User:Upedge/Windows XP Survey

RfC Should the Windows XP article contain this information

rfc|sci|rfcid=0E5684C

Should Windows XP contain this information about end of support?

This is a non-technical question about whether an article should contain certain information. Input from non-specialist editors would be appreciated and even a very brief response would be useful, though of course more in-depth consideration would be welcome.

Addendum: Windows XP is currently seeing a surge in page views, moving up the most viewed list from position 4410 on 6 jan 2014 to its current position of 1150. Its page view stats can be seen here. This is very likely to be due to the impending end of support deadline, however people looking for practical information about this subject will be disappointed since the group of frequent editors of this article oppose efforts to introduce this information, on the grounds that it violates wp:NOTHOWTO.

This is an effort, based on a referenced review of press opinion, to introduce the most important of the missing information, but in order to be convincing it requires the support of a larger number of editors than those who have already signalled their opinion.

Please take a moment to review this effort and add your opinion, for or against, to the poll.Upedge (talk) 12:36, 31 March 2014 (UTC) and 18:35, 7 April 2014

Background

There has been considerable discussion (here) about the information on the end of support of Windows XP that should be included in the article.

My initial attempts at producing suitable paragraphs was criticised as a violation of Wp:NOTHOWTO to which I responded by quoting that guideline: "Describing to the reader how people or things use or do something is encyclopedic; instructing the reader in the imperative mood about how to use or do something is not." This did not satisfy those against, who did not however make any counter propositions. What I wrote was:

• Faced with this situation, many commentators considered the option of continuing to use XP, since this involved zero direct cost and involved no effort beyond ensuring current security best practices were followed. While some were strongly opposed to the idea, others saw it as a legitimate response, provided users understood the risk of their system being compromised.

• Finally, migrating to a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu was suggested by some as a free alternative to taking the risk of continuing to run XP, while still allowing access to existing data. Any compatibility problems could be explored before committing to a change by booting a live CD or USB key version, and the city of Munich handed out 2000 such CDs to provide its citizens with a no-cost upgrade solution.

I occurred to me that it would be very useful to separate the presentation of the information from a decision about the appropriateness of including (or not) the information in some form or other.

Should the article cover these possibilities?

The documentation search (covered here) revealed descriptions of only two free possibilities for dealing with the end of support of Windows XP, neither of which is currently covered by the article:

1. continue using XP, taking measures to minimise the attendant risks
2. migrate to the Ubuntu flavour of Linux

Two thirds of the sources mentioned the former and half the latter, indicating that both suggestions are mainstream.

Should they be covered? I suggest people answer with one of the following formulations, to avoid confusion:

• neither if neither option should be included
• both if both options should be covered
• option one only if only the first should be included
• option two only if only the second option should be included

If the result of this survey indicates that either option should be included then I will copy this page to talk:Windows XP (where I have already mentioned this RfC) to initiate a discussion about how the information should be phrased.

Survey

• both I think this information is very relevant and can be phrased in an encyclopedic manner. If other editors do not like my phrasing then I am more than happy that they should rework what I wrote, but the article will be better for containing this information.Upedge (talk) 12:36, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
• both, sort of The free options would be keeping XP or installing Linux. There's nothing that requires, or even necessarily prefers, that it be Ubuntu. Ubuntu can be given as an example, but there should be at least one other example chosen from among the top few distros, and a link to a summary article about Linux flavors.Roches (talk) 11:44, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
• Neither The article need only say that Microsoft has ceased/will be ceasing support and be done with it. Anything else is outside the scope of the topic of the article which is Windows XP. It should not suggest to the reader what to do next, because Wikipedia is not a how-to guide WP:NOTHOWTO. The creatively worded version is still a how-to guide, using how-to articles as sources. --SubSeven (talk) 16:38, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
• both, sort of per Roches. The WP:NOTHOWTO IMO doesn't apply. The information doesn't suggest any instruction or recommendation to the users. The nearest to a howto that I see is mentioning just one particular flavour of Linux without justifying its particular claim to consideration, and that hardly counts as any kind of advice in context. As it stands it simply is a component of the history and is quite adequately notable. JonRichfield (talk) 05:24, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
• Both GNews shows that end of XP support has been covered by hundreds of news articles--it is a highly notable aspect of of XP coverage. Part of many of those articles is about mitigation strategies for dealing with this. Having a few sentences about alternatives is due weight and is in no way necessarily a how-to; written in an encyclopedic manner, it will report on what people have done or what experts have recommended, not on how to do it yourself. I agree that there is nothing special about Ubuntu; unless the news stories are mostly about Ubunutu, just saying Linux is more neutral. --Mark viking (talk) 05:59, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
• Both--Per Gnews and Roches. The Herald 12:35, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
• Neither Reasons as per SubSeven. --78.86.131.23 (talk) 11:25, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
• Both, sort of The end of XP is being focused on due to security issues that may plague the OS in the future. I feel that something should be mentioned about upgrading to a newer OS, going the free route, or the risks with staying with XP. Especially the risks since there is a lot of focus on that being the primary reason for making headlines in the news. --Super Goku V (talk) 05:11, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• Both per Jon Richfield & Mark Viking - Both topics are IMO relevant and as others have said the primary reason for the jump in pageviews is the security issues so yep both should be included. -→Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 00:12, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
• Neither It is not our job to provide this information. I don't see this at all encyclopaedic. As a side note, why is this on a user page and not on the articles talk page? AIRcorn (talk) 11:10, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

See response below Upedge (talk) 16:33, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose the inclusion as the occurrance is temporary in nature. --Aflafla1 (talk) 16:11, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

By the way, this discussion should be on the talk page, not your user page.--Aflafla1 (talk) 16:18, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Poll Closed, see below. Thanks to those who participated.

Threaded discussion

If editors wish to enter into extended discussion, please do so here rather than in the survey section.

AIRcorn asked why this is on a user page. This was following the suggestion of an experienced editor. I don't know why he made this suggestion, but I've followed it for a number of reasons.

1. Previous RfCs on a related subject on the talk page were cancelled by other editors before I felt they had received a fair hearing. I thought this was less likely to happen to one I created here.
2. There is a nearly religious war between some Windows supporters and some Linux ones, and a windows article is naturally a hotbed for the former. I wanted this RfC to operate outside that context as much as possible, and to garner neutral points of view. Unfortunately I feel this has only partially been successful, but the idea I believe was sound.
3. There had already been a long and rather fruitless related discussion on talk:Windows XP, with no discernible attempts at reaching a consensus. The atmosphere had become, shall we say, rather heated, with one respected editor leaving the discussion, saying " I prefer a page with a calm, measured discussion based on logic and evidence to a page where sarcasm and snide remarks are the norm". I felt that a poll here might avoid much of that.

Note that I did not seek to avoid comment by those who had previously posted a negative opinion, and I placed a notice about this RfC on talk:Windows XP in case anyone there wished to participate.Upedge (talk) 16:30, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

You received some poor advice I am afraid. Discussing content on a user page gives the appearance that you are trying to hide the discussion. It also makes it harder for participants to see previous discussions. I would go so far as saying any consensus reached here would not be valid at the article. I suggest copying this completely with no alteration except a small note at the top explaining the situation to a new section on the talk page. AIRcorn (talk) 21:52, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

After a bit of digging I found the advice here. I think you misunderstood it. The way I read it you were supposed to write a paragraph here demonstrating what you want to include in the article and then link to it from an RFC on the talk page. Maybe @Guy Macon: could clarify this. AIRcorn (talk) 22:05, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

At the very least you should inform everyone who commented on the previous ?two RFCs that this one is now in process. The more I look at this the more it seems like an attempt to dodge consensus. AIRcorn (talk) 22:09, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

I apologize for being unclear. User talk pages are good places to do two kinds of things:

• To stash a proposed version that you want to talk about elsewhere.
• To have a preliminary discussion to help you to write a better RfC to be posted elsewhere.

The actual RfC should be posted where people interested in the topic will read it. Usually this is the article talk page of the article that you want the change to be made in.

In my opinion, this can easily be fixed by moving this RfC to the article talk page with a note on top and putting a note here saying w where it went.

Again, I apologize for not being clear. Please blame me, not Upedge. He clearly wants to do the right thing.

That bit about "Previous RfCs on a related subject on the talk page were cancelled by other editors" concerns me. I would like to look into it, if someone can show me some diffs. I am making no assumption about whether the deletion was or was not justified; I just want to check. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:46, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

• Oops, looks like I misunderstood. Sorry for that. I'm somewhat new to RfC and have been guilty of awkward use of it.
• "The more I look at this the more it seems like an attempt to dodge consensus" I really don't think that's fair. As I noted above, I placed a notice on the article talk page stating what I was doing (you can see it there), which I would hardly have done if I was trying to exclude previous commenters from expressing themselves. I provided links from this page back to the relevant discussion in case anyone wanted to plough through it to see what my previous imperfect efforts had been. I stated above that my intention is/was always to copy this poll to the talk page if it gave a clear indication that people thought this information should be present in the article in some form or other.

I'm in two minds about that at the moment - there's a clear majority in favour here but I think it's likely that there would be no clear cut result once discussion returned to the talk page. I had hoped that there would be a sufficiently large response here for the result to be unequivocal, but this doesn't look like materialising. Tomorrow I'll take a decision to either copy this to the talk page or remove the RfC tag.

• As to the cancelled RfCs, I believe this was done with the intention of providing a helping hand rather than to manipulate anything, though I did rather disagree with the last one. I don't myself have any particular wish that this be looked into, though if you still want to I can easily dig up the references for you. Upedge (talk) 00:58, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

That's fine. There is enough trouble in the world without seeking out more. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 06:17, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Poll Closed

I've now closed this poll. Although the overall direction is clear I don't think it's likely that it will gather enough weight to convince those on Talk:Windows XP to reconsider their position. Given that, I don't think much purpose would be served in copying it to that page - it would just generate more conflict and waste more peoples' time without worthwhile effect, which isn't desirable.

Many thanks to those who responded here. If anyone feels moved to continue the struggle then please feel free to copy this to Talk:Windows XP with appropriate explanation.

As a final thought, Windows XP normally gets around 4k page hits a day. On April 8th alone it got 27.5k and it's a fair bet they were looking for information about the end of support. I don't think it does any credit to WP that they didn't find it. Upedge (talk) 21:42, 12 April 2014 (UTC)