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Article naming system

When I said/say "Follow naming system', I was referring to not using names of the form "DEC xxx". Although some pages are called "{organization} {thing}" (e.g. Interlan NI1010A/NI2010A Ethernet interface (which is actually slightly incorrect; Interlan called it the 'Ethernet Communications Controller'; I will have to fix that), in general I don't use 'DEC' to start page names unless either i) the rest is a common term that might be used by someone else (e.g. DEC Alpha), or ii) it is a natural part of the name (e.g. DEC standard power wire colour coding). (Yes, I know that making DEC pages special is itself inconsistent! But the page names would all be longer, if not: 'DEC PDP-10' instead of PDP-10.)

But in general I try and follow the rule 'use what the original contemporary documentation used' - mostly because that is easy to find out, and then one does not have to think about choosing something! There are some places which fail to do that (e.g. KL10 - although now that I look, that might be correct): KA11 CPU should be 'KA11 Processor' (because I started calling all the PDP-11 CPU pages 'xx11 CPU' - although DEC has a lack of consistency in their naming for them; e.g. they call the KD11-E CPU just "KD11-E"). But I am slowly fixing many of them. Jnc (talk) 13:07, 22 June 2022 (CEST)

Sourcing

Although we have historically not been as anal about noting the source of things as Wikipedia is, maybe we should be, now that I think about it? People do make mistakes (to err is human, after all), and having to trawl though several large documents (almost always given in 'Further reading'/'External links', thankfully) to verify something that might be erroneous is probably non-optimal. Careful sourcing has been a hallmark of scholarship for generations, probably for that exact reason.

Mind, I'm not suggesting that we should make a major effort to go back and update existing content, to add sourcing - we just don't have the person-power available for such a project. I'm also not suggesting we mandate sourcing on new content. I'm just thinking like 'if you have the energy, it would be good to source new content'. Or is just listing the sources in Further reading/External links good enough?

If we do decide we want to start sourcing, I should look and see if the Wikipedia <ref> system is installed here; it might not be. Jnc (talk) 13:00, 30 October 2024 (CET)

No reaction from anyone? Jnc (talk) 03:26, 3 November 2024 (CET)

Our approach

Some further thoughts on what our approach should be:

I'd like to see the CHWiki really focus on catering to our 'average' reader; I do not object to making some detail available, as long as it is done in a way that does not detract from the experience for the 'average' reader.

So those two articles (PDP-1 and Whirlwind) are on the 'short' end of the 'acceptable' range - they aren't stubs, and give a decent very high-level view of the machines - but their technical details content has been boiled down to a sentence or two - as short as I could possibly make them - in line with the goal at the top of the article here.

So the PDP-1 article says that it has only a single accumulator, and gives the basic instruction format, but no more. The Whirlwind article is about the same; microscopically less. It might be nice to add a little more detailed content, but look at the way that was done for the PDP-11; there is a separate PDP-11 architecture article, which gives a readable form of the information in the average PDP-11 reference card. Note that it is all in a separate page, to keep the detail from cluttering up the 'basic' PDP-11 page.

The average Wikipedia article on computing topics is like an old attic - stuffed full with every possible piece of information.

If I ever get a chance, I'll integrate any non-duplicate content from these into the page here. Jnc (talk) 21:42, 21 March 2025 (CET)