Talk:Hal Abelson

message: The article currently attributes the "shoulders of giants" quip to Dr. Abelson.  When I wrote my thesis, I (like many others I'm sure) put it in as a frontpiece.  However, when I later found Dr. Abelson on-line, I e-mailed him to check if the quote did, in fact, originate with him.  His reply was :
: Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 22:32:41 -0400 (EDT) 
: From: Hal Abelson <hal@murren.ai.mit.edu> 
: That's me. 
: Actually, I didn't originate the quote: It was first said by a guy 
: named Jeff Goll, my roommate at Princeton, who used it in his 
: undergraduate thesis.  But I once told it to someone (I don't remember 
: who) who posted it to the network attributed to me, and the 
: attribution has stuck. 
: Hope your thesis advisor enjoys it :) 
: == Hal 
I'll edit the article to reflect this.  --Plumbago 11:24, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Giants" Quip

message: Is Dr. Abelson really from the class of 1922? If that refers to his bachelor's degree, and the school system at that time was approximately like the present school system, that means he was born around 1900. I have trouble believing he's over a hundred years old (especially given the photo on his home page, which is in color so it must be recent, and the video of him learning to walk - consumer video cameras didn't exist until somewhat recently). Since it comes out as exactly 1900, it looks like one of those jokes about their age that older professors seem to enjoy. I'm removing this info; if someone can confirm his age or birth, please do so. --Geoffrey 04:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: P.S.: Since this claim is repeated elsewhere, perhaps there is a technical meaning of "Class of 1922 Professor" that is not commonly known? Or perhaps it's just copied verbatim from his webpage? If he received a degree in 1922, it's clearer to say so next to the degree. If he didn't exist in 1922, we need to give his birthyear. --Geoffrey 04:53, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I suspect the string "Class of 1922 Professor" is a special title, probably referring to a chair endowed by the class of 1922. The actual class members are probably mostly deceased now, while their money continues to earn interest. Stan 05:51, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering is indeed his title; the class endowed a chair. I restored his full title to the article. EthanHunt 03:29, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Lmfao this dude is my advisor, and he's awesome but I wondered "how the hell is he a century old" lol.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.56.0.35 (talk) 21:37, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Class of 1922? 

message: Richard Stallman reportedly enjoys sleeping on Dr. Abelson's couch.
:Oh, RMS sleeps on everyone's couch; he's a total couch-slut.  The dude is homeless and squats his MIT office, but that somehow lacks the personal charm of Adrian Lamo.  (Not that RMS isn't a bang-up guy or anything!)
::The question is : « Did these two friendly Orcs sleep together ? » <and happily dreaming about metallic sheep ;] > Yug 01:48, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  RMS and Couches 

message: I was trying to fill in the [citation needed] where it says he's a director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
I have this citation: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/hal/doing.html However, not sure his own page is a valid cite.
Also, and more damningly, the CTD does not list him anywhere.
:Not on their board of directors page: https://www.cdt.org/board
:Nor on their staff page: https://www.cdt.org/staff
:Nor even on their academic fellows page: https://www.cdt.org/fellows
...so I'm at a loss. DewiMorgan (talk) 19:41, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Center for Democracy and Technology 

message: This article would be much improved by adding the years to the events and projects it mentions. E.g. "In YEAR", "From YEAR to now". Lentower (talk) 17:44, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dates needed 

message: I propose we change the sentence to this:
The Association for Computing Machinery notes this course "was widely emulated and adopted by colleges around the world."
and add this as a new paragraph, perhaps in a new section Awards:
In 2011, Abelson received the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award.  The citation read "For his contribution to computing education, through his innovative advances in curricula designed for students pursuing different kinds of computing expertise, and for his leadership in the movement for open educational resources.
If this award was published in an ACM journal, it be better to use the  template.
The Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award has neither an article nor a template. It's in over a dozen articles so far. Create either if you feel it's meets WP:N.
It's possible this reference could be used to cite other present text or add even more text to this biography. 
Re: the proposed consensus Agreed, Disagree, or Comment Lentower (talk) 04:15, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed consensus

message: Now Lentower is reverting all my changes on the article, with the excuse that this discussion hasn't yet had time to reach a consensus, regardless of whether the changes involve removing the primary tag on Harvey's source (which the preliminary consensus above seems to be favoring). I don't see this as constructive behavior. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:09, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: It was easier to revert, than to put the article into the state it was before you came here for a consensus. Lentower (talk) 23:27, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Reverting *is* putting the article into the state it was before. And it was difficult to put the "primary" tag back on the source while leaving the other changes intact? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:56, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: As an outside observer, please let me suggest that both of you refrain from editing the main article until consensus has been reached; otherwise it looks much like an edit war. Reverting or not reverting, it doesn't matter in which state the article is regarding your disagreement; once concensus has been found, it can easily be changed to whatever that consensus may be. In the meantime it is probably inevitable that one of you is unhappy with the current state of the article. --Nczempin (talk) 05:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, my main goal here (beyond general improvement) was to clear enough tags to get this out of Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics/Lists‎ (a huge morass of bad articles, if anyone's looking for stuff to work on). And since  removed the new primary-source tag I left, that's done, so I'm happy to stop for now. But is there any consensus left to build and wait for? All the issues we were discussing (better sourcing for the SICP impact claims, adding an award to the article) seem to be resolved for now. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:50, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: What about the "proposed consensus" in the previous subsection? I see it only as proposed, but you haven't weighed in on it AFAICS. --Nczempin (talk) 05:53, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

text: And note that while 's changes may have gone "your way", this doesn't mean there is consensus. --Nczempin (talk) 05:55, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: You don't think implementing a large fraction of the things proposed in the subsection (e.g. describing the award), while not necessarily using the exact wording of the subsection, counts as weighing in? I didn't do the parts about changing what the article says about the impact of SICP, or removing the Harvey source so if you still want to find a dispute to resolve by consensus, there's that. I happen to think that stating the impact in our own words is a better choice than a pull quote, and that having Harvey as a source is better than removing that source, but I don't feel strongly enough about it to argue, so you'll have to find someone else to do that. I'd rather step back from the dispute for now as you already suggested (so why are you encouraging me not to now?) and find some way to appease  so we can go back to more cooperative patterns (we've had a long history of working constructively on a different article before butting heads here). —David Eppstein (talk) 06:25, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I didn't express myself clearly. I didn't suggest you step back from the dispute, I merely suggested that you both refrain from editing the article (as opposed to this discussion page; please do continue to contribute) until the issue is settled. I did not read all the details in the section before "proposed consensus". I just got that there was a lot of back and forth, which seemed to culminate in this proposal (as you describe it now it seems that search for consensus is only the last step and most of it has already been agreed on?), and then a) you seemed to ignore that proposal and b) it was suggested it should be taken to other pages, which I found a bit strange, since it seemed to be a content dispute between the two of you and if you are fine with the proposal you can just agree and things should go back to normal. It is perfectly normal, especially when people are able to compromise/agree, that just two people find "consensus" (maybe it is phrased in a misleading way then, all that's really necessary is that you two don't turn it into an WP:EW. So if I misunderstood, and everything is now settled to both parties satisfaction I'll happily step out of this, and will even "allow" (not that it is for me to allow; only trying to mediate) you two to go back to editing. At the moment I am unclear as to what the actual state of the dispute is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nczempin (talk • contribs) 06:55, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

text: I am not happy with the sentence in question or source on it. I was happy to see the award this dispute uncovered added to the article. The reorganization is not an issue to me.
Until you stepped in, the matter had reached a point of diminishing returns for me, even though a Wikipedia concensus had not been reached. 
I believe the consensus I proposed better meets the goals of Wikipeida, and the needs of it's readers. It also meets what  said his primary goal was. I be happy to answer any other questions you have about the reasons I gave above, and would welcome your input on the proposed consensus. Lentower (talk) 16:08, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Wider [[WP:OWN]] problem

message: I have removed the sentence, "He is Jewish" from the article since it was sourced to a software sales website and user-contributed content site. I have no strong objections if the sentence is re-added with appropriate sources, although the usual convention is that religion/ethnicity information is included in a biography only if (1) it is relevant to the subject's notability, and/or (2) the subject self-identifies to belong to those classes. Abecedare (talk) 16:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Religion 

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thread_title:  External links modified