Talk:Fortinet/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Falcon Kirtaran (talk · contribs) 09:13, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

   The only sticking point I have with this article on this criterion is the bullet list after "Fortinet products include the following categories". It doesn't seem to be a covered case under Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Embedded lists exactly, but I think this article would be stronger if the list were replaced per WP:USEPROSE. Many of the items in the list subsume later headings, and of course this could guide the development of prose. The list contents might actually be completely superfluous; consider selecting just the major product lines.

Agreed. I might be misrepresenting or forgetting something, but I ?think? @Timtempleton:'s influence was the reason for a "comprehensive" list of product categories? (Timtempleton please correct me if I'm wrong) Whereas I tend to think any long list is usually an indiscriminate collection of information and a complete list of products is too much like a product brochure. The list could probably be replaced with "IT security, networking hardware, and other technology products"? I also got the impression Timtempleton may have some subject-matter expertise and their input could be invaluable, so I'd like to see if they chime in. CorporateM (Talk) 19:02, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

In reading the proposed article again, I think prose would be better than a list also. I'm not that familiar with Fortinet and which lines are more successful/relevant for them, but I do understand the product categories and their functions. Typically if I write a product section I open with a concise summary overview of all the product categories, and add sections below to go into more detail for the more notable products and services. That saves the casual reader from having to read the entire product section to see if the info they want is there. The rest of the products - those that are maybe not as thoroughly sourced - would go into an "Other" category, similar to how you have it now, except the "Other" section would be the last item. The way you have it now "Security" and "Networking and wireless" come after "Other" - maybe if the security and networking/wireless products are notable enough they should come before? There's also a little repetition when you say twice they are best known for FortiGate. I don't want to clutter up this review with a lot of info, so I'll write something and put it on the talk page as a suggestion.Timtempleton (talk) 20:08, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I drafted a suggestion for the product section and put it in the talk page.[[1]]Timtempleton (talk) 20:37, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Both drafts of the products section resolve the MoS issues; I'll change this to a yes once changes are merged into article space. FalconK (talk) 04:51, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

1. Is it verifiable with no original research?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:

   If anything, there are a few too many references. I appreciate that, unlike so many articles on companies lately, this article stays clear of reliance on press releases and about-us pages. The vast majority of the citations are to high-quality reliable sources and it succeeds in establishing notability. There is no overreliance on primary sources. Almost every non-obvious statement of fact is referenced at least once.

There are two sentences with excessive citations:

• "The operating system has been continually updated throughout the years.[85][86][87][88][89][90][91]"
• "Fortinet continued to release new controllers, features, and FortiGate firewalls for business of different sizes.[58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70]"

These are both the result of substantial trimming from an earlier version, where each citation covered a separate sentence originally and the result of summarizing all of those sources is essentially Original Synthesis and an immense list of sources. My instinct is not to delete so many good sources, but I'm open to just deleting the sentences too. CorporateM (Talk) 19:08, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I see that your new draft removes them, which is fine - it's not a blocking issue either way. FalconK (talk) 04:51, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

1. C. It contains no original research:

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

2. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   The article is very detailed! I can tell exactly who they are, where they came from, and what they are doing, in what context.

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

   The products section is very, very detailed, and conveys marketing tenor by using terms like "flagship" and "helps" a lot; this makes it feel a little more like sales literature than I'm entirely comfortable with, though it isn't so terrible as to eclipse the usefulness of the article. I'm also concerned that the level of detail on reviews of products (number of stars and specific comments for nearly each one) is too high. I don't think the table of products is strictly appropriate. Other sections are free from unnecessary detail.

Good point - the amount of press coverage on individual product releases and reviews is overwhelming. I think what I was going for is just when a new product family/category was introduced and one review for each family, so we were summarizing product families, but not individual products (I believe this is established best practices to summarize product families, but not individual products). I removed "flagship" and "help" and will give it a fresh lookover to see what I can trim. CorporateM (Talk) 19:15, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I have put some proposed trims here. I kept the star-counts on reviews as that's the highest level summary of the review, but trimmed detailed pro/con accounts, trimmed reviews from publication for a specific industry or market (like Federal Computer Week) and focused more on competitive reviews, which are generally more authoritative, reviews by SC Magazine (I believe the most authoritative source in the IT security industry) and so on. That draft also indicates trimming the products table. Overall that would reduce the Products section a good 20-30% at least. Naturally, those trims would reduce both positive and negative material and as a conflicted editor I am not authorized to make them directly per WP:COI, so hopefully either the GA reviewer or Timtempleton might take the initiative to take a look? CorporateM (Talk) 19:50, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

At first blush it does look like the removals remove slightly more negative information than positive, but I think all the removed information is indeed superfluous. Since both @CorporateM: and @Timtempleton: have proposed drafts, it would be great if the two of you could merge them together (they largely remove and condense different things). CorporateM, I really appreciate your efforts to comply with WP:COI - in light of this, perhaps Timtempleton could be the one to accept the revisions as reconciled? Once they get into article space I think we can resolve this criterion. FalconK (talk) 04:51, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Just made some changes and commented on the talk page about COI.Timtempleton (talk) 01:01, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

1. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

   With the exception of the aforementioned review issue, I don't see a lot of trouble here. Negative information is presented equally and not minimised, though the article does have a distinctly positive slant overall.

2. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

3. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

4. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   On the whole, this is very close to GA status. There are only a couple points to address, but they are significant. If the product language is changed to be somewhat less laden, and the list is fixed, I think this would make a GA.

   • Good job, both of you! This article is even better than I'd hoped it would be now - you've taken it from well-formed but mainly promotional and financial content to an equally well-formed and informative article. Thanks! FalconK (talk) 09:33, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

This must be a joke. Is Wikipedia an encyclopedia or an advertising platform? Wikipedia is regarded as a source of impartial information, and our volunteer contributions contribute to that reputation. But this case tells me that we tolerate paid editing, which is disclosed on the talk page but not to the average reader. Totally unethical and I don't particularly want to help build a project that is surreptitiously used by advertisers as a vehicle for promotion. User:CorporateM should be indefinitely banned per WP:NOT. Citobun (talk) 10:02, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

• I feel conflicted about WP:COI editors too, but CorporateM followed the procedures laid out at WP:COIPAYDISCLOSE. Have you found significant or substantial problems with the article's neutrality as a result of the contributor's involvement? FalconK (talk) 10:51, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Products Section

I've been super busy with school and today is the first time I've had a chance to re-check-in. If I'm following this correctly, @Timtempleton: incorporated their draft products section (discussed above) here? I haven't compared his/her version to the prior one, or the trimmed draft I produced, but did notice that the Products section now has about 15 sections and is dominating the table of contents. I think it would be more appropriate as 3-5 sections. Usually it's seen as promotional to have a lot of dedicated sections for individual products or families, much like the opposite of people that make dedicated controversy sections. CorporateM (Talk) 20:39, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

• I think I agree; unless there is more than a sentence or two to say about a given product, it probably doesn't need its own section. FalconK (talk) 23:29, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
• We edited on top of each other. I think it's easier to consolidate info once it's been flushed out than the other way around. The thing I didn't like about your version was one had to read the whole product section to find info on a specific product. Perhaps there's a middle ground. Please note that I put fortigate first, and then I alphabetized the other products, but left the products that you had in the security and networking categories. I also deleted all of the content that you deleted in your version. I guess another way of looking at it is – are these products significant enough to be mentioned on the menu. If not, should they even be mentioned at all? I'm not an expert on their products and I'm just trying to help with the article.Timtempleton (talk) 23:42, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

One way of evaluating which products are worth mentioning might be those with in-depth reviews. The rest could be just mentioned, not by name, but in a manner like "also has products for wireless network security, data center security..." That could trim it down quite a bit more and make you more comfortable with fewer sections. CorporateM (Talk) 21:57, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

@Timtempleton: and @CorporateM:, any chance of getting this resolved sometime this week? I'd hate to have this pending forever. FalconK (talk) 10:27, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

I can take a look later this week and see what can be done to decrease the number of products. I will need to look up all the coverage for each product to see which ones are more notable, which will take some time.Timtempleton (talk) 00:03, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

I took a first shot at shortening the products section below, just before getting an edit conflict. The below would trim it substantially and bring it down from 15 to 2 sub-sections, through a mix of eliminating blurb reviews, trimming less significant products, general trims, etc. Not sure if this is what you were looking for though, or if a different direction was expected. CorporateM (Talk) 00:12, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Good start - thanks - you saved me some time. After taking a few weeks off and rereading with a fresh eye, I think all the detailed product reviews are out of place here. There's so much product info for so many different products, the reviews make it too cluttered. The sources certainly are reliable but none is earthshattering in importance enough to justify the clutter. I kept a few of the links as citations, in case interested readers want to learn more, but I removed all the review text. This will also reassure anyone trying to flag the article for COI. I moved the FortiOS to its own section, since that controls FortiGate also. I added the name FortiSwitch to the switching platform section. I fixed a typo in the first sentence of the FortiDDOS line. I clarified that the 2013 firewall ASIC functionality introduction was a feature added to FortiGate, not a standalone product, based on the source you used. I almost started trying to separate this into hardware versus software, which is probably a more intuitive grouping, but don't want perfect to get in the way of better.

Nice work! That does look much better at-a-glance length-wise. Wanna throw it into article-space? I just consolidated some of the paragraphs. CorporateM (Talk) 21:35, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

DoneI also removed the slogan parameter from the infobox - there was a recent motion to remove it from the template.Timtempleton (talk) 18:01, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Product section

Products Fortinet develops and markets IT security and networking hardware and software. It is best known for the FortiGate family of security appliances, which combine many cybersecurity functions. According to a 2015 report by IT analyst firm The Dell'Oro Group, Fortinet had an eight percent market-share of the IT security appliance market by revenue in 2014, up from 2.9 percent in 2012. This makes it the fourth-largest vendor in the industry. According to Fortinet, its users are 35% small businesses, 28% enterprises and 37% large companies. FortiGate Fortinet's FortiGate family of unified threat management physical and virtual appliances include a number of security functions like firewalls, intrusion prevention, web-filters and protection from malware or spam. The family includes products for small businesses and branch offices, as well as for large enterprises, data centers and internet service providers. It also sells Next Generation Firewalls (NGFW), which Gartner defines as being a product that combines firewall, VPN, intrusion prevention and other security features. Fortinet's first product was the FortiGate 3000, released in October 2002, which had a throughput of 3 gigabytes per second (GB/s). The 5000 family was released two years later. According to The International Directory of Company Histories, Fortinet's early products for small businesses and branch offices, were well received by the industry. In early 2013, Fortinet added firewall functionality to the Fortigate appliance, designed for internal networks and relying on special-purpose ASICs. The FortiGate virtual appliance was later added to the Amazon Web Services in 2014. In April 2016, Fortinet announced the Fortinet Security Fabric, which is intended to allow third-party devices to share information with Fortinet appliances and software through APIs. It also introduced the FortiGate 6040E 320Gbit/s firewall, which includes the new CP9 ASIC that takes on some processing tasks from the main CPU, and was used in future FortiGate releases. Other products Fortinet provides numerous other software and hardware products, including more than one dozen other products for switching, desktops, VOIP services, DNS, user authentication and other applications. The company's FortiAnalyzer software offers reporting features for Fortinet products, including event logging, security reporting and analysis. FortiClient is an endpoint security product for desktops, phones, and other devices. FortiClient VPN software was first released in April 2004. The FortiGuard antispam and the FortiMail messaging security products were first released in February 2005. FortiManager, the company's software for data center security, was first introduced in April 2003. Fortinet introduced its database security product family in 2008. Fortinet's FortiSwitch switching platforms were first introduced in 2009 and its application delivery controllers in August 2013. In October 2010, Fortinet released virtual software versions of its FortiGate, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer and FortiMail appliances. It updated the FortiCloud management system in August 2015. A software-defined networking offering was introduced in September 2015. Fortinet produces and markets wireless versions of its FortiGate product called FortiWifi, which was first in March 2004. Fortinet introduced a new family of cloud-based wireless access points in August 2015. The FortiDDoS product family was introduced in March 2014. Operating system FortiOS is the operating system that runs Fortinet's equipment. In December 2003, Fortinet released FortiOS 2.8, which added 50 new features to the operating system.

Timtempleton (talk) 19:13, 24 October 2016 (UTC)