Talk:Lawrence Roberts (scientist)
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The first sentence of this article is problematic: "Lawrence G. Roberts has been described as one of the four persons most closely associated with the birth of the Internet, the other three being Leonard Kleinrock, Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf."
It contains an unsourced statement, and uses the passive voice to weasel-word "has been described".
Second, it fails to define what it means by "birth of the Internet". Does "birth of the Internet" mean ARPAnet and NCP and TCP/IP or does it refer to the deployment of the IMP's and the first connection to CSNET?
Third, it doesn't give due credit to J.C.R. Licklider, Jon Postel, Steve Crocker, Larry Landweber, Wes Clark or Donald Davis.
Fourth, I don't think Cerf belongs on the list at all... he helped in documenting the TCP/IP standard in an IEEE article co-authored by Kahn in 1974, but it was Jon Postel who wrote RFC 760, RFC 761, RFC 791, RFC 792, RFC 793 &tc.
Note the entry on Roberts chronology of the internet:
1962 August: First Paper on Internet Concept by J.C.R. Licklider & Welden Clark, "On-Line Man Computer Communication". October: ARPA Computer Program Begins, J.C.R. Licklider becomes first ARPA IPTO Director. Writes internal papers on Galactic Network. Lick leaves in 64. It was Licklider's concept, which spurred Roberts to build the Internet. [1]
Cerf's major contribution didn't start until 1973-1974 with the publication of his and Kahn's IEEE paper. Cerf didn't join ARPA until 1976.
I suggest replacing this leading sentence with, "Lawrence G. Roberts is a computer engineer who played a key role in the development of the ARPAnet and early internet protocols."
Later in the article, the following is cited as information from Roberts' "personal home page":
Today, Roberts and Kleinrock, along with Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, are widely recognized as the four founding fathers of the Internet.
I am unable to find this statement on Roberts' homepage. Also, this is an opinion, not a fact, and it fails NPOV I think.
Scanlyze 13:24, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
It is also questionable to base any, or most of the article on Roberts' self-published web pages; this seems to fall afoul of NP: V: "Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."
Scanlyze 13:39, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Found the quote on the "four fathers" on Roberts' about page:
Today, Roberts and Kleinrock, along with Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, are widely recognized as the four founding fathers of the Internet. [2]
The statement (repeated twice in the short article) about the "four fathers of the internet" has a factual basis, but it is self-serving and opinionated and therefore I have requested a POV-check. Its analogous to us putting in an article that Barry Bonds widely recognized as the greatest home-run hitter of all time and citing his own self-hosted about page as the source of the statement. Why not just describe Roberts' major achievements and let them speak for themselves?
This article needs to be re-searched and re-sourced from reputable third-party sources such as the RFCs, particularly RFC 2235 and books such as "Where Wizards Stay Up Late": ISBN-10: 0684812010 ISBN-13: 978-0684812014 according to Amazon.
Scanlyze 16:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
