Talk:Screencam

Current unreferenced state of the article

I originally wrote this article because searching "ScreenCam" resulted in a redirect to "ScreenCasting". This was certainly not correct, as ScreenCam is a trademarked program from Lotus/IBM from the 90s, and has since become ScreenCam from SmartGuyz.

I'm not sure why people are singling this out as lacking neutrality, as the article is simply reporting historically accurate information, including the fact that some people refer to "ScreenCasts" as "ScreenCams", owing in large-part to the significance of ScreenCam in making ScreenCasts so commonplace. Again, this is akin to people saying that "Kleenex" and "Facial Tissue" are the same thing. Not really. "Kleenex" is a trademark of a TYPE of "Facial Tissue", and given that "Kleenex" is still being produced and sold and is a protected Federal trademark, I think the distinction should be drawn, both in that case and this one.

Obviously, since Lotus originally created the category of "Screen Recording Software", there have been a lot of followers in the marketplace, such as Adobe's Captivate, and TechSmith's Camtasia. I've scoured the articles on those programs, and frankly, they read very similarly to this article.

What would you guys suggest to make this more neutral and/or to ameliorate the objections that others have stated?

TinaFly (talk) 02:31, 13 April 2010 (UTC)TinaFly

In response to calls for more references, I did some web searching and added links to old reviews of Lotus ScreenCam, IBM product announcements for ScreenCam for NT 4.0, review of Lotus ScreenCam 97 by PC Magazine, and found an archive of Lotus's official website, showing the product listing from December of 1997.

TinaFly (talk) 18:45, 28 December 2010 (UTC)TinaFly

You assume a great deal of data. %90 what you say needs a reliable source to be accepted in Wikipedia while you have not provided a single proof for them. Article is still problematic. I tagged the article accordingly.

Please don't forget to sign you comments and to indent your next messages.

Fleet Command (talk) 20:35, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I am a newbie, I have only contributed to a few articles, but this is an area where I am an expert. ScreenCam is, indeed, the predecessor to most of the screencasting products out today, and I believe it deserves a little article in Wikipedia that states that verifiable fact. I have been in corporate training and education for over 20 years. I have personally used ScreenCam (and similar programs) since the early 90s, including programs that ran on Sun Solaris OS, and HP-UX, and others. I am trying to do my best to provide objective proofs for everything I write, beyond my personal recollection. Most of the proof I have pre-dates the product being available on the Web (e.g. I have actual boxed copies of the products from the early 90s!), much less current Web articles. Some of that proof came from me calling the engineers who actually wrote ScreenCam and similar programs and asking them how ScreenCam worked and how the competitors worked. That doesn't mean that what I am writing is untrue. Trying to give historical proof for the existence of Lotus ScreenCam in the early 90s off of Internet references is problematic, as this predates much of the Web itself. Perhaps a senior editor can give me, a newbie, some tips here. It is VERY frustrating to simply have a senior person come by and just splatter my edits with "not reliable" tags. I have referenced significant, independent proof, including PC Magazine online reviews, evidence of the product references on IBM/Lotus corporate pages, evidence from Lotus.com archived website pages, and more. This proof seems to be insufficient for some editors, for reasons I don't understand. I'd love examples that would allow my content to stay without someone simply stomping it every time I make an edit. Thanks so much for understanding. Signed, A very frustrated newbie. TinaFly (talk) 22:49, 28 December 2010 (UTC)TinaFly

Thank you for listening. I have added some links to really old InfoWorld Articles that establish much of what I have been saying - that ScreenCam was released in the early 90s, that it was using VPCs to capture content (and NOT screen grabs) and other things. I hope this is helpful. TinaFly (talk) 23:29, 28 December 2010 (UTC)TinaFly

Good. You're doing great. And yes, creating a good Wikipedia article is a very exhaustive task. I'll help as much as I can, but that will prove to be very little because I have no recollection of this software at all. Recollections are not acceptable in Wikipedia; however, they are good clues based on which you can find sources. Fleet Command (talk) 10:39, 29 December 2010 (UTC)