Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Link to the model VW Bug?

Hi, I'm looking 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. [1] [2] [3] [4] 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)

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)

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)Template:Z48

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 decker^{talk 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[5][6]. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:50, 2 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)

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)

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 [7], [8], [9]) 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

WikiProject restructuring

Compared to some other WikiProjects, the WikiProjects related to computing in a broad sense have been split into a large number of small projects:

Project	Watchers	Page views (2010)	Revisions / Contributors (talk)	GA/FA
Wikipedia:WikiProject C++	59	3680 / 464	few	None
Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing	223	23488 / 8738	1429 / 480	62/17
Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer networking	54	6593 / 569	164 / 68	2/0
Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer Security	30	3693 / 1230	173 / 53	7/2
Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science	341	23739 / 2848	649 / 154	9/1
Wikipedia:WikiProject Cryptography	102	8957 / 903	402 / 83	None
Wikipedia:WikiProject Databases	36	1885 / 456	53 / 24	None
Wikipedia:WikiProject Internet	34	2614 / ?	84 / 50	16/3
Wikipedia:WikiProject Java	31	5588 / 819	75 / 26	1/0
Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics (for comparison)	661	19534 / 27375	22711 / 1185	33/23
Wikipedia:WikiProject Programming languages	80	2507 / 357	130 / 56	None
Wikipedia:WikiProject Software	82	6773 / 1443	540 / 143	13/5
Not (yet) included: Wikipedia:WikiProject Cyberlaw, Wikipedia:WikiProject Free Software, Wikipedia:WikiProject Internet, Wikipedia:WikiProject Linux, Wikipedia:WikiProject Apple Inc., Wikipedia:WikiProject Malware, Wikipedia:WikiProject Websites, Wikipedia:WikiProject Microsoft Windows

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)

• 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)

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)