User talk:Dsimic/Archive 6

This is an archive of past discussions with User:Dsimic. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Patrolled user page

Hello - I got a notice that said User:217IP was patrolled by Dsimic. Could you clarify what this means? I am unfamiliar with it in the context of users - normally people patrol pages for changes. Thanks! 217IP (talk) 15:49, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Patrolling new pages is nothing out of ordinary, ;) it's a Wikipedia's "quality control" mechanism ensuring that new pages are checked against major issues, such as insulting material, copyright violations, obviously misleading stuff, or unsatisfied notability criteria. In this particular case, a few hours ago I had a look at your user page, saw that it hasn't been patrolled yet while having no issues, so had it marked as patrolled. See Wikipedia:New pages patrol for further information. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 16:13, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I guess I'm still confused - why would a user's page need to be quality controlled? It doesn't seem like user pages ever have contentious material and don't have issues with notability or reliable sources. I am not very familiar with user pages, but isn't it just a space to talk about myself if I wished to do so? 217IP (talk) 16:59, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

User pages are technically no different than other page types, and some people put all kinds of stuff there. In the end, that's how MediaWiki works and treats them, despite the fact that the content of user pages is almost entirely each user's discretion. See Wikipedia:User pages for futher information (WP:UPNOT describes what isn't allowed on user pages, for example). — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 17:13, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that by patrolling my user page, you are singling me out and saying "I am going to keep a close eye on you" and attempt to exert control over what I decide to include on my user page. Considering user pages very rarely seem like a point of contention for anyone, this sort of comes across to me as WP:WIKIHOUNDING: "with an apparent aim of creating irritation, annoyance or distress to the other editor". I am not accusing you of this, and I assume good faith, but this is sort of how it looks to me (admittedly a novice). If patrolling user pages, especially those which you are in disagreements with on other articles, is normal for Wikipedia, then I apologize for insinuating bad faith. 217IP (talk) 17:20, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

No way. I even haven't added your user page to my watchlist. All I care about is the content of articles, and that's what the Wikipedia:No personal attacks guideline clearly says. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 17:28, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I do sincerely apologize then - you are welcome to remove this from your talk page if you like. I asked another person and patrolling user pages seems like a totally normal thing. I appreciate your patience and civility. 217IP (talk) 17:37, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

No worries. There's no need for removing this discussion as everything on Wikipedia happens with no concealment. Also, it's always the best to clearly and as early as possible express and discuss any concerns – that's what keeps a work environment healthy. Welcome here! :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 17:44, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Blade (templating engine) listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Blade (templating engine). Since you had some involvement with the Blade (templating engine) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Compassionate727 (talk) 19:00, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing it to my attention, I've cast my vote there. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 20:51, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Run-time polymorphism

A tag has been placed on Run-time polymorphism, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a redirect from an implausible typo, or other unlikely search term.

Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. If you believe that there is a reason to keep the redirect, you can request that administrators wait a while before deleting it. To do this, affix the template {{hangon}} to the page and state your intention on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Compassionate727 (talk) 19:56, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

First of all, you're not supposed to remove speedy deletion tags for pages you've made. Also, I see that neither "run-time polymorphism" nor "run-time" are mentioned on polymorphism (computer science). What makes the redirect worth having? Compassionate727 (talk) 20:01, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello, Compassionate727! I'm confused, what's going on here? This redirect is perfectly fine, there's essentially nothing wrong with it; will explain in more detail a bit later. Also, why are you tagging a whole bunch of redirects with {{R with possibilities}} when there simply isn't enough encyclopedic content available to justify separate articles? That isn't helpful. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 20:03, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Ok, got the redirect improved by changing the redirect link from Polymorphism (computer science) to Polymorphism (computer science) § Static and dynamic polymorphism. Please don't get me wrong, but checking the suitability of a redirect with a simple Ctrl+F usually isn't enough. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 21:17, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Intel microarchitectures (July 2015)

Hello,

You have deleted several mentions of Kaby Lake because it is a rumor. However, you have not deleted all the additions of 670221421 ("Cannonlake ... put on hold indefinitely") and 670668783. Please be consistent. Also, I do not understand the comment of 670598820. What is the complete sentence? Especially, what "doesn't fit" with what? Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 19:17, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you very much for pointing out what I've somehow managed to miss in the Skylake (microarchitecture) article, got it fixed now. Sorry for that, but I'm still only a human, and humans tend to make mistakes. :) Regarding the Intel processor roadmap template, it simply wasn't on my watchlist so I haven't seen its recent changes; however, got it fixed as well so everything is now in a consistent state.

Speaking of my edit on the Intel HD and Iris Graphics article, it's about whether the Intel microarchitectures category applies or not. As we know, "microarchitecture" is a term coined by Intel for referring to the way a processor architecture (which boils down to either IA-32 or x86-64) is implemented in a specific processor generation. With that in mind, there's no architecture to which Intel HD and Iris Graphics would be a specific implementation. That might be debatable with the recent trend toward integrating GPUs and CPUs into the same package, but they're still rather independent units (even in the HSA, a GPU is still only a better-integrated separate unit).

Sorry for not describing it in more detail in my edit summary, which pretty much wasn't possible in such a limited amount of space, and I hope you agree with the category removal. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 01:00, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing Skylake (microarchitecture) and Template:Intel processor roadmap. Case closed for now.

"Microarchitecture is a term coined by Intel for referring to the way a processor architecture [...] is implemented in a specific processor generation." →‎ With this definition, all pages in Category:Graphics microarchitectures should be un-categorized from Category:Microarchitectures, and Category:Graphics microarchitectures should be deleted. Please be consistent. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 19:37, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Right, things are in a consistent state now, until (and if) Intel confirms the Kaby Lake rumors. Also, please be aware that I can't do everything in advance before replying on my talk page, so I'm really having difficulties to understand what do you exactly mean by "please be consistent"?

Just had a look at those categories you've referred to, and it seems that we might be having larger issues than the categorization under Graphics microarchitectures category. In particular, it seems that articles such as Fermi (microarchitecture) or Kepler (microarchitecture) might not be describing GPU microarchitectures; instead, they seem to be describing GPU architectures. For the Fermi to actually be a microarchitecture, we'd need to know which exact ISA or GPU architecture it implements (even Nvidia refers to Fermi as an architecture, see this whitepaper, for example). However, I'm not sure whether the Parallel Thread Execution (PTX) could be seen as the actual ISA/architecture, especially because it has multiple versions; if that's the case, calling Fermi a microarchitecture would be perfectly fine, and that should be clarifid in the article(s). Thoughts? Perhaps Jesse Viviano could give us a hand here? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 22:40, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

"Please be aware that I can't do everything in advance before replying on my talk page" → Of course.

"I'm really having difficulties to understand what do you exactly mean by "please be consistent"?" → I mean applying the same treatement to similar pages. For example, both Intel GMA and Intel HD and Iris Graphics pages are about "a series of Intel integrated graphics processors", both had Category:Graphics processing units, Category:Graphics microarchitectures, Category:Intel microarchitectures, but you removed the later only from Intel HD and Iris Graphics. Consistency say that both or none should have Category:Intel microarchitectures.

"Even Nvidia refers to Fermi as an architecture" → Indeed, and Google find much more "Maxwell architecture" and "Graphics Core Next architecture" than "Maxwell microarchitecture" and "Graphics Core Next microarchitecture". Now I am confused. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 19:51, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

I totally agree that the same "structural" changes should be applied to all related articles and templates, but the problem is that I don't have all of them on my watchlist, and I'm even unaware of all of them. Though, that's why Wikipedia is a true team effort, and working together we'll do everything consistently and as accurately as possible. Hope that you agree.

The primary trouble with architecture vs. microarchitecture is that "microarchitecture" is a term that has been pretty much coined by Intel, so it might be that the other manufacturers are avoiding to use it even if that would be the right choice, finding its use potentially confusing etc. Perhaps we should seek for other editors' opinions, but I'm not sure which talk page would be the right place? Any ideas, please? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 23:53, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I am not familiar with the talk pages. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 19:18, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Kaby Lake has been confirmed. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 19:05, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder, I'll review all changes made to the related articles a bit later. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 00:09, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Virtual disk

Hi. This is Codename Lisa! I missed you during my absence. How do you do?

If it isn't much trouble, could you please take a look at the move discussion in Talk:Virtual disk? I feel it needs more contributors and I have already tried all channels of notification short of inviting interested parties. (Hopefully, you count as a potentially interested one.)

Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 07:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello! I've noticed that you haven't been too active recently, it's really good to have you back! :) Speaking about myself, well, I'm chuggin' along as always... Just had a look at Talk:Virtual disk § Requested move 11 July 2015, and I need to think a bit more about the whole thing, including how it goes along with the Disk image, Logical disk, RAM drive and other articles. Will come back with an update later. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 09:08, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, my opinion is now part of the move discussion. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 12:09, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi again. Never mind the delay; looks "delay" is going to be middle name soon. "Codename Delay Lisa"!

But you did well to invite additional editors. Thanks. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 09:50, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Haha, it surely hasn't reached the point of becoming your middle name. :) You're welcome, and thank you for inviting me in the first place; hopefully, we'll reach a good compromise with the input from more editors now available in Talk:Virtual disk § Requested move 11 July 2015. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 10:01, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Half Barnstar
	For your cooperation with other editors while contributing to Wikipedia. I have seen many editors squabbling over minor edits. You are different. It seems to me that you focus your energy on improving Wikipedia rather than socializing. We need more people like you here. Keep up the good work. Chamith (talk) 12:30, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello, and thank you very much! :) As you've described it, my primary goal is to make Wikipedia better, and every single edit counts no matter how minor it might seem. Surely, I also love to have good relationships with other editors, but the primary goal remains unchanged. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 12:51, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

ipkg article and the NOTHOWTO guideline

What's the general or your personal gain, if you remove example use paragraphs such as mine from the ipkg article? It was far away from being a HOWTO. And is it really, really necessary to eliminate such paragraphs? I personally find it really convenient to have almost everything I need in a wikipedia article. You are not going to cut down the wikipedia to exactly your need, are you? --johayek (talk) 12:08, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello, and sorry for the slight delay in responding. Regarding my edit on the ipkg article, I've already described in the edit summary what's it about. In a few words, it isn't some kind of my own "crusade" as you've called it; instead, it's only about following the guidelines, out of which WP:NOTHOWTO clearly says the following (emphasis added):

While Wikipedia has descriptions of people, places and things, an article should not read like a "how-to" style owner's manual, advice column (legal, medical or otherwise) or suggestion box. This includes tutorials, instruction manuals, game guides, and recipes. Describing to the reader how people or things use or do something is encyclopedic; instructing the reader in the imperative mood about how to use or do something is not. Such guides may be welcome at Wikibooks instead.

Please don't get me wrong, I know that seeing someone delete your contributions creates unpleasant feelings, and I've experienced exactly the same myself. Though, the guidelines are there to be followed, no matter how convenient a disobedient approach might be. Furthermore, other articles have seen much larger deletions of howto-style content, please see this edit (or this one) on the mdadm article, for example, and Talk:mdadm § Purge for the associated discussion. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 02:53, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

The question remains, why you are making this your task, and also how you are selecting your targets. And do you also have constructive goals on your list? --johayek (talk) 10:41, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Quite frankly, I don't see the reasons for your obvious unfriendliness. As we know, we're all here do discuss everything and find the best possible solutions, but such abrupt Q&A sessions usually don't converge. However, here are the exact answers to your questions:

"Tasks" like this one are every editor's obligation, simply because all articles are required to follow the guidelines and the Manual of Style as closely as possible. Thus, whenever an editor comes across an article that isn't as good as it could be, it's their duty to make appropriate improvements. Of course, any arising differences in opinions are to be discussed on talk pages.
One part of my work here consists of reviewing changes made to the pages on my quite large watchlist, which is over 3200 pages long. Speaking of how I came across the ipkg article, I've seen it linked in one of the edits made to the Package management systems template I'm watching, so I had a look at the article to verify that it's linked in a correct context.
Yes, I have many goals on my to-do list, but I'm really (and unfortunately) not sure whether your and my definition of "constructive" are compatible. My primary goal is to make Wikipedia better by writing new and improving already existing articles; those improvements may involve copyediting for better wording, new content additions, sourcing improvements, or changes toward better compliance with various guidelines.

As already noted above, we're here to discuss and find solutions, but the discussion is the key. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 02:34, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Johayek, could having this description as part of the article be some kind of a compromise? By the way, the article could use some additional references. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:58, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Redirects and formatting

Minor redirects aren't bolded in WP:R#PLA. Widefox; talk 23:33, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Obviously, we had a not-so-smooth start here, so let's try to make things better. As I've already said in other discussions, if you remember that, I highly respect the gnoming work you're doing here, but please keep your common sense turned on instead of following the guidelines blindly.

Applying some kind of formatting to the redirect terms is beneficial to the readers, and I've seen numerous articles that had redirect terms italicized. Moreover, what is a minor redirect and what isn't, is up to one's personal judgment and background; as a result, I find the "software licensing description table" redirect to be a major one, while you don't. Such a disagreement is somewhat acceptable and not a major issue, but please keep an (IMHO) important thing in mind: there are very few active contributors to the computing-related articles, so other editors should try to help them and promote friendliness, instead of focusing on nit-picking and aggravating whenever possible.

If there's a disagreement about anything, we're here to discuss it and find a compromise, but the "guidelines-clad high-gliding bean counter" attitude I'm sensing from your side isn't the best possible approach. Please don't get me wrong, nobody's perfect, but that's why teamwork produces good results. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 04:48, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dsimic, agree we all have to get along, and there's several overlapping articles. One way is to follow consensus which the guidelines are a written form of (so MOS, BRD, AGF). Going against consensus can be not very enjoyable here. It is a learning experience when an edit is challenged (undone). For instance, the original italic has no basis in MOS that I can see, so I undid that edit. The judgement of a minor or major redirect is somewhat subjective but it appears more minor than the MOS example in my opinion, you're welcome to gather more opinions which is preferable to edit warring. So that edit has two reasons not to be there. Taking a guess, the level of importance of the redirect would be something like a redirect with possibilities. Maybe it's worth taking it up with the MOS to make it explicit (so not subjective at all)?

You've indicated above that you wish to connect with me and resolve for future. Welcome, no problem.

It would help if you could re-read what you wrote above from my perspective, imagining that I had written it to you. I'd be interested in any comments. Regards Widefox; talk 08:59, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Believe me or not, I've already read my own words from your perspective while writing the reply above, and my additional comments would be that making small compromises as we go is the key. I can't recall exact examples at the moment, but I've disregarded more than a few guidelines while working together with other editors so we can reach a compromising solution, instead of blindly insisting on having the guidelines implemented. As we know, WP:IGNORE is also one of the policies, and keeping good relations with other editors is what actually makes Wikipedia better – we're all humans, and humans stay around while the guidelines change over time. Moreover, the same humans may alter the guidelines.

Speaking of italicizing redirect terms, I've seen numerous articles that apply such formatting, and that pretty much makes it some kind of a de facto unwritten standard. Thus, I'd suggest that we start a discussion on Wikipedia talk:Redirect that would propose changes to the WP:R#PLA guideline so redirect terms are:

Formatted in bold for major redirects, which additional instructions on how to decide if a redirect is major or not
Formatted in italics for non-major redirects, which would help readers navigate visually upon a redirection

Thoughts? Please, let's make things better, and let's smooth out our relationship here. Making small compromises is the key, IMHO. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 09:30, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Come on, you know how it works here. There's nothing personal in my undoing your edit, the fact is that the edit isn't based on MOS or any consensus at all is it? Per WP:BRD you should have discussed rather than continue. Sorry you feel it's an improvement, I disagree. Suggest you get more opinions else it's one on one. Your style change suggestion may be a good idea, I'm skeptical as it would involve italicising many minor items based on navigation rather than worth per se.

You've characterised my editing in a certain light above (it is pejorative, rather than I assume your intended aim to connect with me). I'm waiting for you to appreciate how that comes across, especially when you're still sticking to what amounts to a minor style departure of yours WP:DROP seems appropriate at this point. Widefox; talk 12:10, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

If you show me the other italic redirects, I will review and possibly fix. Without links I can't comment. Widefox; talk 12:13, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Your skepticism about the style changes is perfectly fine, as I might be totally wrong with the whole idea about italicizing redirect terms. Though, the only way to see if that's a bad or good idea is to start a discussion on Wikipedia talk:Redirect, together with proposing more clues to be added for deciding what is a major redirect and what isn't.

Regarding my "portraiting" of your Wikipedia work, well, you're publicly declaring yourself as a WikiGnome, and I've already told you that I also do a lot of "gnoming" myself, but I primarily contribute new content and do quite a lot of copyediting. Thus, it's clear that I do appreciate "gnoming" – otherwise, why in the world would I be doing that? Moreover, I've pointed out that new content contributors are very rare here, at least for computing-related articles, so the "gnomes" should try to keep good relationships with those few editors, instead of blindly following the guidelines. "Gnoming" is important for sure, but if there's no new content flowing in, there soon will be nothing to be broomed, "gnomed", or whatever.

Let me tell you what would I've done if I were a "gnome", coming across a significant contributor that doesn't agree with some of my "gnoming": I'd friendly help him or her to start a new MOS discussion about the disagreement in style or formatting, instead of blindly insisting on following the guidelines. That's what I see as the basic principle of teamwork, especially when it's about a bunch of volunteers.

Speaking about the examples of italicized redirect terms, I don't think that providing them here would be helpful. You'd just grab a red pencil and go over them removing all of the formatting, and that would just deepen this slight disagreement. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 13:55, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

WP:WORDSASWORDS "A technical term.." may indicate italics are useful in this case, although I'm not convinced. (Code) doesn't seem useful for this term. Bold really doesn't fit per above. Stylising due to a minor redirect is completely unconvincing per above.

Just so you are aware, it's not "gnome", it's "keep your common sense turned on instead of following the guidelines blindly" (I do have common sense thank you) ""guidelines-clad high-gliding bean counter" attitude" (assuming an "attitude" is AGF, "bean counter" is pejorative), "other editors should try to help" (nobody has exclusivity on errors or helping). For the record, I didn't check/know MOS first so I couldn't have applied it "blindly", it was a common sense challenge to the edit that it looked unusual. Being as it is factually incorrect that I objected based on following rules, that whole logic is flawed and even if I had done the comments above are an AGF / civility. Now that's spelled out, I'll leave you to ponder why you didn't WP:BRD...Discuss when Reverted. That's enough on this from my perspective, OK. Widefox; talk 21:49, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

On second thought, a reason to go with no additional formatting for the "software licensing description table" redirect could be that BIOS § Identification section starts with "Some BIOSes contain a software licensing description table (SLIC), a digital signature placed inside...", so the readers shouldn't be confused when redirected there. Though, such an arrangement (in which the redirect term is very close to the beginning of section) isn't always the case.

Well, Ok, this should conclude our discussion. Moving forward, I'll make sure to exercise the WP:BRD guideline more strictly. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 04:47, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Good stuff. Widefox; talk 09:08, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Booting article and the code for references

Hello, I've undone your undo of my edit. Please stop doing that. I've unified the reference style on that article. I can assure you that no one is reading the references in the source of the articles. Thank you, Dawnseeker2000 14:23, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Regarding your edit on the Booting article and the explanation above, well, I can assure you that the assessment of "no one is reading the references in the source of the articles" simply isn't true. :) I read the source code and there are surely more people doing the same thing (even you obviosly do that), and I find the source code for references much more readable in the "expanded" form. Unification is a good thing for sure, but a unification toward an inferior layout pretty much isn't. Moreover, if nobody reads the source code, why would the unification be important at all? Thus, your explanation seems to be slightly contradictory, if you agree. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 14:36, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Of course we read them. I said that because references are often neglected in articles (drive by editors add whatever text that they want without them, for example) so please don't think that that was a serious comment. You may say it's inferior, but haven't given an explanation. I just don't think having the refs expanded like that scales well. For small or starting articles, fine, but as they get larger, it becomes unwieldy. You didn't expand all the references in the article; you only undid what I had done. If having them "more readable" is important (they're readable just fine inline) to you, I would expect that you would have changed all of them to the expanded view, but you didn't. Because of that, it doesn't seem to me that this is that important to you. It's not that important to me either, except in the articles that I care about. This one is not, and I'll remove it from my AWB runs, as I did the Android article. If it were an important issue to fix, I suppose there'd be hundreds of thousands of articles to "fix". Have a great day (morning here) Dawnseeker2000 15:08, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, you're right that it would've been much better if I had expanded all references in the article, but the whole Wikipedia was built one improvement at a time. "Inferior" in my explanation above referred to my opinion that the expansion makes source code of references much more readable, no matter how long or short an article is. However, I'll refrain from dwelling on just because you've already expressed no intentions to discuss this further. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:28, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Enlist your help to make U.2 (SFF-8639) page great!

Hello, we noticed you have edited lots of the storage pages (M.2, SATA Express) and wanted to give you the inside scoop on U.2 and enlist your help to make the wikipedia page great! I started a draft U.2 (SFF-8639) page that is in review by Wikipedia. I don't really know what I'm doing on Wikipedia though. I am the product marketing manager for Intel's data center SSDs, and have been driving the direction of the storage market. You can see my knowledge of storage ecosystem here: http://www.nvmexpress.org/presentations/

News on U.2: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/sff-8639-u.2-pcie-ssd-nvme,29321.html

Any way to expedite the process of review so we can start editing it up? I also have no clue how to upload pictures.

You can reach out to me on LinkedIn if that works for my email. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmhands (talk • contribs) 00:21, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

There are a few things on the SATA Express page that are incorrect. I regularly meet with the board of directors of SATA-IO and NVM Express, and personally know the authors of the spec. :) I can help you clean them up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmhands (talk • contribs) 00:13, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Hello, and thank you very much for reaching out! I'll be more than happy to see a great new U.2 article, and I'm more than willing to help in making that happen. However, the current U.2 (SFF-8639) draft has some issues, please let me name a few that stick out:

The draft doesn't include enough good references (for example, the PCIe 3.0 reference is rather out of place), and at the moment pretty much doesn't satisfy the article notability requirements.
The writing style doesn't comply to the Wikipedia's Manual of Style in a few places, which isn't a major issue but would still require some work.
Being employed by Intel, especially in its marketing department, :) puts your contributions to Wikipedia on the conflict-of-interest side of things, which may complicate everything a lot.
The article name should be "U.2" instead of "U.2 (SFF-8639)" as the parenthesis would indicate some kind of disambiguation that doesn't exist in this case.

Based on my Wikipedia experience so far, my suggestion would be to wait a week or two with turning the U.2 draft into an article, so the U.2 gets more coverage in third-party sources. With just a tad better coverage in reliable sources, the notability and other requirements should be satisifed and we'll make it a great article. Here are a few more good references I've found, and we need just a few more of them:

In the meantime, I'd suggest that we work on correcting the SATA Express article, and I'll be so happy to incorporate all of the fixes you have in mind. Speaking of that, I'd recommend that you point out factual mistakes, provide better sources, etc., and have me review and incorporate them; that way, we'll make the article better while avoiding any possible conflict of interest and maintaining the article neutrality, which is one of the Wikipedia's file pillars. Hope you agree.

Speaking of uploading images, that's somewhat complicated so please allow me to explain. In order to have images uploaded, you need to make sure they aren't copyrighted in any way or published somewhere else; some copyrighted images may be uploaded as well, but numerous imposed restrictions effectively make such images unsuitable for the SATA Express, M.2, U.2 and NVM Express articles. The simplest thing would be taking a few product pictures by yourself, which Wikipedia refers to as "own work"; for example, two better pictures of M.2 cards, one with a few different M.2 types and another showing a side-to-side comparison with an mSATA card, would be really great. If you're Ok with that, I'll walk you through the uploading process that isn't complicated per se – what's slightly complicated is making sure uploaded images comply with various guidelines. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:34, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Here's an update... In the last two weeks or so I've collected a few good references, and I'll be writing the U.2 article in the next few days. It should be rather good and informative. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 06:51, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

That would be fantastic! Can you reach out to me via email or LinkedIn and I can provide you with the latest sources? Intel will be presenting lot of new information at the Intel Developers Forum in Aug on U.2. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmhands (talk • contribs) 13:02, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Also there isn't a conflict of interest here, I just have the history on the name. U.2 will not be trademarked in any way. Intel proposed the U.2 name to both the SSD Form Factor Working Group and SCSI Trade Association, and will soon be adopted by the PCI-SIG as well. I just wanted to you to get the definitions correct. A U.2 drive (either SSD or HDD) has a link of PCIe x1, x2, or x4 as defined in the SSD form factor spec: http://www.ssdformfactor.org/docs/SSD_Form_Factor_Version1_a.pdf. They will soon be updating the spec to reflect the U.2 name changes. The spec does not dictate the max power or z-height of the drive (common ones will be 2.5inx15mm and 2.5inx7mm). A U.2 connector can support either PCIe, SAS, or SATA and can be at the end of a cable or on a backplane (common in server and workstation). A U.2 cable is anything used to connect a U.2 drive. The first U.2 cables will be using SFF-8643 (minSAS HD) to connect to the motherboard. We will call these U.2 connectors. Sorry I suck at wikipedia, hopefully you can reach out to me. Thanks!! Jmhands (talk) 13:22, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Just as a note, I do remain committed to writing the U.2 article, but in the last week or so I'm bogged down with reviewing an increased amount of changes to the articles on my watchlist. A few times per year there are significant spikes in the editing activity on computing-related articles, and now it seems to be one of those spikes. It would be great to have even more sources on U.2; is this your LinkedIn profile?

Moreover, I've researched virtually everything that's publicly available about the Intel's current U.2 product line, and here's an interesting observation: why no U.2 cables are included with the DC P3500, P3600 and P3700 U.2 SSDs? Of course, those U.2 SSDs are primarily intended to be plugged into U.2 backplanes, so no need for cables has been projected, but many desktop people (myself included) would prefer a DC P3500 instead of a 750 series U.2 SSD. Though, finding a separate U.2 cable seems to be pretty much an impossible mission, so the choice of desktop people is limited to one of the 750 U.2 series SSDs, which come bundled with U.2 cables. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 14:03, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

For the sake of completeness, and to move them out of my to-do notes, :) here are the other sources I've collected so far:

They're quite informative. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 17:42, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Here are more sources, showing that some Z170-based computer motherboards are announced to have U.2 connectors available directly on their PCBs, beside regular SATA and SATA Express connectors:

By the way, got distracted with writing the Stagefright (bug) article in the meantime, which is still under construction for another few days, but the U.2 article is next on the list. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 13:42, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

PU2RC listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect PU2RC. Since you had some involvement with the PU2RC redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Sanpitch (talk) 14:41, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing it to my attention, I've cast my vote there. Let's also ask Guy Harris to participate in the discussion, as he actually added the explanation of the "PU²RC" acronym into the Multi-user MIMO article. Moreover, whatever we decide on PU2RC should be also applied to the Per-user unitary and rate control redirect. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:07, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Shellshock – undid revision 675603800

Hi Dsimic,

I saw that you undid 675603800 on the Shellshock article: Undid revision 675603800 by Regagain (talk) Those capable of producing patches and applying them on their own would be rather advanced developers, not ordinary users
I agree with you, however, I still think the current wording of this sentence is misleading, and even wrong. For the record, here's the quote from the source: If you're an advanced enough user to have enabled the types of services that can be exploited by Shellshock, you're also likely advanced enough to turn those services off for now, or to patch bash yourself using Xcode.
Compare that with the sentence as it is right now: Such advanced users are typically capable of turning the services off until a patch built using Xcode can be implemented.
It does not mean the same thing at all. I think we should update it to something like: Such advanced users are typically capable of turning the services off until an updated is available.
Do you agree (or do you have a better suggestion? :-)) Regagain (talk) 17:47, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello! I've briefly thought about the whole thing further, and I'm really glad that you've brought it here for further discussion. Though, I'm not entirely sure that the referenced source is the best available, so let's have a look at a (lengthy) quote from another source that provides some much-more-to-the-point information:

If your Mac shipped with Mountain Lion or Mavericks (i.e. you bought it in the last two years), it's highly unlikely your Apache web server is turned on. It also probably got turned off if you upgraded to a current OS X edition, so if you didn't take steps to reactivate it, your potential attack surface for Shellshock is smaller than it would be otherwise. [...]

First, you need to make sure that you have Apple's Xcode development environment installed (the command-line tools alone are not sufficient). If you don't have Xcode, you can grab it for free from the Mac App Store – but be prepared to wait for a while, it's a 2.5 GB download. [...]

You'll need my bash-fix script which you can download from GitHub, and you'll need to be logged into your Mac as an OS X administrator (if you're the only user of your Mac, your account is the administrator account). [...] The script will download the source to bash, patch it, compile it, install it, and replace the old instances of the bash and sh executables; it will prompt you for your password along the way, so keep an eye out for that.

Apple will eventually issue an official fix for this problem (and these steps should not interfere with that in any way), but if you don't want to wait for Apple's fix, you can get started now.

With all that in mind, you're totally right that the sentence in Shellshock (software bug) article is misleading as-is, and IMHO this should be a better wording (together with adding the above-linked source):

Such advanced users are typically capable of turning the services off until an official OS X patch is available, or they may use Xcode to replace system-provided Bash with a custom-compiled version that incorporates unofficial patches.

Thoughts? :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 18:49, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Wow!! Sounds great! Please go ahead and update the article. :-) Really appreciative of your work! Regagain (talk) 20:23, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Went ahead and propagated the changes from above into the article. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 21:10, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Bay Trail (August 2015)

Hello. You created Bay Trail (microarchitecture) sometime ago. According to the current version of Atom (system on chip), Bay Trail is a platform for the Valleyview chip. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 12:32, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello! I'm glad that you've brought this issue here, thank you very much and let's see what to do. After having a more detailed look, it seems that the Bay Trail SoC family is built using the Silvermont microarchitecture, so I've corrected it that way in the Intel HD and Iris Graphics article. Could you, please, confirm that, and I'll ask for the Bay Trail (microarchitecture) redirect to be deleted as misleading? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 12:47, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Here are a couple of sources confirming that:

Please have a look. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 12:58, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

The misleading redirect is deleted now. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 13:12, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Preserved date stamps? Confused...

About this edit, I just used a script that does this all the time.. Must be ok? If you're right the script needs to be changed. Unless I'm sure you're right, I'll not be cleaning up after the script.. I might if I heard a logical/good reason.. Doesn't seem to matter much. comp.arch (talk) 09:11, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello! There might be something wrong with the script you're using, as the tag date stamps need to be preserved and that should apply to the {{Use mdy dates}} tag as well. That way, it's known since when the tag is in effect, for example when the article switched to a particular date formatting scheme (in case of {{Use mdy dates}}), or when additional references were requested (in case of {{More references}} or {{Citation needed}}). In the latter example, it's even essential to know when the tag was placed, so the unreferenced content may be removed if nobody provides references for an extended period of time. I'm having troubles to find a specific guideline covering this, but here's a quotation from {{Refimprove}}:

If you decide to change the tag from Unreferenced to Refimprove, don't forget to update the date stamp in the tag.

However, I've seen more than a few editors switching the date stamps back to initial values if they're changed by someone, and that's IMHO perfectly logical because it supports the actual purpose of the date stamps. Hope you agree. Thinking more about the script you're using, maybe it changed the date stamp because it actually cleaned up the date formatting in Chrome OS article? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 10:01, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

After reading the documentation of {{Use mdy dates}} template further and more carefully, it seems that the script you're using is perfectly fine. Those are actually the visit dates of script or bot runs and should be updated if any corrections were made since the last visit; here's a quotation from the template documentation:

After being tagged, and bearing in mind article evolution, periodic script or bot runs clean up formats, correcting any new introductions since its last visit, and updating the visit date on the {{Use dmy dates}} template.

With that in mind, I've reverted my edit on Chrome OS. Thank you for bringing this issue to my talk page! — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 10:12, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Shellshock: afl-fuzz edit revert

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shellshock_(software_bug)&oldid=676626126&diff=prev - actually, the reference is right after this sentence - just press ctr+f and enter "american" or "afl-fuzz". Do you still have anything against this edit? Deetah (talk) 10:39, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Just checked the source you've referred to, and yes, it covers the content you've added to Shellshock (software bug) article very well. With that in mind, I'd say that you should reintroduce the mentioning of american fuzzy lop, but this time with more context so the addition doesn't look like it's there just to serve as something justifying the linking to American fuzzy lop (fuzzer) article. :) Hope you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 11:00, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Got it described slightly better, so the readers can more easily understand what's it about. Looking good? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:44, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Prefetch buffer

Could you have a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing#Help with merge. Someone seems about to do a copy-and-paste merge of Prefetch buffer into DRAM. Copy-and-paste merges are nearly always a bad idea and in this case the AfD outcome of a "merge" looks like an unwise conclusion to me at best. —Ruud 16:15, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you for bringing it to my attention, my humble opinion is now available in the above-linked discussion. Please keep in mind that I'm not an expert when it comes to various low-level implementation details of different DRAM technologies, but I've tried to research the whole thing as meticulously as it is possible to do something like that in a few hours. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:03, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Renaming "Dynamic linker" to "Dsimic's article on dynamic linking"

You are one of the most extreme editors on Wikipedia. Instead of shortening the exteneded list a little (and not just to your own need) you are inconsiderately and simply reverting my contribution a little like a tyrant. Why don't you rename the article to "Dsimic's article on dynamic linking"? Who are you? A ingenious smart-ass professor in Computer Science?--johayek (talk) 12:24, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Well, I'm rather surprised with your reaction, despite the fact I've already explained my revert further in User talk:Johayek § Dynamic linker article and the "See also" list, opening myself for discussion while offering possible alternatives, etc. Please have a look at WP:SEEALSO for more information on how long "See also" sections should be, and I'll be more than happy to work together with you on shortening the list in Dynamic linker § See also (as it should be shortened further), or on creating a new navbox (which would be great). Furthermore, please let's focus on the content, not on the background of editors, just as WP:NPA clearly says. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 12:44, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Got the Dynamic linker § See also section trimmed down to a reasonable size by removing what's already linked in the article body. Please have a look. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 16:36, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

@Johayek: Could you, please, explain why do you write stuff like this post on your Google+ profile, and this post on your blog? That's pretty much bordering with a personal attack, which is senseless. If you have any open questions regarding your and my work on Wikipedia, why aren't you discussing them in the proper place, which is various Wikipedia talk pages? The key is in discussing things and finding compromising solutions. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 06:32, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Self-promotion in citations by Zhanghaohit

In reply to this revert. In general I agree with you, but please see the edits made by this user: Special:Contributions/Zhanghaohit. This is a single-purpose account only promoting their own publications, often adding multiple links to the same article. This is a textbook example of WP:REFSPAM and should not be tolerated. -- intgr [talk] 08:41, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you for pointing it out, just had a look at the list of edits performed by Zhanghaohit and you're right, it seems like someone doing self-promotion. Now I'm having some serious doubts because the In-memory processing article clearly needs more references, and the troublesome paper is a really good and comprehensive high-level overview of various in-memory data processing technologies, which is also published by IEEE that serves as the definition of a reputable association. Perhaps we shouldn't sanction an example of reference spamming by deleting references that are actually good and beneficial to the articles? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 09:52, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Well you've seen the evidence, I'm OK with keeping the reference if you vouch for it.

The in-memory processing article has always seemed to me like it needs a bunch of WP:TNT, but I don't care enough to do it myself. -- intgr [talk] 10:08, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

The troublesome reference is really good, and could serve as a very good starting point for someone to do the article rewrite, which is in dire need. Of course, one would need more references, but this one provides a very comprehensive high-level overview. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 10:16, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Device file discussion

Please can you go and check the Device file article again and remove the unbalanced tag you added? As I’ve explained (again) on the Talk page for that article, Linux really does behave the same as traditional UNIX; the only difference is that, by default, it only creates block devices for disks (just as FreeBSD only creates character devices). The only Linux-specific aspect other than that is that, because character device behaviour is genuinely useful for disks, the Linux kernel added an O_DIRECT flag that you can use to open one of its block devices in raw mode (i.e. as if it was a character device). Well, that and the existence of the raw driver, which lets you explicitly create character devices for the benefit of software that doesn’t know about O_DIRECT. I’ve added coverage of those facts to the article, as well as a remark about the use of the term "raw device" (e.g. in the Solaris manuals) to refer to character devices; I’m pretty certain this addresses your concern about balance. – Ajhoughton (talk) 16:12, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you for reaching out; sure thing, I'll review your latest changes to the article and provide feedback as a reply in the article's talk page discussion. I'll be more than happy to see that {{Unbalanced}} tag go away from the Device file § Unix and Unix-like systems section. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 23:13, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Talkback (Android Gingerbread)

Hello, Dsimic. You have new messages at Talk:Android Gingerbread.
Message added 16:40, 30 August 2015 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Jerod Lycett (talk) 16:40, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you for bringing it to my attention, I've already replied (and once again :) on the article's talk page. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 17:24, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Have some krill!

	Antarctic krill
	Penguins eat krill! (and some fish and squids) Kıverti qwerty (talk) 12:46, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello, and thank you very much – I like eating all kinds of fish! :) I'm glad that you've noticed some of my edits on the Linux kernel article; this one, which you've probably noticed, was merely a small cleanup, but this one, for example, should bring some value to the article. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 14:17, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Signature changes

Could you please see bottom of those pages:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.223.130.175 (talk) 14:22, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Regarding one of your edits and one of my reverts on Talk:Computer data storage, I understand the overall intention of vanishing an abandoned account, but here's what WP:VANISH says about talk page signatures:

References in the history of pages to the former username are replaced with references to the replacement username. Note that signatures (on user talk pages, article talk pages and project discussion pages) will not be changed, and will, by default, be redirected to the new user name. You can ask for this redirect to be removed.

The above-linked discussion you've started on WP:VANISH should answer the question whether such changes to the signatures would be acceptable. In general, talk page posts shouldn't be edited in that way, especially not by an IP address – how do we know that behind the IP address is actually the owner of the to-be-vanished account? Hope you understand. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:23, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

See also WP:SUPPRESS, which describes the possibilities for hiding one's personal information. However, the name you're supposedly trying to hide is almost a generic name in Serbian language, pretty much like John Smith is a generic name in English, for example. :) Thus, IMHO you shouldn't be concerned too much about the possibilities for having "problems in next time", whatever that may refer to. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:41, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

You might want to redact that name: perhaps it's an idiosyncratic spelling, but I only get 279 google results for that "pretty much like John Smith" name, and they're mostly Wikipedia mirrors. --McGeddon (talk) 20:17, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Makes sense, deleted the name in my earlier post. It's really surprising to see such a low number of Google results, I would've expected a much higher one. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 20:35, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

"In general, talk page posts shouldn't be edited in that way, especially not by an IP address – how do we know that behind the IP address is actually the owner of the to-be-vanished account?"

Do you have any Wikipedia references to support what you declared?

I don't know how Wikipedia should prove that vanished account was acctualy mine. Maybe in this way: I have saved e-mail conversations with Fumitaka Joe who vanished (now we can say - partly) my accounts. And my name is mentioned there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.223.130.241 (talk) 09:15, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Please read the WP:TPOC and WP:VANISH guidelines, they clearly say that talk page posts in general aren't to be edited once they're saved, especially the other people's posts (except for certain layout fixes), and that vanishing an account requires establishing one's identitity ("this will send a secure e-mail from your Wikipedia account so that the bureaucrats can verify that it is a legitimate request", "to verify you own the account", etc.). — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 09:29, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I contacted Oversight team twice regarding my requests for removing from Wikipedia and both times I got answer that it "does not meet the Oversight criteria" (among other reasons). Also, they replied that "the Oversight policy does not cover vanishing as such information was self-disclosed by you". I wrote this just for you, for being better informed in possible future similar cases. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.223.130.127 (talk) 12:00, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the update, I'll keep it in mind for any similar cases in the future. I'm sorry to hear that your request has been refused, but it's true that you've disclosed that personal information yourself, which does complicate the whole thing further. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 14:35, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Subsequent edits and their nature

Erm, re edits like this [1]. The syntax of my edit [2] was generated - so I suggest you take your "fix" up with the edit icon bar developers. The stats indicate that [3] we edit many similar articles. In fact, your edits are often closely following mine to the extent that I'm starting to feel that your edits are following my edits a bit too closely (see WP:HOUND). Does that chime with you? Widefox; talk 12:59, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello back! No, I'm just using my watchlist, which is currently quite large at slightly over 3,350 pages, to monitor changes made to a large number of pages, and it seems that we have common pages on our watchlists. It's just a peer review, and‍—‌as I've said more than once‍—‌the only thing I truly care about is the content of articles, which also includes syntax and layout of the Wiki code. In other words, I'm by no means following you, I'm "following" my watchlist.

When you say something like that and even throw in some report that investigates me, well, it makes me unconfortable and I feel slightly bad because of spending a lot of time reviewing edits performed by other editors. I guess that people should in fact say "thank you" to me for doing that. Also, let's step back and have a look at your edit on the Traffic policing redirect – even if it's somehow automatically generated, doesn't it reflect someone's sloppy work? I'm sure you'll, on a second though, agree with that and revert your revert. I'd appreciate it a lot. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 17:52, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

As I've said, take up "sloppy" with the devs, not me. WP:CIVIL slap! From what I can see, there's two or three editors that have remarked about your edits not being conducive to collaborative editing (e.g. "#Piped links", "#Piped links (cont.)") Instead of turning my/our feedback around, it could be time to WP:LISTEN, stop nit-picking over trivial whitespace issues, and take it on-board. OK? I'm in full agreement with User:Thumperward (#Piped_links) but your still and persistently at it, and subtle isn't getting through, so it's plainspeak now. If you still cling to the idea that it's me, or that somehow you're doing "peer review" (of whitespace?!) seek a third opinion. In fact, you're already on fourth/fifth. Looking at the editor interaction stats (whitespace issues and overlap of articles I do uncontroversial gnome-like-cleanup on) I'm waiting for an indication the message is acknowledged. Widefox; talk 20:26, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

There will always be disagreements between editors, and that's perfectly fine. No, I will not stop "nit-picking", as you call it; if those issues are as minor as you describe them, why don't you let them go? Please don't get me wrong, but I'm not on your payroll so you can order me to do anything. Also, please try not to use the "slap" word in that context, that's uncivil. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 20:34, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

(ec) Alternatively, if you have no control over your editing behaviour, then I'd have to know and check your watchlist when editing to avoid them which doesn't seem practical (and no, none of my edits above are from my watchlist).

When there's a seeming consensus about these type of edits (and don't get me wrong, this is a minority of edits) then yes, you kind of do have to take onboard, else it will get escalated. The next whitespace nit-pick will be, OK? Widefox; talk 20:45, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

"Don't do this again. It is pointlessly antagonistic. There is nothing which makes an editor look less suitable for collaborative development than this sort of idiotic revert war. The rationale behind keeping the case is that if the link is somehow transformed such that the piping is no longer necessary (such as in "Interface" in your example, where the pipe trick means the piped text can be omitted entirely in the edit) it doesn't accidentally enter wrongly-cased text. If you've some control issues with your life that you need to work out, do it somewhere else. Argh, and this was going so well." <- this was Thumperward, the same issue I raised with you. Nobody is agreeing with you, you may choose to ignore consensus, but that's your choice. Widefox; talk 20:48, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If you feel an urge to escalate this, please do it right away. There are absolutely no guidelines that promote less readable Wiki code, and all edits should be looked at from the viewpoint of improvements they bring, no matter if it's about the article content or about the formatting of Wiki code. Also, there are no guidelines about the piping of article links and capitalization, so it's up to each editor's preference. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 20:56, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the capitalization of piped links, here's an excerpt from one of my earlier comments about the whole thing:

As already explained in § Piped links discussion above, there isn't a single guideline that could turn it into something more than a personal preference; thus, no approach is either correct or incorrect. As a result, once they're placed, it would be the best simply not to change the case of piped links.

As you can see, I've offered what seems to be the most reasonable way to deal with it, and since then I haven't changed the capitalization of any already existing piped link. However, if you really feel an urge to escalate this, please feel free to do it without waiting for anything. IMHO, it's the best to deal with any issues as soon as possible. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 21:38, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

That argument is logically flawed - it's contradictory/mutually exclusive: it can't be both a) a trivial editor preference AND b) sloppy. It can't be both a} irrelevant AND b) important (enough to fix). Pick one. If a) then why do it, if b) where's the consensus? There's consensus for the opposite of your style changes. Crucially, it's the gratuitous and/or bogus nit-picking that's disruptive to collaboration. If you feel you must compulsively make these changes to a large watchlist, after being told not to by several editors, yes, it's LISTEN / WP:IDHT. You're an experienced editor, you know how it works here. Widefox; talk 11:52, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

You're totally mixing apples and oranges. I've called "sloppy" the formatting of Wiki code in Traffic policing redirect, not the capitalization of piped links. Moreover, as already described above, I haven't changed the capitalization of any already existing piped link since our earlier discussions in February 2015. Got it this time? Those are two distinct things. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 13:03, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Again...for each of these separate things, they can't be both a) sloppy/worth fixing AND b) editor preference / minor. It's simple, as long as the message that these edits are still annoying at least one editor (and good that some edits have stopped). That's the message, received? Thumperward asked you if you have a control issue in your life, that's how it comes across to me too. Widefox; talk 09:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I would appreciate if you would stay away from mixing in allusions toward my personal life, at least because you don't know me. As a note, I would also have quite a few things to say about what your personal inclinations seem to be, but I don't see the point of that because we're here to make articles better, nothing more. Furthermore, if I may say, your attitude is also annoying me quite a lot, but I really don't see why should your feelings be more important than mine? Please, be reasonable. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 20:58, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Furthermore, please have a look at this edit on the Template talk:Clear talk page, which I've just stumbled upon on my watchlist. Clearly, there are more editors who prefer the style of Wiki code formatting I've applied to the Traffic policing redirect, which you've reverted with no valid reasons and pointlessly turned into drama. See, I'm not the only one who prefers some whitespace that results in more readable Wiki code. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 01:14, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Look, this is frustrating - you do good edits. But, these ones just irritate me (and others). Continuing to pedantically argue the merit of these optional/irrelevant level of "doesn't matter" indicates it won't stop. Whitespace etc i.e. trivia is not the point. Changing from one form to another for the sake of it, especially with a CIVIL "sloppy" attitude is. Fine once or twice, but widespread combined with a large watchlist that overlaps with my edits is an issue, yes. Collaboration is. This feedback is. Further, it doesn't ingratiate yourself to mark your own stuff reasonable, and others as sloppy. (and did you take sloppy up with the right people yet? - maybe there's even a technical reason why it doesn't insert whitespace - have you checked? it's WP:AGF). Widefox; talk 11:08, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I really don't get what do you want from me, apart from twisting my arm into some kind of your own set of rules, which simply doesn't make sense. As a matter of fact, some of your edits also irritate me significantly, so what? Again, you haven't answered my question: why should your feelings be more important than mine? Moreover, I don't do so many of those "whitespace" edits (so the "widespread" label doesn't apply), but you're making a whole lot of drama out of those few. Collaboration isn't a one-man show by its definition; thus, if you promote and mention collaboration a lot, you should be the one to make steps toward it instead of saying "stop it" repeatedly. As we know, those steps boil down to finding compromising solutions, but so far you haven't offered a compromising solution, which makes you not truly oriented toward collaboration.

To answer your question about possible technical reasons for such "sloppy" redirect code, even the WP:REDIR, H:R and WP:RCAT guidelines suggest the use of whitespace, and those guidelines surely have regulars who know all of the technical background. However, I'm willing to investigate further; could you, please, specify what actually generated that redirect code? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 13:29, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Punctuation cleanup

Thanks for the fix on the semi-colon. Missed that! 206.82.167.3 (talk) 20:39, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello! You're welcome, that small fix in the Transport layer § Analysis section was like some kind of a cherry on top. :) Thank you for improving the wording in the first place! — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 20:47, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Intel HD and Iris Graphics

Hi Dsimic,

I found that my recent edit on Intel HD Graphics has been undone. I'd like to know which part do you consider redundant?

I added those info because the HD Graphics performance of the same silicon, say GT2, differs with and are constrained by different SKU TDPs. And Intel obviously gave branding numbers proportional to performance. Adding TDP info helps explain why the same silicon differs in branding.

For the lack of refs, maybe we can add a link to Intel's spec, though the relation to branding numbers may be not that obvious at first sight. Jsli (talk) 04:30, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Regarding my revert on the Intel HD and Iris Graphics article, I've referred to the content you've added as redundant primarily because it is unreferenced. On second thought, the part in which I've referred to potential changes in assignments between GPU models and SKUs doesn't apply because Broadwell shouldn't see the release of any new SKUs. However, we would really need references, and with them in place I'd be more than happy to see your additions reintroduced into the article.

It's pretty much obvious that we have a general lack of references in the Intel HD and Iris Graphics article, which applies particularly to the lists of available GPU models in different CPU microarchitectures. With all that in mind, please, just provide references that clearly show those assignments between different GPU models and Broadwell variants, and it will be truly great to have your addition as part of the article. Hope you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:27, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Unlock the O+USA

This is Materialtechnology can you unprotected the O+ USA? Please!!! Materialtechnology (talk) 01:37, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what are you referring to, but you'd need to contact one of the Wikipeda administrators regarding the page protection questions. I don't have the rights required for protecting and unprotecting pages. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:36, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Row hammer

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Row hammer you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Cirt -- Cirt (talk) 06:41, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Cirt! I'm here for all questions, suggestions, improvements to the article, etc. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 16:10, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

The article Row hammer you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold

. The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Row hammer for things which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Cirt -- Cirt (talk) 02:40, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

The article Row hammer you nominated as a good article has passed

; see Talk:Row hammer for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Cirt -- Cirt (talk) 03:41, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Prefix or suffix?

You know, I though all web requests have a "/" prefix. Like in "/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Dsimic&action=edit&section=new" or "/wiki/Special:Watchlist". As long as we are taking about requests, IMHO, it is a prefix. But when we are talking about the whole URL, it becomes an infix or, if alone, a suffix. Fleet Command (talk) 03:43, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello! You're right, it all depends on what the slash character is considered to be part of. After thinking more about my edit on Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computing, I'd say that another wording tweak makes it unambiguous and more readable. Hope you agree. By the way, instructions say that "https://" should stay as part of the displayed URL, but the {{URL}} template automatically hides that scheme as well – should we not include "https://" as an example in the instructions? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:37, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Row hammer and wording improvements

Third one down in "Notes and exceptions". And "dates back" to a date in the past is a extra inessential superfluous unrequired unneeded surplus tautalogical redundancy. ;P Belle (talk) 12:06, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello! First of all, thank you very much for going through the Row hammer article and doing all those wording improvements! That's exactly what the article needed, simply because it's very easy not to see obvious areas for improvement after one (it's clear who :) spends a lot of time looking at the same wording. :) Regarding my edit, yes, I know what the WP:NUMERAL guideline says, but IMHO it's that "up to one memory cell in every 1,700 cells" reads much better, while "one" and "1,700" are rather spaced away from each other. :) Speaking about "dates back", it's another case of something that somehow "reads better" with a slight wording redundancy... Hopefully you'll be willing to let those slip through, and I hope that you're satisfied with the overall wording improvements we've done together. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:15, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

No problem! I don't know if you know but it was nominated for DYK which is why I looked at it. I disagree with a few a your "reads better" changes but I'm not going stomp back in there and change them all back to my preferemces as mostly it is just that: preferences. (apart from one that really sets my teeth on edge which I'm going to change in a minute, but if you do revert it I'm not going to fight you over it; you are probably bigger and stronger than me, so I'd have fight dirty and my mum said nice girls shouldn't bite or pull hair). I think where you've had to explain in the edit summaries then the article could benefit from explanation too (e.g. environment, each of them). Belle (talk) 16:36, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of the DYK nomination, but it's nice to see that happening, and your DYK review conclusion that "it's cited like there's a sale on in the cite shop" brought a big smile to my face. :) In addition, you're right that referring to it as "row hammer effect" might be a bit confusing, but that's what it pretty much is; renaming the article to "Row hammer effect" wouldn't make much sense, though. You're also right that the explanations I've provided in edit summaries might be useful if they found their way into the article, and I'll see how to incorporate some of them. Oh, by the way, nice guys (especially nice 220-pounders) don't fight with girls or anyone else for that matter. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 22:04, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Redundant commas... or not?

About this one and others. You reverted sometime ago also (Stagefright?). I was going to ask you. I generally put commas after years and the Android article does too. Then I see also like "A 2015 report, states..", an exception where the comma is postponed. Maybe in my case I was wrong. This isn't a major deal, just not good that I keep putting them in (out of (misplaced?) habit, and you having to take out..).

I'm not natively English speaking (and your name doesn't sound like either, but it seems your English is excellent/better than mine) but I'm not sure that is the issue. I noticed e.g. SciAm doesn't use commas ("In 2015 something.."), can't remember a counter-example except here at the moment. This is a "style guide issue", and maybe more appropriate for encyclopedias.. I looked up another random article and it does use commas after years but not consistently..

While I'm here, could you look over Julia (programming language). I didn't put in the banners.. maybe they are fair (or not)? Even, besides that, do you know of any specific WP rules for computer [programming languages]? comp.arch (talk) 18:36, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Hello! The comma I've removed in this edit is entirely redundant and pretty much grammatically wrong, which I'll try to explain in more detail and with some background. Let's start with a few examples that illustrate it further by showing additional three variants of the same sentence, of which two actually need a comma:

Another 2015 survey found that 40% of full-time professional developers see Android as the "priority" target platform.
In another 2015 survey, it was found that 40% of full-time professional developers see Android as the "priority" target platform.
In another 2015 survey, 40% of full-time professional developers saw Android as the "priority" target platform.
Android was seen as the "priority" target platform by 40% of full-time professional developers that took another 2015 survey.

By the way, example #1 (which is the variant used in the Android (operating system) article) should be the best choice because it avoids unnecessary passive voice. Furthermore, putting a comma in "A 2015 report, states..." simply doesn't make sense because it's essentially all the same sentence, without the "introductory" part that would require to be separated using a comma. When it's about the commas after years or dates, there are no specific grammar rules for using commas in such constructions; instead, it's all about the correct structure of the sentence as a whole, which is rather well described in this grammar summary. As you've guessed it right, which the userboxes on my user page clearly show, I'm not a native English speaker, but I keep working hard on improving my knowledge of the English language. :)

Just had a look at the Julia (programming language) article, and in my opinion the {{Advert}} tag does apply due to rather frequent use of adverbs such as "effective", "good", "powerful", "elegant", "significant", "many", etc.; fixing that would be rather easy. At the same time, the {{Overly detailed}} tag might apply to a certain extent because the article could benefit from some trimming; for example, the Julia (programming language) § Displaying assembly code section seems rather redundant, IMHO, and should be integrated into another section while ditching the example. Lastly, the {{Primary sources}} tag is debatable for technical articles, but almost the majority (haven't actually counted) of references used in the article are primary and the WP:PRIMARY guideline shows no mercy. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 03:06, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for answering. comp.arch (talk) 09:50, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

You're welcome. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 16:16, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Restored copyvio content

Could you clarify this edit of yours? It appears you restored without explanation material that Hullaballoo Wolfowitz claims is copyvio. I agree (based on google-search for some phrases) that there appears to be extensive copyvio, which seems to be par-for-the-course for the editors who contributed that content. DMacks (talk) 05:27, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello! A few seconds after restoring the content that Hullaballoo Wolfowitz marked as a copyright violation and deleted, I've figured out regrettably that my edit went in with no explanation. By the way, IMHO, Hullaballoo Wolfowitz should've also provided a slightly better explanation while deleting the content. To help with the situation, I've also copyedited the article content a bit, which should've turned it away from being a straight copy-and-paste from some source. However, if the list of features in Android Honeycomb § Features section is really a copyright violation, I'd suggest that we either rewrite the list or delete the whole section, but not the whole article content. Hope you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 16:07, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the info (and sorry this one slipped past my notifications for so long). Turns out some of the other prose was copyvio as well. I ripped out the most obvious of it. What's left seems like rearranged phrases of other sources, not sure it's close-paraphrase enough to be deletable on that aspect. But also, the whole appears to be by a set of block-evading socks, so by process it's all instantly deletable unless you want to adopt the content that remains as your own--up to you. I'm also not sure the subject is notable enough to merit an article rather than being redirected back to the main versions page, but that's solely an editorial decision, at which point I step back because this subject-area an is not one with which I'm familiar. DMacks (talk) 04:02, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

No worries about the delay. Let's be straight, quality of the article remained rather low since its inception, as an unfortunate result of not attracting other editors. Though, the subject is truly notable enough to warrant Android Honeycomb as a separate article, and IMHO we should leave it "dangling" around for a few months, hoping that it will attract more editors willing to expand current stubby version of the article. If it isn't expanded in a few months, what's left is to turn it back into a redirect to Android version history § Honeycomb. Hope you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:33, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a good plan, certainly no urgency in my mind. DMacks (talk) 05:37, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Let's hope that it will attract other editors. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:41, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Row hammer

On 12 October 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Row hammer, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the row hammer effect has been used in some privilege escalation computer security exploits? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Row hammer. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Gatoclass (talk) 03:03, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Millicode information

I added some information to Talk:Computer program#Microcode Programs Should Be Removed in answer to your question about millicode, but that section could be a bit tl;dr, so here's what I posted there:

See the reference for and the external link in the millicode article. If you're willing to drop some coins into the change booth at the IEEE paywall, there's also Millicode in an IBM zSeries processor from the IBM Journal of Research and Development.

There's probably other stuff out there, including IBM papers in the Journal of Research and Development, if you're willing to spend USD 31 per paper. (IBM used to provide access to IBM JR&D papers for free from their site, but they've outsourced that to the IEEE now, and just about everything the IEEE has is behind a paywall, although they do at least make the 802 standards available for free.)

And, yes, it's architecturally the same sort of thing as PALcode - machine code executed in a special mode, with instructions implemented using {PAL,milli}code not being executable in that mode, and with access to special processor-dependent instructions and registers available - although, as Rwessel noted, DEC had a specific set of instructions architected as "traps to PALcode" in Alpha, while "this is done in millicode" is an implementation detail. DEC also did page table walks in PALcode rather than hardware; there's probably no reason IBM couldn't do that in some particular S/390 and z/Architecture implementations, but I don't know whether they did or not.

The millicode for POWER/PowerPC/Power ISA is just low-level ISA-dependent and possibly processor-dependent subroutines provided by the OS in a way that lets you quickly call them and get the version appropriate for the machine on which you're running. OS X, at least on PowerPC, had the "commpage", which was a region of the virtual address space shared between the kernel and userland, at a fixed virtual address, containing some routines where the implementation was processor-dependent for performance reasons; I think the routines were at fixed virtual addresses, so the code didn't have to know where they were. I seem to remember that a notion like this went back at least to Multics, with the pl1_operators segment containing routines to implement some operations in code generated by the PL/I compiler. Guy Harris (talk) 22:38, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Hello! I'm so thankful for your explanation, not just for this one, but for the numerous detailed explanations you've provided over time. I really, really appreciate your work! The papers you've linked above provide a good overview of millicode, which your explanation takes further, and I've shomehow managed not to have a look at our millicode article before. With all that, I may be able to say that I've learned, to a certain extent, something I pretty much wasn't aware of. :) Thank you once again! — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 13:43, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

ASF disambiguation

I had thought to add Atmel Software Framework to the ASF disambiguation page: I previously tried to look up the acronym and found nothing that fit. This meaning is covered in the first paragraph of Atmel application note AT08569.^[1] I frequently use Wikipedia to decipher odd acronyms, and I thought others might benefit from this addition. My first try included a reference to the app note but I got an automated 'we don't do that here'. This is my very first attempted contribution, obviously I don't have a clue. Isn't it worth having another expansion of an acronym even if it's redlinked? 172.88.224.142 (talk) 15:31, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Hello! As already described in my edit sumary, placing redlinks on disambiguation pages isn't prohibited in general, but that subject doesn't seem to have the potential for becoming covered by a separate article, in which case adding a redlink would be fine. Please see the WP:DABNOT guideline for more information on what isn't to be included on disambiguation pages. I know, all those guidelines may seem overwhelming at first, but that's what it is, Wikipedia has grown over time and having numerous rules is unavoidable; otherwise, it would be rather chaotic.

In this case, my suggestion would be to find an appropriate article, add a description of the Atmel Software Framework to it (with references and everything), and then add a piped link to the ASF disambiguation page. Upon closer examination, the Atmel § Microcontrollers section seems to be the right destination, which you may want to expand further; went ahead and readded the "Atmel Software Framework" entry to the ASF disambiguation page, now pointing to an article section, and with a more brief description. Hope you agree with that. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 16:15, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

I think that will do very nicely. I don't think I'm ready to edit articles yet (I haven't even decided whether I want to remain anonymous!) although I do have some definite ideas about the Atmel AVR instruction set article -- the tabular data has improved immeasurably since I first saw it a couple of years ago but it is not _quite_ there yet. Thank you for your help and encouragement. 172.88.224.142 (talk) 17:42, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. You're more than welcome to contribute to the articles, but please consider going through the Wikipedia's Manual of Style first, which is a very good style guide on its own, even when not applied strictly to Wikipedia articles. I know, even looking at the sheer volume of information presented in the guide (and it also branches into numerous separate subguides, which have their own pages) may be slightly discouraging, but IMHO it's well worth it. Improving one's writing skills can only be beneficial in the long run, and the contributions made here are to, hopefully, stay around forever and help many people. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 17:58, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

References

^ http://www.atmel.com/images/atmel-42370-optimizing-asf-code-size-to-minimize-flash-and-ram-usage_applicationnote_at08569.pdf

A barnstar for you!

	The Editor's Barnstar
	Seeing your edits pop up in my watchlist regularly gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that Wikipedia keeps getting better. Thanks! -- intgr [talk] 08:11, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much, intgr! Receiving a barnstar from a fellow editor creates a warm and fuzzy feeling that my contributions, as well as the contributions from other regulars, don't go unnoticed. :) Let's keep making Wikipedia better! — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 08:25, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Halloween cheer!

Happy Halloween!

Hello Dsimic:
Thanks for all of your contributions to improve Wikipedia, and have a happy and enjoyable Halloween!
– Codename Lisa (talk) 23:09, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Send Halloween cheer by adding {{subst:Happy Halloween}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.

Thank you very much, Codename Lisa! — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 23:12, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

MDPI

Hello, Dragan -- Glenn here, and I've got a beaut of a situation!

As we well know, Wikipedia maintains a set of "catchphrases" -- e.g., "sock puppet", "drive-by edit", etc. -- which are invaluable in identifying and characterizing otherwise shadowy behaviors which may be of particular harm -- or, in some cases, of particular benefit -- to Wikipedia. With this context, my question to you is as follows: is there a catchphrase which refers to the practice of re-emphasizing or re-iterating or re-cycling negative aspects of a subject which have since been discredited, corrected, and/or ameliorated by the passage of time -- and this with the effect of keeping said subject under a perpetual but undeserved cloud?

My reason for asking this question is that I would like to have a rationale for doing some corrective editing to the article on scholarly publisher MDPI, wherein there seems to me to be too great an emphasis on the fact that MDPI was at one time included on a list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers" maintained by a single individual -- the famous "Beall's list" -- even though its justification for being on the list has been disputed, and even though it has since been intentionally removed from said list.

Full disclosure: I have a stake in this matter, inasumuch as an MDPI journal has just published one of my scholarly papers; but by the same token, I have some actual experience with MDPI as the basis for my input -- and that experience has been ultimately positive in the sense of confirming MDPI's scholarly integrity.

But not only that, Dragan, in respect to my credentials as an editor of the MDPI article -- I have been in the very den of the lion! In short, I have just concluded a brief but telling correspondence with Jeffrey Beall himself -- who, to his great credit, makes his email address readily available, and who responds quickly; and I cite here, by way of documenting some of the points previously alluded to, my inititiating missive:

From: Glenn Smith <gsmith@space-machines.com>

Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2015 9:16 PM

To: Beall, Jeffrey <Jeffrey.Beall@ucdenver.edu>

Subject: MDPI

Dear Associate Professor Beall,

I'm sure you'll find this email quite typical -- but in today's world of manufactured crisis, typical can be good!

I've recently had an article published by the MDPI journal Arts ( http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/4/3/75 ), and the peer review process seemed quite thorough to me, i.e., in addition to a brief and laudatory review from one reader, I received a substantial and cogent set of comments from two other readers, and the latter of which I had to address before my paper was accepted for publication. This, I realize, is but a single case; but if it represents the current rule rather than the exception at MDPI, one might suppose that the publisher deserves to be removed from your list; and indeed, when I visited your web site this evening, it seems that this has already been accomplished. Can you concur -- and are there any related details worthy of note?

Regards,

G. W. (Glenn) Smith

I do not feel it appropriate to reproduce Professor Beall's brief but gracious reply; but its import was to confirm, without futher detail, that MDPI was indeed taken off of his list as of 27 October 2015; and this further implies to me that MDPI's former presence on this list should become a footnote, as opposed to a major topic, within the Wikipedia article.

So, Dragan, I need that magic Wikipedia catchphrase; and if it does already exist, you -- with your wonderful acquired knowledge of English -- could come up with one! Synchronist (talk) 05:04, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Hey, Glenn! Long time no hear, hope everything is fine on your side... Just went through your published article and it describes rather interesting aspects of the advances in technology and related effects on the society. Good job! For example, it's very interesting that "a 1965 U.S. Senate subcommittee predicted a 21st century work week of 14 hours", which obviously backfired big time. :) Speaking about the catchphrase, it would be all about updating the article according to the WP:RS guideline, so "re-sourcing" might be an appropriate one. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:27, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Dear Dragan, thanks for your enthusiasm regarding my paper! I am actually having some amazing success just now getting published. A more recent paper -- "Art, Aliens, and the Machine" -- has just been accepted by Leonardo, the leading techno-art journal, and as soon as it goes online I will let you know. I would like to think, however, that my "success" is simply a function of being a herald of the great -- and, let us hope, positive -- transformations which humanity is now undergoing; and I have not given up the hope that the two of us might be able to join together in some related, collective effort! [NB: My recent scholarly activities have also involved "visionary Slavic astronautics"! Just say the word, and I will blast you some details via email!]

Returning, however, to the question of the moment, you are correct in thinking that a rigorous and comprehensive application of the Wikipedia "reliable sources" guidelines could result in an edited version of the MDPI article which no longer attempts to cast a perpetual cloud over that publisher (after all, both Nature and Science have found it necessary to retract bogus papers!); but it could be best to take a more "step-by-step" approach. For example, the second paragraph of the introduction of the MDPI article brings up the fact that MDPI was once -- but is no longer! -- on the Beall "index". This is surely an example of "guilt by innuendo"; and so, if one were to "flag" this paragraph with one of the standard Wikipedia warning messages, what would that message be? Synchronist (talk) 05:08, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

You're welcome, and I'm looking forward to reading more of your published articles! However, I'm quite suspicious regarding the chances for the modern society to escape from the increasingly escalating consumerism... It isn't only about the consumerism of technology and various products, but (which is much more frightening to me) about the consumerism of thoughts and resulting lack of true contributions to the humanity as a whole. Even the current job market shows alarming signs – there are numerous open high-tech jobs, but there are increasingly fewer people qualified and knowledgeable enough for actually doing those jobs.

Speaking about the MDPI article and its lead section, the right maintenance templates might be {{Disputed}} and {{Inadequate lead}}, placed in combination with starting a discussion on the article's talk page. However, IMHO doing the following steps, if that would be possible at the moment, should be better instead of simply tagging the article:

The MDPI § Inclusion in Beall's list section should be updated accordingly, providing adequate, reliable sources, which are mandatory, as we know.
The second paragraph of the article's lead section should be edited and expanded to provide more details about the article as a whole, a part of which might be the fact that MDPI has been but is no longer included on the Jeffrey Beall's list.

Hope you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 06:11, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

This is encouraging! Someone else has already made the precise changes I had in mind for the MDPI article, and, in particular, removing the Beall's list reference from the intro, where it cast a shadow over the entire article!!! So there is a god! (Dragan -- check me out on this wavelength: gsmith@space-machines.com ) Synchronist (talk) 05:05, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Sounds great, and there's God for sure. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:11, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

More coverage of erasure coding and distributed placement in RAID topic?

Hi Dsimic

Saw you contributing heavily to RAID topic. Just sat through another presentation where vendor claimed "RAID is dead" due to long rebuilds and need for higher fault resilience levels. I disagree...IMO RAID is a broad technical strategy that does not mandate XOR math, does not limit to 2 or 3 'parity' fragments, does not mandate rigid mapping of a Volume to specific disks, does not mandate 1:1 recovery of failed disks.

My question to you: Do you agree? Should the RAID topic be brought forward with coverage of modern fault-resilience techniques?

use of erasure coding
distributed placement algorithms
parallel recovery from disk failure

A given vendor might choose not to use the term 'RAID' in the context of their object store, but that's a Marketing decision. I think the classic definition of RAID still applies.

Davis471 (talk) 15:20, 25 November 2015 (UTC) Mike Davis akropilot@gmail.com

Hello! IMHO, RAID is far away from becoming dead technology, at least in broad terms. Separate RAID layers, such as those in hardware RAID controllers and layered software implementations, might be reaching their end-of-life stages, but integrated RAID approaches, such as those in Btrfs and ZFS file systems, are just becoming used more broadly. As of why RAID simply can't go belly up, it's all about the amount of existing software that has no clue what to do with distributed object-level storage: just think of various mail daemons, relational databases, operating systems themselves that simply need traditional storage, etc.

Speaking about modern fault-resilience techniques, I'd say those might fit better in the Object storage article, for example, but having more information in the RAID article would also be a good thing. Hope you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:58, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Regarding Haswell second branch unit

Hi Dsimic,

Please see the p25 of Haswell hotchips presentation, titled Haswell Execution Unit Overview. It said there is a "New Branch Unit" sharing with 4th ALU under port6. I think this new branch unit is a branch execution unit, not a branch prediction unit.

Henry Huang — Preceding unsigned comment added by HuangHe THATIC (talk • contribs) 09:26, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Hello! That's the very same document and page I've consulted before reverting your edit. In general, branching can only be predicted to improve performance, while the execution of actual post-branching instructions is performed by other execution units inside the CPU, such as an ALU, FPU and AGU. In other words, there's isn't much to be executed about branching because those are very simple instructions; instead, it's pretty much all about predicting the branching to gain performance improvements. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 11:57, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Branch predictor is at pipeline front-end (even before decode stage), often in fetch stage. Branch execution unit doesn't predict branch direction, it only executes branch instruction and determines whether branch result is different to the prediction made by pipeline front-end. Adding a new branch execution unit can improve branch throughput rather than improve prediction accurace. Page 25 DOES explicitly state that "2nd EU for high branch code", and there is no indication that there is second branch predictor. On page 23 of the same document, titled "Haswell Core at a Glance", it only said "Leverages improved branch prediction" rather than something like "2nd branch predictor". HuangHe THATIC (talk) 14:56, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

You're totally right and I was wrong, sorry. Went ahead and searched for additional sources:

They both confirm that the Haswell microarchitecture contains two branch execution units, so I've reverted myself. Thank you very much for reaching out, and for correcting the mistake in the article in the first place! — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:31, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

File:Xmas Ornament.jpg

To You and Yours!

FWiW Bzuk (talk) 17:17, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much, and the same to you! — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 18:31, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Link to disk cache from page cache

Dear Dsimic,

Indeed, disk cache has two meanings. The first is disk buffer – obviously not what page cache wants to refer to, and the second one is a circular reference back to page cache itself.

Generally speaking, a wikilink should not be to a disambiguation page, unless it is the ambiguity you want to point out.

So, please, revert your reversion on page cache: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Page_cache&type=revision&diff=695806260&oldid=695803912

TIA, RickJP (talk) 08:46, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello! As already noted in my edit, "disk cache" has multiple meanings, which is exactly why Disk cache exists as a disambiguation page. As noted in my another edit, linking to disambiguation pages is fine, as described in the WP:INTDAB guideline. In other words, it's all about the ambiguity of the "disk cache" term, which isn't used exclusively as a synonym for "page cache"; that's why it actually needs to be linked to the disambiguation page. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 18:46, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Only including popular langs in C++ sidebar

Judging by GitHub, Nim counts. How are you judging? Judging by mature languages and current usage, it can be argued that Ada and ML are niche, nonspecific, and are actually language families (though C++ is likewise a family of non-free specs and free implementations of compilers, interpreters, etc.). Mister Mormon (talk) 21:23, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Judging by GitHub, thousands of things count. :) Regarding my edit, I'd suggest that you bring this discussion to the Talk:C++ page, so more editors can weigh in. Hope you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 21:34, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Fair, but first, is it common Wikipedia practice to revert good faith edits without initiating talk? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mister Mormon (talk • contribs) 21:51, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

It may be debatable, but IMHO it all depends on how one sees the relevant guidelines. I've been reverted numerous times in the same way, and we've worked it out through the discussions I've started. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 21:56, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

Wishing you a merry Christmas and a happy new year...

Codename Lisa (talk)

Thank you very much, and the same to you! — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 17:11, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

GOP (disambiguation)

Hello, Mr. Simic. I thought I'd drop you a note explaining my edit at GOP (disambiguation). Per WP:DABPRIMARY, When a page has "(disambiguation)" in its title – i.e., it is the disambiguation page for a term for which a primary topic has been identified...(that topic) should not be mixed in with the other links. Since GOP redirects to Republican Party (United States), it has been identified as the primary topic and should be at the top of GOP (disambiguation). However, since you disagree with that assessment, I'd like to nudge you to make a WP:Requested move of GOP (disambiguation) → GOP, and, if moved, the current (reverted) version of that page would be correct. Let me know if I can be of any assistance with the WP:RM! Thanks, -- Tavix ^(talk) 07:12, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Sorry, I wasn't aware of the GOP → Republican Party (United States) redirect, thank you for pointing it out. With that in mind, you're right about the primary topic so I've reverted my edit, and there's no need for requesting any page moves. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:28, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

"See also" links

It's ok to list articles in the "See also" section that are linked in the body if their of core relevance to the article in question. You can see this in many existing articles. That said, I added CryptGenRandom to entropy-supplying system calls before I mentioned it in the article body; I'm fine with the removal. Risc64 (talk) 18:01, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello! It's all about how one sees the WP:SEEALSO guideline, and the whole thing has been debated over in the past. As I see it, "See also" sections in general shouldn't repeat the links already found in the article body, except for longer articles that might actually benefit from a few repeated links. In other words, IMHO shorter articles shouldn't have duplicates. Hope you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 22:54, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

On BRD and picking

By the way, I'd appreciate if you would try not to pick on me on every possible occasion; what I did here was pretty much fine and according to the WP:BRD guideline.

Your first instinct, every single time someone disagrees with you, is to revert to your preferred version. Every single time, whether you made a change initially or not. In cases like this guideline, this gives you precisely the first-mover advantage that BRD is designed to avoid. Combined with your utter intransigence regarding the most petty nonsense (like this explicit linking that that Widefox is discussing in vain with you once again above) this means that pretty much any article you're watching becomes de facto under your stewardship and thus that editing it takes an order of magnitude longer. What I really wish is that, as with 99.9% of other editors on the site, the very first thing that I did not see every single time you were involved in a discussion was a notification saying "Your edit on X was reverted by Dsimic". Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 08:46, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Your statement about the reverts simply isn't true and it just reflects some kind of your fixation. Could you, please, just refrain from posting comments until they become oriented toward the content (as the WP:NPA guideline clearly says), and toward making Wikipedia better? Also, your statement about me rejecting the WP:NOTBROKEN guideline is totally wrong, and it made me feel uncomfortable because I've in fact put that guideline into practice numerous times. With all that in mind, I'd appreciate if you would try to improve your collaboration skills, and stay away from hounding me in the meantime. Thank you. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 06:28, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dsimic, happy 2016 and appreciate the AOSP "thanks". User:Thumperward, I don't know anything about the specifics above, but I wanted to say in general I hope we can all work on these articles less revertingly (TM) this year. Widefox; talk 22:18, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Hello, and happy new year too! Your edit on the AOSP disambiguation page was a good one and actually resolved my earlier doubts on how to specify two entries on the page, which is why I thanked you. See, I don't judge you or any other editor, all I care about on Wikipedia are the edits and resulting content. And some common sense combined with basic goodwill. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 22:30, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

2011–12 Saudi Arabian protests

Say, you have a passion for date formats. Care to weigh in at Talk:2011–12 Saudi Arabian protests#Move page to avoid date ambiguity? That article is currently linked from the Main Page. Thanks! – voidxor 20:53, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Hello! Sure thing, I just provided my opinion there. By the way, have you managed to recover from the computer failure you've experienced recently? Such unfortunate events may sometimes also serve as good excuses for doing some hardware upgrades. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 21:34, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment! I would expect more traffic on that talk page since the article's currently linked from the Main Page.

I built a new desktop computer for myself, but haven't installed an operating system yet. For the time being, I'm running Kubuntu Live from a USB flash drive to periodically check email, Wikipedia, and the like. – voidxor 19:15, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

You're welcome. Hopefully you haven't lost any valuable data on your old computer. If I may suggest, investing a few dollars into a surge protector like this one might be a good idea for protecting your equipment. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 19:34, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

No data loss, fortunately, as only my motherboard died. You're 100% correct about it being a surge that killed it through the Ethernet port! I had protected in the incoming power and coaxial-cable lines from surges, but not the Ethernet line between my router and computer. Lightning struck a street lamp less than 50 meters away from me, and the electromagnetic induction across the Ethernet line through the attic caused the surge. You could say the surge came in through the air and skipped over my existing surge protectors. I have since installed Ethernet surge protection. – voidxor 22:05, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

It's good to hear that you haven't lost any data. Hm, experiencing such a case of electromagnetic induction is quite strange, as in theory surge-protecting the inbound coaxial and power lines should be good enough. How long is the Ethernet cable run between your router and computer? Was the router fried as well? I'm just curious. :) By the way, I do follow the WP:INDENTGAP guideline on article talk pages, but prefer some whitespace on my own talk page, which should be fine as a discretionary measure. Hope you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 22:26, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I had my computer at my parents' house at the time, and the Cat-5e cable that passes from that bedroom to the router in the basement (via the attic) is probably about 25 m in overall length. Yes, the router was fried, but the cable modem was not. That was how I initially knew that the surge hadn't come in through the coaxial cable line.

I completely understand about WP:INDENTGAP. I tend to follow all Wikipedia policies with which I am familiar, but that one can make the wikicode of long threads difficult to read. – voidxor 00:12, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Assuming that the network layout is like coaxial cable --> cable modem --> router --> long Cat 5e run --> your computer, and knowing the fact that your cable modem saw no damage, you're right that the most probable (if not only) surge source is electromagnetic induction in the long Ethernet cable run. Another possibility would be that your router's power supply wasn't behind a surge protector, so the router introduced the surge into the long Cat 5e run while somehow not introducing anything into the Ethernet port which your cable modem plugs into. Just guessing another possibility; this forum thread provides some useful information.

The WP:INDENTGAP guideline is one of the very few guidelines that don't make much sense to me, simply because having blank lines in the Wiki code is really necessary in all lengthier talk page discussions. I've even considered to propose changes to the way such blank lines are rendered so screen readers aren't confused, but I'm not sure how well would such a proposal be accepted. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 03:29, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

That was exactly the network layout at the time of the lightning strike. And yes, the cable modem, firewall router, and desktop computer were all plugged into good power-line surge protection (from Leviton and APC, respectively) at the time. Don't forget that I'm an electrical engineer. ;-) That forum poster seems to have experienced the exact same situation. However, my new desktop is safely away from long Ethernet runs back at my apartment. My parents' desktop is in their study (a much shorter Ethernet run than the upstairs bedroom), and I have since added Ethernet surge protection on both ends of that run. Thanks for your concern, though.

I would support such a proposal; see User talk:Voidxor/Archive 3#Blank lines in discussions. One could even say that WP:INDENTGAP contradicts MOS:MARKUP. – voidxor 00:24, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Oh, and I installed a whole-house surge protector in my parents' circuit-breaker panel years ago. So the power line was protected at the circuit-breaker panel and then again at the receptacles. There is no doubt in my mind that it was electromagnetic induction. – voidxor 00:40, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for a detailed explanation, as a fellow engineer I had to check and think aloud. :) The only thing coming to my mind, other than electromagnetic induction, is that the varistors inside powerline surge protectors might have become weak over time by absorbing smaller surges. Though, as you described, electromagnetic induction seems to be the only reasonable explanation.

That's a very good point about WP:INDENTGAP contradicting MOS:MARKUP. Thanks for offering support, I'll try to find the right place to propose changes to the way blank lines are treated/rendered, and will let you know once the proposal is up. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:01, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Reverts to NAT articles

Hi,

I noticed your recent reverts to edits I made on the 3 NAT articles. I'm not so sure if the links are irrelevant / advertising -- they're opensource and non-commercial implementations of the protocols that each article describes.

When you have a moment, maybe take a closer look at the links. If you still think they're irrelevant / advertising, then I would suggest maybe getting rid of the Support section in NAT Port Mapping Protocol as well. If it's irrelevant to provide a list of opensource implementations of the protocol the article is about, then it's probably even more irrelevant to provide a list of end-user software and hardware (mostly commercial / proprietary) that uses said protocols in nothing more than an ancillary way.

216.19.189.212 (talk) 02:05, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Hello! As noted in my edits (#1 and #2, just for reference), listing particular implementations might be seen as advertisement, and listing them without having already existing articles goes against the WP:WTAF guideline. Speaking about the NAT Port Mapping Protocol § Support, you're right and it has been an eyesore for a while. Thus, I went ahead and simply deleted it; the presented lists were pretty much irrelevant, unmaintained, incomplete, and of very little use to the readers. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 14:30, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

BIOS boot partition

Hello, smart guy

Okay, I think I have found a little less selfish way. Setting the alignment parameter to "right" on {{Wide image}} creates the layout you want while avoiding the problem that I have. Sure WP:IMAGESIZE says "respect user preferences" but I guess a win-win compromise is always better.

Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 15:25, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello! Quite frankly, it doesn't look great that way, the thumbnail is way too large, please have a look at the way I see it with {{Wide image}} in place and the default thumbnail width in my preferences. Having a slightly smaller thumbnail might be some kind of a compromise, if you agree? Furthermore, I'm sure you'll agree that, according to the WP:IMAGESIZE guideline, our default thumbnail-size-related user preferences should also be respected, :) at least because that's the way majority of our readers view the articles. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 15:42, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Simulation, Design, and Evaluation of an entire Hybrid Electric All Terrain Vehicle

I was looking through IEEE papers from a 2009 conference that I attended in Dearborn, Michigan, and happened to see one authored by Dragan Simic entitled "Simulation, Design, and Evaluation of an entire Hybrid Electric All-Terrain Vehicle". Is that you, or an impostor? – voidxor 02:31, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Hello, voidxor, and I sincerely apologize for the delay in responding. Unfortunately, I'm not the author of the conference paper you've spotted. There seem to be quite a few people around having the same first and last name as mine. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 10:05, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

[1] ttp://www.atmel.com/images/atmel-42370-optimizing-asf-code-size-to-minimize-flash-and-ram-usage_applicationnote_at08569.pdf

[1]