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Now you've actually started talking to each other, can we remove the article from the 3O page? Or do you still need help? Satyris410 ( talk) 19:20, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
No, don't remove it—because Pi314m hasn't started talking to me (other than one comment accepting my apology for a snarky erroneous criticism that I have now removed from the first sentence that started the section above). Last night I made the latest of several comments (starting 31 May UTC) on Pi314m's personal Talk page, "a set of comments intended to convince you that your trying to "help out" with the " Backup" article is not in fact helpful, because you didn't ask anybody on the Talk page what would be helpful." Pi314m hasn't yet made any reply to those comments either.
I can think of only two possible reasons:
The first is that Pi314m's religious sensibilities were immediately offended because I used the phrase "up his tuchus" in the first comment of the section above. Since I only used the phrase to catch his attention—I'm usually very careful not to use offensive language, I'd be happy to apologize for using it.
But I think the real reason is that Pi314m does have a "my way or the highway, even if I don't understand what I'm editing and violate WP rules" approach. Read the preceding sections on his personal Talk page, and then sample his recent contributions. If there's any indication of his interacting with other WP editors, I didn't see it.
Satyris410, given what I've just said will I need to need to repost the article on the 3O page in two days? I'd really like to handle this problem through a 3O, but if necessary I'll proceed to an RfC—because I consider this problem to be very serious for the article. DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 20:32, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
If I do have to repost the article on the 3O page, or proceed to an RfC, I think I'd have to use the word "vandalism" that is a WP-fraught synonym for substantial deletion of useful text. I don't want to do that, because of the future consequences for Pi314m as a WP editor if I can justify it—which IMHO I can.
DovidBenAvraham (
talk)
21:41, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
Last night I looked at what Pi314m did to the " Outsourcing" article from January to May 2019, and IMHO I've discovered both the motivation and the main technique for what he does with existing articles. His motivation is "my redefinition of the article's subject or the highway". His technique is merging related articles into the article he has chosen to redefine, and then deleting any part of the merged-in article that doesn't fit his definition of the merged-into article's subject.
Let's first see what happened in January 2019 after Pi314m merged the "Insourcing" article—without any discussion on " Talk:Insourcing" (hatnote—what hatnote?)—into " Outsourcing". He then expanded the "Insourcing" sub-section on that subject from 0.25 screen-pages to 0.75 screen pages—mostly referenced by magazine articles, but cut the "Standpoint of government" section from 2 screen-pages to 1 screen page—with cites of a 2006 semi-academic article by Richard Baldwin cut from 6 to 1. Pi314m commented "This article is not meant [my emphasis] to be at the PhD level, nor is it meant [my emphasis] to be about unemployment. Now the word unemployment only appears five times, two from a NYTimes financial writer."; that's what I mean by redefinition of an article's subject.
In February 2019 Pi314m deleted a paragraph beginning "Further, the label outsourcing has been found to be used for too many different kinds of exchanges often in confusing ways." from the "Insourcing" sub-section, moving it into the article A. Aneesh about the author of its main reference. Sorry, the fact that the "outsourcing-based market model fails to explain why these [global software] development projects are jointly developed, and not simply bought and sold in the marketplace" contradicts Pi314m's redefinition of the article's subject to fit the outsourcing-based market model.
In March and April 2019 Pi314m merged " Engineering process outsourcing", " Business process outsourcing", " Information technology outsourcing", and " Farmshoring"—all done without any discussion on their Talk pages—into the " Outsourcing" article. In all three cases he soon deleted all or most of the merged-in articles' text.
In March and April 2019 Pi314m also merged " Regional insourcing", " Homeshoring", " Personal offshoring", and " Nearshoring" into the " Outsourcing" article. However in these cases he seems to have kept at least the key definitions from the merged-in articles, so maybe the merging-in of those articles—which again was done without any discussion on their Talk pages—didn't actually delete much text.
The overall picture that emerges is of Pi314m deciding without any discussion to consolidate a whole series of related articles into a single article that conforms to his concept of the subject matter. He can technologically get away with this flouting of Wikipedia rules, apparently because because he is doing a copy-paste of the merged-in article's text followed by replacing that text with a redirect to the moved-to article. The only reason I caught Pi314m is because he did copy-pastes between a sub-section of the "Enterprise client-server backup" section and preceding sections of the same Backup article. As is his custom, he did not discuss these "merges" on that article's Talk page; if he had, I would have carefully explained (as I now have on Pi314m's personal Talk page as well as in the section above this) that application feature descriptions in the last section of that article may seem like duplicates of the same-named feature descriptions in preceding sections of the article—but they're not.
IMHO the underlying problem is that—as I've shown in the preceding paragraphs—Pi314m believes that Wikipedia gives him the right to be the sole decider of the subject and contents of an article, even when it's partly about subject matter of which he knows nothing. That would explain why he has not responded to my subject-related comments in the Talk page section above, and why he reverted my 26 May edits that put back the two feature-description paragraphs he had deleted from the "Performance" subsection of the "Enterprise client-server backup" section; he considers that I have no right to second-guess his decisions. It's debatable whether a 3O will be sufficient to change Pi314m's belief; I now think that it will require an RfC at the least. But good luck as we follow the prescribed process, Seraphimblade! DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 06:28, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
Should Pi314m be permitted to, without prior or subsequent discussion, merge other articles into this one, merge paragraphs from the rear " Enterprise client-server backup" section of this article into preceding sections—and then immediately delete most of the text from what has been merged-in?
What Pi314m initially did to this article—without discussion—from 21 May through 27 May is described at the beginning of the preceding "Rewrite ..." section of the article's Talk page: merging another article, cutting much of what was merged in, and then immediately reverting my edits responding to that merging-in. What he also did to the article's pre-existing text during that same time period is also described in that the preceding "Rewrite ..."section of the article's Talk page: essentially destroying two paragraphs in the article's " Enterprise client-server backup" section by trying to merge them—grossly-simplified—into one of the article's preceding sections that deals with personal backup applications. In this section of Pi314m's personal Talk page, I supplemented an invitation to him to discuss the change on the article's Talk page with an explanation of the two-audience-level structure of this article; Pi314m never gave any indication that he had read any of what I had written there.
In addition Pi314m merged-in a second article, except that after that merge-in he deleted all but the lead two sentences of the merged-in article. That, as I pointed out to him—also in this section of Pi314m's personal Talk page—is something he is not entitled to do under rule 4 of the Wikipedia Deletion policy, because IMHO that article had "relevant or encyclopedic content" that had nothing to do with the "Backup" article. I have preserved the deleted content of that article (preceded by the content of the two " Enterprise client-server backup" paragraphs before Pi314m grossly simplified them while "internally merging" them) in the preceding "Rewrite ..."section of the article's Talk page.
Pi314m has a distinct fondness for "cut-and-paste moves" that he calls "mergers", which he does without community consensus—frequently starting in January. He did one in January 2017,and was rebuked for it by Diannaa. He did another one in January 2018, and was warned about it by Matthiaspaul—who said "If you continue these kinds of edits, they will have to be regarded as vandalism which may led to a block." On the Talk page for that second article, Matthiaspaul said "No, this is not how it works! It is good that you are trying to be constructive, but your edits are not. You are already edit-warring over it and if you continue to try to force your undiscussed changes into the articles, this may led [sic] to a block. [new paragraph] Such changes require prior discussion and won't be carried out unless the outcome of such a discussion (after a reasonable amount of time for other editors to see, think about it and react - typically months) would be consensus for a merge." Pi314m quoted part of that on his personal Talk page, saying "I too can and hopefully will learn from what you said on the article talk page". However starting in January 2019 he did another series of "cut-and-paste moves" without community consensus, which nobody caught him doing—so I have described them starting in the 9th paragraph of the preceding "3O" section of this article's Talk page.
The preceding "3O" section of this article's Talk page was named "3O" by Satyris410 because it was supposed to be where some third editor — Seraphimblade eventually—would provide his/her Third Opinion. However Pi314m never responded on the preceding "Rewrite ..."section of the article's Talk page, which was the section I had listed in my request for a Third Opinion, other than to graciously thank me for my apology for a later-removed bit of (as I later found out, unjustified) snark I had put into the first sentence of that section.
The title of this section is Request for comment on _un-discussed_ text-destroying "merging-in", both of other articles_and of paragraphs within this article, by Pi314m. Sorry I didn't know I'd have to repeat it myself in this section.
DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 01:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
There is a clear consensus that the "Enterprise client-server backup" section at the end of the article should be separated from the "Backup" article into a stand-alone article. The content is now at Enterprise client-server backup.
Should the "Enterprise client-server backup" section at the end of the article be separated from the "Backup" article into a stand-alone article? If so, how would I protect that separate" article from an instant "simplifying" re-merger into " Backup"? DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 05:19, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
*No split necessary for any section per
WP:CONSPLIT and could be considered a redundant
WP:CFORK. --
NikkeKatski [Elite] (
talk)
14:28, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Mainly between 2007 and 2011, the first 7 screen-pages of the " Backup" article evolved as a comprehensive summary of what every computer-using person should know about backing up his/her data. In November 2017 I moved the description of certain backup features from another article to a new 2-screen-page "Enterprise client-server backup" section at the end of the article. The lead of that section clearly says it is about "a class of software applications that back up data from a variety of client computers centrally to one or more server computers, with the particular needs of enterprises in mind." The section goes on to describe special features typically incorporated in that class of applications, with an explanation of the enterprise need for each feature. Should that end section be separated from the "Backup" article into a stand-alone article?
There is evidence that having a single article with sections aimed at audiences with different levels of IT knowledge is confusing for some readers. On 26 May 2019 another editor deleted these two paragraphs from the "Performance" sub-section of the "Enterprise client-server backup" section. He then inserted greatly simplified descriptions of the same features into the " Backup types" sub-section and " Manipulation of data and dataset optimization" section of personal backup sections of the article, evidently to fit those features into his own knowledge of the backup process. Unfortunately his knowledge, because of his evident unfamiliarity with enterprise IT much beyond the early 1990s, does not encompass the application features described in "Enterprise client-server backup"—all of which were developed sometime after 2005 as a result of advances in hardware and operating systems. The fact that his personal backup level of knowledge will be shared by many Wikipedia readers argues for splitting the "Enterprise client-server backup" section off into a separate article, with sufficient two-way linking to guide interested readers to the enterprise features while explaining those features as sophisticated extensions of their simpler roots.
Unfortunately that particular other editor has a distinct fondness for "cut-and-paste moves" that he calls "mergers", which he does—frequently starting in the month of January—without community consensus. He did one in January 2017, and was rebuked for it by Diannaa. He did another one in January 2018, and was warned about it by Matthiaspaul—who said "If you continue these kinds of edits, they will have to be regarded as vandalism which may led to a block." On the Talk page for that second article, Matthiaspaul said "No, this is not how it works! It is good that you are trying to be constructive, but your edits are not. You are already edit-warring over it and if you continue to try to force your undiscussed changes into the articles, this may led [sic] to a block. [new paragraph] Such changes require prior discussion and won't be carried out unless the outcome of such a discussion (after a reasonable amount of time for other editors to see, think about it and react - typically months) would be consensus for a merge." The other editor quoted part of that on his personal Talk page, saying "I too can and hopefully will learn from what you said on the article talk page". However starting in January 2019 he did another series of 9 "cut-and-paste moves" without community consensus into the " Outsourcing" article, which nobody caught him doing; I have described them starting in the 9th paragraph of the "3O" section of this article's Talk page. Starting in late May 2019 that other editor editor without community consensus did "cut-and-paste moves" of two other articles into the "Backup" article, after the second of which he deleted the entire contents of the merged-in article except for the two-sentence lead—because the body of that second article (which I've copied here) discussed an application not directly related to backup.
NikkeKatski [Elite] suggested above "If we gain consensus for the obviously superior your version of the article then any attempts to revert it can probably be considered edit warring (if it wasn't considered that already) and would be more easily punishable." The problem with that approach is that, based on his history I've noted in the preceding paragraph, this particular other editor will do a "cut-and-paste move" of a separate "Enterprise client-server backup" article back into the "Backup" article almost instantly. So there would be no time to gain any community consensus—edit war (which I'd rather avoid) or no edit war. In any case this particular other editor editor doesn't pay any attention to any other editor; he refused to respond to either me or
Seraphimblade in the
Third Opinion section of this Talk page. So how would I protect a separate "Enterprise client-server backup" article from an instant "simplifying" re-merger?
DovidBenAvraham (
talk)
04:38, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
DovidBenAvraham I don't see any reason to remove that section per WP:CONSPLIT and one could argue that it would be giving it WP:UNDUE weight. Also potentially you could purposely start an RfC asking "should we split" (RfC doesnt always have to be worded in your favor, but your !vote would be in your favor) and if we get enough involved wikipedians to participate in the RfC any attempt to go against consensus directly could justify punishment especially considering past behavior. Theres always the chance that wikipedians may agree with the split but hey if that happens then just let it be for the time being. -- NikkeKatski [Elite] ( talk) 22:07, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I've now copied the edited-out portions of the "Continuous data processing" article into an earlier section of this Talk page. The editing-out is what happened immediately after the first of the particular other editor's "cut-and-paste moves" of two other articles into the "Backup" article; I only alluded to that move in the last sentence of the third paragraph of this "Discussion" sub-section. If you compare what was edited-out to this sub-section of the article, you'll realize that the particular other editor's level of IT knowledge has left him unable to deal with the idea that all "CDP" personal backup applications are in fact "near-CDP". A "near-CDP" backup application in fact does un-scripted incremental backups once every 10 minutes to once an hour, which is sufficient for a personal user but not for an enterprise administrator (think about the consequences if the backup administrators at Target had only been able to restore cash-register transactions to 10 minutes before their nationwide system failure a couple of days ago). The SNIA's "every write" definition quoted here effectively means that a "true-CDP" backup application must be tied into a virtual machine, an approach currently available in several applications which only became available at great expense 10 years after the particular other editor's presumed departure from enterprise IT. FYI, I've done the copying merely as additional evidence for the Administrative Noticeboard; I thought you other editors might be interested in reading it. DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 02:14, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
It helps both from a WP:AN perspective and an article upkeep perspective ;p -- NikkeKatski [Elite] ( talk) 12:46, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
{{
R with history}}
and {{
R to section}}
after the original re-direct. However I was unable to recover the revision history for "Continuous data protection", even though I reverted my recreation after the fact and put in the templates. I moved the specific other editor's sneaky additional section and sub-section in the "
Data repository" article back to the re-established "Information Repository" article, including the one referencing the Mount Vernon NY Public Library.
DovidBenAvraham (
talk)
02:34, 20 June 2019 (UTC)Those who haven't (including Pi314m) should cast !votes under survey section if they have come to a conclusion as to what their opinion on the matter is. -- NikkeKatski [Elite] ( talk) 15:49, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
I put in a
request for advice from
Melcous, who put in the {{
incomprehensible}}
tag. She replied on her Talk page "my opinion would be that it currently comes across as more of a "
how to" rather than an encyclopedia article", and was kind enough to go so far as to make a first-pass revision to the article. I like what she's done, although
Pi314m may not. My only revisions so far are—in the article lead—to add back the Note and Kissell ref on "archive file"—because that term needs definition for its
use in the rest of the article, to add back the specification that backed-up data must already be in secondary storage—to prevent a repeat of the
Rmokadem maneuver, and to add back a link to the "
Enterprise client-server backup" article—per
the outcome of the RfC. I won't go into the reasons for these add-backs, because they were discussed
ad nauseam—as linked to—on this Talk page when I originally added them to the article months ago.
DovidBenAvraham (
talk)
01:02, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
After simplifications to "Near-CDP", clarified what it can and can't do for complex files and applications. DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 19:43, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
In going over article after my latest edits, discovered an old Tom's Hardware article is no longer accessible directly and has been removed from the Wayback Machine. This is a disturbing trend I already encountered for another publication ref'd in the Continuous Data Protection article. DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 04:30, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Melcous has now made more changes that in general make the article easier to understand. What she has edited out is mostly text that was added from 2004-2011, or by Pi314m back in May 2019. However there are a couple of exceptions to this, which I'll have to remedy one way or another. One exception is that, by deleting "True" as the first word of the "Near-CDP" sub-section, she concealed a distinction I was at pains to make between true CDP—a feature which is very expensive but vital for high-intensity interactive applications—and near-CDP—a feature which at most is adequate for low-intensity interactive applications (as I stated in part of the "Live data" sub-section text she deleted). The other exception is that the text she deleted included old mentions of enterprise client-server backup features, but also links I had added. Once I originally established " Enterprise client-server backup" as the last section of the " Backup" article in late 2017, those old mentions no longer needed to be there. However I'm worried about pageviews statistics showing fewer people than I think should be are looking at that section since it was split off into a separate article. I've therefore used those mentions to put in appropriate links to the split-off article, but she has now deleted several of those links—leaving no place to put them back in. I'll discuss these problems on the article Talk page, as I think she has suggested; other editors may have suggestions. DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 19:06, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
Somehow, in all these years, nobody ever put into the article any mention of the versioning backup feature—other than a mention of a versioning filesystem—that even most personal backup applications have! Motivated at least in part by Pi314m's "internal merge" of "automated data grooming", I have now put in the proper mention—and its justification of a user-initiated backup and restore objective. DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 09:59, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
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Backup article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
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Now you've actually started talking to each other, can we remove the article from the 3O page? Or do you still need help? Satyris410 ( talk) 19:20, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
No, don't remove it—because Pi314m hasn't started talking to me (other than one comment accepting my apology for a snarky erroneous criticism that I have now removed from the first sentence that started the section above). Last night I made the latest of several comments (starting 31 May UTC) on Pi314m's personal Talk page, "a set of comments intended to convince you that your trying to "help out" with the " Backup" article is not in fact helpful, because you didn't ask anybody on the Talk page what would be helpful." Pi314m hasn't yet made any reply to those comments either.
I can think of only two possible reasons:
The first is that Pi314m's religious sensibilities were immediately offended because I used the phrase "up his tuchus" in the first comment of the section above. Since I only used the phrase to catch his attention—I'm usually very careful not to use offensive language, I'd be happy to apologize for using it.
But I think the real reason is that Pi314m does have a "my way or the highway, even if I don't understand what I'm editing and violate WP rules" approach. Read the preceding sections on his personal Talk page, and then sample his recent contributions. If there's any indication of his interacting with other WP editors, I didn't see it.
Satyris410, given what I've just said will I need to need to repost the article on the 3O page in two days? I'd really like to handle this problem through a 3O, but if necessary I'll proceed to an RfC—because I consider this problem to be very serious for the article. DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 20:32, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
If I do have to repost the article on the 3O page, or proceed to an RfC, I think I'd have to use the word "vandalism" that is a WP-fraught synonym for substantial deletion of useful text. I don't want to do that, because of the future consequences for Pi314m as a WP editor if I can justify it—which IMHO I can.
DovidBenAvraham (
talk)
21:41, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
Last night I looked at what Pi314m did to the " Outsourcing" article from January to May 2019, and IMHO I've discovered both the motivation and the main technique for what he does with existing articles. His motivation is "my redefinition of the article's subject or the highway". His technique is merging related articles into the article he has chosen to redefine, and then deleting any part of the merged-in article that doesn't fit his definition of the merged-into article's subject.
Let's first see what happened in January 2019 after Pi314m merged the "Insourcing" article—without any discussion on " Talk:Insourcing" (hatnote—what hatnote?)—into " Outsourcing". He then expanded the "Insourcing" sub-section on that subject from 0.25 screen-pages to 0.75 screen pages—mostly referenced by magazine articles, but cut the "Standpoint of government" section from 2 screen-pages to 1 screen page—with cites of a 2006 semi-academic article by Richard Baldwin cut from 6 to 1. Pi314m commented "This article is not meant [my emphasis] to be at the PhD level, nor is it meant [my emphasis] to be about unemployment. Now the word unemployment only appears five times, two from a NYTimes financial writer."; that's what I mean by redefinition of an article's subject.
In February 2019 Pi314m deleted a paragraph beginning "Further, the label outsourcing has been found to be used for too many different kinds of exchanges often in confusing ways." from the "Insourcing" sub-section, moving it into the article A. Aneesh about the author of its main reference. Sorry, the fact that the "outsourcing-based market model fails to explain why these [global software] development projects are jointly developed, and not simply bought and sold in the marketplace" contradicts Pi314m's redefinition of the article's subject to fit the outsourcing-based market model.
In March and April 2019 Pi314m merged " Engineering process outsourcing", " Business process outsourcing", " Information technology outsourcing", and " Farmshoring"—all done without any discussion on their Talk pages—into the " Outsourcing" article. In all three cases he soon deleted all or most of the merged-in articles' text.
In March and April 2019 Pi314m also merged " Regional insourcing", " Homeshoring", " Personal offshoring", and " Nearshoring" into the " Outsourcing" article. However in these cases he seems to have kept at least the key definitions from the merged-in articles, so maybe the merging-in of those articles—which again was done without any discussion on their Talk pages—didn't actually delete much text.
The overall picture that emerges is of Pi314m deciding without any discussion to consolidate a whole series of related articles into a single article that conforms to his concept of the subject matter. He can technologically get away with this flouting of Wikipedia rules, apparently because because he is doing a copy-paste of the merged-in article's text followed by replacing that text with a redirect to the moved-to article. The only reason I caught Pi314m is because he did copy-pastes between a sub-section of the "Enterprise client-server backup" section and preceding sections of the same Backup article. As is his custom, he did not discuss these "merges" on that article's Talk page; if he had, I would have carefully explained (as I now have on Pi314m's personal Talk page as well as in the section above this) that application feature descriptions in the last section of that article may seem like duplicates of the same-named feature descriptions in preceding sections of the article—but they're not.
IMHO the underlying problem is that—as I've shown in the preceding paragraphs—Pi314m believes that Wikipedia gives him the right to be the sole decider of the subject and contents of an article, even when it's partly about subject matter of which he knows nothing. That would explain why he has not responded to my subject-related comments in the Talk page section above, and why he reverted my 26 May edits that put back the two feature-description paragraphs he had deleted from the "Performance" subsection of the "Enterprise client-server backup" section; he considers that I have no right to second-guess his decisions. It's debatable whether a 3O will be sufficient to change Pi314m's belief; I now think that it will require an RfC at the least. But good luck as we follow the prescribed process, Seraphimblade! DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 06:28, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
Should Pi314m be permitted to, without prior or subsequent discussion, merge other articles into this one, merge paragraphs from the rear " Enterprise client-server backup" section of this article into preceding sections—and then immediately delete most of the text from what has been merged-in?
What Pi314m initially did to this article—without discussion—from 21 May through 27 May is described at the beginning of the preceding "Rewrite ..." section of the article's Talk page: merging another article, cutting much of what was merged in, and then immediately reverting my edits responding to that merging-in. What he also did to the article's pre-existing text during that same time period is also described in that the preceding "Rewrite ..."section of the article's Talk page: essentially destroying two paragraphs in the article's " Enterprise client-server backup" section by trying to merge them—grossly-simplified—into one of the article's preceding sections that deals with personal backup applications. In this section of Pi314m's personal Talk page, I supplemented an invitation to him to discuss the change on the article's Talk page with an explanation of the two-audience-level structure of this article; Pi314m never gave any indication that he had read any of what I had written there.
In addition Pi314m merged-in a second article, except that after that merge-in he deleted all but the lead two sentences of the merged-in article. That, as I pointed out to him—also in this section of Pi314m's personal Talk page—is something he is not entitled to do under rule 4 of the Wikipedia Deletion policy, because IMHO that article had "relevant or encyclopedic content" that had nothing to do with the "Backup" article. I have preserved the deleted content of that article (preceded by the content of the two " Enterprise client-server backup" paragraphs before Pi314m grossly simplified them while "internally merging" them) in the preceding "Rewrite ..."section of the article's Talk page.
Pi314m has a distinct fondness for "cut-and-paste moves" that he calls "mergers", which he does without community consensus—frequently starting in January. He did one in January 2017,and was rebuked for it by Diannaa. He did another one in January 2018, and was warned about it by Matthiaspaul—who said "If you continue these kinds of edits, they will have to be regarded as vandalism which may led to a block." On the Talk page for that second article, Matthiaspaul said "No, this is not how it works! It is good that you are trying to be constructive, but your edits are not. You are already edit-warring over it and if you continue to try to force your undiscussed changes into the articles, this may led [sic] to a block. [new paragraph] Such changes require prior discussion and won't be carried out unless the outcome of such a discussion (after a reasonable amount of time for other editors to see, think about it and react - typically months) would be consensus for a merge." Pi314m quoted part of that on his personal Talk page, saying "I too can and hopefully will learn from what you said on the article talk page". However starting in January 2019 he did another series of "cut-and-paste moves" without community consensus, which nobody caught him doing—so I have described them starting in the 9th paragraph of the preceding "3O" section of this article's Talk page.
The preceding "3O" section of this article's Talk page was named "3O" by Satyris410 because it was supposed to be where some third editor — Seraphimblade eventually—would provide his/her Third Opinion. However Pi314m never responded on the preceding "Rewrite ..."section of the article's Talk page, which was the section I had listed in my request for a Third Opinion, other than to graciously thank me for my apology for a later-removed bit of (as I later found out, unjustified) snark I had put into the first sentence of that section.
The title of this section is Request for comment on _un-discussed_ text-destroying "merging-in", both of other articles_and of paragraphs within this article, by Pi314m. Sorry I didn't know I'd have to repeat it myself in this section.
DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 01:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
There is a clear consensus that the "Enterprise client-server backup" section at the end of the article should be separated from the "Backup" article into a stand-alone article. The content is now at Enterprise client-server backup.
Should the "Enterprise client-server backup" section at the end of the article be separated from the "Backup" article into a stand-alone article? If so, how would I protect that separate" article from an instant "simplifying" re-merger into " Backup"? DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 05:19, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
*No split necessary for any section per
WP:CONSPLIT and could be considered a redundant
WP:CFORK. --
NikkeKatski [Elite] (
talk)
14:28, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Mainly between 2007 and 2011, the first 7 screen-pages of the " Backup" article evolved as a comprehensive summary of what every computer-using person should know about backing up his/her data. In November 2017 I moved the description of certain backup features from another article to a new 2-screen-page "Enterprise client-server backup" section at the end of the article. The lead of that section clearly says it is about "a class of software applications that back up data from a variety of client computers centrally to one or more server computers, with the particular needs of enterprises in mind." The section goes on to describe special features typically incorporated in that class of applications, with an explanation of the enterprise need for each feature. Should that end section be separated from the "Backup" article into a stand-alone article?
There is evidence that having a single article with sections aimed at audiences with different levels of IT knowledge is confusing for some readers. On 26 May 2019 another editor deleted these two paragraphs from the "Performance" sub-section of the "Enterprise client-server backup" section. He then inserted greatly simplified descriptions of the same features into the " Backup types" sub-section and " Manipulation of data and dataset optimization" section of personal backup sections of the article, evidently to fit those features into his own knowledge of the backup process. Unfortunately his knowledge, because of his evident unfamiliarity with enterprise IT much beyond the early 1990s, does not encompass the application features described in "Enterprise client-server backup"—all of which were developed sometime after 2005 as a result of advances in hardware and operating systems. The fact that his personal backup level of knowledge will be shared by many Wikipedia readers argues for splitting the "Enterprise client-server backup" section off into a separate article, with sufficient two-way linking to guide interested readers to the enterprise features while explaining those features as sophisticated extensions of their simpler roots.
Unfortunately that particular other editor has a distinct fondness for "cut-and-paste moves" that he calls "mergers", which he does—frequently starting in the month of January—without community consensus. He did one in January 2017, and was rebuked for it by Diannaa. He did another one in January 2018, and was warned about it by Matthiaspaul—who said "If you continue these kinds of edits, they will have to be regarded as vandalism which may led to a block." On the Talk page for that second article, Matthiaspaul said "No, this is not how it works! It is good that you are trying to be constructive, but your edits are not. You are already edit-warring over it and if you continue to try to force your undiscussed changes into the articles, this may led [sic] to a block. [new paragraph] Such changes require prior discussion and won't be carried out unless the outcome of such a discussion (after a reasonable amount of time for other editors to see, think about it and react - typically months) would be consensus for a merge." The other editor quoted part of that on his personal Talk page, saying "I too can and hopefully will learn from what you said on the article talk page". However starting in January 2019 he did another series of 9 "cut-and-paste moves" without community consensus into the " Outsourcing" article, which nobody caught him doing; I have described them starting in the 9th paragraph of the "3O" section of this article's Talk page. Starting in late May 2019 that other editor editor without community consensus did "cut-and-paste moves" of two other articles into the "Backup" article, after the second of which he deleted the entire contents of the merged-in article except for the two-sentence lead—because the body of that second article (which I've copied here) discussed an application not directly related to backup.
NikkeKatski [Elite] suggested above "If we gain consensus for the obviously superior your version of the article then any attempts to revert it can probably be considered edit warring (if it wasn't considered that already) and would be more easily punishable." The problem with that approach is that, based on his history I've noted in the preceding paragraph, this particular other editor will do a "cut-and-paste move" of a separate "Enterprise client-server backup" article back into the "Backup" article almost instantly. So there would be no time to gain any community consensus—edit war (which I'd rather avoid) or no edit war. In any case this particular other editor editor doesn't pay any attention to any other editor; he refused to respond to either me or
Seraphimblade in the
Third Opinion section of this Talk page. So how would I protect a separate "Enterprise client-server backup" article from an instant "simplifying" re-merger?
DovidBenAvraham (
talk)
04:38, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
DovidBenAvraham I don't see any reason to remove that section per WP:CONSPLIT and one could argue that it would be giving it WP:UNDUE weight. Also potentially you could purposely start an RfC asking "should we split" (RfC doesnt always have to be worded in your favor, but your !vote would be in your favor) and if we get enough involved wikipedians to participate in the RfC any attempt to go against consensus directly could justify punishment especially considering past behavior. Theres always the chance that wikipedians may agree with the split but hey if that happens then just let it be for the time being. -- NikkeKatski [Elite] ( talk) 22:07, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I've now copied the edited-out portions of the "Continuous data processing" article into an earlier section of this Talk page. The editing-out is what happened immediately after the first of the particular other editor's "cut-and-paste moves" of two other articles into the "Backup" article; I only alluded to that move in the last sentence of the third paragraph of this "Discussion" sub-section. If you compare what was edited-out to this sub-section of the article, you'll realize that the particular other editor's level of IT knowledge has left him unable to deal with the idea that all "CDP" personal backup applications are in fact "near-CDP". A "near-CDP" backup application in fact does un-scripted incremental backups once every 10 minutes to once an hour, which is sufficient for a personal user but not for an enterprise administrator (think about the consequences if the backup administrators at Target had only been able to restore cash-register transactions to 10 minutes before their nationwide system failure a couple of days ago). The SNIA's "every write" definition quoted here effectively means that a "true-CDP" backup application must be tied into a virtual machine, an approach currently available in several applications which only became available at great expense 10 years after the particular other editor's presumed departure from enterprise IT. FYI, I've done the copying merely as additional evidence for the Administrative Noticeboard; I thought you other editors might be interested in reading it. DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 02:14, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
It helps both from a WP:AN perspective and an article upkeep perspective ;p -- NikkeKatski [Elite] ( talk) 12:46, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
{{
R with history}}
and {{
R to section}}
after the original re-direct. However I was unable to recover the revision history for "Continuous data protection", even though I reverted my recreation after the fact and put in the templates. I moved the specific other editor's sneaky additional section and sub-section in the "
Data repository" article back to the re-established "Information Repository" article, including the one referencing the Mount Vernon NY Public Library.
DovidBenAvraham (
talk)
02:34, 20 June 2019 (UTC)Those who haven't (including Pi314m) should cast !votes under survey section if they have come to a conclusion as to what their opinion on the matter is. -- NikkeKatski [Elite] ( talk) 15:49, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
I put in a
request for advice from
Melcous, who put in the {{
incomprehensible}}
tag. She replied on her Talk page "my opinion would be that it currently comes across as more of a "
how to" rather than an encyclopedia article", and was kind enough to go so far as to make a first-pass revision to the article. I like what she's done, although
Pi314m may not. My only revisions so far are—in the article lead—to add back the Note and Kissell ref on "archive file"—because that term needs definition for its
use in the rest of the article, to add back the specification that backed-up data must already be in secondary storage—to prevent a repeat of the
Rmokadem maneuver, and to add back a link to the "
Enterprise client-server backup" article—per
the outcome of the RfC. I won't go into the reasons for these add-backs, because they were discussed
ad nauseam—as linked to—on this Talk page when I originally added them to the article months ago.
DovidBenAvraham (
talk)
01:02, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
After simplifications to "Near-CDP", clarified what it can and can't do for complex files and applications. DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 19:43, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
In going over article after my latest edits, discovered an old Tom's Hardware article is no longer accessible directly and has been removed from the Wayback Machine. This is a disturbing trend I already encountered for another publication ref'd in the Continuous Data Protection article. DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 04:30, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Melcous has now made more changes that in general make the article easier to understand. What she has edited out is mostly text that was added from 2004-2011, or by Pi314m back in May 2019. However there are a couple of exceptions to this, which I'll have to remedy one way or another. One exception is that, by deleting "True" as the first word of the "Near-CDP" sub-section, she concealed a distinction I was at pains to make between true CDP—a feature which is very expensive but vital for high-intensity interactive applications—and near-CDP—a feature which at most is adequate for low-intensity interactive applications (as I stated in part of the "Live data" sub-section text she deleted). The other exception is that the text she deleted included old mentions of enterprise client-server backup features, but also links I had added. Once I originally established " Enterprise client-server backup" as the last section of the " Backup" article in late 2017, those old mentions no longer needed to be there. However I'm worried about pageviews statistics showing fewer people than I think should be are looking at that section since it was split off into a separate article. I've therefore used those mentions to put in appropriate links to the split-off article, but she has now deleted several of those links—leaving no place to put them back in. I'll discuss these problems on the article Talk page, as I think she has suggested; other editors may have suggestions. DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 19:06, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
Somehow, in all these years, nobody ever put into the article any mention of the versioning backup feature—other than a mention of a versioning filesystem—that even most personal backup applications have! Motivated at least in part by Pi314m's "internal merge" of "automated data grooming", I have now put in the proper mention—and its justification of a user-initiated backup and restore objective. DovidBenAvraham ( talk) 09:59, 22 August 2019 (UTC)