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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by User:Marskell 13:31, 7 July 2008 [1].

History of computing hardware

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Review commentary

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User:Ancheta Wis and Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing notified.

I'm going to make this short: This has 5 footnotes, and it's featured. From what I can see, more than 90% of this article is unreferenced. Needs huge improvement. I would say this doesn't even come close to WP:GA standards. — Wackymacs (talk) 16:56, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Remove: Inline citations, in my view, are of particular importance in an article that covers such a broad subject (thereby leaving that much more room for interpretation.) I agree, this is not close to current standards for FA. -Pete (talk) 23:45, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
FYI, this is the review phase, where we just clean it up or identify issues that need to be addressed. Only when it gets moved to the Removal section below do we vote. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 05:35, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
With this being such a huge article that basically needs rewriting in many places, it is most likely this is going to get removed first. I would start work on it, but I have other projects on wiki to complete first.— Wackymacs (talk) 06:51, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I just came across this article and I was about to list it here myself. It's a long way short of FA standard, and I agree with Wackymacs, it wouldn't even make GA as it stands. The obvious problem is with inline citations, or rather the lack of inline citations, but chunks of it aren't well written either, particularly later in the article. Text is squeezed between graphics, one of which partially obscures the text behind it, far too many short paragraphs ... there's a lot of work needed. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 14:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I have asked Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing to help out with the footnotes, and have access to Bell and Newell's book. In particular, I was asked to contribute some references for the article, as is currently shown, several years ago. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 07:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    We are now up to 43 footnotes. I have asked the WikiProject Computing for contributions, and have given some explicit examples of how to add citations to the FA on its talk page. User:Ragesoss has also notified the History of Science wikiproject of this ongoing effort. Let's see who else will contribute. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 14:57, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I will leave this up in the review phase given active work. Keep us informed. Marskell (talk) 19:15, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • WP:LEAD is inadequate, and it's hard to understand why the article title can't be worked into the first sentence. The {{main}} template is incorrectly used (most of those should probably use seealso or further), and most of the citations are incomplete or incorrectly formatted (see WP:CITE/ES). External links needs to be pruned per WP:EL, WP:NOT. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:31, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for your comment. One of the problems is that hardware and software are jargon; for example software can also mean clothing, as I learned in the New Orleans airport once. Not everyone knows the jargon, and jargon needs an explanatory sentence in the first place!
    I will use the see template per your explanation.
    Others will have to deal with the external links; contributions by others are welcomed, unless we want to see this article lose its star. When we worked on this article 4 years ago, there were multiple contributors. Might it be that they have lost incentive? I certainly have other things to do with my time. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 10:47, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I see that Wikipedia:Citing sources/example style is disputed. Which part of this are we supposed to be working with in order to demonstrate responsiveness to the FAR? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 01:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Again, what part of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not are the remediators supposed to be working in order to demonstrate responsiveness to the FAR? Are we supposed to post to individual reviewers in order to get guidance? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 02:02, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    2nd para. added to lede. Invited the members of Wikiproject Computing to contribute. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 02:27, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I have just noticed that History of Russia was defeatured, even in the face of contributions by 5+ active editors and 120 footnotes. Am I wasting my time and energy? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 11:09, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    No time is wasted, but this article is in very bad shape and is going to need a huge effort; are you the only person working on it? The image layout is not good, the WP:LEAD is going to need to be rewritten, there is weasly uncited text (example: Some claim she is the world's first computer programmer, however this claim and the value of her other contributions are disputed by many.), WP:OVERLINKing, WP:MOS#Captions punctuation errors, WP:DASH errors, citation errors ... I could go on ... to give you a frank assessment, this article is in much worse shape than what usually comes through FAR, so I hope others are helping you. It's doable, but will take a big effort. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:18, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The prose is also going to take a large effort, and an engaged copyeditor. Here's the last paragraph in the article:
    • An indication of the rapidity of development of this field can be inferred by the seminal article,[1] (by Burks, Goldstein, and von Neumann, which was documented in the Datamation September-October 1962 issue. This was written, as a preliminary version 15 years earlier). (See the references below.) By the time that anyone had time to write anything down, it was obsolete.
    Ouch. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree, it is indeed doable if a reviewer and a copyeditor can work in tandem. For example, I just reworked the closing sentences per your statement. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 10:10, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    If other editors can work on image placement, in cooperation with a reviewer, that would be good. I have been concentrating on footnotes, and propose continuing to do so.
    If other editors can work on the prose, in tandem with a reviewer, that also might work as a division of labor. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 10:49, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sidenote: History of Russia was removed because some of the people directly active on the article said it wasn't good enough. So no, you're not wasting your time, Ancheta. Marskell (talk) 18:11, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

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Suggested FA criteria concerns are citations (1c) and prose (1a). Marskell (talk) 19:45, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments in the review have died so moving down. Marskell (talk) 19:45, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This diff shows 27119 net bytes (a 33% increase) have been added to the article since 29 April 2008. I have attempted to address the concerns of Wackymacs (1c) and SandyGeorgia (1a) in the meantime. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 10:35, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am continuing to work on the prose, now that the citations follow Wackymacs' suggestions. Specifically, SandyGeorgia's concern about overlinking in the prose. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 22:21, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ancheta continues to work away. With no comments I'm tempted to default keep. I will try to give it a read over beforehand. Marskell (talk) 11:56, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Remove, not enough progress, too many issues. Just read the lead to see how far the article has to go, then go to the bottom of the article to see layout issues. Unfortunately, this article appears abandoned.

  • The major elements of computing hardware are input,[2] output,[3], memory[4], and processor (control[5] and datapath
  • A sentence which says ... I don't know what it says:
  • Eventually the voltages or currents were standardized and digital computers were developed over a period of evolution dating back centuries.
  • Poor prose in the first paragraph of the lead:
  • See the history of computing article for methods intended for pen and paper, with or without the aid of tables. For a detailed timeline of events, see the computing timeline article.

An enormous effort would be needed to clean up the citations. A lot of uncited hard data and fundamental copyedit errors; sorry, this isn't going to make it. Another sample:

  • In 1956, IBM sold its first magnetic disk system, RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control). It used 50 24-inch (610 mm) metal disks, with 100 tracks per side. It could store 5 megabytes of data and cost $10,000 per megabyte. (As of 2008, magnetic storage, in the form of hard disks, costs less than one 50th of a cent per megabyte).

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:01, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

SandyGeorgia, thank you for your responses. This was not 'my' article. This is 'our' article and I appreciate your concern and care for the standards of the encyclopedia. I worked on history of computing hardware simply because I was called. Please convey my thanks to those who participate in the FAR; I have learned more, which I count as a positive.
The prose you refer to in the first paragraph of the lead has sources all the way back to the beginnings of the article four years ago. For example, some of it came directly from Michael Hardy, the mathematician and editor who structured the article in the beginning. I respect him and kept the prose partly for that reason. If a more-or-less continuous effort from April 19 to June 29 comprises abandonment, then I see that my efforts have failed to persuade you that we ought keep the star. From my POV, the chief problem is the 81K message which suggests that the article be split. I am currently removing prose when I add more.
I use italics for emphasis of von Neumann's 'organs' of a computer. Apparently this needs more text for explanation. So it appears that I ought to remove more text to leave room for explanation.
The data you refer to reads well to me, but that is probably because I read it from the POV of someone who mentally compares it to specifications of other systems. In my mind's eye, I see someone lifting a removable disk from a drive and placing the cake cover on it before setting it in a shelf.
The voltages and currents you refer to deserve a small article themselves. Again, there has been a history of behind them, which the 81K limit ill serves. There was a time when frog's legs were the finest voltage reference available, several centuries ago.
I was just invited to join the Computing Wikiproject. Perhaps I/we might persuade some of the participants to join the fun. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 10:20, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ancheta Wis, I'm sorry you didn't get more guidance for all your hard work. Wackymacs nominated the article at FAR and could have helped; have you pinged Wackymacs at any point? You've been working under some self-imposed constraints that aren't accurate. There is no problem with the article size; it is currently at 42 kB (6643 words) of readable prose as measured by Dr pda's article size script, which is within WP:SIZE guidelines of 50KB readable prose. I'm not saying the article needs more text; it needs a copyedit. There's also a problem throughout with the use of italics (please read WP:ITALICS), and I can fix the footnote placement. What is most needed is a copyedit, and it appears you've been laboring alone. You don't need to preserve the original author's writing whe the article is at FAR and the original author and Project have apparently abandoned the article. Perhaps Wackymacs will help? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:42, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've cleaned up the faulty layout (see WP:GTL), fixed the footnote placement (see WP:FN) and will ask User:Brighterorange to run his script to fix the page and date range dashes (see WP:DASH) and will start removing WP:ITALICS. Are all of those References really used as citations? If not, those that aren't used should be separated to Further reading (according to WP:LAYOUT). Can you work on that? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:51, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The article needs major surgery; if you can get some collaborators to help, I'll peek in. All of the citations need cleanup, the article needs to be copyedited, and the WP:LEAD needs to be rewritten. The good news is that the hard work of citing the article is well along. Why are there periods after every citation? Why are publishers listed in the last parameter of citations? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:11, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In Wikipedia:Citation templates, each Citation template example is ended with a period. But for the cite template, a period is part of the template, making the period unnecessary for cite, but apparently a part of the protocol for the Citation template, per the example.
It is my understanding that in a tag-oriented template, the order of the tags is immaterial, thus the 'year' tag could be the last parameter in a template, for example.
I copyedited the lead and will invite the WP Computing participants to join in. Thank you for your guidance and examples. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 07:43, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Bell and Newell is my source, but I have not cited it. It is so important that I included it in the references. Raul Rojas is not my source, so I never cited it, but it was in the article previously and in the table of CPUs. The other references, sure, I used them. In particular, Mead and Conway explained the benefits of CMOS very clearly but I do not have a page number for them right now, although it is in my basement somewhere. I have a much longer citation for CMOS current draw, which I did not put in because I was laboring under the 81k message constraint before this. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 08:17, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
SandyGeorgia or Wackymacs, the harvnb templates still need last|year, but I notice that the 'last=' was missing from the Intel and IEEE Citation templates. I restored the Citation|last=IEEE and then noticed that the Citation|last=Intel was changed as well. How is the Harvard-style referencing method going to work, in this case? I will also direct this question to Jbmurray. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 01:40, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Since Jbmurray is away til mid-July, I directed my question to the Citations people. Here is their reponse to my question: "For the featured article rework on history of computing hardware, I use the harvnb and Citation templates to save on the byte count. My observation has been that I need to use {{harvnb|xxx|2007|pp=x-y}} with a corresponding {Citation|last=xxx|first=yyy|year=2007|title=ttt|publisher=ppp|date=1st day of the waning moon, year 78 of the Saka era|etc}}. But if there is no last name, for example when the citation is from an organization like IEEE or Intel, what should the harvnb contain? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 02:48, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
You could set |last=IEEE or |last=Intel? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 09:55, 2 July 2008 (UTC) ". What do you think? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 12:32, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Despite what Sandy has said, I have helped (not on this page, but at the article's Talk page) and I encouraged Ancheta to use the Harvard citation templates, which has worked out well. I would have helped even more, but I do have my own projects going on. As it stands, this article does not currently meet the 2008 FA criteria. There are still plenty of problems with the prose and citations. I think this article would benefit greatly if this was delisted, and then renominated at FAC later on. It needs thorough reviews to ensure it meets the criteria. At the moment, some page numbers are in the References section, but some are in the Footnotes (where they should be). There are also missing access dates, publishers and incorrect ISBNs. There's also 3 dead links. A lot of the prose is choppy, and there are still "facts" which are uncited (and indeed, paragraphs which are uncited). — Wackymacs (talk ~ edits) 08:42, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
With that said, I think I will remove this. Ancheta, you have put in a vast amount of work and the article has improved. Another FAC is always a possibility. Marskell (talk) 13:25, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
  1. ^ Arthur W. Burks, Herman Goldstine, and John von Neumann, "Preliminary discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument," Datamation, September-October 1962.
  2. ^ Historically, the media for input have been sequences of events: punch card and paper tape hole punch, keyboard keystroke, or mouse click.
  3. ^ Historically, the media for output have been sequences of states: punch card and paper tape hole punch, print mark, or light bulb.
  4. ^ Memory is US usage; Storage is UK usage; the terms are not completely equivalent: Memory has the connotation of rapid access; Storage has the connotation of large capacity. (The use of the term Storage dates back to Ada Lovelace in the nineteenth century.) Magnetic core memory was much faster than disk; which was cheaper, with higher capacity. There is a hierarchy of storage, which trades capacity for speed of access. To this day, semiconductor memory is more expensive than disk or tape.
  5. ^ Historically, control has been implemented by processes, which have been sequences of manual interventions (the earliest versions), switch settings (nineteenth century), patch panel connections (twentieth century), and then stored programs, perhaps in microcode.
  6. ^ Wilkes 1986, pp. 115–126
  7. ^ Horowitz & Hill 1989, p. 743
  8. ^ Patterson & Hennessy 1998, p. 424: note that when IBM was preparing its transition from the 700/7000 series to S/360, they emulated the software of the older systems in microcode, so as to be able to run older programs on the new IBM 360.
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