Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Federal Standard 1037C clean up

Purpose

Beyond the first few paragraphs of text, I'm not sure what purpose this article serves - it seems to have begun as a red link collection for which blue links needed to be made. I suggest moving the list itself to Wikipedia space, and perhaps checking the articles in it against the 1037C definition, to be sure we are not missing public domain information that could be inserted. BD2412 T 14:23, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose is to decide what to do with 100's of stubs created from public domain source years ago and just minorly edited since. It's not about creating new pages, it's about deleting (or something else that needs to be decided) them. If you take a look at the articles in the list - you'll have a feeling that they need clean up (because they are mainly dicdef). And they need it usually since 2002. So some solutios:

Delete
Merge into one or several big articles
Move to Wiktionary (as proposed to several individual articles)
Do nothing and go home

Later on I'll put more meat to it (more text & more info). Renata3 14:36, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see what you're saying. Unfortunately, I don't think there's going to be one solution, but rather a case-by-case mix of the possibilities you've listed above. Some of the terms (like Alarm sensor and Antenna blind cone seem to be candidates for expansion. BD2412 T 15:05, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If there was 50 articles, I would say do case by case. But we have here several hundreds. So to analyze them case by case will be extremely tedious job. I was hoping for some "shortcut." As far expansion goes - they stayed in this abysmal state for years, so... And another note: the list is including every "suspicious" case. Renata3 17:00, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

But not all of them have stayed in their original state. Many of the original definitions have gone on to become full-fledged articles (in which case you may not even be aware that they started as 1037C definitions). In editing optics and fiber optics articles, I have found the 1037C articles useful, as they form a template for what is missing, suggesting areas of knowledge where an article is needed and indicating through their many links to each other which concepts are connected to which others. In some areas, there may not yet be enough "good" Wikipedia structure without these articles. The 1037C articles form the skeleton of what little knowledge is there.. Going through them case by case may be tedious, but there's no rush.

It seems to me the most urgent task is to prune the completely hopeless cases—the ones that can never be more than a dictionary definition. The rest will eventually get edited by somebody. Even just pruning the dicdefs though requires some care. In many cases the article should not be simply deleted, but should be redirected to the appropriate wikipedia article (e.g. backscatter, which I just redirected to backscattering, and conservation of radiance, which I just redirected to Radiance after adjusting the text of the latter page because the 1037C page included a detail I had forgotten. In other cases, two or three related definitions combine nicely into a small wikipedia article or stub on their common subject, e.g. acceptance cone and acceptance angle, which merged nicely with guided ray.--Srleffler 05:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I would propose the following. First, the list itself really belongs in Wikispace, under Category:Wikipedia missing articles. Second, it likely belongs deleted on WP:MFD because it's hardly a list of articles that we really want or that people are going to create from this list.
Third. A quick glance over the articles on this page indicates that most of them are combinations of dicdefs and technical notes. I'm afraid that technical footnotes really don't belong anywhere unless someone wants to write a wikibook on the topic. I can see two possibilities; one would be to simply transwiki everything to Wiktionary; the second would be to merge it into several comprehensive articles, but this requires more expertise on the subject than I have, otherwise the articles will simply be a mess of collated stubs. So unless we find such an expert (try the village pump), I'd say transwik.
That can be done by bot. But before that, someone will have to browse over the articles and see if there are any exceptions (which is likely). This seems like a lot of work but you can really cover 10-12 pages per minute if you want (trust me on this, I've recently been working through every single page in Wikipedia namespace). You can tell at a glance or two whether the article has potential, or is a permanent dicdef.
That'd be my $.2, and the good point about transwiking is that if you tag things with {{move to wiktionary}} then there's usually a helpful bot around to do it swiftly. Ask Uncle G for details, he's the wikt expert. Radiant_>|< 23:42, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I'll buy some of that - certainly I agree that it's possible to at least lay eyes on all of them before deciding to merge/delete/transwiki. I'd try to merge them as much as is reasonably possible. I'm burning to know how you're doing on this every single page in Wikipedia namespace endeavor - how is that progressing, and are you burning up a lot of speedies on the way? BD2412 T 00:29, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - I actually stumbled upon these articles going through letter D on Allpages :) I was surprised to see that we have tons or redirects and that most articles are in a pretty good shape.
  - Back on the subject. I would gladly go through the articles and pick ones that can qualify for hopeless stubs (as I have started already). But it's highly unlikely that I will have time for that until Saturday. Could someone volunteer? Renata3 01:05, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Whoa: wait a minute! Whilst most are dicdefs, some listed here are good stubs: Allan variance, to name just the first I looked at -- an important subject in metrology. -- The Anome 00:32, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- If you would notice, that article is not in the list I have started and which is alphabetical. I remember looking at it - I compared its first version with the last one, and saw quite big changes. There are a lot of exceptions. Like Radio frequency - which a reasonable article. I included in the list only those articles that are dicdefs and have changed since their creation only a tiny bit. Renata3 01:05, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I have seen quite a few optics-related 1037C articles that were viable stubs, with a little editing. Some of these I have edited/merged/etc. myself. Often only very light editing is required. I believe there are many optics and fiber optics articles that started out as 1037C definitions. Wikipedia is still very weak in these areas. I think that any broad, uncautious, effort to delete or transwikify 1037C articles would leave Wikipedia poorer. They need to be examined individually by someone with the expertise to properly wikify them.--Srleffler 04:25, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Separated the wheat...

For starters, I've moved the list of terms from Federal Standard 1037C to Wikipedia:Federal Standard 1037C terms (leaving the article-worthy introductory material as a freestanding article), as this is certainly more in the realm of wiki-projects than of articles. BD2412 T 00:48, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The same should be done to its spuns-offs, like List of fiber optic terms or List of coding terms. There are categories for these things in any case. Renata3 01:11, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed - they should be moved to subpages, e.g. Wikipedia:Federal Standard 1037C terms/fiber optic terms; Wikipedia:Federal Standard 1037C terms/coding terms. BD2412 T 01:15, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Bam! Done, like a phantom in the night. BD2412 T 01:22, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wow! 7 mins! :) Renata3 02:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright issues

Are these standards really in public domain??? Since most of those articles are verbatim copies, it would make them a copyvio. My doubts arrise, because the the "new" update of the standard has this note: Copyright © Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, 2001 in connection with all copyrightable subject matter created by and in Committee T1 and contained herein or comprised hereof. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, in an electronic retrieval system or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher [1] Renata3 04:16, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The use of the phrase "copyrightable subject matter" suggests that some of it is not - and if it's a standard used in any federal law, any private party would be hard-pressed to prove a copyrightable element. BD2412 T 04:29, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I guess that fails, because I got email from them saying:

Thank you for your message to the NTIA/ITS website. Yes, Federal Standard 1037C is in the public domain and may be copied and distributed freely. I believe in the past some people have even sold it. Obviously we would frown on that practice, but wide distribution is no problem at all. The newer glossary, Telecom Glossary 2000, is copyrighted by ATIS and you would have to ask them for permission to copy and distribute it. Renata3 16:05, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

But the defs we have are all from the older version, yes? If the newer version is copyrighted, I doubt it can be used as a basis for federal law. BD2412 T 16:09, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, it's all from the old public domain version. Renata3 21:29, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Some recommendations

I recommend that, before anything else is done, the list of articles that editors consider to need attention in this discussion be completed. So far we have reached "C".
I recommend that editors not conflate "dictionary definition" with "short stub article". (This is something that I keep meaning to bring up at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy.) I've picked three of the articles that were marked as candidates for moving to Wiktionary, and there was a very simple fix for all three: Edit the article so that it is on the "use" side of the use-mention distinction instead of on the "mention" side. Simply replacing "The term X means" or "X is a term that refers to" in the introduction with "X is" fixes quite a few articles that editors think should be moved to Wiktionary. The Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles#Use_of_.27refers_to.27 has clear advice to avoid "is a term" and "refers to", and this is part of the reason for it.
Asynchronous operations and back-to-back connections are things. And addressability is a concept. The question should be "Is there more to say about these concepts/things? Are the articles about these concepts/things stubs that have the possibility of future expansion?"
In the case of all three, the answer is "yes". Our article on back-to-back connections could expand using information from Cisco, information from Hewlett-Packard, and information from Intel about back-to-back connections, for example. Our article on asynchronous operations could expand using information from IBM and information from Tom's Hardware Guide, although it covers much the same ground as asynchronous communication. Our article on addressability could expand to cover direct and indirect addressing and to relate the concept to memory addresses, address spaces, and pixels.

Uncle G 16:55, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I think the first thing to do is to cull the obvious keeps from the lists, and then we can take a deeper look at everything else. BD2412 T 17:04, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm glad someone has raised this issue. This mass of poor articles has been around for far too long. In many cases I think the best option is to merge articles together. For instance, access denial, access failure, access time, and access attempt are all quite hopeless, but if they were amalgamated we could have a decent article on the concept of access in telecommunications. Doing such mergers does, however, require some degree of expertise. - SimonP 14:48, 2 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - How 'bout something like Access in telecommunications? (Note: I left Access time out because I believe it can be a stand-alone. BD2412 T 15:45, 2 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - Great work, a couple hundred similar mergers and we might get the situation under control. - SimonP 18:20, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Expanding upon what SimonP says: It might be a good idea not to cull the obvious keeps, and not treat this simply as the creation of a list of things to be deleted, but to treat it almost as a WikiProject to clean up all FS 1037C articles, in whatever way is appropriate. Uncle G 19:53, 2 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - To clarify, what I meant by "cull the obvious keeps" was remove from the lists articles that are already fine and dandy as they are. I have a triage-frame of mind, which tells me to fix the worst first - but in order to figure out which are the worst, it helps to take the best out of the picture completely. BD2412 T 19:57, 2 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Source: originally from Federal Standard 1037C

A lot of articles (like overtone) have little "Source: originally from Federal Standard 1037C, but edited." disclaimers at the bottom. I think they are ugly and not really appropriate (some of the information came from other sources, too, but those are listed in the references section), but don't know what do to with them. I propose we delete all the little tags and replace them with external links to the appropriate article on their website, treating it more like a reference. When I first started here, I thought it was bad of me to edit such articles away from their 1037C definitions, and just appended info afterwards. — Omegatron 21:14, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If it was a source, it should be cited in the ==References== section. Uncle G 00:14, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It might be useful, at least temporarily, to distinguish between articles which are still essentially unedited 1037C text, and articles which have been modified. It would be best to have two templates, one for each case, which can be applied to all of the 1037C pages.--Srleffler 00:51, 4 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I think that it's unnecessary to have two. Either FS 1037C was a source or it wasn't. We only need 1 template (if we need any at all), a template such as
  - {{FS1037C}}
- placed as an ordinary reference in the ==References== section, that produces an ordinary citation, like any other, such as
  - U.S. General Services Administration (1996). Telecommunications: Glossary of Telecommunication Terms (Federal Standard 1037C).
- If the article is expanded from other sources, there is no need to alter the original citation. One simply adds the other sources to the list. Uncle G 00:06, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly.

It needs to be included on all such articles, too, even ones from which the original tag was removed. — Omegatron 00:15, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

- Another model might be the templates at Wikipedia:Template_messages/Sources_of_articles#General sources, many of which also reference public domain government documents.--Srleffler 03:15, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Possible templates

For deciding the format of {{FS1037C}}:

U.S. General Services Administration (1996). Telecommunications: Glossary of Telecommunication Terms (Federal Standard 1037C).
This article contains material from the Federal Standard 1037C, which, as a work of the United States Government, is in the public domain. --Omegatron

I like the second, since it does not require creating a "references" section. Many of these articles are so small and much of the 1037C content is so insignificant that the articles either don't really merit a references section, or if they do it is because they have been expanded to the point where the 1037C content is insignificant.--Srleffler 02:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I've added it to the template, and added it to Adaptive predictive coding, Adder-subtracter, Access time, Addressability to show how it will appear. Let's not add it to any other articles until we get a few more people agreeing.

Also, some have content from MIL-STD-188 as well. Should we make a template for that too? — Omegatron 21:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It looks good, but I don't think that you should hurry to implement it, because those articles need much more work than just a template. So you might end up doing a lot of work in vain. First we need to decide what to do with those articles in general. Renata3 21:55, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Alright. Well, the framework is at least in place now, and when I come across an article like SSB that we will obviously keep I can tag it. The category would also help in finding the articles that need attention, but might as well have a bot go through them all.

Other notes are of the form "partly from Federal Standard 1037C in support of MIL-STD-188" though. Not sure what to do with those. — Omegatron 22:03, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]