Talk:Computer/Archive 2

Computer

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This is archive 2 for Talk:Computer

Professional Societies

I made ACM and the IEEE Computer Scociety into external links. Certainly my intent is not discourage articles on those particular organizations. Rather, it just seems that a link to the organization itself is preferable to a red link. If someone does write an article on either of these organizations, it would, of course, make sense to relink them. But how does one track such things? Greg 01:01, 29 March 2007 (CDT)

Notice of desire for a major revision

Hi all, I'm new here. I have taken the liberty of revising the status of this article down from a 1 to a 2. I am seeking permission to attempt a major revision of this article; if you agree, it will take me about a week to come up with it. My main complaint with this article is that is doesn't help a reader see the forest because there are too many trees.

This article appears to have been brought from Wikipedia originally, although it has been edited somewhat. I don't think we here in Citizendium particularly need to duplicate the Wikipedia approach, which I have found to be infuriatingly filled with details but still inaccurate somehow. I'm hoping to achieve a new perspective altogether, which may eventually point off to many splinter topics, but one which is substantially different than Wikipedia, which in my opinion, is trying to be a user manual or cheat sheet for college students.

A sample of my writing can currently be found in the German language article in Citizendium, which I recently replaced. I know the "Computer" is a topic a lot of people know a lot about, and many of us work with them. But they have been my life's work for 25 years or more, by training and profession. Please give me your honest opinions; I don't want to start an edit war or anything.Pat Palmer 16:22, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

I have now posted in the Computer workgroup forum that I'd like to make a stab at a complete overhaul (as in, throw out the existing and start over) of the Computer article. I have posted a rough draft of my (brainstormed) ideas here. If no one stops me, I plan to wait a day or two and just go for it, but I'm trying to get the word out first. A lot of people have an interest in this article, and it's sort of at the top of the food chain. We wouldn't really lose anything by wiping this article and trying to write from scratch, because all the details are sitting over there in Wikipedia where we could recover them at any time :-) Please let me know your thoughts.Pat Palmer 22:19, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

Hi Pat. You should start out by checking out Get ready to rethink how to write encyclopedia_articles! and Article Mechanics: Miscellaneous style guidelines. One great way to go about a major revision is to make it at User:Pat Palmer/Computer draft or User:Pat Palmer/My Sandbox, then post the link here and to people in the Computers Workgroup soliciting feedback. Also see here. Regarding that, which specific articles besides this one are you referring to? ---Stephen Ewen 22:25, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

I'd help out where I could with the revision you're talking about... pretty much the meat of my replies to your posts are here and here --Eric M Gearhart 07:36, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

it's way too long at the moment

To shorten this, I think the first step would be to break out Computer history into its own article. I'm planning on doing that shortly if no one stops me.Pat Palmer 15:15, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

Or should it be History of computing? Pat Palmer 15:16, 23 April 2007 (CDT)