Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shortcuts:
WP:COMPSCI
WP:WPCS
This is a WikiProject, a collaboration area and open group of editors dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of a particular topic, or to organizing some internal Wikipedia process.
Please see the Guide to WikiProjects and the Directory of WikiProjects for more information.

Welcome to the WikiProject Computer science page. This group exists to improve all articles relating to computer science.

If you would like to participate in this project, then you can add your name to the list of participants, keep in touch with project developments by watchlisting Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science, and join discussions on the talk page.

Contents

[edit] Scope and goals

The scope of the project includes all articles in the area of computer science, and may overlap with articles in areas such as mathematics, logic, and software engineering as well. The goals of the project are to build a community of interest around computer science, and to provide a focal point for coordinating efforts to improve Wikipedia's computer science articles.

Relevant Categories Related Projects

[edit] Participants

See Participants for a list of the participants in this project. Feel free to add yourself to the list.

[edit] Things to do

Looking for something to do? The current to-do list for the project consists of these tasks:

  1. Find out if User:Mathbot could be set to harvest CS articles and recent activity (or used as the basis for a new bot to do same)
  2. Get pictures for these bios: Thomas Sterling (computing), Donald Becker, Michael J. Flynn, John L. Hennessy, Robert Tomasulo (note - he died in April 2008 - contacting him is now a non-option), Fred Brooks
    Living Turing award winners whose biographies lack pictures: Robert Tarjan - Andrew Yao - Joseph Sifakis - Richard Stearns (computer scientist) - Ron Rivest - Raj Reddy - Michael O. Rabin - Butler Lampson - Robin Milner - Richard Karp - William Kahan - John Hopcroft - Edward Feigenbaum - Leonard Adleman - Manuel Blum - Charles Bachman - Stephen Cook - Fernando J. Corbató - Edmund M. Clarke

If none of those tasks sound appealing, then there are several places on Wikipedia where computer science related requests, suggestions and tasks have been collected together:

What Where
Suggest or edit a computer science article needing attention Pages needing attention: Computer science
Request or write a computer science article Requested articles: Computer science
Request or provide an image Requested images: Computers
Expand a computer science "stub" Computer science stubs
Suggest or edit a redirect which could have its own article Redirects with possibilities: Computers
Add or find a "missing" computer science article Missing: Computer science
Add to or maintain the list of computer science publications List of publications in computer science
Work on improving the computer science portal Computer science portal
Find and fix computer science categories in need of attention Category:Wikipedia categories in need of attention#Tagged categories
Help find, tag, and assess computer science articles Assessment Department

[edit] Templates

Please use the various templates below with any new articles you create or edit.

[edit] Stubs

This table lists stub types that are highly specific to computer science topics. A stub article does not have to use one of these stub types to be included in this project, however. More stub types can be found by checking the list of stub categories.

Template Result
{{comp-eng-stub}}
Comp Sci logo This computer engineering-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
{{comp-sci-stub}}
Comp Sci logo This computer science-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
{{compu-prog-stub}}
Comp Sci logo This computer programming-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
{{compu-lang-stub}}
Soft Eng logo This computer language-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
{{compu-scientist-stub}}
 This biographical article relating to a computer scientist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
{{programming-software-stub}}
Software spannerThis programming tool-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
{{soft-eng-stub}}
Software spanner This software engineering-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[edit] Other

You can tag an article for inclusion in this project by adding {{WikiProject Computer science}} to the article's talk page, this is also used to rate the importance on an article. You may also add {{User WP CS}} to your user page if you wish to indicate participation in this project. Additionally, place {{Computer Science}} at the bottom of any articles that are specifically to do with Computer Science.

Template Result
{{WikiProject Computer science}}
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computer science, which aims to create a comprehensive computer science reference for Wikipedia. Visit the project page for more information and to join in on related discussions.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the assessment scale.
??? This article has not yet received an importance rating on the assessment scale.
{{User WP CS}}
CS This user is a member of WikiProject Computer science.
{{Computer Science}}
v • d • e
Major fields of Computer Science
Mathematical foundations
Theory of computation
Algorithms and data structures
Programming languages and compilers
Concurrent, parallel, and distributed systems
Software engineering
System architecture
Telecommunication & Networking
Databases
Artificial intelligence
Computer graphics
Human computer interaction
Scientific computing

[edit] Things to keep in mind

There are a few things that you should try to keep in mind while editing computer science articles.

[edit] Audience

One of the primary goals of this project is to make computer science articles accessible, so you should make an effort to explain any jargon.

[edit] Conventions

[edit] References

Try to ensure that every computer science article includes at least a few relevant references, and direct citations for anything that could be considered controversial. Wikipedia articles cannot be a substitute for a textbook (that is what Wikibooks is for), and references can give readers some idea of where they should go if they need more information than the article can provide. Just as important, providing further reading enables other editors to verify and to extend the given information, as well as to discuss the quality of a particular source.

You can find more information on citations and references, as well as several examples for how the cited literature should look, in the style guide on citations. Wikipedia's List of publications in computer science can be a good source of references and citations for computer science articles, as can Citeseer and Google Scholar.

[edit] Article statistics

Computer science
articles		 Importance
Top High Mid Low None Total
Quality
Featured article FA 1 1
Good article GA 3 3 6 12
B 18 24 21 5 68
Start 31 21 78 37 10 177
Stub 4 6 21 63 17 111
Assessed 57 54 126 105 27 369
Unassessed 1 111 112
Total 57 54 126 106 138 481

[edit] Useful resources

Here are a few resources that you may find useful if you're contributing to this project.

[edit] Recent changes to computer science articles

Recent changes in various articles within the scope of this project (not comprehensive):