User talk:Warren/0607

Windows "Fiji"

I think this is turning into an edit war. I don't believe in "Fiji" much myself, but I'd rather discuss the changes on the talk page first. — Alex ^(T|C|E) 07:15, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey

Hey, dont see ur name much on my watchlist. so when it did, just dropped in to say hi. --soum^সৌমোyasch 15:36, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey Soum :-) Yeah I've been traveling lots lately; went up to Montreal to see the Montreal International Jazz Festival, for example, which was pretty amazing. I may end up expanding that article somwhat, since I bought the official book on the history of the festival. My activity around Wikipedia has been mostly around maintenance and vandalism reversion, though, instead of writing a lot of new content. I'm going to take on expanding User Account Control this week... there is a lot more information out there now about what exactly UAC provides to the system, and it's probably going to be one of the biggest topics of discussion for Vista in the years to come, so we should have a good article on it!

Say, what does "সৌমো" mean? Warrens 15:48, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Seems like you are having a nice time. :) Even i have been sort of inactive recently. I am a bit busy with my research internship. I am currently focussing on LINQ, ADO.NET, Microsoft SQL Server, C Sharp and Alizée articles, but mainly writing stuff offline, which I will upload when properly incubated.

And সৌমো is just my name in Bengali. --soum^সৌমোyasch 15:54, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Mmmmm.

Thanks for reverting the vandalism to my talk page. Here, have a cookie. Zetawoof^(ζ) 06:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Ditto - cheers for clearing up my talk page too. I'm afraid I have no foodstuffs to offer... :-) --Boxflux 06:18, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft criticism edit

Hi Warrens - glad you're still here :). Anyway, what do you think this edit of mine regarding the criticism? [1] - trying to simplify it as per the anon's comments on the talk page. Better/worse? RN 06:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey, yeah, I'm definitely still around. :) I took a kick at it[2]; I changed the word "use" to "promotion" since Microsoft doesn't really use DRM extensively, they mainly provide the tech to others. I rewrote the explanatory sentence of DRM to separate out the definition of Digital Rights Management from the criticism of it. The definition part of that could probably go away, too, but the contextualisation isn't such a bad thing for comprehension. I also explicitly mentioned "fair use and other rights", since I think the given source supports that line of criticism pretty well, while at the same time being ambiguous enough to cover several other specific concerns about DRM-protected content. Admittedly I'm not sure if "fair use" is a good term to use here, since it is a United States legal thing. What do you think?

Man, I'm excited to see this article making it to the front-page in a few days... I'm sure you are too! We'll need to keep on our toes on Tuesday though... front-page status brings a lot of visibility. I'll have a careful read-through of the article over the weekend and see if I can find a few final things to tidy up before the flood comes. :) Warrens 06:42, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Failed Apple initiatives is a sub-subcat of Category:Failure. The absence of a corresponding cat for other players speaks volumes. Regards, --Ancheta Wis 16:20, 9 July 2006 (UTC) I see there is a Category:Discontinued Microsoft software which is not an appropriate cat for something which was in development for a decade but which never made it past beta stage. Slashdot has a sympathetic post from Reiser who notes the difficulty of such a project, having released incremental ReiserFS improvements over a decade. Slashdot posters have categorized the WinFS failure as a management failure, because the technical difficulties clearly took more than the allocated decade, and the fatal mistake was to tie the project to a public name with a committed delivery date. The nature of project development is akin to other construction projects, such as the erection of the skyscrapers, with a toll of one life per story, in the early times.

No it doesn't. All it means is that nobody's bothered to make a category yet. If you want to make a category for "Failed Microsoft initiatives", then by all means do so, and file WinFS and other appropriate articles under that; it'd be far more accurate than "Failures". -/- Warren 16:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

freddy011 - Well, I must apologize; I didn't realize that the Criticisms section was somebody's exclusive property. I must've missed it in the fine print. POV Garbage, eh? Well, I am not alone with the suspicion that Vista is not much more than XP with a coat of paint and a suspension lift. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.67.94.37 (talk • contribs) .

User above, you sourced that criticism to a blog. Criticm especially must be referenced to a reliable source RN 05:33, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

freddy011: did you bother to actually look at it? It was started by Editor in Chief Harry McCracken of PCWORLD. As reliable a source as any, in my book. And what is Criticm? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 58.178.5.13 (talk • contribs) .

You're welcome to read Features new to Windows Vista, which is in the top 200 articles on Wikipedia by size (out of more than 1.2 million), simply due to the fact that there is a huge amount of new stuff in the new operating system. You're welcome to have whatever suspicions you like, but in this particular case, your suspicions are quite unfounded. -/- Warren 05:37, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

The point being???... Of course I read it. Quite a few long-overdue additions, quite a few unwelcome additions, dropped support for some useless things, dropped support for some useful things, Yet More Eye Candy, DRM, DRM, DRM...Probably introducing us to lots of new Business Partners, too.... Gee, nothing groundbreaking. As I attempted to say earlier, there is nothing in Vista to match the impact of Windows 95, which is what Bill needs to come up with if he wants us to buy it. You are quite entitled to your anal-retentive views, but I fail to see why they should be the only ones presented.

Kind of caual about blowing away valuable info...

Why don't you go back and look at what you deleted from the windows vista graphics hadware requirements. A) hardware requirements should be under "hardware requirements" not "user interface". B) Some majorly important information that was not duplicated was deleted by you. Someone took the time and effort to contribute and you didn't bother to look closely before stomping on that contribution. Nice. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.99.38.36 (talk • contribs) .

Don't bother getting snarky with me because your contribution of duplicate information was removed. Our goal here is to write great encyclopedia articles, and that means being concise and not unnecessarily repeating ourselves. Here's what you entered. Pretty much everything is already covered in the "Graphical interfaces" and "Hardware requirements" sections directly above it, including mentioning the upgrade advisor. Also, we don't employ second-person language (ie. "you", "your", etc.) when writing encyclopedia articles. This is covered in Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Avoid_the_second_person. Thanks. -/- Warren 13:47, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Did you notice the heading where you deleted my contribution from? Graphics Hardware Requirements. Call me crazy but if you were aware that this same information was also under User Interface (which I was not, because why would I look there for hardware requirements?) maybe that is where you should have deleted the hardware requirements from. Secondly, just because YOU know that YOU should't say YOU doesn't give YOU the right to use YOUR delete key on the entire contribution. Not everybody is an expert contributor, but that doesn't mean we can't contribute. The information is more important than the writing style and if YOU don't like it, then why don't YOU edit it instead of using YOUR delete key. That's bad for Wikipedia, Wikipedians, and those of us that are mostly just looking for some acurate information, and especially if we're willing to take the time to add something that's missing and make it better for everyone. Maybe next time I won't bother if this kind of hassle is typical.

One more thing... thanks to your delete of my contribution, nowhere does it now say that you need the hardware to run Aero if you want to use Media Center. I think most people will think that's important to know. I'll let you add that back in since if I do it it will probably just get deleted again. --24.99.38.36 03:54, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Master of the Microsoft Windows category....

I seem to have incurred your annoyance: you had to revert a few of my merge articles, but you did leave some others. If you feel nobody else is taking care of the category or its stubs, I invite you to have the merge articles you don't want deleted. Frankly I'm just trying to reduce the scope some: there's been comments that this category is too much of a Microsoft ad, and things that only make sense in a MCSD book.

Cwolfsheep 20:51, 10 July 2006 (UTC), WP:INT

The general thrust of Wikipedia's activities in computing articles, especially in terms of operating system components, is to be expansive and connected. This in turn leads to Wikipedia's ranking in search engines to move higher, thus attracting more attention to the articles, which can then result in higher-quality articles with better details. One could argue endlessly about whether such detailed information belongs in Wikipedia, but I tend to look at it from the perspective of, if a piece of technology exists in hundreds of millions of computers (as just about every tech in modern Windows does), then it's worth documenting.

We have articles on all sorts of different obscure and limited-interest computing subjects, such as dozens of ITU recommendations, over a hundred articles related to United States Federal Standard 1037C, and piles and piles of articles on communication protocols, standards, bundled software applications, Unix command-line tools, and so on and so forth. There's nothing wrong with that -- it makes Wikipedia a very useful source for good information. Why would our articles covering Microsoft Windows be any different? Because it's Microsoft, and somehow describing their technology in a neutral and informative fashion is considered "advertising"? I'm sure there are plenty of Microsoft-haters out there (especially on Wikipedia) that would argue this, but wouldn't think twice about having an article on, say Count Chocula, which could be considered "advertising" by that same broad standard. I'm all in favour of removing advertising language on Microsoft articles (and if you were to slog through my contribution history, you'd see I've done this many times,) but I've yet to see anyone successfully AfD a Windows-related article on the basis of it being advertising and I've been working on these articles since January.

Look, I appreciate that you're trying to find ways to improve the encyclopedia, but doing so by merging articles together isn't the most effective way to do it. It reduces the usability of the encyclopedia, since categories won't have as many names of articles listed in them. Categories help users of the encyclopedia find reasonably closely related subjects; this is a useful navigation aid. It's also less likely that people will feel compelled to expand larger articles that cover many subjects in one place. Articles marked as "stub" are more compelling targets for editors with some insight into a particular subject.

In short, short articles aren't a problem unless there's really no possible way to expand them further because the subject matter is too narrow. I reviewed all your changes and merges and reverted only the ones that have a wide enough potential scope to continue to merit their own article... simple things like Most Recently Used don't have much potential for growth, so I left it alone, but articles like DirectSound still have plenty of space for expansion. Understand that this might take years... but that's okay, there's really no hurry. By the way, Wikipedia is Google's #1 hit for DirectSound, and we're in the first page of results for Most Recently Used; why in the world would we want to sacrifice that visibility?

Apologies for the lengthy response, but I wanted you to be assured that there is an informed motivation behind how I go about things here. Thanks. -/- Warren 21:48, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow. I do like that response actually. Ever since I started WP:INT, I've heard some interesting viewpoints other than Deletionist garbage or a wayward fool. I'll keep your insight in mind, and I invite you to bring it to the project as something people should think about when optimizing. Cwolfsheep 23:02, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate that! The work you're doing is definitely important and necessary, even if all that comes of it is some good discussion about what the right balance between esoteria and generalisation is. Easy question to ask... hard to come up with a good answer to, not to mention implementing it well! -/- Warren 23:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft on main page

it's there! Exciting :). Ever had an article on the main page before? It can be a war at times :). RN 00:05, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Heh - thanks :). About the headquartered thing what about changing

Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, its

to

With its main campus in Redmond, Washington, USA, Microsoft's

? User:Tony1 had a problem it as well, but I had the article reviewed by my parents when I was in town, and they thought it was correct - so I'm not exactly sure :). RN 01:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure, that works well. We could also use the word "offices" instead of "campus"? -/- Warren 02:02, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

The lead sentence for the Microsoft article seems a bit long, almost verbal-diarrhea like. Great work on the anti-vandalism detail though. --Jay(Reply) 04:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. :) Yeah, the lead sentences are pretty dense... the longer I work on Wikipedia, the more I realise that writing a stellar lead is hard, hard work. I think RN did his level best to find the right balance of what information should be presented right from the top, but if you see an opportunity for improvement, let's talk about it at Talk:Microsoft. -/- Warren 04:49, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Warrens. I have a problem with "headquartered" too but you reverted my edit within minutes. I suggested "With headquarters in..." because this is a perfectly correct expression meaning "the managerial and administrative centre of an organisation". I don't see how it can possibly imply that a list of locations will follow, headquarters are generally deemed to be the registered central offices of a company and usually in a single location (to my mind anyway). For that matter, your 'list' argument could apply to "headquartered" as well. Sorry to nitpick but that word just looks so out of place and lowers the credibility of an otherwise fine article, IMHO. "Main offices" or even "Based in..." would be better. Just my 2cents anyway, I won't be interefering again as I'm sure you guys are on top of this important article and will tweak it until it is right. --Velvet-Glove 16:06, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

American vs. United States

Re: your comment that "United States" is a better description than "American" (on the George Carlin pages)--I'm afraid I disagree. Carlin was born in America, so the adjective "American" describes him just fine. If your concern is a political one, I'd still have to say Carlin is very American, seeing as he is a strong advocate of free speech and other American concerns.

I'm not trying to argue with you, but merely trying to understand your position.Konczewski 13:42, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

It's really very straightforward. Read the first definition of American. Outside of the Americas, most people use the term "American" to describe someone who is from the Americas, not just the United States. I realise that's not a popular viewpoint in the United States, but we do write for a worldwide audience on Wikipedia. Stating that George Carlin (or anyone, really) is from the United States is therefore more accurate than saying they are from "America". -/- Warren 14:51, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I see it as a difference between a noun and an adjective. After all, I wouldn't refer to you as a "Canada" wikipedian, but a "Canadian" one. Similarly, I've noticed most entries for British cicizens use "British", not "United Kingdom", to describe them. Since I don't think "United Statesian" is in common usage, "American" seems the better fit to me, and I'm pretty most readers outside this continent will understand what's meant by it. But I respect your right to use whichever term you think is most aesthically fit, and will leave the edit as it stands. Konczewski 17:45, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Warrens, Americas says "... most of the English-speaking world (including Canada) uses the word to refer solely to a citizen, resident, or national of the United States of America." No evidence is provided - I don't know who is right. Or righter. Leotohill 15:14, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

There is absolutely no doubt that 99% of the world's citizens, when they say "American" mean "somebody from the United States". If they're referring to somebody from Canada, they say "Canadian". Someone from Brazil is "Brazilian" and so on. But, to be quite honest, Americans are most commonly referred to as "Yanks" (that is, when the speaker means to be relatively polite).

Accidental Deletion

I don't remember deleting anything from your page, and I certainly didn't do it on purpose. If I did it accidentally, I apologize.Konczewski 13:43, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

.NET needs

Hey, since you asked, another thing that is needed is archiving of some of the discussions, esp. on .NET Framework. I don't know how to do it and I don't have time right now to learn. Leotohill

Never mind, I had you confused with another user. Delete all this when you like. Leotohill 15:08, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Ars Technica Article

Since you assisted previously with the ArsTechnica article, I am hoping you may be interested in this. A small group of editors keeps removing criticism from the Ars article. They have made other editors jump through hoops in terms of citing every line. This was extremely difficult using ArsTechnica's search function, thankfully abated with Google later on. One editor in particular slings Policy about like a weapon. I cannot say that some of this has not improved the article (as it made the criticisms more defensible). However, recently, one of the editors started a discussion whereby they formed a "consensus" in their own little group, despite the many editors who disagree with them. By "formalizing" the process on the discussion page, they have created a paper trail of "good practice", when in fact what they were doing was forcing their POV by requiring quick attendance to the article, and responding to an absolute ton of "evidence".

I do not believe that the editors who wish for a balanced article can maintain pace with this crowd. They have lots of time, and lots of ammo in various policy pages. Recently, for example, one editor claimed that links to problems on Ars OpenForum aren't valid sources, because the links point to the bulletin board, and that is not a primary or secondary source under WP:NOR (No Original resource). But the subject of the criticisms is the bulletin board itself. To me, that is like saying that a debate transcript is not a valid source for information on the debate.

I have read through some of your page, and the counter-vandalism pages, and appreciate some of the advice there. It has actually helped as I am not wasting as much of my time constantly trying to fix the article. Any additional advice you may have, however, would be wonderful. Thanks!--216.227.122.185 12:41, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Excel page

Hi Warren. It's great that you take the time to make Wikipedia great, but can I suggest before referring to other peoples mojo and making changes, please read them first. Yesterday I went to the Excel page, and in the course of 2 edits, removed commercial stuff (per request at top of page) and added a piece to the API section about some OPENSOURCE software for Excel. This was 'reverted' by you. Contrary to your comments the API item I added doesn't compete with anything listed (where did you get this idea?) and, moreover, is not opensource and commercial at all. On a second note, a host of commercial products appeared again overnight - is it not possible to ban these IP addresses from contributing? This might be a broader Wiki question. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 144.136.33.142 (talk • contribs) .

On WordprocessingML revert

Please see my response on the talk page, yours --Khalid hassani 14:32, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft codenames

Sorry for making your work on that reference for "Frosting" referring to Plus for Chicago - I added that a year ago before sourcing every single edit was such a big push. If you need help with some of these let me know. SchmuckyTheCat 16:02, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey. :-) I have it in mind to get as many references as possible that can be traced back to Microsoft employees, press releases, etc.... it's actually kind of fun to sort all this out! Right now I'm seeing if I can find some sources for Detroit, Snowball, and other older ones. Many of them should be pretty easy to track down a confirmation for, especially the NT Family and most of the ones in Others, so if you want to help out with that, that'd be great. If we can get this taken care of, and get some additional formatting and copy editing done, we should look at getting it submitted as a featured list. -/- Warren 16:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Windows categories

Thanks for the comments. I only dropped in because of the CfD for Category:Windows NT which is likely to be deleted. Also if you would, could you look at Token (Windows NT architecture)? My inlcusion of this in Category:Windows NT was reverted, the details are in the history. Since you seem more knowledgable in this area, maybe you can decide where that one belongs. As to the names, I tried to stay with the the general trend from the articles. Were there better choices? Maybe and they can be changed in the future. However my goal was to reduce the size of Category:Windows software to something more manageable and structured. Vegaswikian 22:22, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

re: btx page move

Hi warren. Will that mean all the pages that refer to the page will be incorrect cus Ive just changed them to reflect the new situation? -- RND  T  C  17:48, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

They'll work, but it will redirect. You can update the articles again if you like, but it's not absolutely necessary. If you choose to, what you can do is write the wikilinks like this: [[BTX motherboard]]s... the 's' at the end will become part of the link, so it will still look nice when you're discussing the motherboard in plural form, but singular usage will also be easy. Hope this helps! -/- Warren 18:00, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, Ill sort that out in the near future -- RND  T  C  19:03, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

BTW Copland

thanks for reverting my move without discussing it

Sorry. I did look to see if there was some discussion somewhere that I could add my five cents to, but aside from a single comment by Tiki and the mention from early 2004 I couldn't find any. Didn't think to check the Talk page history. AlistairMcMillan 21:06, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Replied to your comment on my talk page

• I can't remember if replying to you on my talk page or not will prompt you: just letting you know I did. Cwolfsheep 19:54, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
• I've pulled any standing WP:INT templates from your categories & deployed Template:CatMaintain. I'm done stepping on your toes, and other people shouldn't make changes you will end up opposing anyhow. I'll stick to finishing cleaning up Wikipedia:Proposed mergers. Cwolfsheep 21:04, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Segoe UI

Man, you're taking a beating there. Good job protecting the article in the face of such ugly personal attacks.

FWIW, based on his rather distinctive writing style and his German ISP, I'm pretty sure the 217.249.*.* anon is the proprietor of sanskritweb himself. If so, any edits he makes can almost be assumed to be unreliable and POV; his modus operandi is to make far-fetched claims that go against all the evidence, and then to assert that they must be true because the victims of his libel have not bothered to sue him...

At least you should get a new userbox out of this... "This user is a conman". ^^

— Haeleth Talk 10:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed the anon's IPs are from a German ISP. I work a lot with Microsoft articles so I'm getting used to strongly "anti-Microsoft" types calling me all sorts of things because I actually demand verifiability and neutrality in prose. Ah well. I added a user box per your suggestion! :-) Thanks for the nice comment, have a good day. -/- Warren 15:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Ars and me

Well, there it is ;) Thanks for the heads up. -Harmil 12:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Dude!

What did you do to Microsoft Data Access Components?!? My entire history has been removed because of the way you moved the page! I'm sure it's a mistake, but please be careful. I'm going to merge the page as I didn't do all that work to have my history removed. - Ta bu shi da yu 14:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I did the same thing I've done to just about every acronym'd article we've got on Windows -- I moved it to its full and proper name. Chances are pretty good I didn't know about history preservation when I did that movie, since it was one of the first ones I did. As to why it was done at all, acronyms for article names is needlessly jargonesque, and really should only be for disambiguation pages unless there is a very clear reason for something different. So unless you've got a -really- good reason for having the article on a data access API in an operating system to co-opt a disambiguation page, then I'm going to move it back to its full name -- and I'll do it properly this time. -/- Warren 14:49, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I would strongly advise you not to do that. I am somewhat of an expert on the topic, having wrote most of the article, and I can assure you that it is most commonly known as MDAC, not Microsoft Data Access Components. We use the most commonly used names on Wikipedia, and have done so ever since the start of the project. If you have been expanding acronyms, there may be cases where you can do that, but in many cases you should not be doing that. Please also desist from doing copy and paste article moves, you are destroying article histories and making life difficult for administrators who have clean up after you. - Ta bu shi da yu 15:39, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

P.S. in case this has come across overly harsh (I think it perhaps has), I'd like to say that I do appreciate your contributions a great deal. - Ta bu shi da yu 15:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that MDAC means absolutely -nothing- to people outside of computer programming. The reality is that we write for a global audience, not for a bunch of technowizards that will innately recognise MDAC as something related to Microsoft Windows thanks to past personal experience. You haven't presented a really good reason here to not do the move apart from "that's how it's always been done"... but the reality is that this has been changing as the scope of articles that Wikipedia covers expands. When you see AES, do you automatically think of the encryption protocol? How about SSL? FTP? MAC? CMS? RMS? WAIS? These are all familiar computing acronyms to us as computing experts, but they are all disambiguation pages -- rather, they all are disambigs now, but at their time of creation, every one of these pages was about the technology. Review the histories yourself if you wish. So yeah, back four years ago when we didn't have articles on the Muscular Dystrophy Association of Canada it would make sense for it to be named MDAC, because it was simple. This is no longer appropriate.

Expanding acronyms has another benefit: To someone reading the list of our featured computing articles, or perhaps the category pages, "MDAC" is inscrutiable to the layman whereas "Microsoft Data Access Components" is nicely self-explanatory and ultimately aids in the usability of the encyclopedia.

Look, I work pretty hard to keep the hundreds of Windows and OS X articles we've got free of bull, while also striving to improve the consistency and quality of what's presented. I do put a lot of thought (and a lot of research) into these things so that Wikipedia can do the subject justice. You're coming across as someone with WP:OWN issues, and I know you are a better and more considerate editor than that. Give my stance some thought. -/- Warren 17:04, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, I don't own the article, but also there is a redirect that goes there. If someone types in Microsoft Data Access Components, they will be redirected to MDAC. Wikipedia has always used the best known names. FTP should be at FTP, not File Transfer Protocol, incidently. Same with SSL and AES. Secondly, in almost all technical literature, it's called MDAC. Someone has more a chance of looking up MDAC than they do Microsoft Data Access Components.

As for coming across WP:OWN - mate, do you know how long it took me to write that article? When you moved the page the way you did, you destroyed the history and basically violated the GFDL because it doesn't give me due credit. I have been forced to do an article history merge. You also destroyed the history of the talk page! - Ta bu shi da yu 22:54, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Please tone down the aggressiveness, it's not helpful to the discussion.

Your argument about why this article should be named MDAC isn't going to wash -- there is clear community consensus in favour of using full names for technical protocols. I gave you several examples above, but I found at least a dozen more off the top of my head; I think I found 2 articles out of 20 or so where the . That you disagree with the prevailing consensus is fine, but don't go around renaming your pet articles because you disagree with them. If you don't like it, there's a talk page, use it and state your case there.

I've renamed the article back to Microsoft Data Access Components, where it has sat for months with not a single complaint, and where it fit in quite nicely with all the other related articles that have full names. Since I know you're going to disagree with this, I really very strongly encourage you to take a more level-headed and consensus-building approach if you are going to continue this discussion. If you can't afford me the decency of polite discussion and negotiation, in an attempt to develop a consensus, then back off and find something else to work on that isn't going to piss you off and cause undue friction. Or, get someone to mediate, or file an RFC or whatever. I'll certainly co-operate; I think my case is much stronger than yours, since it's built on prevailing consensus and what others before me have done... not my own opinion or emotional investment in a particular article. -/- Warren 02:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll concede the point that MDAC should be at Microsoft Data Access Components. However, there are a number of reasons I was particularly annoyed, which you have not apologised or conceded to.

1. MDAC sat at MDAC for a good 6 months without anyone moving it. This sort of makes your point about how long it took to move a moot point.
2. Your page move removed my quite considerable edit history. I did extensive research and over 500 edits to that article to get it where it is now, and I got it to FA status without any help from anyone. Then your good self came along and did a copy and paste move, and made removed my authorship. I realise you probably didn't do this deliberately, but you did something the community and the GFDL prohibits. An apology or even a recognition of what you did wrong would be a nice thing. The problem is fixed, incidently, because I was forced to do a page merge, which involves the following and is a pain in the neck to do:
   1. Delete the MDAC page.
   2. Move the Microsoft Data Access Components to MDAC
   3. Restore the MDAC article
   4. Make an edit to the MDAC article to bring back the article history of both articles.
3. You are not correct that every article that has a name that is an acronym should be changed. For instance, you wouldn't expand EFS (IRIX), nor would you expand NTFS. You would also not expand USA PATRIOT Act to Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. The standard for Wikipedia is: we name the article after the most commonly known names of the topic, and make redirects to that article. That is the way that the community has done things ever since I have been here, and I have been on the site for several years and have been an admin for longer than I can remember.

To be honest, though, I'm most upset about the article move because it lost the history. I spent a very long time on the article, and author attribution is one of the cornerstones of the site. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:32, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

EFS (IRIX) isn't ambiguous, but EFS is, which is why the Windows implementation (surely the most popular one) sits at Encrypting File System -- that was another case where you created the article as "EFS" and someone came along and renamed it afterwards. Also, it's worth noting that NTFS is actually the authoritative and correct name of the Windows file system. It was originally an acronym for New Technology File System back in the 1990's, but now it's referred to by Microsoft as "NTFS file system"... this change occured somewhere around the time Windows 2000 came out. Seminal reference books like Windows Internals don't use the expansion, either. (I really should get that distinction into the article.)

Your abrasive attitude here doesn't really motivate me to apologise for a technical error I made almost half a year ago as a new editor. The only thing you'll get from me with this approach is an assurance that I'm much more aware of those kinds of issues now and it's not the kind of mistake I make anymore. -/- Warren 18:15, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Screenshots

Thanks for adding the screenshot of IIS7 to the IIS page - it's most interesting but I would suggest that you turn off ClearType before taking and submitting screenshots. The reason for this is that ClearType is specific to LCD's. Printed on paper, displayed on a CRT or even an LCD with a different arrangement of pixels or on a rotated LCD it looks terrible. DamienG 07:58, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget that in Vista, ClearType is turned on by default. If you turn off ClearType, the screenshot does not exactly represent the default way the window is displayed. — Alex ^(T|C|E) 08:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the message. Is your comment based on the resized image or the full-size image? The resized one definitely looks a bit trashy; I tried to fit it into 800x600 so that mediawiki wouldn't resize it down, but it wasn't going to be possible without leaving out some of the detail. -/- Warren 08:30, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for sorting that. Alex, I appreciate that ClearType is on as default but the point is a screenshot of a system with ClearType looks awful printed, on a CRT or indeed on LCD's differently arranged to that it was taken on. DamienG 15:18, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Windows Vista version

when you reverted the mac fanboy'ism you also reverted the current beta version.. which was correct and included a link to prove that it existed... and that it had been released to tap testers... thanx —The preceding unsigned comment was added by YacozA (talk • contribs) .

I'm fully aware of what I did. Releases to a very limited number of TAP testers (we're talking tens, maybe a few hundred companies here that have signed non-disclosure agreements with Microsoft, and are generally not permitted to discuss TAP releases) are not reflective of what is available to the wider testing and developer community. Build 5472 is available to everyone with an MSDN subscription, for example, which covers hundreds of thousands of people. It was also announced on the official Windows Vista blog, which subsequent private releases have not been. Please note that Wikipedia operates on the principles of Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Notability, not gossip and heresy; builds released to a few people are not notable, nor can we confirm such information with a reliable source. These principles are more important to us than being a Vista scoop site; there's plenty of places to go for that kind of stuff on the Internet. -/- Warren 21:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

ok. makes sense.... thanks for clearin it up :)

Thanks

In large thanks to yourself the Windows Vista articles are very informative. I've learned quite a bit. sean 06:53, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

sorry for my bad English

sorry for my bad English. I love when you correct my bad English so I learn (I hope)

Fran Z (Windows Vista)

Hey Fran Z, your English isn't that bad, really! What you'll see me doing is trying to level things off to a consistent tone, so that the whole article sounds like one complete piece of work instead of a lot of little pieces put together. It's actually pretty hard to do, and as time goes on I think you'll find it gets easier. The Wikipedia:Manual of style has lots of good ideas in it, so have a read through that if you haven't already. -/- Warren 01:41, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Security section in Windows Vista article

I think a separate security section heading is required in Windows Vista article as it gets prime billing in the introduction, but then has references (and criticisms) scattered throughout the rest of the article. Do you support this? Peter Campbell Talk! 01:14, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello, thanks for the comment. This is tricky, because there's really two aspects to the security discussion: history/rationale, and specific features... I think a section under "New features" for security makes some sense... have a look at Features new to Windows Vista to get an idea of what should be covered (there's a big security section here)... but at the same time, bear in mind that that article is our features breakout article, and it's where we go into much greater detail. Anything written into Windows Vista itself needs to be concise and to-the-point. A large majority of readers aren't going to care about ASLR and 64-bit kernel patching and the more esoteric stuff, so explanations of these things shouldn't be written in... but yeah, some of the bigger points, like the Trustworthy Computing initiative, the fact that XP SP2 & Server 2003 SP1 development delayed Vista by a year or more (that's something Steve Ballmer or some other exec said recently), and *big* security features like UAC definitely do merit further discussion. By all means, take a shot at writing some security stuff into a new section, and we'll work it in. -/- Warren 01:49, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft specify security as a primary feature on their Vista website - this level of content could be reflected in the artice.

By the way, I thought WCF was not part of .Net 3.0, it is itemised by Microsoft as one of "Windows Vista Technologies" I think the are a bit schizo about this, they itemise WCF seperately AND they say it is part of .Net! ---Peter Campbell Talk! 06:14, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

MS Vista technologies content removed

Warren, this is also posted on Windows Vista discussion page. Please respond there.

The following edit removed content on Windows technologies (as stated by Microsoft) from the article with the comment that it was a "complete duplicate of what's already stated elsewhere in the article". However, the content covering Microsoft's own categorisation of technologies (as stated on their Vista website) was removed, and there is now no mention in the article of the Mobile PC platform or Windows CardSpace, so I think the removal of this content is not warranted. It should be reinstated. Peter Campbell Talk! 23:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

A few coments to you

Hi, I added some builds and dates to the vista article, and you removed them. Those were all correct builds and releases. They were just release to differnet groups of beta testers, are you an actual beta tester? If not, I will get in touch with a friend of mine who will get you into the actual beta. As well for Fiji, it doesnt exist I have talked to 4 different people at microsoft and they have searched multiple databases and none of them have heard of it. I even had the Director of the Windows Testing search for it and he could not find anything. I hope this info helps -Cullend11

Hello, yes I am on the beta program. However, that's not the important part... what matters is that we are able to conclusively verify that any given build exists and is, furthermore, the most recent official "preview release" put out by Microsoft. As of today, that's build 5472. Yes, people out there are testing newer and older releases than that, but 5472 is still the official latest release. This is Wikipedia, where we need to do our best to operate on the principles of Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Notability. Information on newer & older builds can go into the Development of Windows Vista article, where there's a lot more room for verbosity about what builds are in circulation. Thanks. -/- Warren 04:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but TAP are beta testers with elevated privellages, and they recieved an officiall release, it was simply not given to certain people. Do you participate in the NewsGroups?

I'm not going to discuss my participation in the beta program on Wikipedia. Like I said, that's not the important part. TAP releases are given to companies under a non-disclosure agreement, and typically the only way the outside world finds out about them is because there's a leak somewhere along the way, be it through screenshots, loose lips, or a build making its way to P2P sites. Microsoft doesn't announce them, and they're not intended for public consumption or for the wider testing community (MSDN, Connect, etc.). We can discuss those leaks on the aforementioned development article, because we can cite news sources that talk about them... but for us to identify such a release as the latest preview release is simply inaccurate. -/- Warren 04:23, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

TechBeta BTs are under NDA as well. MS just doesnt care anymore when the info is leaked. The TAP build itself havent been leaked, the news of it has, heres a link http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?s=0294bbaf2c0e35c6b2d6ed42cd255513&showtopic=483401&pid=587749658&st=0&#entry587749658

There is no signed non-disclosure agreement for MSDN subscribers, who have received builds on a regular basis, including 5472.

Also, forum postings aren't a reliable source of information. I encourage you to read the entirety of Wikipedia:Verifiability, which is a cornerstone policy of Wikipedia. -/- Warren 04:42, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

New OS infobox

Hi. I am laying a bit low at the moment, coz my college is taking up most of my time and energy. Hopefully, I will be back full-throttle in a month or two. How's things out there?

The new InfoBox looks good. Hardcoding image sizes seem a very good idea to me to promote uniformity. As for the version numbers, its good to mandate a cite. It has been a problem area for long. But, having the extra "info" link for the cite seems a bit out-of-place to me. May be integrate it into the title "Release information". --soum^সৌমোyasch 08:19, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Hey, I managed to totally miss this message until now! I'm doing well here, all settled in from the move and now I'm just busy with work and getting out and enjoying the lovely summer we've been having here. The 'info' thing is a bit of a stumper for me... there's got to be a better way we can integrate that kind of stuff. Hmmmm... -/- Warren 06:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Vista security and bugs content

With your edit [3] why do you think that "removing patches information. we're an encyclopedia, not a bug tracker, and it's completely irrelevant information for most readers."? Security is THE primary goal for Vista, so security updates are of significant interest - enough to make a lead article on CNET news today. I will put this content on the discussion page for consideration and consensus. I really don't think it is appropriate for you to just trash reference content with any discussion. How about some collaboration? --Peter Campbell Talk! 10:26, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

It will help your understanding of what I do immensely if you take a step back and ask yourself, "what's the BIG picture? what's the really relevant information to Windows Vista as a whole subject, not just what's in the news this week?" ... Wikipedia is -not- Wikinews, and it's really not the place for temporal stuff that isn't going to matter in a few weeks' time. If you want to write about how Microsoft has released patches for Windows, that's fine; but do it on Wikinews. Or, start a Vista news web site like so many others have done. We're here to write an encyclopedia, and as such as need to focus on summarising the important points of the topic, as a whole, as it relates to the entire audience of potential readers. We don't cover the latest security vulnerabilities for Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, do we? And no, I don't buy the argument that because Vista's primary focus is security, we should report on every security-related problem found and fixed during the beta-testing process.

Have a read through Wikipedia:Recentism. It disucsses this concern in greater detail. -/- Warren 11:01, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

The Original Barnstar

The Original Barnstar For creating the Infobox OS version template to replace the old Infobox OS template series with a better design. Keep up your great contributions! – Alex

— Alex ^(T|C|E) 20:33, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I have replied to you

on Talk:Virtual memory. You didn't reply today, figured you aren't watching it. It's important. --JStalk 04:45, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Improve .sys article

I wonder if you want to improve the article SYS that I created. Sys is a well-known file extenstion and you should know anything about it. Track02 19:09, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

WindizUpdate

I took a stab at cleaning it up as well - hopefully I didn't nuke too much out of there. RN 01:19, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Windows-stub

Yeah, I didn't realize it was for stuff only included in the OS. After I thought about it it made sense, but i have a feeling other have probably the thought the same initial thing... RN 12:13, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

reference 33

hello. Reference 33 is messed up. Could you fix it please? dposse 01:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Windows Live Butterfly

Not sure about this one - first google hit is wikipedia article. Searching for the official description only matches the wikipedia article. Maybe just merge into Windows Live and tag unreferenced? RN 07:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

DRM examples

W, Good choice of initial. You have not replied to my response to your note regarding these examples. I'll go ahead and restore to the status quo ante if there is no response from you or others. OK? ww 18:06, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey, ww, I completely missed your message about tha examples section last week... sorry about that! Do what you feel is best, and we'll see how it goes from there. You know me, I'll point to WP:NOT and WP:EL as good guidelines to follow as often as we possibly can, but your justification on the talk page has a lot of sense to it, too, and so if nothing else, more time is probably needed to find the right approach. Thanks for the reminder about this. -/- Warren 19:12, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Our Friend Prideaux

...seems to be on yet another mass-deletion rampage, re: the Yassky page.

Is there any way he can be temporarily blocked from editing that article? Ruthfulbarbarity 00:35, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Arrgh!

He seems to have returned, this time with an even more comprehensive deletion of data.

I thought that the resolution of this primary would end his edit-warring. Alas, that seems not to be the case.

I hate to keep bothering you with this, but his actions are becoming increasingly aggravating.

Is there any way that he can be IP blocked?

Thanks for your assistance. It's much-appreciated. Ruthfulbarbarity 01:59, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

User:RN

Nfitz, don't be a dick. RN doesn't bust his ass improving the encyclopedia to have people like you come around leaving subst'd warnings on his page that are completely irrelevant. Focus your energy on improving the encyclopedia instead. Thanks. -/- Warren 07:35, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

User:RN removed warnings that were only hours old, and did not provide a link to an archive page. This also obscures his past history, where he has received other warnings over the years. I don't see what's wrong with pointing that out in a neutral manner - if an error, he will quickly fix. I'm also unsure how this justifies you calling me names, and I'll ask you not to continue in that rude manner. If you don't like my actions, that's fine, say so. But starting to call people names is most uncivil, and I ask that you apologise and edit your message. Nfitz 16:20, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Apparently you didn't hear me the first time. I will repeat: Don't. Be. A. Dick. Just don't. I've reviewed the history of his talk page... there were no warnings posted on his talk page. RN, like the rest of us, is welcome to refactor any time he likes, in any fashion he pleases. Your personal displeasure at having your pet redirect Microshit being nominated by him for deletion doesn't give you any leeway to leave warnings on his talk page about removal of other warnings that weren't there in the first place. It's rude, it doesn't benefit the encyclopedia, and I recommend you stop harassing RN (who used to be an administrator, by the way, so he knows plenty about what's allowed) and find something else to work on. Don't even bother replying to this -- it's a waste of your time. -/- Warren 16:34, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

There were recent warnings on his talk page, AFAIUI, I warned him not to make personal attacks. I didn't use a template, and I don't think there is a level 1 template for such things ... as such discussions are supposed to be more casual; however he did admit to it; but besides that, there were most certainly some quite clear warnings in the past, which he delinked yesterday, relating to the events that occurred just before he lost his adminship; I draw your attention to the posts at the bottom of this in particular the posts by Essjay and Jimbo Wales.

I'm also going to warn you not to make personal attacks. You have again called me a dick; this is rude and should not be happening. Please see Wikipedia's no personal attacks policy. Comment on content, not on the contributor; personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Note that continued personal attacks may lead to blocks for disruption. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you. Nfitz 17:13, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, big effing wah. Don't lower the quality of the encyclopedia by making childish, POV-laden redirects like Microshit if you are hoping for some respect. Further, don't get into asinine arguments and start flinging threats at experienced editors who have a lot more insight to the subject than you do. And knock it off with the dishonesty while you're at it, would you? You're quoting an event that happened nine months ago, which has precisely zero relevance now. Surely you agree with that. In fact, there were no warnings on his pre-blanked talk page. Most people are dropping by for regular conversations as part of article development work.... except for you and your accusations and threats, of course, and the only reason you're doing that is because you've got your back up because Ryan RfD'd an article you created. Finally, I'm not going to be blocked for telling you "Don't be a dick" -- it isn't a personal attack, it's a suggestion and a reminder which applies to everyone working on the encyclopedia. "You are a dick", on the other hand, is a personal attack. There's a difference. -/- Warren 06:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of what that page says, I find it offensive. The page comments that "Telling someone "Don't be a dick" is something of a dick-move in itself" and the talk page notes that "is specifically meant to be offensive". Furthermore, I don't agree that there were no warnings on his pre-blanked talk page; I had warned him on the day before he blanked it, about violating no personal attacks. In addition, there were was the other warnings, posted only 9 months ago; why you discount such a recent issue, I don't know! I don't for one second consider Microshit POV-laden; if I did, how would I have created it? It's simply a word ... not really sure why this disturbs people so much. Nfitz 01:37, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Large changes on VMware

Hi there. 65.113.40.130 made a lot of changes on the VMware article and I don't know whether it's vandalism or not. I'm tempted to revert it, but I thought I'd ask someone wiser to check it out. — JeremyTalk 01:24, 21 September 2006 (UTC) (I'm watching this page)

• Whoa, thanks a lot! I just sent a message on the IP's talk page. I will try and clean the article up, but I suck at writing new content. I'm thinking of adding a corporate sidebar and maybe a table of its products. I was also thinking of a Comparison of VMware products or something. Get using VMware, it's really great! — JeremyTalk 05:12, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

64.126.42.123

The individual who connects through this IP address has made some rather peculiar assertions, and seems bent on a most unusual form of vandalism, but it would be a good idea to bear in mind WP:CIVIL. If he/she is bothering you so much, you might want to hand the issue over to an administrator.—Kbolino 07:54, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Windows NT 4.0

Warrnes, I am not a vandalistic twat! My comtributions to the encyclopedia are entirely welcome and you are a real twat yourself. Windows NT 4.0 is in Extended custom support agreements until the end of 2006[4] thank you very much, so your the one who is the real vandal, not me. 64.126.42.123 18:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Blocking

Go ahead and block me if it will make you feel better Warrens! I have had enough of your little encyclopedia anyway.64.126.42.123 18:46, 23 September 2006 (UTC)