Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer science

Todo list

Hey all, I (apparently re-) introduced the Todo list. Specific requests for editing assistance should be added there so that they're more easily seen, and preserved across archives. If there are any outstanding issues remaining from the archives, please copy them into the Todo list. Ham Pastrami (talk) 19:01, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Why are you messing about with the project page so much? There are other people who use it, the recent changes links are useful. MattOates (Ulti) (talk) 12:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I've added back the "recent changes" links (and a few other things that recently went missing). --Allan McInnes (talk) 17:11, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem, if you didn't like the changes you are naturally free to revert or improve them. The thing is, judging by the lack of activity in the project I'm not so sure that they are that useful. My changes were intended to help people get into the project and up to speed without being deluged by a myriad of links that, to me, only seem to clutter the page. I mean, the point of a WikiProject page is to provide some kind of focus. Linking every possible shortcut that someone might use doesn't seem to be the best way of coordinating effort. If you personally use these shortcuts a lot, you can always make them part of your personal user page. Ham Pastrami (talk) 20:43, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Formal language

I think the article formal language has degraded severely over the last few weeks. Here are some milestones:

• 30 April
• 5 May (after my substantial rewrite)
• 25 May ("philosophy of logic" version)

The degradation is probably due mainly to the activism of Gregbard, but the narrow (philosophical) POV of Philogo doesn't help either. I encourage anyone interested in the topic to comment on Talk:Formal language. If there is enough support perhaps we can revert the article to a sane earlier version. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:05, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

capitalization of eponymous laws -- opinions sought in move discussion

If you have an opinion on capitalization of "law" in titles, there's an open discussion on a move proposal in Talk:Moore's Law, an article in this project. Dicklyon (talk) 18:18, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

added a new page - cyber-physical systems

Hello, I added a page on cyber-physical systems, right now it's a total stub but hopefully people can add more to it. I've listed a few papers from the NSF workshop on CPS, and have some mobisys papers in mind, maybe some text books too. Hope people can help! Thomaslw (talk) 12:30, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

More pictures

So I got Fred Brooks and Michael Flynn, and I'll have Tom Sterling before the month is out. If you look at the infobox, you'll see that I recently added a bunch of turing award winners. Specifically, I added all of the living ones whose articles don't have pictures. Since virtually all computer scientists have email addresses, I think contacting each of them with a request is a feasible idea - and starting with the oldest of them is a prudent one. (I'd like to avoid a repeat of what happened with Robert Tomasulo; I emailed Fernando Corbato tonight) If anyone feels up to the job, I'd appreciate all the help I can get. Raul654 (talk) 01:17, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Tom Sterling done. Fernando Corbato emailed me back yesterday with good news. I hope to have his pic up soon. I've added the Eckert-Maunchly award winners to my to-do list. Raul654 (talk) 19:34, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I've been sending out a lot of emails trying to get pictures. I've created user:Raul654/Computer to help keep track of my progress. Also, apparently a great many article-worthy computer scientists are part of MIT's CSAIL. I'm in touch with the CSAIL photographer - hopefully I'll be able to get those articles illustrated in bulk. Raul654 (talk) 19:55, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

"Cycle"

I wanted to find more info on "cycles" per The Jargon File v4.4.7 http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/cycle.html

"The basic unit of computation. What every hacker wants more of.... One can describe an instruction as taking so many clock cycles. Often the computer can access its memory once on every clock cycle, and so one speaks also of memory cycles. These are technical meanings of cycle. The jargon meaning comes from the observation that there are only so many cycles per second, and when you are sharing a computer the cycles get divided up among the users. The more cycles the computer spends working on your program rather than someone else's, the faster your program will run. That's why every hacker wants more cycles: so he can spend less time waiting for the computer to respond."

I wanted more info on "cycle" e.g. What exactly does it correspond to in a non-slang sense? Is this term/concept still found useful today, or have subsequent developments in computing made this less relevant? It used to apparently be common for sysadmins to adjust things so that they received a disproportionate share of "cycles", whereas users whom they found annoying had their computers throttled back to one operation per decasecond - does that still happen much?

Our disamb page Cycle lists Instruction cycle. That article does not make clear to me whether this is the same meaning as the Jargon File sense (I think that it is, but I'm not sure.)

Would anyone care to either add something on this to Instruction cycle, or create a new appropriate article, or add content to some other existing article (and add a link to that article at Cycle)?

(I will not be doing this myself. If you have info on this, please do not simply respond here, but create article/content/disambiguation so that other Wikipedia users may benefit thereby.)

Thanks! -- Writtenonsand (talk) 13:38, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

All synchronous processors - that is, pretty much all the ones you've ever used - synchronize their actions according to some common clock. Each cycle (Instruction cycle) corresponds to exactly one tick of that clock. Yes, this is still a very relevant concept in computer science/engineering.

As for your final question, some older computers used to have a Turbo button which locked the system speed to some multiple of clock ticks (that is, instead of completing a cycle on every clock tick, they'd complete it on every 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc clock tick). This slowed the computer system down, and allowed the user to play some games that depended on computer system timing. Admittedly this has the potential for abuse, but it's rather easy to notice and fix, and I don't know of any instances where this was abused. You may also want to read our nice (Unix) article. Raul654 (talk) 14:00, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Just to add a few quick notes: You probably already knew that processor speed is measured in "Hertz" (Hz), but you might not have realized that Hz is defined as cycles-per-second. The greater the Hz, the larger the number of "clock ticks" per second. As of 2008, most processors are rated in the Gigahertz (GHz) range, which depending on who you ask is either 2³⁰ or 10⁹ cycles-per-second.

Instructions take X number of cycles to execute, and operations take Y number of instructions to complete, but X and Y vary depending on the architecture of the processor. To avoid apples-and-oranges comparisions, MIPS (millions of instructions per second) and FLOPS (floating-point operations per second) are sometimes used in place of Hertz.

Finally, note that the inverse of Hertz is "period", defined as seconds-per-cycle. One would probably describe the period of a GHz processor in terms of nanoseconds (a nanosecond is 10^-9 seconds). Groupthink (talk) 22:35, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject:Software

Hello WikiProject Computer science. You have been invited to join WikiProject Software, a WikiProject dedicated to improving the Software-related articles on Wikipedia. You received this invitation due to your interest in, or edits relating to or within the scope of the project. If you would like to join or just help out a bit, please visit the project page, and add your name to the list of project members. You may also wish to add {{User WikiProject Software}} to your userpage and == WikiProject Software Centralized Announcement System == {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Software/Announcement-u}} to the top of your talk page. If you know someone who might be interested, please pass this message onto others by pasting this code into their talk page: == [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Software|WikiProject Software]] Invite == {{subst:Software invite|~~~~}} Thanks, ~~~~

ulimit nominated for deletion

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ulimit. To what extent should Wikipedia cover Unix utilities and shell built-ins, without going against the "Not an instruction manual" rule? Since this is just one of many articles devoted to a Unix command, it is a question that the members of this project might be interested in. I'm posting here because Unix is listed as "belonging" to this WikiProject. --Itub (talk) 10:11, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Because of its centrality in practical computing (outside the Microsoft world and evne there to a large but not so obvious extent), Unix concepts are relevant to understanding modern computing. Fork, pipe, standard in and standard out, grep, more (or less), root, shell, ... are all, in my view candidates for Wikipedia article, without violating the NotAManual policy. There are certainly Unix aspects which don't (all those exec variants, for instance, or the differences between BSD and Sys V versions of ps, for another), but good sense will make the distinction. There's likely to be conflict at the edges, of course, but this is likely unavoidable, editors being editors. So I would vote against routine deletion for articles on Unix utilities. ww (talk) 03:23, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for the lists of basic topics

This project's subject has a page in the set of Lists of basic topics.

See the proposal at the Village pump to change the names of all those pages.

The Transhumanist    09:56, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 22:04, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

A discussion

An important discussion on " Should WikiProjects get prior approval of other WikiProjects (Descendant or Related or any ) to tag articles that overlaps their scope ? " is open here . We welcome you to participate and give your valuable opinions. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - , member of WikiProject Council. 14:51, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

All code in templates proposal

Please take a look at my proposal at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#All_code_samples_should_be_transcluded, and respond on that page. Thanks! Dcoetzee 00:25, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Assistance request

I've been forced into the position of asking for assistance with the content and writing style of an article I've been long editing. Since it's pretty central to computer use, and referenced in the WP's new user page, getting it to a good condition is important. The article is Password strength, and the history is more or less as follows. For some time, the article had been accumulating cruft or one kind or another, as many do, and earlier this year (see page history) an editor notice this and began a major revamp. I had also noticed it, but hadn't gotten up the gumption to dive in myself. So I decided to assist as I could. There was some difficulty (well covered on the talk page) over both technical issues and writing issues. Email exchanges (very much along the lines of the talk page discussion) failed to produce much progress.

The article is now stalled (3RR is on the horizon), but is in an unsatisfactory state, both from confusion about technical issues (eg, randomness v entropy in this context) and with respect to writing -- organization, and clear and helpful presentation.

Editor relations having become wedged, I have resolved to ask for assistance. Any here who are willing to lend a hand should look over the situation, and attempt to make improvements. Thanks. ww (talk) 03:48, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

"ToonTalk computer programming language" needs your help

Could members of this project please take a look at ToonTalk computer programming language and regularize the article title, as well as formatting and terminology within the article? Thanks. -- 201.17.36.246 (talk) 02:14, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Optimal classification

Hi - is there anyone in the project who works in pattern recognition and statistical classification? I'd appreciate some insights into the optimal classification article (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Optimal classification). Thanks! --Jiuguang (talk) 16:43, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 507 articles are assigned to this project, of which 173, or 34.1%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 14 July 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place a template on your project page.

If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:19, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Integrated banner with {{WikiProject Computing}}

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This project is a subset of the parent project WP:COMPUTING.This project articles contains both {{WikiProject Computer science}} and {{WikiProject Computing}} and possibly other descendant wikiproject banners also.

I am proposing the use of the integrated banner of {{WikiProject Computing}} , if there is a consensus among our project members...

Example :

{{WikiProject Computing|class=start|importance=Mid|science=yes|science-importance=low}}

will produce...

• This project and its autonomy will remain the same...
• No pages have to be moved as a task force.

The advantages of this are :-

• Intergated banner which takes up less space and avoid clutter of different Computer related WikiProjects.
• Greater co-operation and co-ordination among computer related wikiProjects.
• Each WikiProject doesnt have to maintain an assessment department...Since the standards for WP 1.0 Assessment is same for all WikiProjects, single assessment is only required for all the computer related WikiProjects. This means more time for individual computer wikiprojects to help and improve the articles in their scope..
• Seperate stats for quality and importance for both parent and descendant projects ( as before)
• Catergory intersection of quality and importance available like Category:Amiga articles by quality and importance for WP:Amiga

Possible Actions:

• Replace {{WikiProject Computer science}} with {{WikiProject Computing}} and our project parameters in the article talk pages .
• Copy the importance in existing {{WikiProject Computer science}} to |science-importance= in {{WikiProject Computing}} banner.

Thoughts ?? -- Tinu Cherian - 04:29, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Oppose - I don't believe that every computer science article should also be a computing article, and furthermore I find these integrated banners highly cluttered. I would prefer the banners remain separate. Adam McCormick (talk) 20:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Still Oppose - Computer science is not a subfield of computing. Computing really shouldn't cover topics such as Artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, algorithms or computational complexity. These topics are the meat of computer science but don't even require the use of a computer. By integrating the banners, you would force many topics that have nothing to do with computers, or information technology to be grouped there. This is not acceptable. CS is not a subfield of computing, Programming is, maybe, a subfield, but the meat of CS is not and grouping them is not correct. Adam McCormick (talk) 15:49, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh? I'm curious to know what approach would you use to do Artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, algorithms or computational complexity without computers (other than study them and never put them into practice) ;-) Diego (talk) 16:39, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

There are good examples in the area of, say ... Turing undecidability, which are mathematical proofs, and not something you'd implement as an algorithm. -- Or oracle machines, which are computers that could never be built, (at least, not as Turing machines .. perhaps quantum computers?) but the theory is still interesting. Please note that oracle machines are not arcane, they're commonly covered in undergrad texts on computing theory. I've been reading Barendregt's book on lambda calculus, and while its technically comp sci, 99.999999% of it will never ever be implemented as a computer program or hardware or anything -- its a math book, for all intents and purposes. linas (talk) 17:35, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Oppose - For same reasons as Adam McCormick --Cybercobra (talk) 21:53, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Still oppose --Cybercobra (talk) 05:19, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Oppose - per Adam McCormick — Johnl1479 22:11, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

After reading the extending explaination by the 'nominator' below, I would like to change my vote to Support. Computing != Computer Science, but project Computer_Science extends Computing — Johnl1479 04:38, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's true, but the argument below is that Computing extends Computer science or for those C++ folks, class Computing : public ComputerScience which is not a valid assumption. Adam McCormick (talk) 15:54, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm also reading it like class ComputerScience: public Computing, which is mostly true in a practical way (the exceptions that I listed below would be friend class DiscreteMathematics; ) although it's not strictly true in an ivory tower sense. The wp:wikiprojects are not an ontology. Diego (talk) 16:20, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Java ftl... :-P. Anyway, now I'm confused. Is he saying 1) Computer Science is a child of Computing, or that 2) Computing is a child of Computer Science? 'Cause that is what is all depends on. — Johnl1479 02:02, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah, to hell with it, I still oppose — Johnl1479 02:04, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Oppose - computing != computer science. ␄ –Iknowyourider (t c) 01:19, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

May I know what exactly are the concerns in the integrated banner ?

The scope of Computing WikiProject is defined here...Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computing > Scope and Goals. On a broader view, it can said that the scope of Computing WikiProject is articles related to areas or subjects relating to computers , computing and information technology. Please note that WP:COMPUTERS was merged to WP:COMPUTING long time back. "computing" means using computers and other computing machines. It includes their operation and usage, the electrical processes carried out within the computing hardware itself, and the theoretical concepts governing them (computer science).

Isnt single banner better than the article being tagged separately by say WP:COMPUTING and WP:Comp Sc, WP:software etc...I feel that it avoids the clutter of banners better-- Tinu Cherian - 02:09, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the kind of people who are interested in computer science are not interested in other aspects of computing, and v.v. ? Perhaps your proposal is similar to trying to merge WP:Linux and WP:Windows into, for example WP:Computer Users -- it might not be something that everyone would agree to. linas (talk) 03:21, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Oppose - per Adam. --Chet B. Long^Talk/_ARK 02:20, 4 August 2008 (UTC)Support - after reading the new definition and clarification by Tinucherian. --Chet B. Long^Talk/_ARK 18:17, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

let me explain further. This is NOT_A_MERGER_PROPOSAL between WP:COMPUTING and WP:CompSc..... WP:COMPUTING is like a parent project ( call it umberalla project) to all computer related aspects and wikiprojects similar to WP:Christianity. People are welcome to work in any of the descendant projects like WP:Anglicanism or WP:CATHOLIC or even work with WP:Christianity as a whole. Similarly people are free to work in either WP:Linux or WP:Windows or both or even WP:COMPUTING depending on their interest.The autonomy of individual WikiProject remains the same ( see WP:Amiga or WP:Websites ). This effort is just a initiative to work in greater collabration between the computer related WikiProjects.

The seperate importance for each WikiProject helps to identify the importance of the article for each project seperately. Howover the |class= parameter which defines the quality of the article is same for all projects which is in accordance with the WP 1.0 Assessment standards.

Think of these advantages :

• Only one assessment rating is needed , whether it is computing, networking , comp sc. etc ,which gives the WikiProject members more time in article improvement and less overhead for administrative activities.
• A article may be a tagged by different computer related WikiProjects say WP:Computing, WP:Comp Sc. , WP:Databases ? Which is better ? Having a single banner which supports all or different banners which takes up too much space on the talk page.

Having said that, there is no clear line separating the two projects of WP:Computing and WP:Comp Sc.. All articles in WP:Comp Sc is within the scope of WP:Computing but not viceversa. The scope of WP:Computing is boarder and Comp Sc related articles account for a major portion of the articles. This calls for better interaction and co-operation of these WikiProjects -- Tinu Cherian - 04:38, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

For - I believe Computer Science is extended arm of Computing and there is no harm in having integrated banner for sister projects or parent-child projects, infact it makes tagging easy. Where ever there may be requirement a specific note may be left that explaining standing of article e.g. Bio-Informatics may come under Computing, Computer-Science, Databse, etc. as bio-informatics is related with them all(in field of Computation). There is very good example of same pattern being follwed by WikiProject India where articles fall under scope of different projects but we use integrated banner there listing different projects under umbrella of WP India. To conclude, I think it is great to integrate different inter-related projects in one banner. --Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haider Rizvi (talk) 04:21, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

still for --Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haider Rizvi (talk) 09:01, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

for - WP is otherwise cluttered with too many banner templates - a unified one is much better than two separate. Said: Rursus ☻ 06:41, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

For - but with reservation. Computer Science is the top level (i.e. parent class) of the academic field. As such things like databases, AI, and even Software Engineering all really belong as a sub class of computer science. The only example I can think of that is computing but not computer science would be an article on the computer industry - and even then some may disagree. All that said, an integrated approach sounds good, and if computing has been chosen as the parent... so be it. Oboler (talk) 10:55, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

For - per Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haider Rizvi. There may be some very abstract mathematical non-computing results that are of interest for Computer-Science and not for Computing (e.g. general articles in topology, order theory or formal systems), but having them enclosed by the former would give enough hint of this, and they should be the exception more than the rule. Also articles about particular tools or platforms (Windows, Oracle, Logitech...) are of interest for Computing but not really for Computer-Science, so the second is mostly a subset of the first. Diego (talk) 12:58, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Still For - this fusion is not about defining the fields of Computer Science and computing, is about joining forces in a practical way. Adding CS as a subsidiary project of Computing would allow for greater visibility to a more diverse audience, and would do nothing to change the platonic definition of both disciplines. Diego (talk) 16:47, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Oppose - the kinds of article qualities that might make for a good article on databases are in general quite different than the kinds of qualities that would make for a good article on comp-sci. I think it's healther to evaluate an article from several perspectives, driven by specialists, rather than some vague general one-size-fits-all, lowest-common-denominator evaluation. linas (talk) 17:25, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment - I think the integrated banner approach is very interesting. See for example Talk:Deep Impact (space mission). WP:WikiProject Space has a very broad scope, similar to this project, but they were able to organize the child projects appropriately. I think if there is a combined WikiProject for both Computing and CS, then the integrated banner makes more sense (you can incorporate software engineering, crypto, etc). --Jiuguang (talk) 18:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

For - I've not been very active, but I think that might give me a slightly more objective view. The argument of what is and what isn't Computing or Computer Science, is not in dispute here, from what I can tell? The banner is only displayed on the Talk page anyway, correct? Everyone opposing: your arguments would be valid if it were suggested that all Categories should be changed so that everything came under Computing, instead of Computer Science. The only thing I can see proposed here is the unification of administration of the projects, where appropriate, which I can only see being a good idea. Some review instead of no review, regardless of how generic or one-size-fits-all has to be an improvement (rather a Computing Project person than some unqualified random with too much time on their hands), and anyone can step in and dispute that review at a later time, or claim ownership by the Computer Science project specifically. Maybe there needs to be further discussion about what the joint banner means. I assume from the current format there is another version that says it has X importance to WikiProject Computing? Although I am "For" I don't really see why this is important, or really that great a help. If we spent this amount of time and energy on some collaborative editing of Computing/Computer Science articles instead of bureaucracy we wouldn't need to worry about administration ;D That last statement is under the assumption everyone edits for fun in their free time and gets enough TPS at work? MattOates (Ulti) (talk) 18:45, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

• Weak Support - I can easily see both sides of the argument here. In short, not repeating the arguments above, I think the advantages of integrating a banner outweigh the disadvantages. --ZeWrestler ^Talk 00:29, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments: Altough there is a better support for the integrated banner use, I dont wish to proceed without addressing the concerns of those who oppose. To be fair, I had dropped a note regarding this discussion to the talk page of ALL the members.
Let me go through some of the concerns expressed by some of the project members :

• Computer Sc is a subset of Computing ?
  • Ans : Probably not, but WikiProject Computer Sc is a subset of WikiProject Computing. I would have definitely opposed to idea of Categorization of Comp Sc articles under Computing. And here lies the difference. Dont be mislead by the name WP:Computing. The scope of WP:Computing is 'anything related to computers and computing' in simpler terms ( including the science of it ) . Please note that WP:Computers was merged to WP:Computing long back for remove redundant project infrastructure.
• Will WP:Comp Sc lose its autonomy and independancy ?
  • Ans : No ! This initiative is to reduce the Bureaucracy and administrative overhead on computer related WikiProjects and enhance greater collabration and cooperation.Since the scope of these projects are loosely overlapped ,many members are already members of both the projects. As I had said earlier , this is NOT a merger proposal of WP:Comp. Sc and WP: Computing. Think of the advantage of ONLY one single quality assessment to be done for every article unlike each WikiProject member manually assessing the quality of the article for each project banner. Still each project will get seperate stats for quality and their own importance scale. The importance of a particular article for WP:Computing may of Mid-importance but for WP:Comp Sc, it may be Top-importance. This facility is available in the intergated banner. Tell me which is better ? a clutter of computer related banners on the talk page or an integrated banner which servers all purposes! Frnd, we are making the the changes only on the talk pages not the articles. The result : you have more time to work on the articles of your interest. Having said the above , we are extending this initiative to all computer related wikiprojects.

-- Tinu Cherian - 06:06, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment It is my opinion that WP:ComputerScience should not be a subset of WP:Computing. To answer the response to my last post above, graduate level CS courses in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms, Data Mining, and many other core CS topics do not rely on the use of computers. Most rely on advanced mathematics and bookwork, and may not even be implementable. Sure, many of the concepts are implemented on computers to show how they work, but they are not "Computing" concepts and are not specific to 'anything related to computers and computing'. They are no more a part of computing than Calculus is. Sure you use calculus to build computer programs but that should not put it under the Computing WikiProject.

I understand that you are not proposing that the two WikiProjects merge but you are forcing the improper assumption that WP:Computing should encompass all articles even tangentially relating to Computers which is not accurate and will only serve to inflate the size of that WikiProject and dilute its ability to improve its articles, not reduce any perceived bureaucracy. Adam McCormick (talk) 15:02, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment I've been largely inactive for a long while, so I'm a bit out of touch on the whole banner thing. However, reviewing the comments above, it would seem that: some articles fall clearly into both Computing and Comp Sci; some articles seem to fall primarily or exclusively in Comp Sci; and some articles seem to fall primarily or exclusively in Computing. So perhaps instead of replacing the current two banners with a single integrated one, both banners could be modified to have an integrated option. Then, if an article is primarily Comp Sci, it can use the Comp Sci banner; if it has enough overlap into Computing, it can reference Computing with its integrated option. Likewise, if an article is primarily within Computing, it can use the Computing banner; if it has enough overlap into Comp Sci, it can reference Comp Sci with its integrated option. If a given article has overlap into both but is contentious enough that one of the two projects doesn't want to use the integrated banner, then just use both. In other words: implement and use the integrated banners where they make sense, but not where they don't. Then you get to reap the benefits of an integrated banner where you can, without losing the benefits of having separate banners where they'd be useful. Would that be an acceptable option? – Zawersh 19:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I think that's an excellent suggestion. --Allan McInnes (talk) 22:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I support that option too. Best of two worlds. Diego (talk) 08:08, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

This would be a reasonable alternative, IMHO. --Cybercobra (talk) 08:21, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Very reasonable, but then let us decide the articles which doesnt need to use an intergated banner ? -- Tinu Cherian - 09:32, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Why not just modify the template and let the wikiprojects work the rest out? Seems a lot of work to decide this now for every single article... --Cybercobra (talk) 10:17, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment Two importance ratings is one too many. Can this banner possibly stick to one topic with one rating? (Thanks for the heads up on my talk page by the way and apologies if this has already been addressed.) -SusanLesch (talk) 19:18, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

The seperate importance ratings are important and has the following advantages :

• More flexibility for both parent and descendant projects. ( greater independance and autonomy , I would say)
• An article might be of say Mid importance for Computing Project, Top Importance for WP:Comp Sc and even may be Low importance for WP:Databases. This helps such situations.

Please note that this initative is extended and in discussion with all the computer related Wikiprojects and there is more or less unanimous support now.

You may need not consider this banner integration as an overhead as I will make sure the present importance rating for this project is properly carried over to the new banner parameters during the banner intergation . I will make sure there is no or minimal overhead to the descendant project members for this banner intergation ( TinucherianBot is a hardworking Bot :) ). Whether or not the you may need to add importance rating to newer articles is left to the descendant WikiProject members.. -- Tinu Cherian - 04:54, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Oppose sorry, but because as said above "this is NOT a merger proposal of WP:Comp. Sc and WP: Computing". The idea of one or two WikiProjects breaking ranks to have their own special-cased conglomeration sounds confusing. And further confused if the suggestion above succeeded in making the banner flip back and forth from one WikiProject to another. Thanks for your suggestion but in my opinion it is probably better to conform to the model that is used by all of the projects. Regarding "Please note that this initative is extended and in discussion with all the computer related Wikiprojects and there is more or less unanimous support now", WikiProject Computing has no discussion at all. Maybe you can provide a better link. -SusanLesch (talk) 05:41, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Please see below :

• Disussion for Intergated banner for the existing Task forces and absorption of Inactive Wikiprojects can found here.
• Discussion at WP:Websites can be found here.
• Discussion for WP:Computer networking can be found here
• Discussion for WP:Software can be found here.

-- Tinu Cherian - 06:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment Can you please stop breaking up the threaded discussion? I for one have no problem with those other projects being brought under computing (Websites, software and Networks don't exist without computers), but just because there hasn't been any discussion from those projects (or at computing) does not create "Unanimous support". I for one think that there is not enough support shown ant any of those links to combine the templates. I do see that you are contributing the vast majority of the discussion which makes it difficult to follow at best. I don't see any consensus that this proposal go forward, and nothing you have said refutes the points made in opposition above. Adam McCormick (talk) 16:13, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I second the sentiments with regard to the non-threaded responses being hard to follow. --Cybercobra (talk) 18:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be better if WP:CompSci was completely divorced from WP:Computing, and instead got married to WP:Math? That way we could use the "integrated" mathematics banner for the WP:CompSci articles. This would more closely mirror how these disciplines are actually related in the "real world", where CompSci is academic, whereas Computing is a commercial activity. If there are overlapping articles, they could have two banners: one from WP:Math, and one from WP:Computing. This would make for a very clear, clean-cut distinction. linas (talk) 16:55, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Eh, IMHO, CompSci should be its own separate thing. Certainly parts are mathy e.g. algorithm articles, but other parts, e.g. programming language articles, definitely stray from mathematical subjects but are within the domain of CompSci. But this is all tangential to the discussion at hand, which is merely about merging banners. Cybercobra (talk) 18:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

linas, that is only true for a subset of computer science and for the way it is taught in some universities. Computer Science is usually: (a) It's own department (b) Part of the science department (c) part of the engineering department (d) part of the mathematics department. I don't want to be really geeky, but... I did gather raw data on this in 2001 by going through every department at every unversity teaching computer science in the US as well as Australia. It was for a survey an unfortunately I only have the results online for those that responded - Australia [1] , and USA [2]. Beware small samples! (the original data as I said was from every department and collected via inspection of their websites) Oboler (talk) 05:07, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Totals as of 19-Aug-2008

7 Oppose
5 Support
1 Weak Support

— Johnl1479 16:54, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Support/Opposes comments copied to below poll data.The user may shift to appropriate vote if I am wrong in reading your comments. -- Tinu Cherian - 07:22, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Support

1. TinuCherian
2. Chet B. Long
3. Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haider Rizvi
4. Rursus
5. Zawersh
6. Oboler
7. Diego
8. Jiuguang
9. MattOates (Ulti)

Weak Support

1. ZeWrestler

Oppose

1. Adam McCormick
2. linas
3. Cybercobra
4. Johnl1479
5. Iknowyourider
6. SusanLesch

Closure of the Proposal : As the person who made this proposal , I am withdrawing this proposal for WP:COMP SC. Altough there is a greater support for the Intergated banner , I dont believe there is a consensus for the integrated banner migration for WP:Comp. Sc. Altough there is some pointy and ownership issues in some of the oppose reasons, I respect your valuable opinions. Having said that, we have done this integration successfully for other descendant projects like WP:SOFTWARE , WP:Comp Networking etc. Should anyone feel this proposal is still possible with consensus among the project members , this discussion may be opened anytime. Thanks for your time and valuable comments. -- Tinu Cherian - 11:59, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Network effects

I've just tagged Network effect, Metcalfe's law and Reed's law for WikiProject Economics. I'm guessing someone might want to tag them for this project as well. CRETOG8(t/c) 05:19, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Computer science

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:02, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Missionaries

If Civilized People Ever Send Missionaries To The Computer Scientists To Inform Them For The First Time That Lower [hyphen omitted] Case Initial Letters Exist And That Hyphens Exist, Would The Missionaries Be Killed Immediately Or Would They Be Allowed Any Last Words Before They Died? Michael Hardy (talk) 13:54, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

No last words: they'd be strung up high, next to the Schemers hung in dynamic-wind nooses -- sad old souls who'd used their last escape continuation. Tragic, really. (I hope you can figure out for yourself why hyphens are disallowed inside of identifiers in infix languages. As for initial lower-case characters, you betray your innocence: how could you have camelCase or posix_style without them?) --mgreenbe (talk) 15:10, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Well today I moved Crossing [no hyphen here] Based Interfaces (plural) to crossing-based interface (lower-case initials, hyphen included, singular). I've done things like that before. Am I in danger? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:19, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I've done tons of those, as well as tons of putting en dashes in things like Bose–Einstein condensate, and only rarely do I get any feedback or questioning. Dicklyon (talk) 18:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

So apparently they don't kill the missionaries; they just ignore them. I keep finding computer science articles called Something Based Something with no hyphen and all capitals, or Something Based Somethings—plural in disregard of WP:MOS's preference for singular. I think they must be taught to write that way in computer science courses. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:47, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I have not seen a disproportionate amount of these problems in CS; it's pervasive. Dicklyon (talk) 02:20, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

It really does happen far more frequently in computer science than in most fields. Also in business management articles and a few other topics. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:13, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I haven't noticed the phenomenon, but I once had to use the German version of Microsoft PowerPoint: The default setting is To Capitalise Every F*** Word, Even Though Nobody Ever Does This In German. It strikes me that the kind of article that you mentioned are exactly those that I would expect to have an unusally high percentage of PowerPoint users as editors. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:39, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

"Dubious reference" at Graph isomorphism

See Wikipedia:ANI#.22dubious_reference_....22.3F and the talk page of the article. The controversial content is about the ease/difficulty of computing isomorphism for regular graphs, so I thought this would be a good place to ask for help. VG ☎ 23:51, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Lambda calculus and friends

So there's lambda calculus, but there's also pages for untyped and typed versions, as well as simply typed and polymorphic...and and and. I would not suggest that we just have a single, big PTS page and give the different formation rules, but how do people feel about abstracting out some of the description? I see two options:

1. separate articles on syntax, operational semantics, and simple typing for the lambda calculus

   System F and the Calculus of Constructions can simply refer to those as necessary

2. one big article on lambda calculus (syntax, dynamic and static semantics)

   extensions can refer to sections in the lambda calculus page

Any bias either way? Is there a protocol for levels of abstraction in mathematical articles I don't know about? Do we want an infobox? (Various common properties: PTS rules in the lambda cube, confluence, strong normalization, seminal paper, etc.) If no one cares, I'm happy to be bold... --mgreenbe (talk) 13:02, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Untyped lambda calculus thankfully redirects to lambda calculus, which is what it should do. I see no problem having simply typed lambda calculus, System F, and CoC as separate articles. See the Lambda_cube article, which unfortunately lacks the obligatory picture. Adding a pictorial infobox for those calculi articles in the Lambda cube may be useful, but it's a fair bit of work. The article on general Typed lambda calculus is a bit difficult to follow, but stands on its own since it generalizes Lambda_cube. So, I'm not sure I understand your proposals. VG ☎ 14:58, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah...didn't see the redirect. So it's not as bad as I thought. But I mean that each of these articles, in order to be readable to non-experts, should include the syntax, semantics, and appropriate typing rules. I think the lambda cube and pure type system approaches are easy ways to understand the whole...after you've understood them. From a theoretical perspective, a single page on PTS with a discussion of various rules would suffice, but that's not useful to most encyclopedia readers. Likewise, it's important to have pages for individual points in the lambda cube.

Concretely, I was thinking we could try to unify the style and treatment of the lambda calculus across multiple articles, as there's a lot of redundancy at present. --mgreenbe (talk) 19:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Difference between this WikiProject and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computing?

I this WikiProject supposed to focus more on the theoretical side and WikiProject Computing on the hardware side? In practice I see a lot of redundancies, especially having two assessments for most articles. Perhaps the assessment processes of the two projects should be unified... VG ☎ 14:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you havent see the the discussion above ? -- Tinu Cherian - 10:17, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

VG, this project is supposed to focus on computer science (i.e. the study and the science of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems), while WP:Computing -- as the name suggests -- covers computing (i.e. "the activity of using and developing computer technology"). There is certainly some overlap between the two topic areas. And I suppose you could characterize the difference as focusing on "theory" vs. "hardware". However, my own preference is to view computing as focused on using computer technology (hardware, software, or a mix), and to view computer science as concerned with the fundamental properties of computation (which may have implications for computing, but also for biology, process planning, control systems design, and a host of other disciplines in which processes performing some kind of "computation" may be observed to exist). --Allan McInnes (talk) 20:52, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with making some distinction, but does the perspective matter so much that two reviews are necessary for each article? VG ☎ 15:38, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Ga Sweeps Reassessment of Functional Programming

Functional programming has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 23:20, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Where is this review taking place? I don't see it... VG ☎ 15:41, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, I found it. VG ☎ 15:43, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Scott Aaronson's theoretical computer science article improvement project

Scott Aaronson has launched a small project to improve Wikipedia's coverage of theoretical computer science topics: see this blog entry.

Here's a list of the topics on which he is soliciting contributions:

• Algorithmic game theory
• Algorithmic mechanism design
• Algorithms for matrix multiplication
• Arithmetic circuit complexity
• Average case complexity
• Circuit complexity
• Combinatorial auction
• Conductance (probability)
• Derandomization
• Discrete harmonic analysis
• Glauber dynamics
• Hardness of approximation
• List-decoding
• Locally decodable code
• Locally testable code
• Max-flow min-cut
• Metric embedding
• Model of computation
• Online algorithms
• Polynomial identity testing
• Polynomial-time hierarchy
• Price of anarchy
• Primal-dual approximation algorithm
• Probabilistically checkable proofs
• Property testing
• Propositional proof complexity
• Quantum computation
• Sketching algorithms
• Sparsest cut
• Streaming algorithms
• Unique games conjecture
• Worst case complexity
• Zero knowledge proof

—Preceding unsigned comment added by The Anome (talk • contribs)

Literacy issues

Some People Say It's Not Completely True That People In The Computer Science Field Don't Know That Lower [hyphen omitted] Case Initial Letters Exist. I Just Found This:

The term Customer Edge (CE) refers to the Router at the customer premises which is connected to the Provider Edge of a service provider IP/MPLS network.

Now Supposing We Grant That "Customer Edge" Requires Capital Initial Letters Because The Gods Of Computer Science Require That Particular Form Of Worship. That Still Leaves Not Only The Question Of Why Most Computer Science Articles Use Capital Letters In Section Headings In Disregard Of WP:MOS, But Also This: Observe The Word After The Phrase "refers to the".

Maybe The Pharmaceutical Industry Will Some Day Introduce A Drug To Treat This Condition. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:31, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I DON'T UNDERSTAND. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH THE ABOVE SENTENCE? IT READS PERFECTLY WELL TO ME. Raul654 (talk) 18:09, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

MustBeABadHabbitThatComesFromUsingTooMuchCamelCase. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 21:54, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

"Permanent is sharp-P-complete" proposed for deletion

Please see the article Permanent is sharp-P-complete and the deletion discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Permanent is sharp-P-complete.

A number of discussants feel that if the article were re-written to be about the theorem rather than about the proof then it could be saved. Michael Hardy (talk) 12:19, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Artificial Intelligence issues branching between WikiProjects

Hi CompSci people, I am an active member of WikiProject Robotics and as it turns out, we both have been trying to cover artificial intelligence in our respective WikiProjects! I found out recently that Wikipedia:WikiProject Artificial intelligence redirects here. I'd like to see what your thoughts are in regards to setting line if you will what types of AI should this WikiProject be covering and what types of articles WP:ROBO should focus on.

In other news, ANPR is up for Wikipedia:Featured article review/Automatic number plate recognition. Now this article currently is not a WP:WPCS article yet, but I would like some help rescuing this FA from being demoted. Any assistance would be helpful. Thanks. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ guestbook ♦ contribs} 05:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we really need to define a "line" at all. WPCS also naturally overlaps with parts of the Mathematics Wikiproject, but it's never been necessary to define a "line" there. We've always been able to successfully collaborate on those articles that happen to fall inside the overlap (which is ill-defined at best anyway). We tend to leave it up to individual project members to decide on a case-by-case basis whether they think a given article should be considered within the scope of the project. --Allan McInnes (talk) 21:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Great! I thought as much. I guess my response would be - do the members of this WikiProject consider ANPR a part of your WikiProject?  :-) - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ guestbook ♦ contribs} 09:17, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

LEGO Turing machine

IMHO very interesting "hardware implementation of a 'Turing machine'" constructed of LEGOs at Aarhus University by Mikkel Vester, Sean Geggie, Martin Have, and Anders Nissen
A blog about the project at http://legoofdoom.blogspot.com/2009/01/conclusion.html . Also includes demonstration video. Video also available on YouTube.
I understand that hardware implementations of Turing machines are not "real" Turing machines, nevertheless I think that many people would find an article about them interesting. Hardware implementations of the Turing Machine ??
-- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 00:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:11, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Programming language

Programming language has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. --Malleus Fatuorum 14:41, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

P=NP edits: Martin M. Musatov

Someone (probably Martin M. Musatov himself) has been disruptively editing Wikipedia articles with a purported solution (or something) of the P = NP problem, on articles such as: P = NP problem, P versus NP (newly created), Martin M. Musatov, and under many different accounts and addresses, including MartinMusatov (blocked), 76.91.204.240, 76.79.179.55, Libertyrights, and probably more accounts in the future. (The person has also been doing this outside Wikipedia, leaving comments on CS blogs etc.) I don't know the right way to deal with this; could someone look into the duplicate accounts? --Shreevatsa (talk) 03:25, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I've seen this guy around too, and warned him at least once. I suggest reporting this at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations, to start. Dcoetzee 03:29, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Looking for watchers for active queue management

The article Blue (queue management algorithm) had outstanding vandalism for 3 days, probably because of a small number of watchers. Please add it if interested. Dcoetzee 05:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:59, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Help with data structure template

Hi, I just created {{Data structures}} to aid with navigation in related articles. Please help populate the navbox with appropriate entries. I am going through Category:Data structures and List of data structures (which you can also help with) but now would be a good time to mention otherwise "hidden" topics. Ham Pastrami (talk) 04:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Pbit nominated for deletion

Please consider expressing your opinion in discussion about this article - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pbit. I think this nomination need more expert point of view.Mathel (talk) 20:12, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Long lists of external links

Many algorithm articles seem to contain extremely long lists of external links. I think this is against WP:EL: "long lists of links are not acceptable" + other points in the guideline. Often the links seem to be to sites which I normally wouldn't consider reliable sources. Links to Java applets, illustrations, etc. are completely unnecessary in my opinion. Most of the sites containing these would never pass WP:RS. I think we should cut down the external link sections to the bare minimum. Links to scientific publications should be strongly preferred over anything else. Offliner (talk) 04:07, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I think some amount of implementation pointers can be useful, but I agree that we tend to have too many of them. If you find some of these and don't have time to clean them out yourself or want a second opinion first, {{linkfarm}} is an appropriate tag to use. But I don't think links to scientific publications should be in the external links section: if they're good enough to include they should be good enough to use as actual references rather than links. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:17, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

What I think should definitely be removed outright without a question: 1) links to personal blogs, 2) links to personal websites of non-notable persons, 3) links to implementations by non-notable persons. There seems to be a lot of linking to source code written by "some unknown guy in the Internet." According to WP:EL the linked sites should be reliable: (Links normally to be avoided:) Any site that misleads the reader by use of factually inaccurate material or unverifiable research. See Reliable sources for explanations of the terms "factually inaccurate material" or "unverifiable research" Many sites/projects linked to are of completely unknown reliability. Sure, having links to various implementations is useful, but is it encyclopedic? Why not just let the reader google up such materials himself? Offliner (talk) 22:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Source code written by editors

I've noticed that many articles seem to contain source code that is written by Wikipedia editors. I feel that including code written by editors is completely against all Wikipedia guidelines, such as WP:NOR. One might argue, that source code is an illustration of the article subject, much like self-taken photographs or self-made SVGs that are widely used in WP. But I think that still does not excuse us from ignoring very basic Wikipedia guidelines. I'd say that the only case when we should include source code in articles is when we can directly copy it from a free reliable source.

This seems like a very important subject - has this been discussed before somewhere? Or maybe there is some kind of guideline for including source code that I'm unaware of? Offliner (talk) 22:31, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Offliner asked me look at this as an outsider. I've looked at some of the articles in question, and they are for the most part unsourced. The articles are failing a core policy, that being of verifiability. Everything that appears in Wikipedia articles need to be published in a reliable source and cited that others can verify it. If it isn't sourced, it is valid for {{fact}} and ultimate removal if sources aren't forthcoming. If sources can't be found it constitutes original research, and that is most definitely not allowed. As this is obviously affecting a lot of articles by the looks of it, discussion at village pump may be in order to get wider input into what clearly looks like a problem. --Russavia ^Dialogue 22:51, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Next we'll be outlawing articles that contain prose written by Wikipedia editors, I suppose, and only allowing Wikipedia articles to contain text that has already been published by a free reliable source? This is not intended purely as sarcasm: often code or pseudocode is the clearest way to describe an algorithm, and copying someone else's code is in most cases a copyright violation. So how do you expect us to proceed? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:52, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any exception in WP:NOR, WP:V or WP:RS that would allow us to write source code ourselves and claim that it correctly implements the algorithm that is the subject of the article. I'm not sure what exactly we should do, that is why I'd like to see some discussion. But I'd say we need to do the obvious: give a ref for every piece of source code in Wikipedia, make sure that it is from a reliable source and that it is not a copyright violation. Offliner (talk) 23:02, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it needs to be taken to a higher level (village pump). In some ways, it's more similar to creating an image (say, a map or a graph) for posting on Wikipedia. tedder (talk) 23:18, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I posted on WP:VPM also: [3]. Offliner (talk) 23:42, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any exception in those policies that lets us write prose ourselves, either. And yet we do anyway. How is it different to be writing in, say, Python, than in English? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:51, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

We are allowed to write prose ourselves if it contains the same information which is published in the cited reliable source. But as I have pointed out, most source code examples do not cite their sources at all. Writing Python is very different from writing English, I think. If you write a sentence in English, it is easy for anyone to check if it corresponds to what is said in the reliable source. For Python code, this is not the case. Also note, that including source code as an example for an algorithm amounts to making the claim "this code correctly implements the algorithm," which is OR if the code is written by an editor and no source is given for it. Offliner (talk) 23:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

It is preferable to include code or pseudocode from a reliable source. However, "real code" includes lots of distracting details that we don't need for exposition, and code from books is typically non-free and substantial enough to invalidate a fair use claim. Thus it makes perfect sense for editors to write their own code. This does have the unfortunate consequence that editors frequently introduce errors into code snippets. The analogy with prose is appropriate: a person can examine the pseudocode in a reliable source, compare it to the pseudocode/code in an article, and see that they implement the same algorithm. Dcoetzee 00:02, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I can write an image in a markup language. Does that mean we need to have refs for every graph or map or image that has been created for Wikipedia? In any case, not everything needs to be sourced: WP:V says "Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or the material may be removed." That makes me think a straightforward python program doesn't need to be cited. However, if it is challenged, we are back at the same position. tedder (talk) 00:03, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

(some replies below merged back from Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Source_code_written_by_editors)

We have long accepted this, along with simples examples in mathematical and scientific articles. Remember that WP:V only requires sources for things that are challenged or likely to be challenged. Simple, short examples are fine. The Bellman-Ford algorithm article has a lot of problems, but there are many other articles that are not problematic. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:02, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Most of the source code I've seen wouldn't qualify as a simple, short example. Also, what about WP:COS? "This policy does not prohibit editors with specialist knowledge from adding their knowledge to Wikipedia, but it does prohibit them from drawing on their personal knowledge without citing their sources." WP:NOT#HOWTO might also be relevant. Offliner (talk) 23:35, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

My opinion is that if it is on WP, it needs to have been published by a reliable source previous to its insertion, otherwise it is original research, regardless of whether it is likely to be challenged or not. That of course is just my opinion. Does fair use apply for code/calculations, given that this is an educational setting after all? --Russavia ^Dialogue 23:33, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

While there is often too much source code in articles, simple examples can often be helpful and don't violate policy. The fact that some piece of code performs a stated computation is a matter of mathematical fact. Given the algorithm or concept described (which should have references in the prose) and the definition of the language (which should be referenced in the linked page for the language) the example can be verified. This is not OR in the same way that "22.3/5 = 4.46" or "this sentence contains the word example" is not OR. However, many of the existing C examples are overly complicated for what they are trying to show. Using psuedocode is better in case of algorithms, or much shorter examples for illustrating other concepts, "this an example of a recursive lambda-term" for example. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 23:46, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

The fact that some piece of code performs a stated computation is a matter of mathematical fact. Could be, but is it an obvious fact? If you think the code in Bellman-Ford algorithm is correct, could you provide us a sample mathematical proof? It might take a while to do that. It seems to me that you are implying that the burden of evidence does not lie on the editor who inserts the code. It seems to me that you are saying that anyone can write some code, insert it to an article claiming that it correctly implements the algorithm that is the subject of the article, without having to provide a source or any direct evidence for this claim, simply because "the fact that some piece of code performs a stated computation is a matter of mathematical fact." Offliner (talk) 00:24, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

As I've written in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer science, my position is that, as code snippets are used here, they are not significantly different from writing prose, or maybe more like writing chemical formulas or mathematical equations: they are a way of expressing ideas for other people to read, in a language that is more precise than English. We don't forbid people to write a mathematical formula unless that formula has already appeared in a reliable source. We don't forbid people to write an English sentence unless that sentence has already appeared in a reliable source (in fact, it's the opposite, we prefer not to plagiarize). By the same token we should not forbid people from writing code snippets that do not come from other sources. In the specific example given, Bellman-Ford algorithm, I would keep the pseudocode but delete the longer C implementation, not because it's original research but because it's long and redundant and doesn't add any useful content to the article for the human reader. That is, it's not a WP:OR issue but a WP:NOT issue: Wikipedia is not a code repository, so if the algorithm has already been clearly described to a human reader in pseudocode then there's no point in keeping the C code. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:55, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I removed the C source code from the Bellman-Ford algorithm page. Some other people may want to put that page on their watchlist. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:25, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

As examples of short code snippets that are short and not hard to verify by eyes, see Halting problem, Smn theorem, and Kleene's recursion theorem. One could complain about the latter two using lisp, but not about the code being original or hard to check. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:28, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

What do you think of the code in Red-black tree? It is long, detailed and hard to check. One of the cited references (Cormen) has the full pseudocode, but the code in the article is C, and it is probably written by an editor on the basis of the textbook pseudocode. Offliner (talk) 00:38, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

The final piece, about tail recursion loop optimization, should be left out; it's quite long and on a topic somewhat tangential to the overall article. The other pieces are individually quite short, and would be easy to verify from any book that explains the algorithm. Moreover, I do not think that the article would become any clearer to read if those short code fragments were replaced by English alone. So I would say we should remove the last big block and leave the others. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:42, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Those snippets are mine, and I agree (I did not write the large one). The code is based in a straightforward manner on the referenced lecture notes, and in fact was written to roughly parallel those notes in structure. At the time I wrote it in C mainly so that I could verify its correctness with testing, but it may have become stale due to incorrect edits since then. Dcoetzee 01:41, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Please Note When Preparing Any Work Here The Below

An Open Letter to the Moral and Scientific Community:

A Quote:

"If smart people all had Ph.D.'s we would not have light bulbs." --Martin Musatov speaking on American Entrepreneur and Innovator Thomas Edison

Preface: "Computational Complexity"

So much of what I have seen since I have began studying computational complexity simply amazes me. I have come from an outsiders perspective peering into this vast new world where obvious things hide themselves and complex things take center stage to be studied like pellets of sand beneath a microscope. I will say this one thing: I have never been treated with more disdain in an academic setting. I have had M.I.T. Assistant Professor Scott Aaronson publicly threaten to contact my Internet Service Provider and call me a "goon" for disproving his theorem publicly. I have been called a "troll" and "couch boy" the latter I have no idea what the colloquial means. I have had my I.P. address blocked from contributing to Wikipedia and have been sent threatening emails from Wikipedia administrators saying, "Wikipedia doesn't need you." Since I began pursuing my proof of computational complexity my Wikipedia profile for my work as a screenwriter (which had remained untouched for the better part of three years) was immediately flagged as "non-notable" and deleted. And all because the mathematics and code I was inputting was too advanced for wiki language to swallow without causing system problems and offending apparently some very sensitive people. And all over a tiny little problem in theoretical computer science called P=NP.

Basically, as the case may certainly be there seem to be a lot of people out there absolutely insistent that "P" does not equal "NP". But I have to wonder, if it is only theory we are debating here, what is so vested by this people that they defend an insistent of an impossibility as if it were the holy grail? It just does not make sense to me. I will say this, especially, it does not make sense to argue that something such as P equals NP has to be impossible. If it were true there are well documented published articles such as this one in the Boston Globe which blatantly list all the potential benefits we might experience if the scientific community would accept P=NP. The list includes advances in "Protein Folding" which could spur unprecedented growth and advances in biological research which may well include cures for diseases like cancer and H.I.V. So dare I say, why are noted professors at top universities such as Scott Aaronson at M.I.T. and Stephen Arthur Cook at the University of Toronto so insistent of its impossibility? What could be so motivating as one would defend such a contrary position to which being contrariety holds no obvious benefit for society at large. The elephant in the room seems to be that this argument has been raging and churning for years ever since Stephen Cook invented the class "NP-Complete" back in 1970.

My goal, my dream, in pursuing a proof that P=NP was not to win a million dollars and notoriety, but to help the people in the world use the technology to better take care of themselves and their families. My goals personally are to help my young niece who just had an implant put in her ear so she could hear better and to spur advances in cancer research as my uncle and Godfather Michael Schultz was in the last month diagnosed with kidney and bone cancer. So still, I continue on, every morning pursuing the solution despite the animosity and ignorance.

My dreams are simply bigger than theirs. My dreams are not to predict the S&P 500 and compromise the security of banks by collapsing known elements of cryptography. My dreams are that a young researcher in Tibet working by himself may uncover a cure for cancer that no one had seen. My goal is that a hobby mechanic in rural Russia with access to the Internet will invent a hybrid computer driven engine which will best all the struggling automakers who we continue to float financially like giant sick whales out to sea. My dream is that the academic community would allow open access to citizens at large and not simply the ones who can afford the prestigious school tuition. The basis of my plea: history has shown it to be the best path.

With only three months of formal education he became one of the greatest inventors and industrial leaders in history. Edison obtained 1,093 United States patents, the most issued to any individual.

Call this my prayer or call it my plea it is my cry to the scientific community and to God in heaven can we please work together here and accomplish some good in the world instead of warbled disagreement? My last thought is to ask yourself why would anyone insist on the absolute impossibility of something that could bring so much good to the world?

Quotes by Thomas Edison:

"Hell, there are no rules here we're trying to accomplish something."

"I didn't fail ten thousand times. I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times, materials and combination which wouldn't work."

"I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others."

"I am more of a sponge than an inventor. I absorb ideas from every source. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others."

"Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the one thing that he can't afford to lose."

"I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it."

"I have more respect for the fellow with a single idea who gets there than for the fellow with a thousand ideas who does nothing."

Thank you for reading this letter. If you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to contact me through the publisher.

Warmest regards, Martin Michael Musatov

Note to Editor: You have to wonder with stories like these, could there be something more to this whole element that as to yet remains unseen.

VAST SPY SYSTEM LOOTS COMPUTERS IN 103 COUNTRIES... (N.Y. Times, Front Page) Canadians find network... (AP News) Posted by M-Wave at 8:16 AM 0 comments