Wikipedia:Peer review/OpenBSD/archive1

OpenBSD

I feel that the OpenBSD article has matured a fair bit recently, but that it could use filling out and review from eyes beyond just NicM, SimonMorgan and myself in order to truly become worthy of being featured. There are still sections and information yet to add to the article, but I am reasonably satisfied with it as is. --Janizary 03:43, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A few things: does the dev section really need to be that high up? How is OpenBSD in terms of GUIs? casually reading through it, it sounds like a scary hardcore command line unix. True or myth? Screenshots might help here, I dunno. Plus: there are quite a few red links. This isn't really a bad thing for the article per se, but does make it suboptimal. And... that's it really; some of the "flavor", if you know what I mean, is missing, but it's pretty good as is. --Maru (talk) 04:14, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean normal GUIs, like KDE and whatnot, or GUI configuration tools? I feel the former are already mentioned quite enough in the Desktop section. GUIs have no more - perhaps less since desktop uses probably make up the minority for OpenBSD - to do with OpenBSD than they do with FreeBSD, Linux, etc. If the latter, a few words might be appropriate, but it may be tricky to put in a neutral way. Some actual OpenBSD (not X) screenshots (booting? what else?) could be a nice idea. NicM 07:53, 4 October 2005 (UTC).[reply]

This is a good article, but it seems to emphasize the developer and hacking aspect of the operating system a little too heavily. Large sections are devoted to this, including a list of developers (if this is really necessary, it should be moved down to the bottom of the article). There seems to be too little coverage of GUIs under OpenBSD. Now, the project web page hardly mentions GUIs at all, but presumably they can be made to run equally well under BSD as under Linux. Andrew pmk | Talk 18:34, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The reason for this is that OpenBSD doesn't have GUIs, that is X that deals in GUIs. It is mentioned only in the Desktop section of Uses because it is only a very small part of what OpenBSD is able to do and those GUIs are dependant on X and not OpenBSD at all. Janizary 18:39, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Even the Linux article only has a paragraph about GUIs, why should we do more? We do already link to the KDE and GNOME articles. OpenBSD is not focused on and it's strengths don't lend it to GUIs, even though they do run fine (but don't forget most are ports, not part of the project). NicM 20:13, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there! I don't usually review content but considering I know the subject matter quite well... here we go!

First off, you're going to need a lead at least two paragraphs long for an article this size - see WP:LEAD
General issues with whole article:
1. Where are the references?
2. Too developer-oriented and too many unexplained buzzwords (CVS, etc.) - you're going to need to explain these in layman terms. Yes, I'm a developer and know these things so this article reads well for me of course - but please keep in mind not everyone is a developer :).
"History" might benefit from a section intro here. In addition
"Schism" - this has some serious POV issues.
1. For one, the treatment of Theo's departure from the team is very one-sided - WHY did the developers lock him out? Did he submit faulty commits? It doesn't say immediately and insinuates plenty of conspiracy theories here before getting to the supposed reason.
2. In addition, this reads more like a novel then an encyclopedia IMHO... try rewriting it just a bit (the writing itself is pretty good).
3. " he found that NetBSD developers had been encouraged not to talk with him about the issue"- WOwOW! If you are going to say that you BETTER have a reference for such a claim!
4. Also, when was OpenBSD 1.0 released (was there a 1.0?) - it should probably say here.
5. In addition, consider splitting off a bit either into a seperate section or doing something, as this is bigger then the other sections
6. "he only reason officially given is "because of philosophical and developer personality differences"" - mind explaining this? Again, really fluffs it up in a very POV way. Also, "only" itself seems POV here, as if they needed a seperate reason, no?
7. Paragraphs could be combined here to form two longish ones rather then the current way
"Focus"
1. "Theo de Raadt was contacted by a local security software developer interested" - who was that developer?
2. " exploit possible security flaws" - in what? I'm assuming in OpenBSD, but you might want to enlighten the reader :)
3. "synergy" - neat word, but "relationship" is probably more appropriate here, LOL
4. "OpenBSD would often go out of the way to do what was right, proper or secure, even at the cost of ease, speed or functionality." - yeah ->I<- know that, but you might want to give some examples for the poor readers, eh?
5. Missing dates in general - i.e. "After years of cooperation, the two parties decided that their goals together had been met and parted ways." Its rather unclear when the relationship started (1994?) so the reader is probably lost time-wise by now....
6. "As bugs within OpenBSD became less easily found and exploitable" - reword a bit, writing-wise a bit sub-par to the rest
"Here and now"
1. "Despite being the largest reason" - largest here is quite clumsy, try "most prominant" or something similar
2. In general, this section doesn't really belong in "History", or at least is misplaced a bit, as it details more the general goals of the project rather then something that happened in time which generally goes in a section like this
"Releases" - combine the first two paragraphs here...
"Nomenclature" - ambigous section title, consider using something more specific
1. Delistify this, first off
2. Don't wikilink -beta as its kind of odd, consider explaining a bit more a linking a seperate word "beta"
3. Quote the things prepended with -
4. Ending paragraph is too developer heavy and needs rewording
"Latest" - avoid this, as it makes the article time-based. Instead just list the versions and when they came out, along with their notable features
"Image and marketing" - "interesting" and "imaginative" are definately POV in this context. Do something like "widely considered to be" if you can get away with it
"Themes" - make the paragraphs here longer. Also, that list is really annoying - if it were me I'd put it into a table so that each entry only took up one line, but you can also either turn it entirely into prose or get rid of the "-" parts and collude those
"Mascot" - Something's not right with the list here. I can't put my finger on the exact problem, but I think there's a bit of context missing here...
"Slogans" - delistify both the lists here...
"Developers" - a normal reader is going to fall asleep on this section. WHY is this important? Needs more context... in addition consider using a more neutral word such as "recognized" instead of "notable" as it veers a POV-y. In addition, I'd make this a table instead of a list, but I suppose its not too bad as is, just a little long.
"Hackathons"
1. Needs to be wikified more
2. Paragraphs way too short... combine them or something
3. "A brief summary" - well, if you're going to list them I suppose that would be "listing", eh? A table might be better for this too.
"Security" - especially nasty offender of short paragraphs and one-sentence paragraphs
"API and build changes" - thoughts here too detached and needs better flow in general
"Strong crypto" - strong is POV here, also use the full word "cryptology".
1. "frustrate password-cracking attempts." - Consider something like "make ... more difficult" etc..
"Memory protection" - consider doing something here like killing the subsections here as they are extremely short
1. "Stack-smashing" - kill the list here...
" Ports and packages" - short paragraphs.... well and I'll save you guys the trouble and not mention that again :)
"Licencing" - a lot of this stuff seems like it would go better in the history section.... anyway
"Highlights" - kill the list here... - "unacceptable licences" is POV in the current context
"XFree86" ewww... don't italicize quotes - if you want to highlight it blockquote it instead :)
1. " He later added, "it seems like every 8 years or so we have to go through some period where someone tries to take free software and makes it less free because they don't feel they are getting enough credit."" this just reinforces a POV - get rid of it
"Uses" probably needs to be renamed
"Derivatives" - HMMM. I'd kill the list here and do a bit of rewriting to make it one or two nice long paragraphs
"Desktop"
1. "From it's beginnings OpenBSD has been distributed with an X Windows system" say "derivative" or something afterwards or reword a bit.
2. The second paragraph here is a pretty egregious POV offender :)
3. Third paragraph has obvious grammer issues
"Forks of BSD" - merge this into "See also"
"See also" - seems kind of bare for the subject. Also, axe ones like hackathon as they are already wikilinked in the article.
"Books" - consider renaming this "Further reading" as a lot of articles have. Also, the place where to buy it reeks of advertising - I'd cut that out. In addition, consider using a reference style here that doesn't take up five lines a reference :).
"External links" "OpenSSH page" etc. - if the project has a wikilink here don't do an external link in addition to it :). "Free For All by Pete Wayner" needs a better description

WHEW! Well, I'll see you guys later :) Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 01:31, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You are asking for things which, if you did know this material well, you would know are impossible. The Schism section is one sided because only one side has ever talked about it, period. All the items which are linked within the article are the sources of this information - including Free For All by Pete Wayner. Read it. Most of your whining is solved through reading, be it the OpenBSD site or the other parts of the article. "In October 1995, OpenBSD 2.0 was first released as a fork from NetBSD 1.0." Should point you to the fact that there was no OpenBSD 1.0, that it was a fork of NetBSD 1.0. Within Focus, you ask once more for things which are not disclosed - the company is never mentioned because Theo has never named it, likely because they wish to remain unnamed. The exploitation mentioned is in software, any code that the tools could find problems in, I thought that obvious by the way it had been worded - I will see if I can dumb it down a little for the more mundane. With the path of least resistance, those examples are later given, within the Licence section and Security section. If all you have to complain about is consistantly saying it's too developer oriented then there is nothing wrong with it - I have attempted to ensure the article is readable to mundane users but I will not remove good information from the article. You refer several times to not explaining words enough and using buzzwords, those words a linked so someone that doesn't understand can read up on what they don't know - that is one of the benifits of an online encyclopedia like this. You complain about point of view in the sections like Licencing - but this is stuff that the OpenBSD developers decided was unacceptable - that isn't stuff that is point of view, it is fact about their stance on licences, it is the backing proving the point. Infact, I cannot see any of these point of view violations you're talking about. So I'll have to ignore them, cause you're the only person to see them. I can't even see how quoting Theo de Raadt on the issue is a mark of point of view, it's stating exactly what happened and why. Regarding the Lastest release section, that doesn't seem like a problem to have dated information when the releases happen regularly and the information listed can be updated by anyone. I'll see what I can do about dumbing things down a little, but if you want something in Simple English, that's what the Simple English Wikipedia is for. Janizary 02:15, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry you feel I was "whining". I will cease commenting further then :). Take care :). Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 04:42, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Don't get me wrong, I do like that you were good enough to read the article and comment, just some of the stuff you mentioned has irked me - things which are covered in the article but you didn't see in it. Janizary 05:01, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Theo's departure is hardly undocumented; if one looks through the NetBSD mailing list archives from around that time, the threads that lead up to Theo's departure are there for anyone to read. I know that Theo used to include some of the pertinent messages on his personal website - but they were cherry-picked, and hardly NPOV. --moof 08:05, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is a big comment and some of it is fair. I might take a run through and see if I can define some buzzwords later on, a few simple definition might not hurt, even if they are covered in more detail on linked pages. Schism would certainly benefit from references, but Janizary is right that it is one-sided because only one side has ever been told (this is sort of explained in the section). I'll take a look at your comments on Focus section sometime, they are minor but not without merit, although I really want to avoid getting bogged down in tedious examples that people who are interested could look up themselves. Your comments on Here and Now and Releases are ~~nitpicks~~minor (sorry, it's early :-) NicM 09:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC)) and I disagree anyway. I don't agree with Nomenclature comments except the last paragraph, I'll take a look. Image and Marketing - good point about POV, I'll fix it sometime. I don't really understand a lot of your comments about the lists, this article is trying to be a reference as well as an informative one, and lists are easier for uninterested people to skip than dense paragraphs. I think short paragraphs are a good thing in this kind of article so long as they don't cover the same part of a subject. Strong crypto(graphy) is a recognised phrase, not POV. Security, the centre two paragraphs could combine. I'll take another look at API and Build changes sometime. "Books" is better than "Further reading". They are books. I'll have a closer look at your other comments a bit later. NicM 08:25, 12 October 2005 (UTC).[reply]

Oh, some (many) of these comments are useful, even if I don't agree with them all, so thanks ;-). NicM 09:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

*sigh* the point of peer review here is to get an article to featured standard and resolve standard objections raised at FAC, and what's raised here are suggestions that are not set in stone, but realize that I wouldn't have spent several hours pointing these out and it should be somewhat clear what is a light suggestion and what needs to be fixed (for example, if I say "kill the list" I mean someone is going to ask you to do the same at the FAC). I've done quite a few (something like 20 or something) peer reviews here already, so I'd like to think I have a decent idea of how it works :). Anyway, well, as for nitpicking, that's part of the whole point :). In general with lists you should only use them when you have to with featured articles - and people will object for that sort of thing. Same with short paragraphs - take a look at mercantilism for an example of a good modern featured article with nice long paragraphs - this is what people are going to expect at FAC time. As for the history POV thing, well, nothing is really one-sided (this seems like an example of the POV of the writer) - you give the reason there right at the end "because of philosophical and developer personality differences"" - if that's the official reason, then that's what you go with - rewrite it to be balanced, which may be slightly difficult (you've got more to work with then you realize), but is definately neccesary as you don't want POV issues in a featured article - reread the article as the devil's advocate if need be :). Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 12:59, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Also, to the both of you - please don't get so defensive about it. It's highly unusual around here mostly because as I mentioned these are suggestions from me/someone on how to improve the article, and the person may or may not be right. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 13:02, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if defensive is the term best used to describe us, we are that way because of how much we've done to the article in question. A great deal of historical and technical data has been taken from common sources and when people call what we view as plain fact a bias impression it will likely raise ire. Regardless, we do take even the critizisms with which we completely disagree into account and try to redevelop the article with the comments in mind, despite Maru and Andrew's comments making no sense to me, I have worked to try and expand the Desktop section and add Screenshots. Janizary 16:14, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't being defensive. I was just pointing out (quickly :-) the bits I disagreed with and the bits I would take a look at, after a relatively quick reading of your (extensive!) list. Anyway, I'm going to work through your list properly now and see if I can fix some of them. NicM 18:31, 12 October 2005 (UTC).[reply]

Defensive? How about ungrateful. Ryan Norton takes a lot of time to meticulously criticize your article at your explicit request and the first thing you say after is that he is whining. How dumb is that. It seems like Ryan Norton has a big heart and is not bothered too much, but I think you can do better than your half-hearted attempt at back-pedaling and do a real apology.--MarSch 16:22, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

few see also's

I enjoyed reading the entire article and the only thing that I could find was that there are so few see also links. --MarSch 15:44, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]