Softtest123

Church-Turing thesis, history etc.

Yes, go for any additions and changes you want to make. The way I look at it is: nothing is really gone (as it resides in the history). There seem to be a few others with a lot of interest in this and other topics in theoretical computer science, in particular you may see edits (of yours and my stuff) by CBM (another PhD, I believe he's a recursion theorist) who has risen in the ranks of wikipedia to become a kind of super-editor. He is not shy about editing out stuff but he is always very polite and explains why he did it on the article's talk page (see the Recursion theory talk page for a recent example). wvbaileyWvbailey 16:49, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi, wvbailey here. Martin Davis 1965 (a student of Post and Kleene -- he's still quite alive and kicking -- we've actually corresponded about the origin of phrase ("the Halting problem" (he is the originator)) is the editor of "The Undecidable: Basic Papers on Undecidable Propositions, Unsolvable Problems and Computable Functions". He assembled the papers from the various journals, had translated for him when necessary (e.g. Godel 1931), and then added commentary to the various articles of Godel, Church, Turing J.B. Rosser, Stephen C. Kleene and Emil Post. In the process he had contacts with those who where alive at the time (in particular: Godel). Some of his correspondence is almost as famous as the original articles themselves. So sometimes the article is the source of the quotation, and sometimes Davis's comentary is the source of the quotation, and sometimes Godel's (in particular) responses to Davis's queries is the source of the quations. Something similar happened to van Heijenoort when he was doing a similar task. Hope this helps: wvbaileyWvbailey 23:17, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I've had a hard time with "The Undecidable" citations too. One way I've done them is something like this (which seems to me the best way, but the most laborious):

(Gödel in Davis 1965:24)

And perhaps when Davis is commenting, something like this:

"Dr. Gödel has stated in a letter that that he was, at the time of these lectures, not at all convinced that his concept of recursion comprised all possible recursions . . .."(Davis in Davis 1965:40)

I believe I've also done it this way -- put a note at the top of the page that "U" in the citations indicates reference to The Undecidable, so you could then do either of these (this method is maybe better when you have a bunch of co-authors or long names like (Whitehead and Russell (1910) in van Heijenoort 1967:216):

(Gödel in U:24), or more vaguely (U:24)

I suppose any of these are okay so long as the reader can figure out where to look up the quote. wvbaileyWvbailey 13:51, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

DTSS

Hi. You asked about, "the first timesharing system [] developed by a joint effort between General Electric and Dartmouth. I presume that would be the Thayer School of Engineering."

Dartmouth, but not specifically Thayer. Kemeny and Kurtz were professors in the math department:

"The Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, or DTSS for short, was the first large-scale time-sharing system to be implemented successfully. Its implementation began at Dartmouth College in 1963 by a student team under the direction of John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz with the aim of providing easy access to computing facilities for all members of the college. By 1964 the system was in use where it remained so until the end of 1999. DTSS was originally implemented to run on a GE-200 series computer with a GE Datanet 30 as a terminal processor that also managed the 235."

—wwoods 16:23, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. What the person wrote above is correct. And the history goes way back. With regards to George Stibitz (also see the Valley News article that I typed in on that article's talk page) I took a photo a couple weeks ago of the brass plaque in McNutt Hall at Dartmouth College. The plaque reads as follows:

"In this building on September 9, 1940, George Robert Stibitz then a mathematician with Bell Telephone Laboratories first demonstrated the remote operation of an electrical digital computer. Stibitz, who conceived the electrical digital computer in 1937 at Bell Laboratories, described his invention of the "Complex Number Calculator" at a meeting of the Mathematical Association of America held here. Members of the audience transmitted problems to the computer at Bell Labs in New York City, and in seconds received solutions transmitted from the computer to a teletypewriter in this hall."

What Stibitz invented (1936-7) was the binary (relay) adder. Turing must have heard about it when he was at Princeton and he built himself a binary multiplier (Davis 2000. Stibitz' use of a teletype was apparently the first instance of a "time sharing" use of a computer. By the time I arrived on the campus (1966) the folks who were funding this was ARPA or DARPA as it was known then -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They had an on-staff retired general or colonel or something like that who was ensconced in the Kiewit Computation Center (now demolished). As I remember, the time sharing computer was in the basement of either in McNutt or a hall next door. About midway through fall of my freshman year (1966-67) the Kiewit Computation Center was finished and everything moved over there (I knew Kemeney but didn't have him for a prof). Two research/design projects I did when I was at Dartmouth and then Thayer School were funded by DARPA. Some of the Seven Sisters' colleges (I know for certain this included Mount Holyoke, and most likely Smith College) were also linked via teletype, as were all the local high schools. The historical connection between this and the Internet as we know it is unclear to me, but they are connected. wvbaileyWvbailey 18:19, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

It is interesting that the main article makes no reference to General Electric's contributions to that effort. Later GE commercialized that effort making it available through its Information Systems Division. in the late 70's, I designed the "CRD-8" microprogrammable synchronous communications controller that was key to operation of what was later known as the "backbone" of GE's timesharing network. It was capable of handling 4 voice grade lines up to 57 KB per line, but of course the voice grade lines in reality could only handle about 50 KB. GE, having sold its process control division to Honeywell, commissioned Honeywell to build data concentrators, MRC, and RC (Mini-remote concentor, remote concentrator.)

Too bad Wikipedia does not allow "original reseach" so that it could include what those of us that were there saw with our own eyes.

Softtest123 15:29, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Adding facts that you happen to know from personal experience isn't a problem, as long as you don't add personal theories about them. Ideally, having some documentation to corroborate your statements would be good, but this stuff doesn't sound likely to be controversial. (Just don't dwell on the underappreciated importance of the CRD-8, or the brilliance of its designer.) If in doubt, tell your version on the talk page, and see if someone else can pick up the ball.

—wwoods 20:22, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind.

I'm not particularly interesting in promoting the CRD-8 or any of the professional work that I have done. I have, however, had occassion to observe quite a bit of computing history in the last 49 years. <grin>

21:31, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure the above is true. Example: I contacted Martin Davis directly to ask him he was the source of the phrase "the halting problem". I had traced the phrase to him via a proof in a book of his, a proof without citation. In an e-mail to me he confessed his crime. I pasted this into the talk page. But it was inadmissable in the court of wikipedia -- when I entered, in the halting problem article, a weasel-worded sentence to the effect that "Martin Davis claims to have coined the phrase" it was challenged and expunged (in my opinion: rightfully so; I was curious to see what I could get away with). Eventually someone found a footnote in a book that answered exactly the same question exactly the same way. I journeyed to the library, verified the quote in the book and entered it with a proper citation, and thus it remains evermore as a footnote in the article. I believe that the rule is this: if you didn't read it in a book or article that can be found by someone and fact-checked, it is not admissible in the article article. But it can sit on the talk page and maybe a reader will make a kindly/helpful suggestion (as happened in my example). Similar cases have happened more than once to me (e.g. busy beaver). The talk page proves to be very useful this way. wvbaileyWvbailey 21:03, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Huh! We collided again! I'm learning how to merge these things in, though.

I'll bet the rule has to do with hearsay, or some such. And the controversial nature of it.Softtest123 21:31, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's their official policy statement:

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed."

"It would seem to me that, according to this wiki-rule, the information must be "publically accessible", i.e. not in the inaccessible/private/hidden-away files of some company or some personal collection; rather, the info should be locatable in a public library or the equivalent. Don't get me wrong: I don't agree with everything that wikipedia promulgates. But I try to find "peer-reviewed" stuff, or real physical evidence (e.g. photograph of), and I assume that anything that is in a book or a magazine in a library is more-or-less (kind of, hopefully sort of) "peer-reviewed". A strict adherence to "Bill's rule" leads to misgivings about web-available papers of such folks as Gurevich at Microsoft; the papers are published internally at Microsoft but available to the public and thus some are not peer-reviewed. But sometimes I break the rules, esp. with regards to Gurevich. There are also problems when someone is pushing their very Non-Neutral Point Of View and citing weird sources/information as "truths" (e.g. Nazi propaganda -- 2 years ago I ran into this on the Hilbert article. The guy was finally blocked. He had been using "sock puppets" from public computer terminals and got caught. He started spouting vile stuff in German...'twas a horrible episode)). wvbaileyWvbailey 00:18, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the operative word there is "may". First person knowledge "may" remain in an article if it adds to the article and is not "controversial". Just about anything can be controversial and if it is and cannot be verified, then it probably shouldn't be left in.

I just started reading a book about the origins of phrases and had to put it down because it was so badly written. Lots of references listed at the end of the book, but none cited. <tsk. tsk.>

Anyway, there is enough work on Wikipedia to keep me as busy as I want to be without writing anything new. If I write something new, I'll get it published, then cite it in Wikipedia. <ho ho ho>

Softtest123 04:47, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

An awesome job

I quickly re-read the Church-Turing thesis history. The amount of work you did was really awesome. One of these days I'll go through and check the quotes and citations. Because someone stole the last two volumes of Godel's complete works from the Dartmouth library I have not been able to verify some other important quotes that I'm aware of, so they are not in the article. Wow, what a nice job!

Another topic, I was reading your bio and observed that you are code-checking theorist. Here's another, related problem. Actually: pretty scary problem, there's even an international standard related to this (I can't remember the number, IEC 950?). The dangerous stuff we built (plasma cutters) had one little scary problem that we could not seem to work around -- eventually they had to start (!) Someone had to push a button. Scary thought: I saw once and only once (and so did someone else), 20 years ago, a plasma machine start up on its own. Some glitch somewhere, set it off all on its own. My first eye-witness of the aftermath of an industrial accident -- in a coal mine, a miner was sucked under a coal-digger machine when it started up on its own (some fool didn't turn off the main power -- the guy lost his legs, we were there nearby doing something else and helped in the rescue).

In the last couple years of my work I got involved in various litigations (had to testify in a Canadian lawsuit, for instance) that happened because of human errors. But the potential for machine-made errors always really bothered me. AT the very end, I was researching a scheme for a Motorola MC68HC05 micro to self-check by running, periodically, a computation (I had it runnning a tiny random number generator)... the point being that if something was wrong with the guts of the micro, it would produce bad numbers, and (somehow, there had to be a internal scheme to detect this, force a loop, or whatever, and ) an external watchdog equipped with a flip-flop would then catch the "hang" and disable the machine (we always used external watchdogs together with the internal one, at least we had that). But all this had to be done cleverly, so that the "hanging" would not be fooled .... Did you ever run into anything like that? I got to the point where I was simulating the entire micro on a spreadsheet -- I mocked up the entire micro and ran tests on it, forcing bits high or low and seeing what would happen. The only work in that direction that I know of, I saw on the web that at Stanford where E. J. McCluskey (we called him McFlip-Flop) had a team in the early 2000's working on this sort of thing. wvbaileyWvbailey 18:03, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Not an uncommon problem when the power-on feature of a system is computer driven, i.e., the internal computer that detects the "on" switch being depressed and issues the "system on" command. There is a basic problem in the software development side of programmable systems development rooted in the culture of software development: "A hardware problem is not my problem." I will be writing more on this in the next few weeks on a different wiki and I'll let you know. This is not autonomic. I have designed and implemented an operating system for malfunctioning systems.

In the process control business it was common for us to lock up a computer when a system failure was detected and a "dead-man" timer would trigger and reactivate the processes on a standby machine. Somehow we seemed to have lost that technology.

Your technique works well when the system being monitored is designed to work with a monitor, but not otherwise. There is a fault injection technique that works quite well for determining how well a program works and responds to system failures. See Appendix G of my Ph.D. Dissertation.

Thanks for the kudos, but my work was just cleanup for your excellent research work. The article is quite long and probably could be decomposed some more. The desire is that articles be limited to 32k so this one is a little long. The rule is no longer hard and fast and having many sections may avert any size problems.

My work on this article does need checking and I could not resolve some of the "reprinted in" issues.

Perhaps you can get the books you need on interlibrary loan. If there is something you cannot get, let me me know what the issue is and I'll see if I can get the book and resolve the issue.

Softtest123 03:14, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

My Help Desk Questions

Getting rid of unwanted watchlist item.

Getting rid of unwanted watchlist item.

Watchlist

Did you ever fix that spurious item on your watchlist? I suggested on the help desk that you try at the village pump, but I noticed it seems to have been archived off of there by the robots without getting any comment. If the WP:SOURCE item is still there I'd suggest asking User:Brion Vibber. He's one of the main software devs and can check the watchlist table in the database to find out why it's there (and easily remove it). It may have been only a one-time database glitch that caused it, but the fact that you cannot remove it makes it sound like possibly a reproducible bug, so you could also submit it at Bugzilla, where the devs will see it immediately. • Anakin ^(talk) 02:02, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope. It is still there and I still cannot delete it. I will report this to User:Brion Vibber and see what happens. --Softtest123 (talk) 15:14, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

WP Computing

Greetings. You are receiving this note as you are a member of this WikiProject. Currently there is not much of activity in the project and I am hoping to revive the project with your help. I have made a few changes to the project page Diff. You are welcome to make suggestions of improvement / changes in the design. I have also make a proposal to AutoTagg articles with {{WikiProject Computing}} for the descendant wikiprojects articles also. Please express your opinion here -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 12:58, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Help needed: Sitakunda Upazila

The article failed an FAC mostly because of irregularities in citation format. I found you at the ciitation cleanup project, and I am really hoping that you can help the article. Would you consider helping it, please? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 02:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'll take a look and see what I can do. Softtest123 (talk) 21:36, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

License tagging for File:Image Part-Time-Scientists Logo.png

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Cleanup tags

Hi, when you add cleanup tags to articles, as here, please use the actual month and year, not variables, otherwise a reader won't know how ling the tag has been up. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:16, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh. Okay, Thanks, Rose. I thought the variables were bound at the time they were entered. I'll make sure all the places are fixed. Softtest123 (talk) 21:09, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

BACKLOG OF THE WEEK Category:Pages with broken reference names

Hello - some editors fight off the vandal hordes, as I do repairing pages with citation errors. If I didn't - there would be a large backlog in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting and in Category:Pages with missing references list as in Category:Pages with broken reference names (more than 1500 yesterday). But it is impossible to work it alone. Do you know how to do a "Blitz" (excuse the comparision) to find willing editors to work on it. It is much more easier to repair references if you do it one hour, one day or one week ago after the errors were made instead of months and years after the error was done. Very, very difficult to find these errors.

Only with WikiBlame Search it is possible to find and repair such errors.

Best wishes & thanks --Frze ^{> talk} 09:09, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Backlog template made by User:TheJJJunk

Backlog status ()

Category	Current status
Pages with incorrect ref formatting	Not done
Pages with missing references list	Not done
Pages with broken reference names

Best wishes --Frze ^{> talk} 03:57, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

New REFBot

There is a suggestion on Wikipedia:Bot requests for a new REFBot working as DPL bot and BracketBot do. I beg politely for consideration. Please leave a comment if you wish. Thanks a lot in anticipation. --Frze ^{> talk} 03:57, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Frze ^{> talk} — is wishing you a Happy New Year! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the New Year cheer by adding {{subst:New Year 1}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

A barnstar for you!

	The Special Barnstar
	I am awarding you this barnstar for your excellent work on Cite Templates. Skr15081997 (talk) 11:46, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Drive by tagging

I am guessing you are complaining because I used reflinks on Phreaking. Why? Because that is the only case I have used any refbot recently. One step backward in the history of the article should be able to solve any damage I did by trusting reflinks. And I'm still the last edit on that page. Frankly I dislike the entire concept of the formatted references. Generally I never use them and have discussed why at User:Trackinfo#Link Rot. Nobody yet has given an argument why listing a source directly as I do is inferior to the complex, time consuming, reference formatting some seem to think is required. So on rare occasions, like this article, some obnoxious editor drives by and defaces the look and credibility of an article by leaving tags. User:Trackinfo#Tagging discusses my opinions on that. If you want to participate in the improvement of an article, by all means, join in. Driving by and complaining about other people's work is the height of laziness. Looking at your historical contributions to that article, you made two edits, both drive by tags. All you left are complaints. I've made 37 contributions to the article and have done a lot of research to source each contribution in order to make that a credible article on a poorly known subject. Many other editors have cumulatively contributed several hundred edits. The article doesn't need or deserve your graffiti as the first thing a reader will see above everything else. So if you have to go back to fix my solution to your complaint, I'm not particularly concerned. Have at it. I hate using reflinks and won't do it until someone like you drives by and tags an article that I have worked on. Then I get offended. If you keep spray painting your complaints over other people's work, you'll probably pass me again and I'll be just as pissed off. If you don't like the way an article looks, do some work to fix it yourself. Complaining in main space is just your superiority complex thinking your opinion is more important than any body else. Your habit of tagging is a detriment to the wikipedia project. Trackinfo (talk) 18:48, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Figures you would salt my user talk page with dead links. However, I would like to know why you disapprove of time proven citation methods? Softtest123 (talk) 20:32, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't know how my # symbols turned to colons but here is the verbatim text from my talk page that you were unable to find.

Thank you. And speaking of doing homework, I certainly should have read your user page before making assumptions about you. You have done an impressive amount of Wikipedia work. I, too, commend you. I've started cleanup of the references for Phreaking. It will take some time to complete the work because I also want to finish the Idaho National Laboratory work first. That article has a lot more problems than Phreaking. Cleaned up references will help it, I think. It has been on the cleanup list since 2012. BTW, there were still bare URLs in the Phreaking article and the tag should not have been removed until they were all cleaned up. And I thought I would mention to you that as of October I will have had 56 years of computing experience. Softtest123 (talk) 00:45, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Link rot

I believe in what is called "Link rot." Actually what I believe in is using bare URLs. The wikipedia administrators have carried Anal retentiveness beyond reason. On wikipedia, we want verifiable information, that is a given. I clearly give the source where I found the information or "source" that backs up the information I am supplementing. There is nothing improper about that. I DO NOT go through the slow, laborious and unnecessary step of creating the complicated and difficult to read wikipedia format for displaying the source. I don't think I should have to. My contributions to this global knowledge database already require far too much labor and concentration. Completing all those source details would slow my progress immensely. Completing those details would inhibit the majority of content contributing editors from depositing valuable content to wikipedia.

Perhaps we can begin again. I apologize for being rude. I am a research scientist and a software security consultant. I watch several sites pertaining to that subject. My interest in Phreaking is a professional one, not as a Wikipedian. As a scientist I judge the quality of information by, among other things, the quality of the references, as I would any technical paper. When I see poor quality, I mark it as such; knowing that in the Wikipedia culture, someone will fix it.

However, I do disagree with some of your premises. Firstly, the Wikipedia administrators did not arrive at the specific need for particulars in references arbitrarily. And the debate still rages, but consensus is formed. I disagree that you "clearly give the source[s]" but would say that if you provided the URL that was more than sufficient. (Other people, like myself, will spend the time and effort needed to make clear, and complete as possible, references based on this information.) I agree "there is nothing improper about that" and "[you] don't ... have to." I accept and respect you as a SME on phreaking. Providing detailed references would slow you down, so don't let it. Provide your material as efficiently as possible. Others with take up the effort (but not so likely to be interested if you insult them.) The accepted way of marking effort needed is with tags. I suggest that where you provide bare URLs that you tag them yourself. Wikipedia is a team effort. I would like to help you improve your work to Wikipedia standards, but I wouldn't be alone in that effort. I've set my sights on being really good at providing well formatted references.

My point here is, writing all that source detail is totally unnecessary. The minority oligarchy that controls wikipedia procedures has decided that a bare URL reference automatically results in the link going down, or the information being obscured. Yes that is a possibility, but a small possibility. We cannot control what happens to outside sources. Our posting a URL does not cause that nor will writing all that detail solve that.

I agree. It is unnecessary for you. We can, however, control outside sources for we have the ability to archive pages that may not be stable. This is not work I do, but others do. I can't do everything (nor, I submit, can you, nor should you try.) The control of Wikipedia content is not oligarchical, but rather democratic. You had (and still have) the opportunity to submit your opinion as to changes you would like to see made. If you can gather a consensus, it will happen.

What they wish for is verification, which requires human supervision--someone actually re-reading the source and confirming that the conclusions in the wikipedia article are backed up by what an independent reliable source says. Its a two way street. When the site does go down, the information is no longer secured by all that source detail. Yes an article was once there, no we can't verify what its contents once were. There is zero protection of wikipedia for the verifiability of the information and it will get marked with a dead link tag.

In my efforts to clean up bare URLs, I also do verification. I usually start with bare URLs that have been around for a long time, but a good part of my motive is to learn about something that, in general, I would know nothing about.

So. What I am offering, here, is to work with you. You provide the technical details and I'll provide the detailed references. I've done this with other SMEs to considerable success. I do hope we can work together, even after our rough start. I will, however, add tags for work that I see needs to be done that neither of us is interested in doing. I would like our article to be an example of Wikipedia quality.

Tagging

Let me examine the psychology of the person who leaves these Tags. If you read through the source citing guidelines, one of the subsequent steps for sourcing, if there is a problem with the source, one of the solutions is to find other sources. Just leaving such a tag without taking any further action to search for other sources is the height of laziness. I equate it to Wikipedia:Vandalism and sometimes leave sarcastic comments to that effect. Like when a gang leaves Graffiti they unnecessarily deface the look of an article, its credibility and the overall look of credibility for wikipedia. If you leave such tags without doing the further work, you are NOT helping. All you are saying is "I was here." Kilroy. Instead, if you feel so motivated to detect a bare URL someone has left, you have several better options. Each will take some of your time and labor.

You are quite mistaken about tagging being vandalism. It is the Wikipedia standard for marking work that needs to be done. Saying so is insulting. Saying it is lazy is insulting. Sarcastic comments is not a sign of maturity. I am the judge of how I spend my time and effort on Wikipedia. Personally, I spend considerable time fixing bare URLs and I establish my own priorities as I mentioned above.

Run reflinks. Its easy to find--its in the tag you would be leaving behind. Like I said, I don't do it because I don't see a purpose to its results, but if you think the article desperately needs have the bare URLs cleaned up then DO IT YOURSELF.

That is what I am offering. You need never provide reference details beyond a bare URL. I usually only work on one article at a time. This dialog detracts from that effort, but, since you are making a point of it, I will help you to meet Wikipedia standards with respect to web citations.

Further, if you have a point you know to be true, but cannot find the necessary references, I would be pleased to do that research. I have a pretty good technical library and have access to both public and university libraries as well as having studied information retrieval at university for one year.

If the source is no longer present, or there is no source listed, spend your time and find another source. Google, Yahoo, Bing, Dogpile and many others are great search engines. I've been amazed with the stuff I find when I search, based upon a start from a contribution into wikipedia. Someone with intelligence should be able to come up with combinations of key words to search out the content that needs to be verified. Watch out for the sources you do come up with--many times after something is reported in wikipedia, it is copied or mirrored on other sites. Look for unique phrasings of similar content, rather than an echo. Further, if the original source article is now missing, look for it in the The Internet Archive and WebCite.

In my experience it is unwise to assume ignorance. Quite apparently you are a newby when it comes to research. If you want, I can help you learn more about research.

And finally is to point out that a citation is needed or that a contention is dubious. Even there, after a serious search for the information, before you place the tag, make some sense of the content. Search back through the history of the article. If a piece of information has been part of the article for a long time, particularly if the article has had traffic, consider that a lot of eyes have looked past that point. Before you base any tag on your limited personal opinion, realize that the people who look at and find such articles over time (and made no change to the content) know more about the article than you do and probably did so because there is no problem with that content. Understand your own limitations before you tag outside your area of expertise.

So you've done drive by vandalism to an article I've contributed to. And you get the complaints. Trackinfo (talk) 02:35, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Strange. For all the tags I have ever placed, you are the only one that has ever complained.

Softtest123 (talk) 19:37, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Softtest123 (talk) 19:37, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Softtest123 (talk) 19:37, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

My apologies to you. You have incurred the wrath of years of fighting battles against some less well meaning people. Maybe you have not dealt with the folks in the back rooms of wikipedia too much, but there is a group who have taken ownership of certain aspects of wikipedia. The have a small enough audience who knows where they discuss and set policy and a sufficient number of people who will support them that this microscopic minority dictates their rules all of us must abide by. Those are the people I refer to as the oligarchy. When they do not get involved, I have found reasonable people speak reasonably and we end up with a collegial consensus. As for my habitual accusation of drive by tagging, I should have noticed or referred to better your attempt at reading the article and trying to make sense of it. Most others who leave tags are mass editors who simply use it to complain in a consideration of the article that (from their edit history) had to take seconds--more likely an automated system that just alerts them to bare urls. Regarding phreaking, yes I have inside knowledge. I was one of them, I personally knew Captain Crunch and many others. I met Steve Wozniak years before Apple. Many of the first Apple employees, including Crunch, were phreaks. I was not one of them. I edit this article starting from what I know and source outward, rather than the usual way of re-writing what the sources say, so my research here is finding sources that know and verify what I know. Trackinfo (talk) 21:59, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the Wikipedia insider information. As Heinlein has said, democracy is the dictatorship of the majority. I understand that policy can be manipulated by a few.

I should suppose that my expertise is computing; I have programmed 3 different vacuum tube computers and if you want to set MY fire ablaze, If I report to you a software error and you fix the symptom and not the problem, I will be all over you! (See Microsoft Calculator Challenge)

I'll be adding my comments to the requested merge. Softtest123 (talk) 00:45, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

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ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:36, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Help me!

I've been trying to replace an image (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bounded_floating_point_format.png) and though the image appears with a "revert", the "Current" image stays the same.

Please help me with...

How can I get the old image replaced with the new one?

Softtest123 (talk) 17:08, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

If you mean User:Softtest123/Patents/Bounded floating point, I see the current version of the image on that page; maybe you need to clear your browser cache. However, what you're writing there reas more like an essay then an encyclopedia article. Huon (talk) 17:43, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Hopefully Helped When I look at User:Softtest123/Patents/Bounded floating point it looks identical to [1] to me, the latest version on Commons. Did you purge WP:PURGE? If needed, change {{help me-helped}} back to {{help me}}. Sam Sailor ^Talk! 17:46, 12 December 2015 (UTC) (please  mention me on reply)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Softtest123. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Softtest123. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Softtest123. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Softtest123,

The Wikimedia Foundation is asking for your feedback in a survey about your experience with Wikipedia and Wikimedia. The purpose of this survey is to learn how well the Foundation is supporting your work on wiki and how we can change or improve things in the future. The opinions you share will directly affect the current and future work of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 16:25, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Softtest123,

A couple of weeks ago, we invited you to take the Community Insights Survey. It is the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual survey of our global communities. We want to learn how well we support your work on wiki. We are 10% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! Your voice matters to us.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 15:35, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Softtest123,

There are only a few weeks left to take the Community Insights Survey! We are 30% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! With this poll, the Wikimedia Foundation gathers feedback on how well we support your work on wiki. It only takes 15-25 minutes to complete, and it has a direct impact on the support we provide.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 20:35, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:09, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2021 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:15, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:31, 29 November 2022 (UTC)