Talk:Hans Reiser

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[edit] Wife's Disappearance

I agree with this last point of view. These news are not acceptable in a serious encyclopedia! AML—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.128.85.72 (talk)

The disappearance of his wife part is irrelevant to this page, or at least it should be rewritten without the slander thrown around in a divorce trial, "He gave his 4 years old nightmares!!!11ONE!" is fit for a tabloid, not a encyclopedia. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.255.101.42 (talk) .

I agree that listing the allegations verbatim is inappropriate, at least for now. I'm going to re-add the links, however, and tone down or eliminate the details of the allegations. Caffeinepuppy 20:54, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I just saw the current page... it looks like a news blurb. I'd at least take it off until he's either acquitted or convicted. Somehow I doubt it'll even be worth keeping if he's acquitted. Oct11 -smosher
It's completely relevant to Reiser's biography as factual information. 67.42.94.9 03:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
I'd say it's incredibly relevant given recent events. Incidentally, am I a bad person for worrying that this might cause Reiser4 to be less awesome? --Gwern (contribs) 03:46, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Totally relevant IMO. However, I do think that "Reiser was arrested on suspicion of her murder" should be changed to "her suspected murder".
From what I've read, Mrs Reiser is still just a missing person. Neftaly 08:05, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Not a missing person anymore. `Police said Tuesday evening they believe Nina Reiser's disappearance is a homicide and no longer a missing persons case, NBC11's Jodi Hernandez reported. "Nina Reiser was a victim of a homicide and not a missing person," said Officer Ersie Joyner, of Oakland police homicide division.` cited from http://www.nbc11.com/news/10046048/detail.html?treets=bay&tml=bay_break&ts=T&tmi=bay_break_1_04160310102006 (danyvip 11:14, 11 October 2006 (UTC))
I agree that this is relevant, but the "undue weight" issue of WP:NPOV is worrying me a little. I think the section on his arrest is reasonable, but it would be great if we could expand the rest of the article some. William Pietri 15:04, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps the details about Namesys could be moved into a new section and expanded a bit, with the appropriate "Main article: ..." link? (It would be rather silly to have more information about Namesys here than on the proper article, though.) Caffeinepuppy 17:18, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
That seems like a great start to me. Perhaps some content from ReiserFS focused on Hans Reiser would also be good. William Pietri 17:29, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
So if you murder your wife, we can't talk about it on Wikipedia without balancing it out with a bunch of boring crud about the rest of your life? 66.251.24.39 19:27, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
When you are famous and interesting precisely because of that "boring crud" - yes. --Gwern (contribs) 21:46, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
To 66.251.24.39 - There is no body of Nina Reiser in evidence. A murder is suspected, Hans Reiser is a suspect, and is to be presumed innocent until found guilty. You remember? As such, I find it irritating that 80% of the article is about this alledged murder, while very little is said about his excellent work on journaling filesystems, or his criticism on the Linux kernel maintainers. This article looks like Hans Reiser is a person of public interest mainly because he's a suspect in the murder of a person most of us have never heard about before she went missing. 212.149.48.44 07:48, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

His wife seems a bit young to be a " Jewish OB-GYN " as described in the article; in addition, she is not licensed as a doctor in the state of California; so I ask: what makes her a " Jewish OB-GYN"Ovrd 00:08, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

For one, her mother's last name is "Sharanova", which is a Russified Jewish last name. By Jewish law, if the mother is Jewish, then so are the children. "OB-GYN" -- possibly inaccurate, because several sources claim she's only studying towards it.
I guess Jewish law is no law, except in Israeli probably. Jewish is a religion and one is free to decide his/her own religion, whatever his/her parents'

This divorce/murder stuff has NO place in an encyclopedia. This stinks the UK tabloids. Shame...

[edit] Murder Discussion Section is Very Biased

All that is presented is the Oakland PD's side of the case, which looks pretty shaky even when unchallenged. When the facts about the CRX passenger seat removed for weight reduction, the length of the marriage and other items are revealed, it is obvious that Hans is innocent. 216.175.118.55 03:36, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Please review Wikipedia's standards for inclusion, especially WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:NOR. Regards, Nandesuka 03:46, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
I think the current section does pretty well in neutrally giving the current facts. Readers can and should judge for themselves whether they are convincing or not. --Gwern (contribs) 04:30, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Regarding Nin'as being too young to be the doctor. She was going to start working for Kaizer as a doctor from September 20-th. She disappeared on the 3-d.

Reiser's wife is not listed as a Physician for the state of California; also, it would be close to impossible for a 31 year old to be board certified as an OB-GYN. Ovrd 21:06, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

That she is a doctor is mentioned in multiple news reports. Doctors in Russia are still doctors. If you've got a better citation saying she isn't a doctor, let us know. I couldn't find the OB/GYN bit in the reports I looked at, so unless somebody has a cite, I wouldn't object to you removing that. William Pietri 22:52, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
[1] says she was "studying to earn her medical license so she could practice obstetrics and gynecology". In many countries (the UK for example, I dunno about Russia) medical education isn't a postgrad - kids go straight from highschool to medical school. At least in the UK one is a "doctor" yeears before one has fully finished training ([2]_. So it's likely she's officially a doctor (because she's a medical school grad) but isn't a board-certified doctor because, as Ovrd notes and cbs5 confirms, she's not passed the US boards yet. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:14, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

it is unlikely that a computer programmer would perform murder. generally speaking.

yes, because it is unlikely that any random person would commit murder.

[edit] What officials allege

Right now the article reads "Officials allege he removed the passenger seat of his 1998 Honda hatchback" - but do they? The cited source for that section ([3]) says the seat is missing, but leaves it at that. Unless another link is much more explicit, it looks like we're inferring that they're saying he disposed of the seat - it might be a reasonable inference, but it's not one we should be making. If all the cited sources say is that the seat is missing, we should just say that ourselves, and leave the inference to the reader. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 09:47, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of cars, I've seen reports of a 1998 Honda hatchback, and of a 1988 CRX. (The CRX wasn't made in 1998.) I can easily imagine carring duct tape and plastic bags in a 1988 CRX because the rear window gets leaky after 15 years through the brake light fixture. A 1998 is much less likely to leak. Not that this is the right place to discuss that.... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 198.4.83.52 (talk) .

[edit] New article

There's a new article in the San Jose Mercury News that has some good information that goes beyond what we have now. [4] It discusses him in the context of the OSS community. I don't have time to incorporate it now, but I thought I'd mention it. William Pietri 16:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if there's much from there that we can (or at least should) add. The only thing it really gives (that our current sources don't) is the mention of Reiser being a bit spikey in online debates ("It got very political. And Reiser is not the most diplomatic of people"). If we mentioned that, it might be read (by visitors who aren't familiar with the OS community's robust debates) to imply that Reiser has some kind of anger-issues. But OS discussions can generally be rather spikey places, and Reiser is no spikier than Linus or Larry McVoy or others, and a tad less than Theo de Raadt; so I think mentioning that could be a misleading characterisation. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Well said. The only way to enter an OSS (not just operating system) debate is with full body armour and asbestos underwear. Outsiders would not appreciate the tone of the online debates and could easily misunderstand. Robert Brockway 00:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed "suspicion of"

Even though the news headline that was widely reported included the phrase "suspicion of", this is not a legal concept in the US. Arrest implies a certain legal definition of suspicion. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, so the phrase "arrested on suspicion of" is inane and misleading. It implies that there's a lesser sort of arrest when the evidence is weaker, such a thing does not exist.

I've removed all references to this misleading and potentially POV phrase. Gigs 14:55, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, it doesn't exist? I suppose that you mean that a google search for "arrested on suspicion" finds only incorrect articles.
Unless he has been charged with the murder, he is being held on suspicion. This is in fact done quite frequently with possible suspects where there is a flight risk. Come up with a source before you re-add this to the article.
Remember the policy mentioned at the top of the page: don't say anything that isn't provable on someone's bio page.
-- BillWeiss | Talk 15:30, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
A clarification on my previous point. Looking at references 11-13 on the article, two of them say that he has been "arrested on suspicion of murder", while one says he has been arrested on charges of murder. These were all updated around the same time (2006/10/10), with the latest (2006/10/11, ref-11) having the former wording.
If you can find reference to a more authoritative source, that would be great.
-- BillWeiss | Talk 15:35, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Bill, he's been charged with murder, that's verifiable. One isn't arraigned for charges one hasn't been charged with. :) I've also found a citation regarding the mistake of saying "arrested on suspicion of". This pretty much sums it up. In short, yes, all those articles are using misleading phrasing. It is a common mistake. Please correct the article to reflect the proper phrasing. On a personal note, I'm as dissappointed as anyone that such a valuable member of the open source community has fallen to this. I hope Hans is innocent too. We shouldn't let that bias seep into the article though. Gigs 18:28, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't know enough of the legal language to know about usage of the word "arraigned". Your citation is some guy's blog. A blog about language, yes, but that's not sufficient to make it a reliable source.
Make the change if you like. A reliable citation would be good, but I won't argue it with you.
-- BillWeiss | Talk 22:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
An arraignment is the formal presentation of charges, it's the first hearing where the judge asks how you plead, and it is the time where you'd ask for a public defender if you need one. I know my citation was weak, but arrest, in the US at least, requires probable cause. Probable cause is a stronger standard to meet than the lesser one of "reasonable suspicion", it is instead a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed. Mere reasonable suspicion of a crime isn't a valid grounds for arrest, there must be enough evidence to convince a reasonable person a crime has indeed be committed. This is important, because an improper arrest can invalidate evidence at trial. It also keeps police from going on fishing expeditions, arresting people they merely have a reasonable suspicion of committing a crime. I do not mean this as an attack, only as background information I hope is helpful to cut through journalistic pitfalls such as "arrest on suspicion". Thank you for your reasonable debate and comments. Gigs 01:23, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm a bit late to the party, but I thought I'd post the relevant California law anyway. The California Penal Code makes a clear distinction between an arrest and a detention. From the Penal Code:
PC 834. An arrest is taking a person into custody, in a case and in the manner authorized by law. An arrest may be made by a peace officer or by a private person. [5]
PC 849.5. In any case in which a person is arrested and released and no accusatory pleading is filed charging him with an offense, any record of arrest of the person shall include a record of release. Thereafter, the arrest shall not be deemed an arrest, but a detention only. [6]
My understanding of PC 849.5 is that an arrest is downgraded to a detention if no charges are filed. I assume this change in wording is designed sidestep certain questions on employment applications and the like. But I am not a lawyer, YMMV, etc. —Ryan 14:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ELER reference

The current text about the Everyone Loves Eric Raymond comic fits really badly into the section about "Arrest following wife's disappearance", it is a long mostly chronological series of factual statements sourced from press articles, followed by one factual statement about an appearance in a comic. I'm not certain whether it belongs in the article, but if it does, shouldn't it go in its own section, for example "reaction of Free Software community"? (Although there's not a lot of citable sources about the community's reaction: it's reacted, but no one has written anything summarising the reaction. Maybe I'm missing some sources.) Thayvian 21:37, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I've been tempted on several occasions to remove the ELER reference in its entirety, as it just doesn't strike me as a very encyclopedic thing to include on a living person's biography. As a precedent, I couldn't find any external links to political cartoons on Bill Clinton. Caffeinepuppy 22:28, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I concur. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:29, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I also agree that the comic is in poor taste and not fitting of wikipedia. I'd put in a vote for removal (24.21.97.86 00:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC))
IMO, ELER is one instance of the communities reaction. I dont like this particular strip, but it has happened, and it is cited, and as the comic strip is on the commons, it is verifiable. I dont think it can be compared to political cartoons of Bill Clinton as in this instance there is only a single cartoon involving Hans, and that he is in the comic strip demonstrates how important Hans and ReiserFS is to the community. One article that describes the communities response (inc a comment on the size of the slashdot thread) is As suspect, Hans Reiser is hot topic in software world. That said, I would object to directly linking to the slashdot thread, and wouldnt mind if the ELER reference was replaced with a more balanced paragraph describing the effect this event has had on the OSS community. So, the ELER reference has a weak keep from me. Perhaps the section title needs to be broadened, and subsections created. John Vandenberg 23:32, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
OK, I've created a Community reaction to arrest and charges section to contain the ELER reference and John Vandenberg's source on the general reaction. It's not a very good section yet, and I'm still dubious about including a paragraph about the ELER comic unless someone publishes an article about the comic strip. Thayvian 09:05, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Nice work. Would it be more appropriate to say suggesting... instead of which humorously suggested.... Is there a better way of expressing that it was intending to be humorous without injecting POV that it isn't humorous? As I said earlier, I not humoured by this ELER strip which reaks to me of groupthink-come-bad-taste. Sadly, I think it is notable. I'm conflicted. John Vandenberg 10:22, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Maybe "jokingly suggested" rather than "humorously suggested", or just "joked"? It seems less POV to state that it was a joke than to state that it was actually funny. Thayvian 22:24, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
I prefer "jokingly suggested"/"joked" to humorous, but my first thought was that it sounds like poor English. John Vandenberg 22:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Something else that could do with another wording is the description of that ELER marquee text. Yes, it's now inaccurate, but 'A (now inaccurate) scrolling marquee text following the strip noted that Hans Reiser "has not been termed a suspect in his wife’s disappearance",' strikes me as inelegant phrasing. Do we really need to note that it is now inaccurate. It was a statement made in early October and was correct at the time. Thayvian 01:12, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I think it is important to temporally put the strip (October 7) before the arrest (October 10). This allows the reader to see that the "community" was not sitting on the fence -- they either saw him as guilty or/and wanted to point out the flaws in the reasoning of the police. I think this speaks of the importance of Reiser/ReiserFS to the Linux world. However the current text goes about this the long way; a more elegant wording would allow the reader to infer this.
Also, is it worth putting the community response section under the Arrest following wife's disappearance section, so that the {{template:current-section}} applies to it also. John Vandenberg 02:11, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I really think that the comic is in poor taste and inclusion doesn't add any information to Hans Reiser and really doesn't even
reflect the Software community reaction as far as I can see. I'd vote for removal, or at least put it in a "Trivia" section
along with the SouthPark/Simpsons/InsertMyFavoriteRandomTVShowHere type references. (24.21.97.86 00:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC))

As someone thinks that this topic needs to be discussed any further. Here my POV rant alongside my edit: [7]. Arnomane 10:38, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I find it very strange that you consider this web comic strip to be not representative of the community. Do you consider yourself to an active part of the community and able to speak for them, or do you have sources that back up your claim ? Have you read all the comments from the slashdot article ? Your use of "Dilbert" for comparison is very odd, as that comic is intended to appeal to a large group of IT people (hence its popularity) but doesnt really represent any of them; ELER is more comparable to Penny Arcade except in this case the comic is specifically about key figures in the open and free source worlds and events related to those people. IMO each strip can be more appropriately called an op-ed piece, as each is about a specific recent event, links to the pertinent background information and then the strip makes a point. Please read our ELER and the references, specifically the one from Gerv who considered it an honour to be used in the webcomic. Please also take a look at the spike on alexa (that will be disproportional due to non-windows clients) and eler lists ELER as the top result and blog posts from people in the community, such as Ryan Russell [8], who understand the jokes-within-jokes. I'll need a bit more time to think of other ways to illustrate my point, but so far you havent provided any to justify removing this content. What you have done is indicate that you have a negative POV of the webcomic and reverted without discussing it first. John Vandenberg 12:13, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

P.S.: Furthermore the article was quite some time without this tasteless reference, based on the discussion here and was just readded recently: [9]. Therefore I urge people not to add this once again until they bring up some further points right here on the talk page and until this has been discussed about. Thank you. Arnomane 12:15, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

User:Wefa removed this without any discussion on 6 February 2007 and I restored it as soon as I noticed. Wefa has only made a 100 edits, and probably thought that the comments by the anon above meant there was consensus to remove. Look I am all for this section to be reworded to be more tasteful (and was involved in reducing the prominence of this section back in October last year) and other useful types of edits, but deleting text because you don't like it, is lying by omission. John Vandenberg 12:30, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Blabla bla. I really hate people looking at other peoples' edit counter in order to marginalise their points instead of arguing content wise. My point doesn't get any better cause I have some several thousands edits in various Wikipedias and cause I am admin in several Wikimedia projects (of course not en.wikipedia). The article currently is full of voyeurism of some people that have zero clue about Free Software and about the Linux kernel but are just interested in sex & crime. This particular web comic was highly rejected by most of the free software community and are in now way a representing a significant group. Beside that for exampe in Germany this tasteless comic strip is completely unknown and Germans have a huge impact on the free software community. But in contrast the concerns about the future on Reiser file systems were raised by a significant number of people in the Free Software community accross nations and languages. This should give you some relations. Arnomane 00:55, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
I did not marginalise Wefa's point due to them being a new user; I was WP:BOLD and reverted their changes because the person didnt participate in this discussion first. We have already argued content-wise here, so removing this is not warranted without more discussion. I dont mind that you and User:Wefa both were WP:BOLD and deleted the content to test the waters. I was equally bold by reverting it. No need for personal attacks regarding motives. I'm open to discussion or other improvements to the article, but removing all reference to ELER isn't on without consensus. This isn't about sex and crime; it's about current events and relevance of that specific strip. If you look at the Alexa data, Germany is the second highest viewer of this webcomic, and given the spike at the time of this specific comic strip, I am pretty sure that a large number of Germans did see this comic.
If you can find evidence that the strip was rejected by a prominent member of the community (even email works for me), the wording can be radically revised and the importance of the ELER strip can be downplayed. In regards to the concerns about the file-system that arose in the community, I use the FS on my systems too, and am keenly aware of the importance of this. But that aspect is unrelated to the importance of the difficulty that Reiser was have with the other kernel hackers, both in regards to the maintenance of v3 and the merging of v4. In my opinion, the importance of one aspect doesn't invalidate another aspect. Also, if you think there are WP:BLP concerns, raise them here plainly. John Vandenberg 03:31, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
After a bit of a reactive edit war with an anon IP who chose, for some bizarre reason, to insult me as responsible for the ELER reference (a quick glance at the history shows my contribution to this article is marginal at best) I had a change of heart and decided that I agree with the removal.
My thinking is that I agreed with the removal of the word 'borderline' on the basis that it wasn't attributed, but how could it be when no-one has as of yet found anything attributable concerning this particular comic about Reiser. Unless anyone can find a reliable source to cite about this, I think the material fails notability requirements.
SeanLegassick 13:53, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
There are no reliable sources about this particular strip, probably because nobody would go near it for fear of being caught in a controversy. If this wasnt a BLP, I would stick to my guns about this fact not needing a secondary secondary as I consider the link to the strip to be a primary source, which are allowed normally when there are already substantial secondary sources. As I mentioned in my last comment before the edit war, I thought there may be BLP issues; when you finally deleted this factoid in memorable fashion, I decided this was best left as we have had enough BLP issues recently, and the general consensus appears to be that all facts on a BLP must be covered by secondary sources, in part due to "undue weight" concerns. John Vandenberg 09:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Psycho picture

Could we get a picture that doesn't make him look like a out of work 80s actor? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.169.214.13 (talk • contribs) 05:10, 4 December 2006 (UTC).

He does look like a psycho from his picture in court: http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/ci_4734707
  • This is the highest quality photo I could find, and while a bit out-of-date, is is well photographed and was put up on Reiser's resumé site, so presumably he was satisfied with its artistic merits. --Dgies 22:58, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article is unbalanced and too long

Let's get a little more on his career, and lose some of the waffle about his wife's disappearance. --kingboyk 13:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

What about this: Temporary move the article about the trial of Hans Reiser out of his biography and merge it back in when the result is set. Of course the judge's decision will be controversial nevertheless which decision they will make but it will be easier to deal with it when something is final. It's buzzin' my head that there could be an inbalance between a charged (not ruled) murder and a contribution to the free software world whose importance can not be estimated at this point (From recent developments there are good chances ReiserFS (Version 4) will stay a niched, unfinished product and Version 5 and 6 and whatever will not and/or never arrive). This is all too vague and seems unworthy of the term "biography" to me. --84.185.136.126 13:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I share your concerns, you just put it a little more eloquently than me :) --kingboyk 13:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Hans contribution to the free world is covered in ReiserFS and Reiser4, but this article could be expanded greatly in that regard. There are some earlier "Hans Reiser" news archive results that could be used to expand it, but as you can see from the result from 2006 onwards, he is most notable to the rest of the world due to this trial. As a result, I dont agree the trial should be split off until this article is expanded to be a bio. i.e. expand the article first and then we can separate the trial into its own article. WorldCat and Google Scholar may be of use. John Vandenberg 01:00, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This section was removed. WHY?

This section was removed by BANDITS/VANDELS/JEWS,... why?

Hans Reiser, a technical genius, is the main developer of the Reiser3 (ReiserFS) and Reiser4 filesystems.

Reiser3 was an advanced filesystem, in its time, but is beginning to show its age.

Reiser4, the replacement Reiser3, is truly cutting edge, an outstanding filesystem.

To get some idea of how good Reiser4 really is, you should consider the following test results. The first column names the filesystem tested. The second column records the total time (in seconds) it took to run the filesystem benchmarking software bonnie++ (Version 1.93c). The third column records the total number of megabytes needed to store 655 megabytes of raw data.

SMALLER is better.


FILESYSTEM TIME DISK USAGE
REISER4 (lzo) 1,938 278
REISER4 (gzip) 2,295 213
REISER4 3,462 692
EXT2 4,092 816
JFS 4,225 806
EXT4 4,408 816
EXT3 4,421 816
XFS 4,625 799
REISER3 6,178 793
FAT32 12,342 988
NTFS-3g >10,414 772


Each test was preformed 5 times and the average value recorded. SMALLER is better.

The bonnie++ tests were preformed, with the following parameters:

bonnie++ -n128:128k:0

More on the tests can be found here: http://m.domaindlx.com/LinuxHelp/resources/fs-benchmarks.htm

The above site provides a script, so that you can check these results for yourself.

It was removed because it has nothing to do with Hans Reiser as a person. It might belong at ReiserFS; however, it's heavily biased (please read WP:NPOV) and contains much more information that necessary. Moreover, the page you're citing claims that Hans Reiser has been imprisoned because Reiser4 performs too well - this is more or less the antithesis of a reliable source. Zetawoof(ζ) 05:03, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

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