]. Therefore, MSE on XP is no longer the same product and does not provide the protection that it does for all the other OSes that are supported. Therefore I believe it should be clarified on this page that while it may "run", it should not be encouraged.

Also, there are some "system requirements" provided at the end of the Features section where it mentions Windows XP. However, that cited page no longer mentions Windows XP and the system requirements have changed.

For the header and the first paragraph of the features section, it says 'Windows 8 and 10' have "built-in AV protection". However, they actually provide more than that - please see the first link I provided - the tabulated set of features says differently, therefore I think the description needs to change from "AV protection" to "malware protection".

Also, the header and the first paragraph are not synchronised - they are phrased differently. I think it would be best that both paragraphs are kept in sync. Perhaps a template could be made here that could be used to populate each section so that they don't need to be edited separately?

The Development/Future section says at the end that MSE is "required" to be uninstalled before upgrading to Windows 8. However, this forum post [3] which was replied to by an official Microsoft spokesperson states that it doesn't have to be for Windows 10, and provides a method of getting around it. So this needs changing.

--Byziden (talk) 14:17, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, Byziden. I am glad you came. Thanks for doing that. I'll answer each of your comments one by one.

"The article currently states that it runs on Windows XP. [~snip~]" You are right, this is a problem. Microsoft.com addresses the current version only. Wikipedia, which is an encyclopedia, is interested in the history. (Infobox, however, reflects the latest version only.) But we have sources besides Microsoft.com. AV-TEST.org that has tested Windows XP versions is just great. I'll get to work on this. Thanks for informing. I will make sure the prose makes it clear that only certain versions run on XP.
"it says 'Windows 8 and 10' have "built-in AV protection". However, they actually provide more than that - please see the first link I provided." Two problems here:
1. This article is not about Windows Defender or Windows 8 and later. WP:FACR requires everything not related to MSE to be kept out. During the second FA nomination, a lot of these extraneous details were cut by the FA enforcer.
2. The bootkit and rootkit protection in Windows 8 and later is not a feature of Windows Defender. It is a feature of the notorious Secure Boot and ELAM. (See Windows 8 § Safety and security.) Windows Defender in Windows 8 is actually inferior to MSE because it lacks NIS. Windows 8.1 added NIS. But vendor websites like Microsoft.com are considered biased primary sources. i.e., they are engaged in advertisement. They do not hesitate to askew the facts. And why not? They want to sell Windows 10 and people do get these with Windows 10 anyway.
"the header and the first paragraph are not synchronised". By header, perhaps you mean the lead section? Slight difference in wording is okay, as long as there are no technical differences.
"[~snip~] an official Microsoft spokesperson states that it doesn't have to be for Windows 10 [~snip~]." I am very sorry but you are badly mistaken in this case:
1. The person you are quoting in is not a Microsoft employee. As you can observe from his badges, he is "Stephen Boots", a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). The MVP status is never given to a Microsoft employee. Although, as you will read below, this is good.
2. Stephen Boots does not say that at all! He is certainly helping a user who somehow got stuck with an MSE after an upgrade and cannot uninstall it. Naturally, the OS didn't detect it during the upgrade and does not detect it afterwards, let alone allow it to be uninstalled. But nowhere in the prose I see any indication that this is a principle for all Windows 10 upgrades. Something for that user is broken. Please be very careful, because if you read too much into what is not written and forget the context, you may commit synthesis of published material.
3. As a principle, self-published sources are unacceptable in Wikipedia unless they are used for extremely trivial cases. A reliable source must have a credible author, publisher oversight and quality contents. An open forum has none of these. Nobody enforces this rule in an ordinary article; but on a Featured Article like this, self-published sources must be avoided.
4. In general, the words "official", "employee", "spokesperson" are taboo in Wikipedia because they signal biased primary sources. We desire unbiased sources and, as far as possible, secondary sources.

Again, thanks for coming here. I'll get to work on the first one. I will notify the co-nominator of the FA for this article, User:Codename Lisa. I'll also standby to respond to any objection, question or general reply that you have.

Fleet Command (talk) 07:05, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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I have just modified one external link on Microsoft Security Essentials. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://www.webcitation.org/66chqKGYK?url=http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Definitions/HowToMSE.aspx to http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/definitions/howtomse.aspx

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MSE on WinXP[edit]

Although signature updates continue to work on MSE on WinXP, the delivery mechanism (Windows Update) does not. MS continues to provide signature updates for offline users, which can be manually download for use in MSE on WinXP — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.162.148 (talk) 07:26, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you're right and I already put that into article.108.30.101.121 (talk) 21:14, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Spoken Wikipedia Recording[edit]

I have started working on a Spoken Wikipedia recording for this article. Thanks! Camshaft64 (Talk | Contributions) 06:21, 24 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Concerns regarding article[edit]

I've tagged a few areas where the article could be improved. In particular some areas of the article are reliant on primary sourcing and three sections need updates to cover everything post 2013. (Windows 7's last enterprise update was in early 2023, I would be surprised if there hasn't been any critical comenary about this aging product during that time). Sohom (talk) 14:24, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]