Talk:Richard Stallman/Archive 5

message: Trivia sections on Wikipedia are considered very bad form. All imformation within this section should be dispersed to apropriate places within the article. --The_stuart 18:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Trivia section

message: Lots of these items are worthless, and many of them belong in the copy of the article... at the moment it reads like a lazy schoolboy essay written in bullet-point form. 
Examples:
*"Stallman did not participate in the counterculture of the 60s, but found its rejection of wealth as the main goal of life inspiring."  -- Hardly trivia since it describes his main motivations. It needs to be sourced and written into the article copy, or removed.
*"POSIX" -- again, hardly trivia. It needs to be sourced and included in the article copy or removed.
*"He cannot swim" -- big deal. This is relevant how?
*"He can't program in Java" -- relevant how? He has talked about "The Java Trap" in the past. If the article had part discussing his objections to Java, it might be relevant there. As it is, it's just a rather pointless factoid.
*"Right Management System" -- pointless bit of cruft, unless Microsoft chose the name specifically to irk him, and I don't think they did.
*"Linus Torvalds said: 'Think of Richard Stallman as the great philosopher and think of me as the engineer' -- interesting, but not for a trivia section. More appropriate if written into the article section discussing his relationship with Linux. -Motor (talk) 18:15, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well said. Most of these points -- Java, POSIX, Linus, philosophy -- need to be moved and/or expanded on, not deleted. Until they are expanded on, they should stay, as a form of "stub". --GRuban 20:07, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed a couple of the most obviously poor entries (I'm waving on the SF entry... it should probably go too, unless it is a major influence on him).. I added the fact template to others -- without sources for these, they should be removed. Additionally, as I said above, once these items are sourced many of them should be written into the article rather than left in a shoddy bullet-point form. -Motor (talk) 22:58, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All of those, except the Java and influences ones, cna be sourced to at least Free as in Freedom. --maru  (talk) contribs 23:06, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

text: "People shouldn't complain so much about the Trivia section." -- the Trivia section is an eye-sore on this article. "Suprisingly, the biographical section of the article had most of the inaccuracies fixed directly by RMS, and not so much the trivia section" -- What does this have to do with requesting cites for the facts in the trivia section, and removing obviously irrelevant nonsense to tighten up a poorly-structured article? Not to mention requesting that many of trivia section entries are not trivia at all, but substantive claims that should be written into the article rather than left as bullet-points. It's not a matter of accuracy, so much as tidying up a bad article and wanting the information in it verified to a higher standard. That's why I've re-reverted you... anon IP editor. BTW: by adding the fact template I'm requesting more than just "it came from this book"... preferably a page number so it can be easily verified by others... there are too many people adding crap to this article to trust just one person, especially if they happen to be an anon-IP editor. -Motor (talk) 17:28, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Incidentally, the Java entry can be considered confirmed by Stallman- I think he may even have been the one who added it in. Of course, then there is concern about verifiability... --maru  (talk) contribs 18:16, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've deleted the Java entry (again), because this is an encyclopedia.  If RMS, or any other editor, wants to make clever puns, I suggest they start a weblog, not use Wikipedia for non-encyclopedic content. Nandesuka 00:04, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

text:  The trivia section is definitely not an eyesore.  The article is probably one of the higher quality biographical articles on the site.  Although silly, the trivia section is fine and people have been distracted by it (or instead the criticism section) while the main biographical material has not been verified by the same standard (proof by RMS's fixes).  These pleas to make the article more "encyclopedic" fall flat when paper encyclopedias are not required to have footnotes and don't have trivia sections.  If having trivia sections doesn't prescribe to your sensibilities, then I'm sorry to hear that.  But don't use fact checking to enforce your motives. Further, attempting to find a compromise by merging trivia items into the main article will likely result in an article with poor style.  People familiar with Stallman (or Stallman himself) have and will continue to speak up when inaccuracies exist.  This current exercise is futile and wasteful.  You win the edit war; I'll just surrender.  --65.19.87.53 06:19, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trivia Cont'd

message: "explainging the proposed changes became a core speech." -- typo aside, 'core speech' sounds like a bit of opaque management-speak. If by "core", you mean that explaining the changes to the GPL is one of the most important parts of his agenda when speaking, then it needs to be stated clearly and in plain English. - Motor (talk) 00:41, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you can smooth the wording, please do.  My meaning is that before 2006, he had 3 speeches (each with a seperate topic) that he gave over and over again.  Now, he has a 4th speech, and during 2006 he will give it over and over again. Gronky 01:12, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Core speech

message: Hi, 64.222.109.153 and 71.241.136.108 (are you one person or two?)
Thanks for helping out; I see you think the number of sources
on the Emacs/XEmacs split here should be limited and the others
moved to XEmacs.
I don't much mind where that material goes (except that XEmacs is a little messy at present.)
But I do ask you to be more careful in your reverts.
Each of you now (or you, twice, as the case may be) has, while cutting down the discussion of the Emacs conflict, reverted edits I made that clarified text, labeled links, and fixed typos.  As you might imagine, I find this a little frustrating.
After the first instance, I made a comment at User_talk:64.222.109.153, but in hindsight I suppose that wasn't the right place. =)  I am a little new around here.
Thanks,
Greg Price 08:29, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your initial rewrite was good, except for the formatting, and 71.241.136.108 should not have deleted it.  I've restored the Xemacs discussion that lists Ben Wing's, Zawinski's, etc. criticisms separately.  I think devoting a few sentences to the topic is not excessive. Nandesuka 12:30, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  reverts in Criticism 

message: The "Lesser terminology issues" was given that name because Stallman places less emphasis on correcting them.  They are words he avoids, and he will correct them in certain situations, but he is less pedantic about them than he is about the big three: "GNU/Linux", "free software", and "Intellectual Property". Gronky 19:08, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Then they should be part of the pre-existing Terminology section with an explanation similar to the one above. They don't need their own section. - Motor (talk) 21:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  lesser and other 

message: Does anyone have something to say for this link that was on the page?
*Chapter 3 of an free documentation book detailing Stallman's life
It's sharply and overtly POV, thick with speculation and innuendo, so it's not much of a reference. There's no indication it's had any particular influence,which would make it interesting and the POV merely part of the exhibit.
In policy terms, it's well described by the first item in Wikipedia:External links#Links to normally avoid. --Greg Price 14:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No. It's been pretty steadily added by anons and removed by users over the last several months. --maru   (talk)  contribs 22:48, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Bezroukov tirade/external link 

message: The "Interviews" sub-section is within the "References" section and it contains a lot of external links. How many of them were actually used as references to add facts to the article, and how many have just been added without a good reason? - Motor (talk) 15:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Interviews

message: I think it's important to mention that rms was hacking at the >same< time he was getting a magna cum laude degree in physics, when some people in mit (some "hackers") were absorbed by the hacking and did nothing else. Some of them even loose mit courses because they were hacking so hard.
What I mean, is that rms is not just a or the "philosopher" of gnu and free software like Linus Torvalds says in the movie Revolution OS, he's also a very good programmer (emacs, gnu C compiler, etc.)
"Richard was often in night phase, and when the people in the lab discovered after the fact that he was simultaneously earning a magna cum laude degree in physics at Harvard, even those master hackers were astonished."
from: [] from the book Hackers: heroes of the computer revolution
So i think this should be added.
--Licurgo 03:21, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Harvard Physics Degree