Talk:Snake-arm robot

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Snake-arm robots are completely different to snake-bots! It says so in the article. A snakebot mimics the biomorphic motion of a snake in order to slither along the ground but a snake-arm is a fixed manipulator which has many degrees of freedom and can bend and change it's shape like a snake (if you were to hold it's tail!).

[edit] Removed links to commercial website

This article is sounding like a commercial for OC Robotics. Removed links to commercial website per WP:EL, links to be avoided. Calltech 02:19, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't the Universities be removed as well in that case (WP:EL#Advertising_and_conflicts_of_interest)? Or should they all be in a References section instead? Are there any other snake-arm robot companies that should be on the page alongside OC Robotics? R 12:46, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

No. COI policy says that universities should not add links to their own pages, but other people can add them since they are legitimate sources of information, especially for emerging fields like robotics. Kborer 13:28, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand why that's different to someone linking to a company that is a legitimate source of information. What's the difference? Do we have to reject sources of information because they are selling something? R 11:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Someone's going to have to explain this to me: What is the difference between an OC Robotics link on this page and the extensive list of links to industrial robot manufacturers on that page? Kborer, I understand your argument but this makes no sense to me. What is the difference??? R 13:58, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Kborer: While I agree that an article shouldn't be "a commercial for OC Robotics", or anyone else for that matter - a friend of mine makes Snake Arm Robots, and it seems odd that the mere existence of commercially available robots of this type shouldn't be part of the wikipedia article. While I have great respect for the folk at Carnegie and Clemson (and any others) who are researching this stuff - that people are actually putting them to work seems factually important. RobertKent2 08:43, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure why all these comments are directed at me, but since I have removed links to snake arm manufacturers from the page I will defend those edits. A commercial website could be a valuable source of information and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with linking to one. However, each time that I have personally removed a commercial link it was because I followed it and made a qualitative assessment of the website's content. It is impossible to make a rule that says how much or what kind of information makes an external link a legitimate resource, but in the cases where I removed links it was because I felt that they were not. I am happy to discuss individual sites and also re-evaluate sites that may have changed since they were removed, but I stand by the decisions that I have made up to this point. Kborer 14:25, 18 March 2007 (UTC)