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Revision as of 05:40, 25 November 2011

Computing Stub‑class Low‑importance

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State of the art

Article had almost been stubbed due to edit warring. Restored to last stable revision and contents. Moving the previous sections to Talk:Floppy_disk_hardware_emulator/Archive_2 (already created) has been blocked by automated filter. Another authorized user should retry. 137.204.148.73 (talk) 13:02, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Done . That was probably down to me. The move looked like a mass delete because of the (lack of) edit summary mentioning archiving. Ho-hum - fixed now.  Velella    13:06, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

The user has also conveniently archived the recent discussion of why most of the content they just re-added was removed in the first place. Rwessel (talk) 18:09, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Re-additions of low level interface details

Frankly, I don't see the value of including pin-outs and low-level signal descriptions in this article. They are far to detailed and low level for an encyclopedia. They should be removed (basically the table, and most of the misnamed "Solid state storage" section). This topic deserves only a short article. Rwessel (talk) 18:09, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Edit warring memories

Hoping this article will not fall into the edit-warring downward spiral again... 137.204.148.73 (talk) 22:21, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Conflict Of Interest

A while back a user going by the username of User:Blackvisionit showed severe signs of claiming WP:OWNERSHIP over this page. Upon further investigation, it turns out that he sells floppy disk hardware emulators and was making decisions not for the good of this article, but rather to advance his own interests.

When this came out he engaged in edit warring and some rather nasty personal attacks against me, ending up with him being temporarily blocked and warned to be civil and to not engage in WP:COI editing. Rather than comply, he "retired" from editing Misplaced Pages.

Here it is several months later, and I noticed that someone editing from IP address 137.204.148.73 had re-inserted most of the material that had been inserted by the editor with the COI, so I attempted to rewrite one section with more of an emphasis on all types of floppy disk hardware emulators, not just the kind that he sells (which are characterized by having the same connector and pinouts as an IBM PC Floppy drive). As I expected, he reverted my changes. I rolled his revert back and, as I expected, he was monitoring the page and reverted my changes 4 minutes later (1RR for me, 2RR for him) with the edit comment "User:Guy Macon is back...". He then placed the comment about edit warring that you see in the section above.

I have been pondering what the best course of action at this point should be -- what is best for the article. I think that the best thing to do at this point is to take the following actions:

First, I am going to remove all links to any vendor who is selling any variety of floppy disk hardware emulator. I expect there to be strong objections from Blackvisionit/137.204.148.73 over this, and if history is any guide, repeated personal attacks and claims that, despite being a vendor of floppy disk hardware emulators, the COI rules don't apply to him. Nonetheless, I think removing all vendor links is justified on the basis of them not meeting Misplaced Pages's criteria for reliable sources. Note that this may leave some sections unreferenced, so I invite all who read this to help find reliable sources that are not vendors to replace the links I will be removing.

Second, I will be removing the pinout and low-level interface details. They are specific to the particular type of floppy disk hardware emulator that Blackvisionit/137.204.148.73 sells and ignores the fact that Commodore 64/Amiga, Apple II/Mac, and many synths have completely different pinouts. Besides being an important step to making this page vendor-neutral, as Rwessel correctly pointed out a couple of sections above this, such details are not encyclopedic.

I think that both of these changes are justified. I also believe that Blackvisionit/137.204.148.73 should abide by the instructions given by the blocking admin: "As I said very clearly, I do not believe that you can judge when your edits will or will not be neutral based on your admitted COI. Please get consensus for every non trivial edit you wish to make on the talk page first.. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions."

I will be glad to discuss the above plan of attack with anyone, including Blackvisionit/137.204.148.73, but based upon my previous experience, I will simply not respond to any personal attacks or incivility. I would also remind other editors that according to WP:TPO you are allowed to delete personal attacks but not messages that are merely uncivil. I will leave that decision to others so as to avoid my own bias influencing the decision as to what to remove.

As always, all of the above is open to discussion and I will be happy to follow consensus. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:40, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

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