Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer science/Archive 2

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Wikipedia talk:Stable versions#Certification gang

would you like to create certified articles in science? -- Zondor 03:33, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

This project page could use some work

The project page looks a little disorganized and full of empty sections right now. I'd like to reorganize it into something more along the lines of Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics. I'll start making changes in the next few days unless anyone has any objections. --Allan McInnes 07:08, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Concurrency

For anyone who's interested, I have a WikiProject-like page on improving Concurrency (computer science) articles up at User:Allan McInnes/Concurrency project. This was originally intended to serve as a WikiProject proposal, but I've since been persuaded that it makes more sense to pursue any efforts to improve the concurrency articles through this project (rather than starting a new project). However, I figured the remnants of the project proposal might serve to spark a little discussion as to what needs to be worked in the concurrency subject area. If you have any comments or suggestions, please post them here, so that we can get others involved in the discussion too. --Allan McInnes 07:19, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Manual of style?

Computer science topics might be structured via an Audience analysis schema of some sort.

We're going to try to come up with a table that is transcluded into all the articles in the Computer science reference.

For example, a person with only a passing interest may not be interested in Library_(computer_science) but may be intered in lexicon or programming language.

How Computer science is viewed by a layman is probably vastly divergent from what is studied academically by Comp-Sci post grads. I suppose Project2501s :discussions so far with me have been laced with comments like "That's not Comp-Sci!" I think that proves my point. I thought Comp-Sci Historically was... to be continued on talk page

Anyways, I'm going to push for this table :-p cq

Audience analysis for Computer science topics and WikiProject community roles etc.

project	General	Advanced	Academic
Audience analysis	Children and adults with passing interest	Teens and adults with keen interest	Collegiate and post-graduate level studies
social roles	student (newbie}	enthusiast (wizard)	mentor (guru)

Seems like this discussion (which I pulled off of the project page) might make a good starting point for discussing some style guidelines for CS articles. See also Wikipedia:Manual of style (mathematics) for some other ideas. --Allan McInnes 21:24, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

If there isn't a manual of style for CS articles there should be! I think getting one written (or more widely promoting an existing on if it already exists) should be a prime focus for this project. I think particular focus on having firm guidelines for a suggested structure, and writing style. In my experience far too many CS articles seem to provide very little information, or immediately delve into deep terminology and provide little introductory content. Leland McInnes 22:33, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK there is no CS manual of style. I'd suggest that a good starting point might be Wikipedia:Manual of style (mathematics), especially for the more theoretical articles. We can probably try to generalize from existing articles on programming languages to develop some guidelines for language articles. I think that Quicksort is a nice example of how to handle algorithm articles. Any other ideas? --Allan McInnes 23:20, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good way to go. Having a far more clear and consistent style for CS articles can only be a good thing. Can we start by delineating different classes of articles and nominating candidates of model articles? Obviously languages and algorithms are two clear categories, and I agree the Quicksort is very good. Does anyone want to nominate some particularly good language pages? I would suggest two more categories fields of study and definitions. For fields of study I would nominate Topology and Group theory as good examples (sorry for having to go to math). For definitions I think Manifold is an excellent article (sorry, more math!). Leland McInnes 02:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm working on getting BASIC programming language to a featured article, but C programming language also pretty good. I think we should nominate Quicksort for a peer review. On algorithm articles I'd like to see more use of pseudocode (the mathematical-notation inspired variant) and less code in existing programming langues. —Ruud 02:24, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it would be nice to see more pseudocode. At one point there was apparently a proposal to define a standardized pseudocode for Wikipedia. If you want a mathematically-inspired notation then you probably won't be impressed with wikicode. But the arguments about it on the discussion page are fairly enlightening. I suspect we'll be better off trying to establish some loose guidelines on pseudocode, rather than a strict standard. It's may also a good idea to accept a few sample implementations as well (if only to avoid never-ending arguments), so long as there's a pseudocode version provided earler in the article. That said, in the long run I'd rather see any sample code which isn't in an article on a specific language end up on Wikisource. --Allan McInnes 03:59, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of classifying articles. Here's a quick list of possible classes (please feel free to add or amend) --Allan McInnes 02:40, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

• Algorithms and Data Structures - examples Quicksort and Hash table
• Problems - example Dining philosophers problem - "good" example ??
• Definitions - CS examples Compiler or Continuation - "good" example Manifold
• Design patterns - example Delegation pattern - no obvious "good" examples; classic GoF format is probably a good guideline
• Fields of study - CS example Formal semantics of programming languages - "good" example Topology
• Formalisms - example Lambda-calculus
• Programming languages - example BASIC programming language
• Theorems and Conjectures - example Halting problem and Church-Turing thesis

The main thing we have to deal with if we're going to do any categorization scheme is that it has to be easy for anyone to understand and good to navigate. I like the idea of both an audience analysis and topic based (as directly above) scheme of categorizing but should they be implemented in the same template or in two templates and if they're gonna be done at the same time how should they work together? Brainstorming on that might be a good place to start. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 03:04, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

The categorization scheme discussed above is intended as a way to help develop guidelines for internally structuring (i.e. in terms of major article sections) different kinds of CS articles, rather than a suggestion for how to actually organize different articles in relation to each other. If you'd like to discuss this more, feel free to join in helping to draft the CS manual of style at WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style. --Allan McInnes (talk) 19:43, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Would it be worthwhile to set up a project subpage to start roughing out some guidelines? It would also give others something to comment on (or contribute to). --Allan McInnes 03:59, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, definitely. I would go so far as to have suggested templates/outlines for each of the different classes of article - it would be only a suggested structure, each article being free to deviate as required by its idiosyncracies, but having a standardised base for sections and structure from which to work from seems very sensible. Consistency counts. Leland McInnes 04:49, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Templates are a good idea. I'd like to avoid a proliferation though, so it would probably be a good idea to see if we can collapse the article classes down into a few very general types (perhaps with some guidance on applying to more specific classes of article built into the template). --Allan McInnes 06:38, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I have created a project subpage within which to draft a manual of style. Perhaps we should carry on any further discussions on the talk page of that subpage. --Allan McInnes 22:17, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Special Recent changes

I saw the Rencent Changes you had set up on the project page, and I was wondering how it worked. Could something similar be set-up with and random article fucntion?--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 02:47, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

The related changes special feature goes through the target page, and lists the recent changes to any link appearing on that page. Unfortunately (based on a quick test I just did) it doesn't seem to provide much useful when pointed at Special:Random. You might try asking around the Wikipedia:Village pump to see if anyone knows how to do what you want to do. --Allan McInnes 04:30, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 14:43, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

User:Jitse Niesen provides such a function for the mathematics articles, but is runs on his own computer and I guess it relies on the list of mathematical articles created by User:Mathbot/User:Oleg Alexandrov. Cheers, —Ruud 16:03, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Programming language theory

I had proposed a WikiProject on programming language theory (and I just wrote the aformentioned article; please feel free to improve it!), and was informed about this project by Allen. Any other members of the project interested in PLT?

--EngineerScotty 06:17, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I am. But you may have already figured that out :-)

--Allan McInnes 07:01, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

) --EngineerScotty 07:29, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I haven't added myself to the list of project members yet (just found out about it, really) but I have been contributing off and on to PLT-related articles for a while now and would like to join in whatever organized effort there is. Cjoev 22:22, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd recommend just working through this wikiproject until you feel the signal to noise ratio gets too low. You don't get much more core CS than programming language theory. --- Charles Stewart^(talk) 03:36, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Foreign function interface

Another article for peer review; foreign function interface. --EngineerScotty 07:29, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Algorithms Cleanup

While hunting through the algorithms articles to find out what the current common styles of formatting pseudocode are I noticed that a great many of the articles in Category:Algorithms could benefit from some quick copyediting and formatting. This is often the case becaues the article is somewhat rarely visited and hasn't had the attention it deserves. This means there's an easy project available for people in this Wikiproject: Go through articles in Category:Algorithms and give them at least a cursory cleanup.

Suggestions for formatting pseudocode (based on what the existing standards seem to be) can be found on Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style (computer science). If enough people are interested we can start keeping tally of what articles have been checked. Leland McInnes 18:22, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd be happy to contribute to this effort. --Allan McInnes 22:12, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Portal

Right now, Portal:Computer science points at Portal:Information technology. That portal looks nice enough, but is pretty general. Would it be worthwhile to have a more focused CS portal? (Obviously I think so, otherwise I wouldn't be asking :-) If so, is anyone interested in putting together and maintaining such a CS portal? I'm willing to work on it, but don't want to be the only one putting any effort in. --Allan McInnes 22:10, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, CS needs its own portal. I will help. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-01-29 22:41Z

I'll see if I can make some time this weekend to put together at least the beginnings of a CS portal.--Allan McInnes 15:48, 2 February 2006 (UTC) I think I'll wait until there's more likelihood that such a page will be regularly maintained. --Allan McInnes 16:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Portals look pretty, but I never use them. Who finds them useful? --- Charles Stewart^(talk) 16:27, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, to be honest, I haven't used them much either. But that's because I'm generally looking to understand a specific concept, and searching on that. But I could see them being useful to people looking for a general overview of the structure of a topic. At least, I assume that's why they were instituted on Wikipedia.

Having said that, my question was motivated more by the fact that there is a link to the CS portal on Computer science, and that it seems to be standard practive to have portals for specific disciplines (see Portal:Mathematics and Portal:Engineering), rather than any particular need to use a portal myself. --Allan McInnes 17:06, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Portals being like mini-Main Pages, the important thing seems to be to have someone fiddling with it on a daily basis - monitoring new articles for CS-related ones, looking around for interesting anniversaries, etc. In order not to be an abandoned embarassment, I would say not to create with less than a total commitment of 3 hours/week to portal freshening. Stan 14:28, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Portal Engineering hasn't been modified since December 27, others haven't been changed in weeks. Just FYI. Gflores ^Talk 15:02, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Which is why I asked if anyone else would be willing to help out — I don't want to be the only one on the hook for a CS portal. However, since there seems to be minimal support so far (aside from Quarl) maybe I'll just defer the idea for now. It may have been expecting a bit much for a project that's only really got back on its feet to set up a portal this soon. --Allan McInnes 16:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Good articles

I added a list of Good articles. If possible, we should articles that fit that criteria and label them with {{GA}}.

Collaboration of the Week/Month?

Am wondering how many people would be interested in having a Cot(W/M)? Too soon? Comments are welcome. Gflores ^Talk 02:02, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a reasonable idea to me - what exactly did you have in mind? Leland McInnes 19:45, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I've started the Computer Science Collaboration of the Week. Templates are needed for the current COTW, candidates, etc. Feel free to make any changes. Gflores ^Talk 22:59, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Enterprise resource planning

I took the liberty of adding link to this project from talk pages of this article, since I believe there is a vast area of major business and industry computer applications that are found in hundreds of thousands of companies world wide, but not much more than stubs in Wikipedia. User:AlMac|^(talk) 11:02, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't really consider ERP software (or application software in general) a part of this project. The Computer science article gives a pretty good overview of the general scope of this project. ERP falls more into the category of Management information system - which, as that article states in its 2nd paragraph, is not the same as CS. There are almost certainly elements of ERP systems that may have articles suitable for inclusion in this project, but not ERP as a whole. More generally, I don't think that articles on specific applications belong in this project. Applications are certainly a product of computer science, but it is the technqiues used to create them, or the technology implemented within them, that I would consider part of this project, rather than the specific app itself. For example, I think adding Firefox to this project, simply because it's software, would be wrong.

Anyway, that's my view. I'm going remove the WPCS tag on the ERP article for now. But if other project participants have a different view, let's discuss it here — I'll be happy to put the tag back if there's a general consensus that the ERP article belongs in this project. --Allan McInnes (talk) 16:34, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: you might try making this article (and the Computer security audit one) part of WikiProject Computing, since their nominal goal is "to produce detailed, well written and NPOV articles on all topics related to computers," which is a much broader scope than ours, and might include things like MIS. It'd probably be a good idea to ask on their project page first, to see if those things really are in scope for them though. --Allan McInnes (talk) 17:01, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Resources for computers are within the scope computer science. That is not all-inclusive, however. Instead of a way to tag the entire article, a tag is needed for a specific section. Then, the relationship can be explained within a section. — Dzonatas 18:31, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

That may be, but ERP isn't about "resources for computers", it is (in the sense that it's related to computers at all) about using computers to plan things (enterprise resource allocation in this case). I suppose that resource allocation may include an assessment and specification of specific computer and network needs for a particular organization. The techniques used to perform that assessment may well fall under the heading of "computer science" (although network engineering seems more appropriate to me). However, that is only small facet of the overall ERP problem.

• From Enterprise resource planning: Enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) are management information systems (MISs) that integrate and automate many of the business practices associated with the operations or production and distribution aspects of a company engaged in manufacturing products or services.
• From Management information system: The study of information systems is usually a commerce and business administration discipline, and frequently involves software engineering, but also distinguishes itself by concentrating on the integration of computer systems with the aims of the organization. The area of study should not be confused with Computer Science which is more theoretical in nature and deals mainly with software creation, or Computer Engineering, which focuses more on the design of computer hardware.

As Mgreenbe has pointed out, there may be interesting algorithms or implementation techniques that are part of some ERP systems, and it would make sense to include articles on those things in the scope of this project. Similarly, there may be specific techniques for computer resource assessment that could be included under the heading "computer science", and it would make sense to include articles on those techniques in this project. But ERP systems themselves are simply an artifact produced by computer science, and including them doesn't make sense to me. --Allan McInnes (talk) 20:39, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok. You have stated that ERP isn't about "resources for computers". The tag, on the other hand, needs to state something along the lines of the intention of the project to work on computer-specific articles and that it is not for every computer-related article. — Dzonatas 21:41, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

The tag in question already says "This article is part of WikiProject Computer science, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to computer science." Which sort of bounds its scope in some respects, since CS is not (even in its broadest definition) "everything computer-related". It's a pretty standard format for project tags.

That said, while the scope of this project is nominally computer science, that term is sufficiently vaguely defined that in practice the scope will ultimately be whatever the participants in the project are interested in working on. If they want stick the WPCS tag on every article in Wikipedia, under the premise that Wikipedia itself is a product of computer science, they can do so (of course, that may annoy some of the people in other projects - WikiProject Computing for starters). However, given the stated interests of those people currently in the list of participants I rather doubt that will happen. Either way, I'd personally prefer that these talk pages not become a battleground for interminable arguments over differing views of what constitutes computer science (let's save that for Talk:Computer science, shall we?). I've already stated my objections to the tagging of the two articles in question, as has Mgreenbe. However, if you (Dz) or User:AlMac disagree with these objections, and want to add the WPCS tag back to the ERP talk page, you can (IMHO) go right ahead (although I note that neither of you are actually signed up as participants in this project). But don't be surprised if none of the other participants show much interest in working on those articles. --Allan McInnes (talk) 22:29, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok. You stated "I'd personally prefer that these talk pages not become a battleground...," and, if you notice that there is a focus on the tag and not the CS definition, there is a way to reword the tag to let people know when they want to add it. Otherwise, these details, if anymore, can go on the tag's talk page.— Dzonatas 22:58, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't think it's going to matter what kind of rewording you put together to try to establish a "focus", there will still inevitably be arguments over whether some specific article falls within whatever scope the reworded statement establishes. However, if you would like to propose some kind of rewording, go ahead.

The point I was trying to make with my comment above is that I think it's silly to get into arguments about this. Whether or not an article is tagged is pretty much irrelevant - an article will be "part" of this project only if project participants are actually working on it, regardless of its tag status. The point of the WPCS tag is to direct people to this discussion page. If, as in the case of ERP article, someone tags something that seems like it's probably not going to generate much interest from the folks here, then it makes sense to point that fact out (as I have done in the ERP case). The person responsible for tagging the article in question can then re-evaluate whether placing the WPCS tag is worthwhile. But arguing over whether a specific article should or should not be tagged seems pointless, so if someone feels strongly that a particular article should be tagged I'm quite prepared to let them tag it. --Allan McInnes (talk) 00:20, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

As a possible metric, what sort of CS papers could be written about ERP? An ERP system could be subjected to analyses. A tools paper? Maybe, but pretty boring. An SE paper? Perhaps as an example. What sort of CS classes could be taught about ERP? Administration, management, installation — none of these are CS. Writing ERP? Within the broader scope of an SE programming course. Answering both of these questions, it's clear that an ERP system is interesting only as a piece of software; perhaps interesting algorithms are used, but there is still no "science": just "computer". I would suggest WikiProject Computing. --Mgreenbe 18:58, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Missed this post first time around! Take a look at this LtU thread for an idea. I support covering issues like ERP is this project, but should make it clear that they are issues in information technology that raise CS questions, ie. they are applied CS, not basic CS. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 17:57, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Computer security audit

I took the liberty of connecting this article to this project. I recognize there are important topics in the field of computers that are not part of computer science. It might be helpful if someone was to provide some definitions so as to help focus what computer topics do not belong in this project. User:AlMac|^(talk) 11:08, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Again, I'm don't really think this falls under the heading of "computer science". Related to computers, certainly. A task performed by people with CS degrees, probably. But not really (IMHO) part of computer science. The techniques involved in computer security are what I would consider the computer science aspect of things. But the audit article is mostly stuff (preventing laptop thefts, backup media theft, supply-chain risks) that falls well outside of what I think even the broadest definitions of CS would include.

With regard to guidelines on project content, while there's nothing specifically written down anywhere (partly because CS is hard to define precisely), I think that the fields of computer science section of the computer science article is probably a good starting point. --Allan McInnes (talk) 16:51, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be beneficial to include on the project page a statement along the lines of "For the purposes of this project by computer science we mean ...". I suspect it won't be too difficult to get some manner of consensus on this given the apparent interests of the current project participants, and it will help clarify the position for future discussions like this. It's probably best to get such a definition hammered out now while consensus is likely rather than later when people with dissenting views have signed on. The important point is that it would be definition of computer science for this project - the aim is to collect people with similar interests to work on some defined subset of wikipedia, the definition would simply be a matter of definining and delineating that "common interest" so it doesn't need to be subject to debate as in Computer science - people with different views of what computer science means simply need not subscribe to this project. Leland McInnes 19:56, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

The problem that I foresee with that suggestion is that you will still end up with arguments over what articles properly fall within the scope of whatever statement you come up with. As with the proposed "manual of style" I think we're better off with loose guidelines, e.g. "articles in Category:Computer science and its subcategories" might be a good start (although that may just cause people to add anything they want to include in the project to the CS category).

Part of the problem may be the {{WikiProject Computer science}} template itself, which identifies some article as being "part" of this project. I'm starting to wonder if it's such a good idea to explicitly mark articles that way. It's great advertising, but it also creates discussions like this one and the ERP one. Whatever "community of interest" we have here will, I think, do a good job of identifying the scope of the project by the articles that get discussed here. That allows us to remain flexible, and also to say "hey, it's great that you want to talk about Comet Hyakutake, but perhaps that discussion would be better suited to the Astronomy talk pages". --Allan McInnes (talk) 21:04, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

The WikiProject Computer science template

Crosspost from my talk page:

I was unsure about putting the WikiProject CS notice on MATLAB when I was going through my watchlist tagging. It's a programming language, and other programming languages certainly deserve the tag. I wouldn't think of the tag as a "territory grab" (as though no other WikiProject can claim its relevance), but I'll leave it off as dubious. In the end, I think most computer scientists would be embarassed about the program, so it's best this way. :) --Mgreenbe 20:22, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I will post something about this on WP CS soon. This template is used mainly for advertisment purposes not "claiming ownership". Therefore is is not really necessary to put it on each end every page only those with a large audience of computer scientist. I'm currently thinking about programming languages. The Haskell programming language mostly of interest to computer scientist, but I don't think putting it on Java programming language would be a good idea as it would more likely than not attract the "wrong" audience (programming language discussions would most likely flood the talk page making discussions on other CS topics hard). Cheers, —Ruud 20:28, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the template is better used for advertising than for "marking territory". Maybe we should consider altering the wording of the template so that it sounds less like a territorial sign, which may also help us to avoid arguments about the "scope" of the project (see above). How about instead of saying

"This article is part of WikiProject Computer science..."

we use something like

"Editors working on this article may also be interested in WikiProject Computer science, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to computer science. If you would like to participate in this project please visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

Think that would help at all? --Allan McInnes (talk) 22:24, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. —Ruud 22:28, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I think this is too weak. While advertising is one of the primary roles of the template, it also serves to mark the fact that the project has taken an interest in the page and, as such, it is worth checking what the project has to say about the page before making drastic changes. This is not so much a territory grab as letting potential editors know that some work and discussion relating to the article may be found on the project pages as well as talk page of the article itself. I would like to propose the following:

"One or more participants of WikiProject Computer science are actively maintaining this page. WikiProject Computer science is an attempt to better organize information in articles related to computer science. If you would like to participate in this project please visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

A side benefit is that this provides a theoretical means for removing the tags: if it can be deemed that no participants are maintaining the page then the tag can be removed. Leland McInnes 23:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

While I agree in theory, this doesn't seem to be the standard among other projects (we should add ourselves to that, by the way). --Mgreenbe 23:32, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Reading through those there are a number that use "This article is related to..." or "This article is supported by..." both of which I think would be acceptable - it's less of territory grab, but still espouses that the project is taking some level of responsibility for the page. Leland McInnes 00:34, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

That's a good point. Maybe the solution is to have 2 templates then — one that is simply advertising (my weaker suggested wording), and one that indicates that the article in question is actively being looked at and worked on by project members (your suggested wording). Anyone else have any opinions on this? --Allan McInnes (talk) 23:36, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Does the value-add outweight the effort here? I also, don't really like Leland's proposal to remove templates from high traffic articles which are for one reason or another left unmaintained for a while. —Ruud 23:46, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm happy enough with the wording that I originally proposed. I think it makes people aware the project exists, and it can be placed on pretty much any article that we think might attract people interested in this project (including articles that aren't necessarily within the "scope" of the project). OTOH, I can see what Leland's version is trying to accomplish. However, after thinking about it a bit, I suspect that in practice anyone making a drastic change to an article will probably either mention it on the article's talk page first, or they're likely to ignore any WPCS tag anyway. If an article is being actively maintained by some project participants they'll presumably be monitoring both the article and the relevant talk page, so if drastic changes do take place they'll know about it (regardless of whether or not the article has been tagged). So in the end, I guess I'm back to advocating my original proposal, which makes the template more advertising than an ownership claim. --Allan McInnes (talk) 00:36, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I guess we haven't actually achieved a consensus on this, aside from a general dissatisfaction with the current (territorial) template. So here are the possibilities from what I can see:

1. "This article is related to..."
2. "This article is supported by..."
3. "Editors working on this article may also be interested in..."

Personally, I'm happy with any of them, but am leaning towards number 1, since it is "more standard" but doesn't make any claims that we're actively supporting a particular article. Opinions from others? Unless I hear anything in the next day or so, I'll go ahead and change the template to read "This article is related to..." --Allan McInnes (talk) 19:49, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Any of those are fine by me. Less process, more computer science! --Mgreenbe 22:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I feel the same way. But I'd rather get the process stuff sorted out now, than wait for it to generate all sorts of annoying arguments later. In particular, I want to avoid anything like the interminable definitional argument that took place at Talk:Computer science. --Allan McInnes (talk) 22:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

All three are fine with me as well. —Ruud 22:43, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've updated the template, and posted it in the template messages table as Mgreenbe suggested earlier. We now return you to your regularly scheduled CS wiki-activities. --Allan McInnes (talk) 23:19, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Poll

I have started a poll at Template_talk:WikiProject_Computer_science#Poll. —Ruud 19:15, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

template inclusion

Should we be including the Wikiproject CS template on programming languages and frameworks (such as Perl, C#, .NET... etc)? Gflores ^Talk 16:23, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that would be a very good idea per my comment above. —Ruud 16:27, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I see your point. But I don't think the talk page would get flooded by discussions of programming languages. After all, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Programming_languages seemed to do ok. Computer Science isn't all theory. :) If most discussions are about languages, they'll be motivated to resurrect the aforementioned inactive project. Seeing as how programming languages are a field of computer science, I think we should include them in the template (or perhaps just the most important langs). I could just be the minority here. :) Thoughts? Gflores ^Talk 17:12, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I can't see how it hurts. Any language wars can be immediately cut off, as we all agree that they're inappropriate. --Mgreenbe 17:20, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to lie in the way here, but I would like to here from Allan as I convinced him to merge his highly specialized project here. —Ruud 17:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh and you might want to ask the people at WikiProject Programming languages first as well, of course. —Ruud 17:32, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, it seesm pretty deserted, so just ignore that. —Ruud 17:34, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't really see a problem with putting the template on those talk pages. I understand Rudy's concerns, but I'm skeptical that people will come here specifically to argue about just PL issues. They're more likely to continue those arguments at a PL-specific talk page. If things get out of hand here, we can always ask the offenders to take it somewhere else.

The whole reason I merged in my "highly specialized project" was to be able to get input from a wider number of people, who wouldn't otherwise know what I was up to. In the same way, I think we're probably better off casting as wide a net as possible, in the hopes of getting useful contributions from people who might not otherwise be involved. We've got an ambitious project here, and the more help we have, the better. Not to mention that, by casting a wider net, we have a chance to reach people who may have only a narrow understanding of CS, and show them a much broader view of the discipline. That's the kind of thing that can change lives, and being improve the discipline as a whole. Seems like a worthy goal for a project like this :-)

--Allan McInnes (talk) 18:44, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

For those keeping track, the template now reads "This article is supported by WikiProject Computer science.", as a result of the most recent edit by User:Dzonatas. So I guess the question now is, does this project "support" (for example) the Perl article? --Allan McInnes (talk) 00:34, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah.. damn. —Ruud 02:07, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Implementation for deletion

I've put Quicksort implementations up for deletion, as I don't believe that implementations belong in an encyclopedia, however useful or interesting they may be. Discuss! --bmills 16:51, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

When Code is Appropriate

With Quicksort implementations up for deletion under the Wikipedia is not a source code repository policy, it raises the question of guidelines on exactly when source code (as opposed to generic pseudocode) is and is not appropriate. Feel free to join the discussion at the manual of style talk page. Leland McInnes 22:42, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposed change for userbox template

I propose changing our userbox template from

CS	This user is a member of WikiProject Computer science.

to

This user is a member of WikiProject Computer science.

• The reasoning behind this is that A) the image makes it look a lot nice than just pure text (and yes I did confirm that it was an image we can use) and B) it illustrates at a glance that we're a comp sci oriented group. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 03:55, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... I like the look of it, but a lot of the userbox discussions I've read discourage images because of server load. That, and I've spent a lot of energy trying to convince people that CS is not actually focused on computers. I dunno, what does everybody else think? --bmills 04:33, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

When I first created the userbox template I considered finding an appropriate image. But then I ran across the discussions about server-load and images in userboxes that you've mentioned, with the result that I settled on the text version. I think that the points that you and Ruud make about the image itself are also valid. But IMHO they main reason to stay with "CS" (or some other relevant piece of text) is simply that images in userboxes seem to be discouraged now. --Allan McInnes (talk) 18:26, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about the whole image thing I think they might have caused the major issues with images in templates but I'm not entirely sure. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 21:11, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I think "CS" looks more professional than an image and much... much more importantly, what does the image have to do with computer science? Seems more appropriate for WikiProject Computing to me. —Ruud 04:49, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually in taking a fresh look at this I agree with you that CS works better and looks more professional. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 21:11, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

On AfD today

• Quicksort implementations (transwikied and deleted)
• 99 Bottles of Beer computer program 2 (already transwikied and deleted)
• XML-RPC Implementations (deleted)
• Floyd-Warshall algorithm/C implementation (deleted)
• Theoretical foundation of polymorphism (deleted)
• Nice class (nicely deleted)

Would it be worthwhile to put this list on the main project page, and update it regularly? --Allan McInnes (talk) 02:25, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I follow WP:AFD and WP:PROD so I will be updating this list. Don't know whether it will be noticed quicker if I post it on the talk page or the main page, especially given that the number of CS related articles up for deletion is unusually high this week. —Ruud 02:31, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Talk pages I guess, we can also discuss about the articles in question as well. I have read the articles and I believe some of them are useful content, although not meant for an encyclopedia. It seems such a waste to delete. Are we able to save them somewhere? -- ^Evanx(tag?) 02:40, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

In that case you should vote merge, but as these articles all seem to be going to a delete, you might want to copy them into your user space or put a note at the top requesting the closing admin to move it into your user space so you can do such and so with it (incorporate them in a wikibook, fore example). —Ruud 02:45, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

They can sometimes be transwikied. Just vote "Transwiki" on the AFD page, I think; most original content can go te WikiBooks, though some can go to WikiSource if it's external. --bmills 04:08, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

As a partially related issue: what about having a list of articles that are currently featured articles candidates, articles currently on peer review or submitted for "good" status? - Liberatore(T) 13:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it woul dbe appropriate to post thme on the talk page as well. —Ruud 16:01, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Datatype reorganization

At Talk:Datatype, there's a discussion and related vote about reorganization of datatype, one of the articles listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/WP1.0. The first step is a request to move the current datatype to Type system, the idea being to better match the current content and to make space for new, more practical articles on data types. --TuukkaH 07:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

AfD update

• CRAM-MD5 — Proposed for deletion, but rewritten (not currently proposed for deletion)
• LanguageOrientedProgramming — Proposed for deletion, deleted.
• Fractal cryptography — Articles for deletion, deleted.
• List of hello world programs — AfD — kept
• Hello world program in esoteric languages — prodded (and poked and jabbed) — kept
• Fibonacci number program — prodded (some of its useful information should be moved somewhere useful) — kept
• Insertion sort implementations (AfD) — to be transwikied, then deleted
• Selection sort implementations (AfD) — to be transwikied, then deleted
• List of multi-threading libraries (AfD) — deleted
• Stooge sort#Java (since it's only a section, see Talk:Stooge sort) — translated to pseudocode
• VALGOL programming language, SIMPLE programming language, SLOBOL programming language, LAIDBACK, Sartre programming language, FIFTH programming language, C- programming language, LITHP programming language, DOGO programming language — no consensus, admin suggests merge

Mmm, the VALGOL programming language, SIMPLE programming language, SLOBOL programming language, LAIDBACK, Sartre programming language, FIFTH programming language, C- programming language, LITHP programming language, DOGO programming language now all redirect to the non-existing InfoWorld joke programming languages. -- Koffieyahoo 11:30, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. —Ruud 15:02, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

AfD trigger happy

I see the reason to delete these because of the repository sense, but is there an effort to covert them to psuedocode? — Dzonatas 19:21, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

For most of the above, some relevant article already contains a suitable implementation in either pseudocode or actual code — so there's no pressing to convert them. --bmills 19:29, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Okay. I skimmed. Is there a list of actual code implementations that need to be converted to psuedocode? — Dzonatas 22:44, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

No, but we could use one, though. I guess most articles in Category:Programming and Category:Algorithms and all the enties in List of hello world programs need to be moved (hint). —Ruud 22:49, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Esoteric programming languages

• 0x29A - afd, deleted
• 4DL programming language - afd, deleted
• HQ9+ - afd, no consensus
• Beatnik programming language - afd, no consensus
• Condit programming language - prod, deleted
• Choon - redirected to Chōon
• Borg programming language - prod, deleted
• BDAMD - afd, deleted
• Argh! - afd — no consensus
• 23 programming language - prod, deleted
• Wierd programming language - deprodded
• David Morgan-Mar - afd
• Piet programming language - afd
• Ook! programming language - afd
• Chef programming language - afd
• Whenever - afd
• Sean Heber - afd
• Whirl - afd
• COW programming language - afd
• ZT programming language - prod, redirected
• XXC programming language - prod, deleted

Esoteric programming languages were mass-nominated for deletion in September 2004, which was strongly opposed. The contents of these pages could be moved as descriptions under list of esoteric programming languages or the articles could just be merged into one esoteric programming languages article (changing it to its own article instead of being a redirect, like now). "Non-notability", which seems to be your point, is not a justification for deletion (WP:DEL) and merging is suggested. --ZeroOne 01:14, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

The problem here is that I could without too much effort write yet another Brainfuck clone and then write an article about it on Wikipedia. I don't think that is right. Please help me sort out the cruft from the real stuff here. —Ruud 01:21, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I just voted keep on Argh! At least it has been implemented, and I find it intellectually interesting. Ones that have never been implemented I won't argue about. RJFJR 01:31, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Non-notabile articles have been commonly deleted for about a year, according to WP:N (which has some interesting commentary regarding notability). I think the main problem is than non-notable topics often don't have the potential to become encyclopedia-quality, encyclopedia-length articles. That said, in many cases merging is appropriate. --bmills 03:03, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed something, and I will add it to the pages on notability when I figure out how to be really articulate about it. If there are only two Wikipedians with any knowledge of or interest in a topic, then even if the article's content IS verifiable from reliable secondary sources, it is likely that the article will not in fact be properly fact-checked and NPOVed because nobody will bother to do so; and a wikipedia article which nobody has bothered to verify is as unreliable as one that is not in principle verifiable. That is, "verifiability" is not sufficient unless we in fact have people who will actually verify the article's content. However, this criterion does not lend itself to a clean guideline like "can secondary sources be cited to back up this statement". You can look at the article's edit history for a rough assessment; if after two months it consists of substantive contributions by one or two people, with only grammatical tweaks and stub-sorting tags and so on by anyone but those one or two, it is likely to be inadequately policed. (Or the one or two editors are being so careful that others HAVE verified it and found nothing that needs fixing.) This is the main function of "notability". I am not going to weigh in on these individual languages, because I do not care whether their articles stay or go. (I helped clean up the Argh! language when it was being developed, but I had forgotten about it until yesterday :) ) But I am going to suggest looking to see which of these articles appear to be adequately policed, and keeping those ones. (People have said "how many people have edited an article has no bearing on whether it should stay or go." It is true that we have no obligation to keep people's contributions merely because they have put work into them, as the effort expended is not directly reflected in quality of the article. But how many people have contributed IS some indication of how many eyes are watching the article for POV or outright lies.)

This whole point is expressed very concisely in WP:N: "Not enough Wikipedia users will take enough interest in your next-door neighbour's dog to ensure that the article is accurate, even if the information is theoretically verifiable." But the dog example fuzzes it, since facts about the dog are likely to be original research not verifiable from secondary sources. DanielCristofani 00:04, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

DanielCristofani 00:04, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

By non-project members

• List of basic computer science topics - afd — no consensus
• Bedroom programming - afd — deleted
• Database instance - afd — redirected

New on AfD

• Most of Category:Software comparison will be either prodded or in AfD by March 8. In AfD so far:
  • Comparison of web browsers
  • Comparison of Internet forum software
  • Comparison of BitTorrent software
  • Comparison of file systems

Expect more comparisons to show up in the next couple of weeks, after any reasonable content can be salvaged. —donhalcon^╤ 14:49, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

• Tiny programming languages
• Lists of computer syntax patterns --Allan McInnes (talk) 17:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Algorithm history section

I know it's on the todo list but I think that if someone can get around to rewriting it it is a fairly critical priority since it is absolutely incomprehensible and impossible to read. Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 20:17, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Literate programs wiki

Deco has started a new, Mediawiki-based site called Literate Programs. The intent is to provide MIT-licensed code in a literate form that explains the algorithm and implementation. Deco has provided a simple way to extract and download the code too. This seems like both a worthy project in its own right, and a great place to stick all of those "sample implementations" that are being AfDed as unencyclopedic. We might also consider adding some guidance to the WPCS manual of style that recommends providing an appropriate LP link for any algorithm description. --Allan McInnes (talk) 17:52, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

This seems like almost exactly the solution I was looking for: a logical place to put implementations. I strongly recommend we update the MoS to reflect this. Leland McInnes 21:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Done. Although the wording could probably use some work... --Allan McInnes (talk) 21:49, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Note that WP content can't be transwikied there because LP doesn't use a GFDL-compatible license. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Insertion sort implementations. —donhalcon^╤ 21:29, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Good point. LP uses the MIT/X11 license, and we should probably make that fact clear in the MoS. Existing WP content can't be transferred there. The recommendation is rather that new sample implementations be place on LP rather than WP. I suppose that existing content will end up in WikiBooks. --Allan McInnes (talk) 23:18, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I doubt most code samples are long enough to be copyrightable, and some minor modifications will probably make them original work. —Ruud 23:23, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Length is a rather muddy issue for copyright, and one we don't want to accidentally run afoul of. What about WikiCities Programming or some other chunk of WikiCities, which does use the GFDL? —donhalcon^╤ 05:30, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Scale Factor (Computer Science)

I was going to suggest that this article be merged, but cannot figure out where exactly it should be merged to. Is there an article around anywhere which discusses the application of numerical analysis (generation and propagation of errors) to the various representations of numbers? EricR 20:02, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it belongs in data structure? It seems to me that a scaled value is just a particular abstract data type. —donhalcon^╤ 18:19, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject programming languages and C

Those two projects are both inactive. As I'm currently working on C/C++ related things, can I refurnish the C project into a C++ project (which includes C, of coz) and put it back? Deryck C. 08:05, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

If the project is inactive, then you can probably do almost anything you want with it. OTOH, is there anything that would prevent you from simply working through this project? --Allan McInnes (talk) 15:55, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that is, I'd be very annoyed if I nobody joins. Deryck C. 10:51, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Recruit members

The newly set-up WikiProject C++ is now recruiting members. Please join if you are interested in C++ programming. Deryck C. 14:54, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Stub sorting

I've started cleaning up Category:Computer science. I think a new stub-type woudl help (see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Proposals#.7B.7Bprogramming-stub.7D.7D). —Ruud 18:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Manual of Style

The Manual of Style seems to have become increasingly stable of late. It still requires a little work however. I have filled in some suggested structure for Theorem or Conjecture article and Classic Problem articles, but Definitions could use some work. In general however, I feel that it is beginning to take shape. Could we all go through and make sure it meets our approval, make changes or suggestions on the talk page where it does not, and try and beat it into a solid state that we can expect to remain fairly stable and largely satisfactory with all participants? Thanks. Leland McInnes 21:55, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Guarded suspension

Does anyone know whether this is different from a condition variable? Seems like a redirect candidate to me. Gazpacho 05:11, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Since someone already tried to redirect and I reverted, I'll comment here too. The article says that guarded suspension is a design pattern (computer science), so it's not directly the same as any single feature. Not that I would know about this particular pattern or too much about design patterns in general either. In any case, I can't understand why it should be redirected at condition variable, which isn't even of stub quality, and which itself might rather be merged into monitor (synchronization). --TuukkaH 08:13, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The guarded suspension appears to have more in common with Dijkstra's guarded commands than it does with condition variables. However, it's both more vaguely defined than guarded commands, while at the same time being (apparently) only applicable to objects. It would be helpful if whoever wrote the article could provide some references though... --Allan McInnes (talk) 14:28, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Update: the guarded suspension pattern (as well as some of the other patterns listed as see also articles in the guarded suspension article) appear to be patterns drawn from Doug Lea's book on concurrent programming in Java (I thought they sounded familiar :-). I'm away from my copy right now, but should have access to it tomorrow. --Allan McInnes (talk) 14:34, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I turned CV into a stub just so I could redirect Guarded suspension there without confusion. I'm eager to see what Allan comes up with. If this "pattern" was created around Java's wait/notify, then there should be no doubt that it's the same as a condition variable, because that's exactly what wait/notify is. Gazpacho 20:34, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, based on my reading of Lea's book, it seems that "guarded suspension" is one of several patterns for dealing with a precondition on method that may be invoked by concurrent threads. Guarded suspension involves blocking until the precondition is fulfilled, then continuing method execution. Guarded suspension can be implemented in a variety of ways (including built-in language constructs). One way to implement guarded suspension is by waiting on a condition variable. So a guarded suspension is not the same as a condition variable. You might consider guarded suspension to be one possible pattern for using condition variables (and a pretty standard one — but it's always useful to have a name for a particular style of usage).

The term "guarded suspension" appears to have originated with Lea's book, but is being used beyond there — see here and here for usage by someone other than Lea.

My conclusion: guarded suspension should not be redirected to condition variable. What it really needs is expansion and referencing. When I get some free time I'll try to expand the article a bit. In the interrim, I'm going to at least provide a reference to Lea's book. --Allan McInnes (talk) 22:12, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Abstract data type cleanup

Hi all! I noticed there's a lot to be cleaned up regarding abstract data types, starting from the article itself. A problem seen in Queue, Stack (data structure) etc. is that they don't consider the abstract data type -- or at least not in a uniform manner. I sketched Stack (data structure)#Abstract data type, what do you people think? On the other hand, List doesn't seem to fit in Linked list. An important missing piece is Container (data structure) or Collection (data structure).

Here's something our style guide could also try to address at Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style (computer science)#Algorithms and Data Structures.

Abstract data type topics on the list Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/WP1.0 include Array, Graph (mathematics) (should be changed to Graph (data structure)?), List, String (computer science), Tree (data structure). --TuukkaH 21:59, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Your suggestions sound very reasonable to me. I like what you've done at Stack (data structure)#Abstract data type. If you want to make some specific additions to the Manual of Style, please go ahead (the discussion in the Algorithms and Data Structures mentions "discussing operations on data structures" but doesn't really specify much in the way of style). Then we can all argue about whether or not we agree with your suggestions ;-)

And yes, Graph (mathematics) should probably be changed to Graph (data structure) in the WP1.0 list. --Allan McInnes (talk) 22:44, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Categorical list of programming languages

I've just posted a question over at Talk:Categorical list of programming languages, asking why this article shouldn't be eliminated in favour of simply using Wikipedia's category system (it is a categorical list after all :-). Thoughts from anyone else are welcome here, or better yet at Talk:Categorical list of programming languages. --Allan McInnes (talk) 16:47, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

See also Alphabetical list of programming languages (pretty much covered by Category:Programming languages I would think). --Allan McInnes (talk) 17:10, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

A small case might be made for the alphabetical list, but IMO both can go. —Ruud 23:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I just posted a new message at Talk:Categorical list of programming languages. I've started to clean the page up, as well as categorizing the languages it lists. I'd certainly welcome any help or comments from anyone else. At present, much of the information on the list isn't reflected by the categories. Almost everything in that list can and should be reflected by categories, whether or not the list continues to exist. Of course, once the list is fully redundant, it may be harder to justify its continued existence... – Zawersh 00:12, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

A special programming language

My friend has invented a programming language called Ting++, named after himself, has its own, complete syntaxes, is published on the web, but isn't widely known. Can it have a space in Wikipedia?

A little background information: the inventor is quite a well-known programmer in Hong Kong. He's one of the two Hong Kong representatives in Canadian Computing Competition 2006 and has won two individual champions in some programming competitions in Hong Kong, the bigger one hosting about 600 contestants. --Deryck C. 09:01, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

A language that was just invented by one person is most likely not notable. When it gets some academic papers and a couple thousand users it'll be notable. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-04-12 09:23Z

He's published some docs and the interpreter, but the public didn't quite notice it. --Deryck C. 09:37, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

If by "published" you mean put up some web pages, that probably doesn't mean much. It's not hard to write a grammar. There are countless "amateur" languages intended for general use that never went further than that. It is indeed exciting to create programming languages, but it has to be notable before being in Wikipedia; Wikipedia is not an advertising platform :) —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-04-12 10:05Z

I agree with Quarl on this one. --Allan McInnes (talk) 14:36, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

C/C++ "manual" articles

I think fgets et al should be transwikied out of Wikipedia. Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject C++. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-04-12 09:38Z

Method Engineering Project

As some of you are already aware, a group from the University of Utrecht has been adding a large number of software-engineering-related articles to Wikipedia, under the aegis of a method engineering wikiproject. Unfortunately, these articles are of variable quality. Some are not really appropriate for Wikipedia. Many fail to follow Wikipedia style conventions. In some cases, they duplicate information already contained in other WP articles. There are also concerns with the potenitally closed nature of the Utrecht group, and their lack of engagement in the larger Wikipedia community.

Having said all of that, there is a large amount of content added by the method engineering group that is good, and can usefully be incorporated into Wikipedia. I'd like to encourage any WPCS project participants who have an interest in software engineering to take a look at the articles produced by the method engineering group (Ruud, thanks for your efforts in tagging these articles!), and to help get these articles

• cleaned up
• checked for correctness
• made compliant with WP:STYLE
• better crosslinked with the rest of Wikipedia
• merged where appropriate
• AfDed where necessary

You may also want to weigh in on the discussion at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Method Engineering Encyclopedia.

Finally, I'd like to encourage WPCS participants to try to draw users that appear to be part of the Utrecht group further into the Wikipedia community. Many of these users only edit one or two obscure method engineering articles. As a result, they have often escaped the notice of other Wikipedians, and haven't even received a {{welcome}} message yet. --Allan McInnes (talk) 16:51, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Design Patterns and Frameworks

I just stumbled across Design Patterns and Frameworks. I was going to suggest a merge with Design pattern (computer science) (and perhaps Framework), but it's not obvious to me that there's any useful content in Design Patterns and Frameworks (not to mention a total lack of references). Anyone else see anything of value there? Or should the article just be AfDed? --Allan McInnes (talk) 19:11, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• Maybe a page called software abstractions which categorized and distinguished between things such as components, libraries, patterns, templates, macros, frameworks, modules, packages, idioms, classes, etc. (assuming concrete definitions for these can be established) might be a useful page. If such a page were created, DP&F could redirect there. Otherwise, AfD. Actually, I vote to nuke; we can always create the redirect later, and the history indicates that the material is available outside Wikipedia. --EngineerScotty 22:26, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

There's Abstraction (computer science) too. Abstraction is a major topic in computing, so it warrants a series of articles, but it's a matter of choosing the scopes. I would expect to read about architecture, leaky abstractions, Greenspun's Tenth Rule. The list you have seems fine for programming abstractions exactly. Could the line be approximated between mental abstractions (such as modularity (programming), software design pattern, software architecture, abstraction layer) and programming language abstractions (such as subroutine, software component, module (programming))? --TuukkaH 08:10, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of a series of articles covering different abstractions (presumably all tying back to Abstraction (computer science)). The line between "mental abstraction" and "language abstraction" seems a reasonable one. Arguably, much of computer science research has involved turning loosely-defined mental abstractions into language abstractions (of one sort or another) that make it easier to communicate, resuse, and manipulate those abstract ideas. We might also look at pairing up language abstractions with their corresponding mental abstractions, and making the link more explicit in both articles. For example, I note that modularity (programming) only mentions module (programming) in passing, and that module (programming) does not reference the mental abstraction modularity (programming) as the rationale for the language construct at all. It's probably also worth noting that some mental abstractions may not be given concrete instantiations in programming language constructs, but may show up in specification language constructs (for example, many concepts in software architecture are formalized in things like the Wright architecture description language). --Allan McInnes (talk) 16:50, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

This is not going to be easy. I started with some structural cleanup of Abstraction (computer science) and links. --TuukkaH 09:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Javolution?

Recently, I've seen links to Javolution (and the related JScience) pop up in several articles that I track. Now, I've never heard of Javolution before. But then I don't do much real-time Java programming. However, from the history, the Javolution article seems to have been written almost entirely by the primary developer of the Javolution library. The same goes for JScience (also by the same developer).

Has anyone here heard of or used these libraries before? Are they actually notable, or is this a case of a developer spamming Wikipedia to advertise his product? The Javolution article in particular looks a lot like advertising, since it's primarily a bulleted list of features with external links to the Javolution website rather than any explanation of the features.

--Allan McInnes (talk) 16:26, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, this is a freeware rather than a commercial product. I've never used it; but googling for javolution does bring up numerous hits besides its own promotional stuff. The big logo on the top is ugly and inappropriate, but the article itself doesn't make any wildly fantastic claimes. My thoughts:

• Scale back the logo; we don't need a product logo which spans the width of the page. Better Wikipedia style to shrink it and put it in the box.
• Include some links to establish that the library meets some threshold of notability--I'm generally a constructionist at heart, but often times the difference between spam/vanity and a legit article is the fact that others care about the topic and that this can be demonstrated.

If these things are done (I'll go ahead and do the first right now; and add a note on the talk page regarding the second), I see no reason why this article can't continue to exist.

--EngineerScotty 16:59, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, that sounds reasonable. --Allan McInnes (talk) 18:59, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Stub sorting bureaucracy

See Wikipedia:Stub_types_for_deletion#.7B.7BCompu-prog-stub.7D.7D_.2F_Cat:Computer_programming_stubs and Wikipedia:Stub_types_for_deletion#.7B.7BInfo-sci-stub.7D.7D_.2F_Cat:Information_science_stubs. —Ruud 17:01, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Please do. I object, however, to the use of the word "bureaucracy"; this is the correct process for the deletion of stub types, and these show every sign of needing to be deleted (unproposed, undersized, and poorly defined (exceptionally so in the latter case)). Would you prefer I'd just speedied them? Alai 00:16, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Fine. I'm not planning on doing any stub sorting in the foreseeable future. —Ruud 14:49, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Elemental programming and Algorithm

Elemental programming is up for deletion and I have listed Algorithm as a Featured article removal candidate. —Ruud 23:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Stub Icon

I noticed in Template talk:Comp-sci-stub that there was some dissatisfaction over the current icon used for the stubs since downscaling it so strongly degrades the image substantially. I was bored, so I created two candidate icons.

Candidate 1: (deleted)

Candidate 2: (deleted)

Graphics arts isn't my thing, plus I'm color blind, so if they're lousy feel free to say so. :) -- Zawersh 11:05, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I like the second one more, but I think they could use a little anti-aliasing. —Ruud 12:42, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Ruud — the second is better (the extra color makes it stand out a little more), but needs antialiasing. Thanks for taking the time to put these together though! --Allan McInnes (talk) 16:19, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

As per Ruud and Allan. -- ^Evanx(tag?) 20:43, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Here's another try, this time using a better program. Same basic idea, but antialiased (and proportioned more like with real flow chart symbols, hopefully).

Candidate 3:

Also, if it would be preferable for the background to be transparent instead of white, let me know and I can make that change. -- Zawersh 02:39, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I like it! I'd definitely be in favor of replacing the current stub icon with this new one. --Allan McInnes (talk) 03:08, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Me too. —Ruud 19:59, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the work Zawersh. I think it is better done. -- ^Evanx(tag?) 18:18, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Me three. Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 20:04, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, the reaction to the latest proposal seems pretty positive. I've gone ahead and changed the stub template to use candidate 3. --Allan McInnes (talk) 18:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Turns out, there are a lot of other comp-sci-related stub templates that use the old image. Should we go ahead and swap the images on those too? Although some of them, like AI or Computer engineering, really should have their own, more relevant images. ~ Booya ^Bazooka 03:04, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Consider: ~ Booya ^Bazooka 03:16, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

These all suffer from the same problem the original flowchart image suffered: they're scaled so small that much of the image is lost. I could see that image 1 is a head, but without any significance. Images 2 and 3 don't look like much of anything recognizable to me at this scale. However, I do like the idea expressed in image 2 for software engineering and computer programming. One way or the other, though, I do think that the old flowchart image should be phased out of all the stubs. -- Zawersh 05:26, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps for computer engineering we might try something like

File:Flipflopjk.png

although that's possibly still scaled too small. --Allan McInnes (talk) 06:28, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Syntax colouring and {{major programming languages}}

See MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Syntax_Highlighting_Proposal and Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 May 25#Template:Major_programming_languages. —Ruud 22:11, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Cleaning up excessive code — with Wikibooks!

In effort to cleanup algorithm articles with too much code implementation (I strongly support pseudocode), I've created a Wikibook called Algorithm implementation where these code examples can be transwikied. The "book" at this point is just a pile of some code that I've thrown on it, but the idea is that these implementations can be explained and elaborated on, to make it a legitimate book, as well as a place to dump our unwanted code ;) ~ Booya ^Bazooka 06:17, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Great idea! Thanks for putting this together. --Allan McInnes (talk) 17:51, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. You might be able to do the people at Wikisource a favour be moving some of the articles here as well. —Ruud 18:00, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Small userbox whitespace change

I just made a small change to Template:User WP CS (edit discuss links history) to remove some extra whitespace that was between the userbox's end span and the noinclude section. The extra whitespace was forcing a newline (which I don't think userboxes are supposed to do). Just thought I'd mention it in case anyone objects. -- Zawersh 20:47, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

CS collaboration of the week: Programming language

We have three votes for programming language as the CS collaboration of the week, so it's official. Please join in helping improve the article. Ideogram 23:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Hewitt related AfD

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Direct logic. —Ruud 04:22, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for update, I voted. -- ^Evanx(tag?) 20:59, 11 June 2006 (UTC)