User talk:Andrew-King

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Welcome to my talkpage[edit]

Hi! Thanks for visiting my talkpage, and for any messages. I'm sorry if I'm slow responding and I'll try to reply ASAP. If you have an account please add this page to your watchlist along with whether you'd prefer me to reply on your talkpage or mine. Oh, and please remember to sign your posts using four tildes (~~~~) so that I can get back to you. Please indicate in your message whether you are seeking a reply to it so that I can correctly prioritize my responses. Thanks :-) Andrew-King ) (formally Annoyamouse)

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About my Wikipedia talkpage[edit]

“Oh God! Not this again... — I'm a celebrity cat: get me out of here!”
This is Schrödinger's cat. She keeps an eye on my talkpage for me while I'm away, and those vandalizing mice at bay. In return she gets to live, free from diabolical thought experiments. When on patrol, she loves to suddenly ambush and annoy mice by flummoxing them with bizarre quantum paradoxes. The stunned mouse is briefly frozen in a quantum superposition of dead & alive. She then resolves this by giving it a quantum death stare, collapsing the mouse, and sealing its fate. Having donated 8 of her 9 lives to scientific research, she can't help but think that mice make better lab rats. Her favorite perk of being a quantum cat isn't the fame but the ability to do more than one thing at a time. In her spare time, she likes to demonstrate the absurdity of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, in memory of her original owner Erwin Schrödinger.
Hello and welcome to User talk:Andrew-King — This is my talkpage where you can leave me messages.
If you know of any rolling release software distributions not in the Rolling release article's examples list or other useful information, or would like to talk about or help with the article, please post a message on my talkpage here. If you would like to talk about anything else, please post a message on my talkpage here. I'm always more than happy to chat about anything, whether Wikipedia related or not, so please don't hesitate in posting or emailing! Thanks. :-)

My messages section[edit]


Messages regarding Rolling release article[edit]

Please put all messages regarding the Rolling release article here:

"Counter-examples" section edit proposal[edit]

I am on-board with your recommendation to leave the four paragraphs in the "Counter-examples: non-rolling releases" section and either create a "Non-rolling release" stub article [or eliminate the "List of non-rolling release operating systems and software distributions" content altogether for that matter (it seems more appropriate to a general article on release methodology or some such)]. The list makes for a nice quasi-catch-all as a preventative of erroneous additions, I just don't think it necessarily fits the focus of the article; the list has kind of taken on a life of its own as it has grown. Editing can easily be a "two steps forward, one step back" affair, so this may just be a matter of experimenting with different changes until one stands out as best to your eye. -G.Ceara

Thanks for the feedback G.Cera. I'm particularly grateful for your feedback due to the great work you've done the article (especially with finding good sources etc). Do you have a preference as to whether the "List of non-rolling release operating systems and software distributions" content becomes part of a new stub article, or would you prefer putting it at the top of the article's Talk page maybe? If you reckon it best to remove it altogether, I'm happy to "host" the removed content on a subpage of my userspace. My instinct (though I'm very open-mined on the matter) is that some of the content in the first few paragraphs of "Counter-examples: non-rolling releases" may help readers see the differences between a rolling release model and non-rolling models, which might be useful when reading the "Comparison of rolling and non-rolling releases" section, as well as seeing how rolling release models fit in to the general array of development and release models. If it becomes decided that some of the section's content is kept, there's then the question in what way to include it in the article, and whether it would be better in a new subsection of the "Comparison of rolling and non-rolling releases" section (which is probably my preference). Thanks again for your feedback, I'm always interested to hear what you think, and do let me know of any further thoughts you have regarding this matter and the article in general. :-) Annoy@mouse )
I don't have an irreconcilably strong preference about whether the content becomes a stub article or is moved to the talk page or somewhere else. I understand how the use of real-world examples could help give insight to readers; however, "Examples of popular non-rolling release operating systems and software distributions include Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, most BSDs and most Linux distributions." seems sufficient, rather than listing multiple Windows releases, et al. By going into such detail about non-rolling releases, I feel the article begins to slightly stray from focusing on the rolling release model (the list doesn't seem fitting to the article in either further explicitly or implicitly highlighting the differences in development models or in explaining why the individual examples aren't rolling releases). Granted, the following example is not wholly alike, but mentally picture an article about Windows that briefly mentions open source operating systems as part of the landscape in which Windows competes/operates. Then picture that same Windows article, but now including the line "Several open source alternatives include..." with DistroWatch's page hit ranking appended to it. I think it becomes too much of its own entity at that point and no longer fits the focus of the article.
I think the non-rolling release list serves more as a strategic device, where it is anticipated that a reader might contest individual versions, such as "Well, what about Windows XP, could it be considered a rolling release?" — "Well, what about Windows Vista, could it be considered a rolling release?" — "Well, what about Windows 7, could it be considered a rolling release?" … ad infinitum. It is incumbent upon the reader to be able to comprehend that "Examples of popular non-rolling release operating systems and software distributions include Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, most BSDs and most Linux distributions" means ALL Windows releases thus far (similarly, "Mac OS X" could be shortened to "Mac OS" or changed to "the Mac OS family" or "Mac OS Classic and Mac OS X"). I do not think we would be expecting too much in that the readers possess basic mental faculties, and I do not think the article can be completely foolproof without straying off course.
When I read the article, what comes to mind when I look over the non-rolling release list is "So, you think you're going to erroneously include operating system n as a rolling release?", followed by a picture of Phoenix Wright and the phrase "Objection!".
I guess what I’m asking is for you to read the article with and without the list being included, and decide which, if either, configuration you think detracts from the article in its purpose of illuminating rolling release development. I trust your judgment. Keep up the good work. That's about as enthusiastic as I can be without it causing me to dry heave. :-p -G.Ceara — SineBot is a binary fink. 21:43, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to clutter your talk page, but in reference to "Popularity and adoption statistics: Various changes; Statistics section: added new 1st paragraph (please check accuracy of info)", Reference 57 (Operating system Family share for 11/2009 | TOP500 Supercomputing Sites) currently produces an error. The URL for the most recent statistics (November 2011) is http://i.top500.org/stats/list/38/osfam, but unfortunately this also currently produces an error. The current statistics can be viewed at http://i.top500.org/stats (select TOP500 Release: November 2011, Stats type: Operating system Family). I'd be surprised if any of the supercomputers are running a rolling release. If you select Stats type: Operating System (URL- http://i.top500.org/stats/list/38/os — again, the TOP500 statistics direct links are currently producing errors) instead of "Operating system Family", you can see that while the largest group is unreported Linux, the known systems tend to be enterprise-grade (AIX, SLES, CentOS, etc). -G.Ceara — 19:58, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks G.Ceara. By the way, please don't worry about "cluttering" my talk page - that's what archiving is for;-). I completely agree with you that supercomputers (and HPC in general) are likely to stay well away from rolling distros and I bet the same goes for most servers (although there's a stabilized version of Arch Linux called Arch Server I doubt it or Gentoo-stable are widely used). Thanks for the link heads-up, I'll fix it so it's up-to-date. I'm thinking of removing some of that stuff though, since (as you point out) it's not really what rolling distros are used for. Unfortunately, the only solid usage figures for Linux seem to come from HPC, Server, Business and Mobile sector stats (as other sectors are hard to measure) none of which really use rolling distros much. My thought is to put together a small table of DistroWatch's page-hit stats for the top5 or top 10 rolling distros, to use in that section. Rolling distros are probably "under-represented" in such stats due to their users not visiting their distro's page to download a new ISO in the way non-rolling users do. Nevertheless, I think it's probably the best statistical measure of rolling release popularity and adoption available that I can think of, and would convey more relevant info than the material currently in that section. Just my two cents. :-) Annoy@mouse ) 01:27, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I read through the Rolling release talk page and someone questioned the placement of Aurora OS within the article. Quickly scanning through the article, I did notice that Aurora OS was grouped both as a "partly rolling distribution with a more stable non-rolling fixed core" and as a "fully rolling distribution based on a rolling...development branch..." – these classifications conflict.
I also wonder if the article is in danger of linkicide. I am not familiar with Wikipedia's style guide, but aesthetically there is a lot of linked text that jumps out at me when I glance at the Rolling release article. For example, by my quick tally, Arch's Wikipedia article is linked to 12 times within the body of the Rolling release article, Wikipedia's "software development model"/Software development process article is linked to 13 times, etc. I wonder if either only first occurrences should be linked (ex. only use a hyperlink with the first occurrence of "Debian unstable", which in this case would be in the first bullet point in the "Full-rolling distributions" subsection), or instead only the clearest indication/explanation/focus of a given item should be linked (such as instead having a hyperlink for Debian unstable only in the first sentence under the "Debian-related" subsection, where a brief explanation of Debian unstable is given). If the links are pared down, I would probably leave the links for distributions either in the "List of rolling release software distributions" subsection or the "Rolling distributions: further details" section, and remove the rest. For any distribution linked in the article, should we include a hyperlink to the home page of its website in the "External Links" section?
PS I don't know if you read the most recent Fedora rolling release discussion (7 threads in January 2012, and 2 threads in February 2012), but, minus the occasional contentiousness, it contained some interesting opinions and information with regard to rolling releases. -G.Ceara — 20:23, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi G.Ceara. I agree with all of the points you raise and I'll do some work on fixing those. The linking is definitely overly excessive and needs reducing. I have to confess that a lot of it is my fault as I wrote the majority before reading the Wikipedia style guidelines and as a newbie Wikipedian was over-eager with linking, like a kid discovering a new toy. I'm gradually working at reducing them; at most I think a given link should occur only once per section and *never* twice per paragraph. Unfortunately I've been very ill over the last few months and took a bit of a wiki-break. Regarding AuroraOS, you're absolutely right that it shouldn't be under both headings. I think it is part-rolling (with a non-rolling core; i.e. kernel, X-windows, etc.) not fully-rolling, but I'll do some searching to check. It switched from being based on Ubuntu to Debian a while back according to their website and it's (rather dated) Wikipedia page, although DistroWatch lists it as based on Debian and Ubuntu. As far as external links to major distro websites (such as Arch, Gentoo, aptosid, Unity, PCLinuxOS) I've no objections and I'm more than happy to add them if you're in favor. The website links are generally available on the distro's Wikipedia page (which most of the major distros have) but as the article doesn't have many external links I don't see any harm in adding a few to the article; Arch and Gentoo have some good documentation and FAQs on rolling releases. Thanks for the info regarding Fedora. I was following the discussion ~6 months ago but haven't kept up to date with it. I really hope they do produce a rolling edition like other distros have (e.g LMDE, openSUSE-Tumleweed and DebianCUT) as the closet otherwise is Fedora-Rawhide dev-branch or Fuduntu which forkded from Fedora. Annoy@mouse )

Other messages[edit]

Please put all other messages here:

Moving redirects[edit]

Hi Annoyamouse. I saw your request at WP:RM to move the redirect currently at compiled sofware to compiled software. The thing is, unlike articles, redirects should really not be moved. For example, if the relevant article is "A" and "B" redirects to "A", but you think "C" should redirect to "A", it is better to just create "C" as a redirect rather than moving "B", which would create a double redirect (easily fixed, but not a good thing). Anyway, on to your specific request, I have simply restored the redirect at compiled software, so now if anyone searches for that term (or misspells it as "compiled sofware"), they will be taken to the compiler article. As a result, I have removed your request from RM. If you believe that compiled sofware is an improbable typo, you are free to nominate it for deletion at redirects for discussion, but please note that redirects are cheap. If you have any question, please feel free to ask me, either here or on my talk page. Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 09:55, 10 November 2011 (UTC

OK, I see what you were trying to do. The problem is that by moving the redirect, any article that linked to compiled sofware would still have that typo in the article – moving the redirect would not fix that. The only solution would be to go to Special:WhatLinksHere/Compiled sofware (there is a "What links here" in your toolbox on the left hand side that you can click on to get to this) and manually go fix the each article that. I've just checked and, happily, there are no articles that link to it, so none need to be fixed. Also, I've just tagged the compiled sofware redirect with an {{R from misspelling}} template – this means that should anyone in future link to it, a bot will come along and fix it (at least, that's my understanding).

Regarding your second question, I'd be happy to offer you any advice and please do ask if there's anything I can help with. Some great advice when that I got when I was a new editor, though, is to be bold – if there's something you think you can fix or improve, go right ahead. Jenks24 (talk) 00:18, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help Jenks24. Jenks24 got a barnstar wikibanner form me for helping out a newbie Wikipedian. Cheers.:-) Annoy@mouse )

FA review?[edit]

Hello,

I noticed that you are involved with the physics articles on Wikipedia, and I was wondering if you could help me out. Right now, I'm working to bring the article AdS/CFT correspondence to FA status. So far, people have had many good suggestions and many positive things to say about the article, but I'm having trouble getting people to support or oppose the nomination.

I was wondering if you'd be willing to take a look at it and tell us your thoughts at this page. Please note that you do not have to be an expert on the subject. The article has already been checked quite carefully by other reviewers, and at this point, I'm just looking for people who can check that it meets the FA criteria.

Please let me know if you're interested. Thanks. Polytope24 (talk) 15:36, 28 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

userbox request[edit]