User talk:Spinality

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  • Shamelessly borrowed from Theo Clarke's talk page.

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Trevor Hanson 02:01, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] S/370 article

Thanks for your hard work on the article. You've obviously put in a lot of time chasing down references for others' vague recollections (including mine), and it shows. Jay Maynard 10:30, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

<blush>. This was a nice way to start the day, much appreciated. The S/370 editing kind of snowballed from work in progress on VM/CMS and National CSS – and some new pages on CP/CMS, CP-40, VP/CSS, Cambridge Scientific Center, Lincoln Labs, etc. The work is still in a sandbox as I pull the necessary citations together; see User:Spinality/CP/CMS if you're interested.
BTW after using {{cite...}} a little I see why its use is neither encouraged nor discouraged at Wikipedia:Citation templates. Embedded conventional footnotes like <ref>S. Dodgson, ''The Hunting of the Snark''</ref> are relatively comprehensible in the article source, but a full {{cite...}} block is pretty annoying. I understand that normal Wiki style is not to use in-line citations, and instead to place them after a paragraph; but I feel that doesn't give enough precision when supporting specific facts. I still haven't made up my mind which approach is best; I'm leaning more toward using a consistent citation format in plain text, rather than using a template, for ease of maintenance. This Wikification stuff is complicated. :) Trevor Hanson 15:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, what Jay said. Nice exchange between you and Dave Tuttle over on Hypervisor too. RossPatterson 02:47, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
Dave added a lot of great detail. I kind of barraged him; I hope this hasn't put him off. I am still trying to pull all this material together (just got back from a week in Oregon) but hope to start getting the corpus in place. Recent category-related updates by others have reminded me that I am clueless about Wiki categories and their proper use. I think I need to go for a little remedial study. Every time I look at category use, I kind of don't get the point. Or rather, I believe I get the point, but nobody seems to use them that way. Most categories seem to be very sparse and not very useful. Anyway, a category-mashing cycle seems to be in my future. Trevor Hanson 06:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Isomorphism (biology)

Kudos on starting Isomorphism (biology) - you noticed the article was clearly missing, and created a strong stub for it. Keep up the good work! --Swpb 02:02, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

<blush>Thanks for noticing. It's a good feeling to notice and plug a hole that lies outside one's field. Trevor Hanson 18:55, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] recently created mainframe articles

Congrats on landing the thoroughly cited History of CP/CMS and IBM CP-40 articles (are there others?). I have been off playing with journals & citations on WP:LOMJ/Queue, and I see you are yet to settle on a preferred format, so .. here is the raw data for you to use as you wish:

John Vandenberg 04:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for positive feedback. This project dragged on longer than I hoped so I am trying to get some material out there, I hope not too prematurely. ¶ Since commenting on your talk page, I have of course been seeing updates there; and this has included the many interesting recent posts about citations (which left me feeling even more ignorant and out of the loop than usual). This is a deep issue that I have been afraid to investigate. I have managed to keep disregarding this topic, continuing to create citations in whatever the hell format I liked; but clearly this libertine attitude is about to die a horrible death. Oh well, I figure that the first job is to try to get the facts and article text straightened out. ¶ My latest new material is CP/CMS. I am about to replace VM (operating system) and VM/CMS. Other recent activity has included History of IBM and IBM M44/44X. You may also note template:bibliography_CP/CMS and template:FamilyTree_TimeSharingOS. ¶ Thanks again for always-helpful input. I'm always pleased to see your footprints show up when "jayvdb is online". (Like now.) Trevor Hanson 06:49, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, how do you like the format here: Charles_Darwin#Citations. John Vandenberg 03:58, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Very impressive. This seems to strike a good balance between readability and specificity. I can see there's still a lot of heavy lifting involved, trying to keep all the sources and refs in synch; but I don't see how that can be avoided. I will take a more careful look shortly. (Just got power back after a 30-hour outage.) Trevor Hanson 18:29, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:FamilyTree_TimeSharingOS

If you'd like to have an article you created deleted, just put {{db-author}} at the top of the page, and an admin will delete it. That template indicates that the page's creator and sole author would like the page to be speedily deleted. I'll delete this one for you. | Mr. Darcy talk 03:48, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

D'oh! How logical. Thanks much. I was surprised not to find anything like that mentioned on Wikipedia:Deletion_policy (the one linked to from the Help page). Do you think there's some reason it's not cited there? I am tempted to update the page, but my attempts to "be bold" as an editor have not thus far crossed into the policy pages. Trevor Hanson 04:57, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hello, Trevor!

Hi, Trevor!

I ran across your name while perusing the talk page on the "assembly language" article. I jast added a little story over there that you might enjoy.

I haven't yet had a chance to read the stuff you've contributed about IBM machines and operating systems, but I'll be taking a look soon. I spent about twenty years cranking out assembler code, and doing SYSGENs, and stuff like that, so I'm sure our paths will cross again. Heck, I'm so old I even remember how to write self-relocating code that can execute in BG or F1 or F2. For now I just want to say hello. STM 14,12,12(13) [90ECD00C] forever! DavidCBryant 20:49, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, yourself, David. Funny story. I also have run across folks from the hand-assembly age, though nobody still doing it as recently as the hero in your story. Of course, in the early days, waiting for overnight keypunch runs and overnight compiles wasn't all THAT much different from what she had to do. I don't know if you're as old as that.
You will enjoy the fact that I used to have a cat named BXLE. He was cantankerous, unpredictable, and annoying, which is about how I always regarded that particular instruction -- a solution in search of a problem.
Cute name for the cat. I actually liked BXLE and BXH quite a lot. Some of the stuff I worked on involved very large (>100Kb -- haha -- that was large!) tables of data collected with a hashing algorithm (for efficient sorting during the data collection phase). I'd use BXLE to drive a bubble sort at an intermediate phase, prior to reporting the final results. Interestingly, that instruction actually used the full 32-bits as an address internally ... before IBM came out with extended addressing you had to be careful not to set bits 0 - 7 on in the even-numbered registers in a BXLE, or you'd get an Addressing Exception (SOC4? I did more with DOS, and less with OS). A lot of other instructions simply ignored bits 0 - 7 in 24-bit address arithmetic, but not BXLE. DavidCBryant 12:54, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
One of the problems we have with Wikipedia articles on these topics is that so much of the ideal reference material is not easily found today. As you know, the goal with Wikipedia articles is to have everything sourced back to something authoritative, so we're not relying on the infallible memories of old farts like us. We have seen many examples recently where one or another of us is absolutely sure that "this is how it was" – only to find out that the memory was wrong, or only partly true. So if you still have a lot of old manuals lying around, this could be a big help in nailing down specifics. (Unfortunately, I dumped a lot of my old library during a few moves over the last 15 years, so I have frequently been slapping my forehead saying "Damn, I knew I should have kept those OS/VS2 PLMs.") Go look in your garage, and see what treasures you might be able to contribute to our computer archeology efforts. Trevor Hanson 05:48, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I'll take a look. I might have a S/370 POPS manual lying around ... I know I used to have one, at least. That was the main book I relied on. DavidCBryant 12:54, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History of IBM - discussion

I have tried to begin a reasonable discussion with the anonymous user who has promoted Edwin Black's agenda on the History of IBM. Please see that article's discussion page for more details, and also the user's Talk page. I invite you to join the discussion if you are so inclined; I have tried to set the tone. Paul 15:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

This is all rather troubling. I am not sure how best to proceed. I wish somebody had the time to tackle this article properly. For the present, disengaging (Wikipedia:Resolving Disputes) might help to cool things down. Well, we'll see. Trevor Hanson 23:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I seem to have been more caught up in the discussion with the anonymous user than I realized, and I will leave this alone for a while. Thanks again for your help. Paul 01:46, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

BTW, I trust you realize that I deliberately phrased my "let's all calm down" to apply to all of us, i.e. not to single anybody out. However, I'm sure I see this in basically the same light you do. Your efforts on this article look like normal, quality WP editing. I don't think you were tromping on anybody. There clearly was some serious misunderstanding by the anon IPers about what WP is, how we develop material, and who contributes.
But I could see this tiff spinning out of control. It sounds like there are multiple people contributing from that IP address, and they appear to have a well-defined agenda. We don't want to precipitate a shouting match, especially if that is something they relish.
Ultimately, somebody needs to get a couple of strong IBM history reference books, and tidy up that entire article – verifying the events, dates, names, etc., supported by citations. We certainly don't want people to be able to say "this article is full of factual errors." But I don't currently have time to take on that work.
I do think that the whole IBM-as-Nazi-collaborator thread needs to be handled in a reasonable way. The issue is important, and I don't mean to marginalize it. But as I keep saying, it isn't the only fact of interest about IBM, even during the war years. (This is the same problem I have with the entire article: It is more an assembly of random factoids and trivia than an encyclopaedic presentation.)
Anyway, please don't take any of my comments as critical toward you. I don't understand why took such umbrage. But they did, and it's better to resolve the situation than try to win a petty argument with somebody – especially if they won't listen or participate in discussion.
JMO, as always. Trevor Hanson 05:14, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Trevor, you may be sure that I didn't take what you said personally. (You didn't mention me by name and your intent was clear.) The environment here is new for me in some unexpected ways but I will continue to experiment and figure it out. I'm an engineer by profession and these complex systems fascinate me. Paul 15:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] using <ref> and {{cite}}

I've updated the citation style on National CSS. Hopefully you dont mind it too much. 14:05, 29 January 2007 User:Jayvdb

Remember those <nowiki> tags! :) Trevor Hanson 01:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History of IBM

Several days ago you requested non-binding mediation for a dispute on this article with the cabal. What is the current state of the dispute? Is the conflict still in need of attention? Please respond on my talk page. --Selket Talk 00:08, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ed Buhrer - family matters

Please contact [redacted] to meet/reminisce outside the auspices of Wikipedia.

[edit] "Unparliamentary language" on History of IBM

Thanks Trevor - I'm glad you found it. Wanderer57 02:42, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Disputed fair use rationale for Image:TonyBennettCloud7Cover.jpg

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[edit] Isomorphism (computer science)

Another editor has added the {{prod}} template to the article Isomorphism (computer science), suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but the editor doesn't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and has explained why in the article (see also Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Notability). Please either work to improve the article if the topic is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia or discuss the relevant issues at its talk page. If you remove the {{prod}} template, the article will not be deleted, but note that it may still be sent to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. BJBot (talk) 16:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)