Talk:Frequency modulation encoding
Did you know nomination
- The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 04:09, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
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- ... that early floppy disks used FM encoding that used only half the available storage? Source: Wakeman pg 1
- Comment: I added this with the DYK tool when I uploaded, but it seems it never got posted to the DYK nom page. Trying again...
Created by Maury Markowitz (talk). Self-nominated at 20:27, 13 April 2022 (UTC).
This seems to be exactly the same topic as that of a much older article, differential Manchester encoding. I have tagged both articles for a proposed merge. As such, I think it is ineligible for DYK. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:48, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- @David Eppstein: FM is a specific implementation of DME in the same fashion that MFM is a different specific implementation of DME. FM referrs to both the encoding of the individual data bits as well as the disk format and the header timing signals. I believe this is well explained in the article. Maury Markowitz (talk) 21:45, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- The lead sentence of the article says that it is about the code 0 → 01, 1 → 10, and mentions its usage in multiple applications. If it is intended to be only about the way floppy disks were formatted using this code, and not about the code itself, I think it needs significant rewriting to make that clear. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:51, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- @David Eppstein: The lead sentence of the article is "Frequency Modulation encoding, or simply FM, is a simple type of run length limited code that saw widespread use in early floppy disk drives and hard disk drives." I see nothing like "it is about the code 0 → 01, 1 → 10" and I think it clearly indicates the field is disk storage. I have added a link to DME in the appropriate location and I assume from the wording of your reply that the merge tag can now be removed? Maury Markowitz (talk) 23:09, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- "is a simple type of run length limited code". That describes it as a code. It is the same code as the one described in differential Manchester encoding. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:18, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
- "That describes it as a code" ... in a specific setting. I have added words to this effect. Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:27, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
- But it's the same code, used for the same basic purpose (maintaining synch). How is it notable for two articles rather than just one? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:03, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
- As I am now stating for the third time, this article is not about the code, it is about the entire system of which DFE is used for one part. I have made several changes to the text to make this distinction clear and you haven't commented on any of them. Maury Markowitz (talk) 18:40, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
- While we're repeating stuff we've already said, maybe I should repeat that the first sentence of Frequency modulation encoding states that FM encoding "is a type of run length limited code". If you don't want to think the article is about a type of code, maybe you shouldn't say in the first sentence that it is about a type of code? —David Eppstein (talk) 19:46, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
- As I am now stating for the third time, this article is not about the code, it is about the entire system of which DFE is used for one part. I have made several changes to the text to make this distinction clear and you haven't commented on any of them. Maury Markowitz (talk) 18:40, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
- But it's the same code, used for the same basic purpose (maintaining synch). How is it notable for two articles rather than just one? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:03, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
- "That describes it as a code" ... in a specific setting. I have added words to this effect. Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:27, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
- "is a simple type of run length limited code". That describes it as a code. It is the same code as the one described in differential Manchester encoding. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:18, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
- @David Eppstein: The lead sentence of the article is "Frequency Modulation encoding, or simply FM, is a simple type of run length limited code that saw widespread use in early floppy disk drives and hard disk drives." I see nothing like "it is about the code 0 → 01, 1 → 10" and I think it clearly indicates the field is disk storage. I have added a link to DME in the appropriate location and I assume from the wording of your reply that the merge tag can now be removed? Maury Markowitz (talk) 23:09, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- The lead sentence of the article says that it is about the code 0 → 01, 1 → 10, and mentions its usage in multiple applications. If it is intended to be only about the way floppy disks were formatted using this code, and not about the code itself, I think it needs significant rewriting to make that clear. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:51, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- @David Eppstein: FM is a specific implementation of DME in the same fashion that MFM is a different specific implementation of DME. FM referrs to both the encoding of the individual data bits as well as the disk format and the header timing signals. I believe this is well explained in the article. Maury Markowitz (talk) 21:45, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
By all means, suggest alternative phrasing. Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:48, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
- I did a preliminary NPP review and have similar concerns plus others. I'm posting separately at that page. North8000 (talk) 17:47, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
The wording has been changed multiple times to address David's concern and I have changed it yet again in an effort to avoid the issue, hopefully successfully. North8000's concerns have been addressed on the talk page. Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:52, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
I shall review this. Storye book (talk) 08:42, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
| General: Article is new enough and long enough |
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| Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems |
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| Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation |
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| QPQ: Done. |
Overall: 
Thank you, Maury Markowitz, for a great nostalgic article. The article was created on 3 April, and the nom was posted on 10 April, but I accept the explanation given above - it's only three days out, anyway, and you have waited three months for a final review. And hooray, Earwig is working for me today, so you get a non-AGF attestation of zero plagiarism. The citation for the hook is right at the bottom of page 1 of the Wakeman citation. I am satisfied that the article is about system and storage, and not just code, and that mention of the code in the body text is merely a means of explaining the system and storage issues. I have been using a PC since 1982 (by which time we had the smaller floppies) but I'm not expert, and I did need the mention of 0101010's etc. to explain storage and system. Ah, those were the days - Mortville Manor on a floppy, having to use the keyboard to make the Lemmings jump ... (shut up, Storye book). Just one issue: QPQ please? Storye book (talk) 09:09, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Storye book: "Earwig is working for me today" - ohhh, it wasn't just me... QPQ is Richard Peck (RAF officer) Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:02, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
. Thank you, Maury Markowitz. Good to go (at last!) Storye book (talk) 15:11, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
Feedback from New Page Review process
I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: Re: Frequency modulation encoding I have the same concerns as posted as David. Plus the title is for something far more widespread than the narrow meaning stated here. E.g. see Frequency modulation.
North8000 (talk) 17:51, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
- I was pinged......I'll expand a bit on concerns:
- As per the discussion by others including @David Eppstein: above, it's not even clear what this article is about. A type of coding? An instance of use of a type of type of coding different than Manchester? An instance of use of Manchester coding? Identifying that would be step one of discussing any basis for keeping this as a separate article.
- The title doesn't clarify; it's a much broader term "Frequency modulation" with another even broader word "encoding" added onto it ending up with a vague three word sequence that does not define a topic. I made a search on the three word sequence and none of the first hundred hits was anything in relation to this article.
- I did a quick search of the given sources that were on on-line (which should have been plenty to see if the term exists) and don't see anyone using that term.
- Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:32, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
- @North8000: I just did this and received: "One of the earliest techniques for encoding data for magnetic storage is called Frequency Modulation encoding", "MFM encoding stores more information on a disk than does frequency modulation encoding and is used on many hard disks", "(mfm)...stores more information on a disk than does frequency modulation encoding", "Modified FM The Miller code or the so-called Modified Frequency Modulation encoding is created from the frequency modulation coding...", "One of the earliest methods introduced to prevent long runs of 0's in recorded signal is the FM (frequency modulation) encoding." That's just the first page.
- Of course, as the term is similar to both radio-related FM and disk-related MFM, one has to judiciously apply various search-engine tricks to pick out the wheat from the chaff. I used variations of "FM"|"frequency modulation" along with "single density"|"encoding"|"disk"|"floppy" and optionally adding "-modified"|"-mfm". Using, for instance, "single density FM" immediately returns many hits, like like this one or this one. The search engine on archive.org is often useless, but "frequency modulation disk" turned up hits for various disk systems, including, for instance, this one. It can also be found on numerous web pages, mostly to do with data recovery and retrocomputing, like this one for instance, or better, this example.
- There are literally millions of hits to look through. I don't think I'm being unreasonable in suggesting you apply a little more google-fu before reaching any conclusions. Maury Markowitz (talk)