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This is just a request (which you guys are free to ignore) not to revert Dr. Michel's addition of the
Webots link (which then links to the site where he sells his software). I've sent him some email explaining a little about Wikipedia policies and offering my assistance, if he wants it. He developed Webots back in 1998 and I believe he owns the company that sells the software...and it's expensive for non-educational users, so this is just the type of link we usually revert. But, the best I can tell, his work is important and notable, and there are a lot of university students who agree, and he has a very active group of users on Yahoo. I think Wikiversity would benefit from sharing in some of that work and community, and I hope Wikipedia too, some day. Strike that, I will invite him and his users to join Wikiproject Robotics. - Dan
Dank55 (
talk)
22:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to just make a personal plea for interested editors to jump in over at WT:WikiProject Robotics. What is great about editing robotics articles on Wikipedia? (The fact that I meet so many highly accomplished people is tops for me.) What sucks? (Wikipedia rules? Or just the fact that it's such an intimidating subject?) Do people's eyes glaze over when you talk about what you do, and does that mean we need more support and understanding from the admins? Join us! - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 15:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
This link, added 2008/1/31, does seem to pass the test...they don't seem to be promoting or selling anything in particular, it's an attractive website representing the long-time work of a group, mostly academics in Italy, as far as I can tell. I'll check up on them (and all the other links) in a month or two. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 17:53, 31 January 2008 (UTC) Robo
Most of the external links are working and have content that doesn't violate any WP policy. Some appear to be deletable...if the broken links don't start working, and if no one objects, I'll delete the bad links in a couple of days.
Ten Best Robots isn't working at the moment.
HUAR is working, but the
HUAR page on Wikipedia seems better than the link in all respects, to me.
Robot news, theory of robotics is a Polish-language site based in Krakow. Although they have an English flag to click on, there's very little English content.
The roboethics official website was just added, but seems notable and fine.
I just added
Society of Robots myself, today. I have no connection to anyone at the site, except that I like them...they have "wiki values" and a lot to offer. I am trying to acquaint them with Wikipedia and Wikiversity, and get them to participate here in
WP:WikiProject Robotics. Of course, if anyone knows any reason we shouldn't accept this link, please share, I can't claim to know them well, but their tutorials are outstanding. Although their yearly contest is fairly small, I'm thinking of adding it in the "contest" section because of the high value of the tutorials...but I don't have any strong feeling about this, if anyone would prefer we not include smaller contests in this section.
- Dan
Dank55 (
talk)
03:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
It's wierd, but the anonymous edit was right: I can't find any link to JIRA now, it's JARA. I thought I had double-checked Rocket's link. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 22:11, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
We have had a hidden message (that is, using <!-- -->) for a while now on the article page at the top of External links saying that links will be reverted if they're not discussed on the talk page first. This is sensible, given the frequency of linkspam here. Recently, there has been an increase in the number of undiscussed wikilinks in See also, which then link to new pages that send people off to new external links ... which is the same problem, so I propose to treat it in the same way: I've added the same hidden message at the top of the See also section, and I intend to revert undiscussed wikilinks, unless anyone has a problem with that. There's been recent discussion on WP:Layout that 60 wikilinks is too many, so that's another reason to ask for new wikilinks to be discussed first. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 15:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I just noticed that this article is intended for inclusion in both Version 0.7 and Version 1.0, which is the printed and DVD version of Wikipedia, and some of the deadlines for Version 0.7 are this month. This makes it very important not to include any links that the general public might perceive as advertising, or even any links which might take advantage of the link from Wikipedia to become promotional at a future time, so I'm afraid the "newsy" links, no matter how well done, have got to move to DMOZ. (And btw, DMOZ isn't just an acceptable alternative, it's recommended by WP:EL.) Thoughts? - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 15:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
(Copied at anon. user's talk page) "130.64.177.109", you're more than welcome to collaborate on this article, I hope you are up to speed on the research at Tufts University and will help us write the article. But most people around here will say that "revolutions in medicine, the military and even outer-space exploration" and "Kaplan believes that..." are not sufficiently encyclopedic, in context, and will need some editing. Also, everything has to go if the only two sources you have are web press releases from Tufts. See WP:V for acceptable sources. (Yes, I know there was a press release there and elsewhere originally as a source, but it attracts attention when the article specifically promotes work done at Tufts. Also, there's a lot of work to be done to find verifiable sources for everything ... we tend to pick on whoever was the last to speak up, but sooner or later, all the "press releases", in some sense of the phrase, have to be re-sourced.) This all seems like common Wiki-knowledge to me now, but if I'm wrong or clarification is needed, someone jump in here please. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 00:17, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Hello, Thanks for your great effort reducing spam links, it is becoming a serious problem over the web, and i hope soon this 'spam culture' will fade away... (although i am not quite sure!). Anyway, here is an external link i am proposing for the robotics page:
http://www.ikalogic.com/cat_robot_navigation.php
I am not quite sure if this is the right place for that link. but the content is specially authentic and interesting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.50.95.247 ( talk) 00:24, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Any feelings about DaveFS's new wikilink to Human-robot interaction? No identified sources, but it appears to be a collaboration, and there are potential academic sources in the article. I'm not familiar with the field. The presumption for Robot at the moment is "we have more than enough links", so perhaps we should lean on those guys to at least source the article and make their case for inclusion of the link before we let them keep it? - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 13:50, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I believe the section on protests against robotics should have it's own article, for several reasons. Unfortunately, there are so many protest against the advancement of robotics, they can't fit in a tiny section of thier article; it needs it's own page in order to truly be comprehensive. Does any one else agree? The Pink Panther ( talk) 17:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I think other people might get annoyed with so many in-text links. I think it would be much easier to give this it's own article. The Pink Panther ( talk) 19:49, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Just got this email:
"Hi Dan, I just returned from holiday ...
I'm very sorry to hear this. www.personalrobotics.nl is a news/hobby/ blog site. Knowing that the robot article on wikipedia does refer for instance to "Boe-bot" and its company "Parallax", I don't understand why my site is removed?! Can you explain to me the policy of wikipedia with respect to this situation? On what basis are decisions made to remove one site and link to another? Knowing this policy, I can adjust my site." [name withheld, since I haven't gotten permission to release it]
Well, because I'm involved in a lot of conversations at once and I've gotten behind on link-patrol in Robots, and also because it's common practice on a page like this to suggest the changes first and then wait a while to see what the reaction is. I waited too long, I see, and the current External links aren't at all what we've agreed on; I'll fix that shortly. All the links that either are promotional or could become promotional without too much alteration have to move to http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Robotics/, and notice that we have a link to that site. (I would not be opposed to a proposal to link to some other link farm, if there's a good reason, but dmoz.com is the one that's recommended at WP:EL.) You were asking about "adjusting your site"; roughly speaking, the more a site looks like a collection of people trading information, and the less it looks like a site with pictures of neat robotic toys, the more likely the link is to survive here. See #I am proposing a link, just 3 sections above. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 19:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I really like the link to robots.net, even though it's a "newsy" site. The site doesn't just post cute press releases; it selects news that it thinks is important, and then explains why, and I like their judgment, too. Here's a typical example: "Posted 23 Mar 2008 at 16:50 UTC by Rog-a-matic. This nice overview of the differences between biological brains and modern computers highlights important reasons why our digital electronics and even neural network simulations running on them fall short of the abilities we take for granted in living systems. The list of points include content-addressable memory, variable clock rates, pointers as short term memory, lack of separation between software and hardware, unification of memory and processing, the underestimated complexity of synapses, self-organization, and the overall size of the systems."
Anything else people want either in or out? - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 05:10, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Deleted epigenetic robotics which is a redundant redirect, robot baseball which is a stub, future of robotics which has no non-wiki sources and is unevenly written, carbon chauvinism and Technocracy movement (little to do with robotics), and all references to specific consumer robots. Links to articles that represent a category of consumer robots are fine. Again, we want to make sure that when the printed Wikipedia Version 1.0 comes out, we don't get stuck with any links that could be interpreted as promotional of any product. Suggestions? - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 05:40, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
It seems to me Wikipedia is reaching a tipping point of greater participation by academics, and we should encourage that in every way possible. WP:Flagged revisions is coming to Wikipedia, probably in mid-April, and depending on how it's handled, it may deal with the top objection of academics to Wikipedia, that they have to constantly "baby-sit" their work to keep it from being vandalized.
As a first step, I rewrote the Softbots section. It needed it anyway, probably, but one thing that really upsets academics is when some competitor gets a glowing review in Wikipedia and they get no mention. It's better to keep discussions of what any particular group is doing brief, even when it may be significant work. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 15:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Hi Mac. At Robot, we're really choosy about external links, you can see the long messy history on the talk page, because everyone wants to link to us. I had to think about it a while, but I'm going to revert your video link from howthingswork.org ... although that's a great site. The first item in the video, the dentistry student, is apparently non-notable, because I could find no hits at all in newspapers (and I tried several different spellings). The second video about the video screen on wheels that makes medical rounds isn't particularly new or interesting as a robot, and we don't really do much with medical robotics in this article. It's also a news story from last July, and I don't see a lot of follow-up in newspapers since then. The third story is about combat robots, and it talks cheerfully about "saving soldiers' lives". A little too cheerfully ... a video about robots that kill people or assist the process should at least be somber and thoughtful. But I do like the howthingswork.org site. If you'd like to suggest other links, please do it here on the talk page, and consider adding links to other articles. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 03:22, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
The most recent edit complained that robots are not intelligent. The lead said that robots have "some degree of intelligence or ability to make choices based on the environment, often using automatic control or a preprogrammed sequence". I agree with the new editor that that's a little controversial and a little distracting for the lead, so I removed just "degree of intelligence or". See artificial intelligence for a good discussion. The bottom line is, 30 years ago, most people had a fairly wide view of what demonstrated "intelligence", and every time machines start getting good at something, we tend to "move the goalposts" (sorry for the American slang) and decide that maybe what they can do is not a good measure of intelligence after all. Since the meaning of the term keeps changing, it might be best not to try to use it to define what a robot is. Thoughts? - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 00:01, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
of the reference to the early Westinghouse robots that I just reverted? I left a note on the user's talk page offering assistance to try to find a reliable source for that information. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 04:37, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 02:43, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
I just reverted the IP edit that added a couple of links to Super Why!, per the invisible html comments on the article page asking people to discuss links first, and per this talk page. I also left a message on the user's talk page offering help in finding articles to link to. This issue comes up from time to time, so I'm asking again: does anyone think that we shouldn't revert undiscussed and improbable wikilinks and external links on sight (with a nice message on the user's talk page, of course)? The amount of linkspam has died off recently, so maybe that's a good sign; on the other hand, maybe the reason it died off was aggressive reverting, who knows. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 19:31, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Can someone please stop the trend in Wiki Articles of important and positive achievements of mankind surprisingly originating from some Muslim inventor or origin? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.164.5.166 ( talk) 21:53, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
May apply to about the first half of the article - convert some lists to prose and make better text consistency (join alonestanding sentences into articles).-- Kozuch ( talk) 20:39, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Rocket asked me if I was the culprit behind the "citation needed" tags; I was. The edit was http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Robot&diff=208022475&oldid=208006142. In other cases, I've been able to either improve the article myself or come up with a reason to delete inserted material, but I couldn't go either way in this case. The competition looked legitimate to me, so I didn't have a good reason to remove it, but I couldn't find reliable sources and none were provided. We haven't heard from 75.186.81, the original poster, in a while. I guess if the material still can't be sourced after almost 3 months, it may be time to delete it. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 14:58, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually, just reading this list of things, I would be highly surprised if they were not true.
Anyway, this is all text straight from the IGVC web site. Which, surely, is reliable enough to be a reference in itself. If you were interested in entering the competition, and read their web page, would you be highly suspicious of those claims, or would you just accept them? Personally, I'd have no to reason to doubt them. Which begs the question, why not just use the web page as the ref? Rocketmagnet ( talk) 18:29, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
In the first section of this article, there were a couple of references to a forum, which were removed because generally forums are not reliable references. However, in this particular case, I believe that a forum is a valid reference and the best reference.
The point being made in the article was there was a lot of discussion about the nature of robots. What reference could possibly be better than a forum where people are actually discussing the nature of robots?
Of the three references that were there originally, one remains. It points to a news article where several definitions are given, but it does not mention any discussion. Below that is a comments section (essentially a forum) where discussion is happening.
It would seem to me that either this ref is referring to the discussion below the article (the original intent of the ref), in which case refs to forums should be allowed. Or it's referring to the article, in which case it's a bad ref.
I move that we should put the two other refs to forums back in. And opinions? Rocketmagnet ( talk) 11:21, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Fly by comments: I found this discussion via Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard but my comments go beyond just the quality of the sources so I'm replying here instead. The first section is the WP:LEAD, which should be a summary of the material in the article proper. Maybe it would be better summarize the definition contents already in the article (which looks relatively well-sourced) instead of adding this new material? For the forum refs specifically, you would need reliable third party sources to establish why these specific discussions on these specific forums are of enough WP:WEIGHT to warrant inclusion in the article. Robotics as a field should have plenty of reliable and weighty sources available. I don't see why there's a reason to resort to using internet forums as sources. Secondary sources aren't only used to refer to the content itself, but also its weight. If there are no reliable secondary sources, maybe these discussions just aren't of enough weight to warrant inclusion. Siawase ( talk) 12:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm doing a bunch of things to push in the general direction of FAC. In general, the things people like at FAC don't make an article worse, and often make it better, but we don't actually have to go to FAC...I'm open to stopping my work at any time. Warning: I tend to make a lot of edits, it's a function of how my brain works (or doesn't). It will probably be easier to read the diff all at once by pulling up the history, clicking on the last and first edit you want to see, then clicking "Compare selected versions". Btw, WikEd is one of the tools you can opt for at "my preferences/gadgets", and WikEd has a great diff screen that works automatically, even when WikEd is "off", that is, even when you have clicked the WikEd icon so that it's gray and it's not your default edit screen. After you've checked WikEd in your "my preferences/gadgets" screen, and when you're editing some page, click the "toggle automatic improved diff" button (to the right of the WikEd off/on button). It will highlight the diffs in a new screen below the normal diff screen, whenever a diff is shown, that is, even when you're not editing.
I added a ref to what I think is the first relevant Chinese technology, a clock tower from 1088 with mechanical figurines that chimed the hours, and I changed the relevant section heading to the less Eurocentric "500 AD – 1500". ("Medieval" implies Western. "Modern" tends to imply Western too, and it wouldn't bother me to change that to a date range, but I prefer to leave things alone that have been in an article for a while, and generally, a focus on Europe is more okay after 1500.)
People at FAC are pretty brutal about links these days; it's best to have at least an argument that readers are going to want to click on the links, and that they'll be happy with what they find when they do. The argument is that very few readers are going to click on even a fifth of the links provided in the article. The reader doesn't know what they'll find when they click, and we do, so it's our job to enforce quality control. But I'll put off de-linkifying until later in the editing process.
The second paragraph in the lead is currently "While there is still discussion about which machines qualify as robots, a typical robot will have several, though not necessarily all of the following properties:
Everyone arriving at FAC has a certain amount of goodwill to burn through, and having 6 lists in the introductory material of the article will burn through all of ours and then some. I think we can prosify this list, and since I'm adding a couple of paragraphs to the lead to comply with WP:LEAD, we should prosify it IMO. How about something like this?
"There is still vigorous discussion among experts as to which machines qualify as robots; the current consensus might best be described as "I know one when I see one". There is however broad agreement that robots are artificially created and that they will have many or all of the following properties: they sense and skillfully manipulate their environment, make intelligent or programmed choices, move with one or more axes of rotation or translation, act without human intervention, and give the appearance of acting purposefully in the way a human or animal would." Some of the details I'm leaving out of the lead are explained well in the text. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 18:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | → | Archive 12 |
This is just a request (which you guys are free to ignore) not to revert Dr. Michel's addition of the
Webots link (which then links to the site where he sells his software). I've sent him some email explaining a little about Wikipedia policies and offering my assistance, if he wants it. He developed Webots back in 1998 and I believe he owns the company that sells the software...and it's expensive for non-educational users, so this is just the type of link we usually revert. But, the best I can tell, his work is important and notable, and there are a lot of university students who agree, and he has a very active group of users on Yahoo. I think Wikiversity would benefit from sharing in some of that work and community, and I hope Wikipedia too, some day. Strike that, I will invite him and his users to join Wikiproject Robotics. - Dan
Dank55 (
talk)
22:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to just make a personal plea for interested editors to jump in over at WT:WikiProject Robotics. What is great about editing robotics articles on Wikipedia? (The fact that I meet so many highly accomplished people is tops for me.) What sucks? (Wikipedia rules? Or just the fact that it's such an intimidating subject?) Do people's eyes glaze over when you talk about what you do, and does that mean we need more support and understanding from the admins? Join us! - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 15:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
This link, added 2008/1/31, does seem to pass the test...they don't seem to be promoting or selling anything in particular, it's an attractive website representing the long-time work of a group, mostly academics in Italy, as far as I can tell. I'll check up on them (and all the other links) in a month or two. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 17:53, 31 January 2008 (UTC) Robo
Most of the external links are working and have content that doesn't violate any WP policy. Some appear to be deletable...if the broken links don't start working, and if no one objects, I'll delete the bad links in a couple of days.
Ten Best Robots isn't working at the moment.
HUAR is working, but the
HUAR page on Wikipedia seems better than the link in all respects, to me.
Robot news, theory of robotics is a Polish-language site based in Krakow. Although they have an English flag to click on, there's very little English content.
The roboethics official website was just added, but seems notable and fine.
I just added
Society of Robots myself, today. I have no connection to anyone at the site, except that I like them...they have "wiki values" and a lot to offer. I am trying to acquaint them with Wikipedia and Wikiversity, and get them to participate here in
WP:WikiProject Robotics. Of course, if anyone knows any reason we shouldn't accept this link, please share, I can't claim to know them well, but their tutorials are outstanding. Although their yearly contest is fairly small, I'm thinking of adding it in the "contest" section because of the high value of the tutorials...but I don't have any strong feeling about this, if anyone would prefer we not include smaller contests in this section.
- Dan
Dank55 (
talk)
03:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
It's wierd, but the anonymous edit was right: I can't find any link to JIRA now, it's JARA. I thought I had double-checked Rocket's link. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 22:11, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
We have had a hidden message (that is, using <!-- -->) for a while now on the article page at the top of External links saying that links will be reverted if they're not discussed on the talk page first. This is sensible, given the frequency of linkspam here. Recently, there has been an increase in the number of undiscussed wikilinks in See also, which then link to new pages that send people off to new external links ... which is the same problem, so I propose to treat it in the same way: I've added the same hidden message at the top of the See also section, and I intend to revert undiscussed wikilinks, unless anyone has a problem with that. There's been recent discussion on WP:Layout that 60 wikilinks is too many, so that's another reason to ask for new wikilinks to be discussed first. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 15:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I just noticed that this article is intended for inclusion in both Version 0.7 and Version 1.0, which is the printed and DVD version of Wikipedia, and some of the deadlines for Version 0.7 are this month. This makes it very important not to include any links that the general public might perceive as advertising, or even any links which might take advantage of the link from Wikipedia to become promotional at a future time, so I'm afraid the "newsy" links, no matter how well done, have got to move to DMOZ. (And btw, DMOZ isn't just an acceptable alternative, it's recommended by WP:EL.) Thoughts? - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 15:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
(Copied at anon. user's talk page) "130.64.177.109", you're more than welcome to collaborate on this article, I hope you are up to speed on the research at Tufts University and will help us write the article. But most people around here will say that "revolutions in medicine, the military and even outer-space exploration" and "Kaplan believes that..." are not sufficiently encyclopedic, in context, and will need some editing. Also, everything has to go if the only two sources you have are web press releases from Tufts. See WP:V for acceptable sources. (Yes, I know there was a press release there and elsewhere originally as a source, but it attracts attention when the article specifically promotes work done at Tufts. Also, there's a lot of work to be done to find verifiable sources for everything ... we tend to pick on whoever was the last to speak up, but sooner or later, all the "press releases", in some sense of the phrase, have to be re-sourced.) This all seems like common Wiki-knowledge to me now, but if I'm wrong or clarification is needed, someone jump in here please. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 00:17, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Hello, Thanks for your great effort reducing spam links, it is becoming a serious problem over the web, and i hope soon this 'spam culture' will fade away... (although i am not quite sure!). Anyway, here is an external link i am proposing for the robotics page:
http://www.ikalogic.com/cat_robot_navigation.php
I am not quite sure if this is the right place for that link. but the content is specially authentic and interesting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.50.95.247 ( talk) 00:24, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Any feelings about DaveFS's new wikilink to Human-robot interaction? No identified sources, but it appears to be a collaboration, and there are potential academic sources in the article. I'm not familiar with the field. The presumption for Robot at the moment is "we have more than enough links", so perhaps we should lean on those guys to at least source the article and make their case for inclusion of the link before we let them keep it? - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 13:50, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I believe the section on protests against robotics should have it's own article, for several reasons. Unfortunately, there are so many protest against the advancement of robotics, they can't fit in a tiny section of thier article; it needs it's own page in order to truly be comprehensive. Does any one else agree? The Pink Panther ( talk) 17:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I think other people might get annoyed with so many in-text links. I think it would be much easier to give this it's own article. The Pink Panther ( talk) 19:49, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Just got this email:
"Hi Dan, I just returned from holiday ...
I'm very sorry to hear this. www.personalrobotics.nl is a news/hobby/ blog site. Knowing that the robot article on wikipedia does refer for instance to "Boe-bot" and its company "Parallax", I don't understand why my site is removed?! Can you explain to me the policy of wikipedia with respect to this situation? On what basis are decisions made to remove one site and link to another? Knowing this policy, I can adjust my site." [name withheld, since I haven't gotten permission to release it]
Well, because I'm involved in a lot of conversations at once and I've gotten behind on link-patrol in Robots, and also because it's common practice on a page like this to suggest the changes first and then wait a while to see what the reaction is. I waited too long, I see, and the current External links aren't at all what we've agreed on; I'll fix that shortly. All the links that either are promotional or could become promotional without too much alteration have to move to http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Robotics/, and notice that we have a link to that site. (I would not be opposed to a proposal to link to some other link farm, if there's a good reason, but dmoz.com is the one that's recommended at WP:EL.) You were asking about "adjusting your site"; roughly speaking, the more a site looks like a collection of people trading information, and the less it looks like a site with pictures of neat robotic toys, the more likely the link is to survive here. See #I am proposing a link, just 3 sections above. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 19:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I really like the link to robots.net, even though it's a "newsy" site. The site doesn't just post cute press releases; it selects news that it thinks is important, and then explains why, and I like their judgment, too. Here's a typical example: "Posted 23 Mar 2008 at 16:50 UTC by Rog-a-matic. This nice overview of the differences between biological brains and modern computers highlights important reasons why our digital electronics and even neural network simulations running on them fall short of the abilities we take for granted in living systems. The list of points include content-addressable memory, variable clock rates, pointers as short term memory, lack of separation between software and hardware, unification of memory and processing, the underestimated complexity of synapses, self-organization, and the overall size of the systems."
Anything else people want either in or out? - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 05:10, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Deleted epigenetic robotics which is a redundant redirect, robot baseball which is a stub, future of robotics which has no non-wiki sources and is unevenly written, carbon chauvinism and Technocracy movement (little to do with robotics), and all references to specific consumer robots. Links to articles that represent a category of consumer robots are fine. Again, we want to make sure that when the printed Wikipedia Version 1.0 comes out, we don't get stuck with any links that could be interpreted as promotional of any product. Suggestions? - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 05:40, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
It seems to me Wikipedia is reaching a tipping point of greater participation by academics, and we should encourage that in every way possible. WP:Flagged revisions is coming to Wikipedia, probably in mid-April, and depending on how it's handled, it may deal with the top objection of academics to Wikipedia, that they have to constantly "baby-sit" their work to keep it from being vandalized.
As a first step, I rewrote the Softbots section. It needed it anyway, probably, but one thing that really upsets academics is when some competitor gets a glowing review in Wikipedia and they get no mention. It's better to keep discussions of what any particular group is doing brief, even when it may be significant work. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 15:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Hi Mac. At Robot, we're really choosy about external links, you can see the long messy history on the talk page, because everyone wants to link to us. I had to think about it a while, but I'm going to revert your video link from howthingswork.org ... although that's a great site. The first item in the video, the dentistry student, is apparently non-notable, because I could find no hits at all in newspapers (and I tried several different spellings). The second video about the video screen on wheels that makes medical rounds isn't particularly new or interesting as a robot, and we don't really do much with medical robotics in this article. It's also a news story from last July, and I don't see a lot of follow-up in newspapers since then. The third story is about combat robots, and it talks cheerfully about "saving soldiers' lives". A little too cheerfully ... a video about robots that kill people or assist the process should at least be somber and thoughtful. But I do like the howthingswork.org site. If you'd like to suggest other links, please do it here on the talk page, and consider adding links to other articles. - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 03:22, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
The most recent edit complained that robots are not intelligent. The lead said that robots have "some degree of intelligence or ability to make choices based on the environment, often using automatic control or a preprogrammed sequence". I agree with the new editor that that's a little controversial and a little distracting for the lead, so I removed just "degree of intelligence or". See artificial intelligence for a good discussion. The bottom line is, 30 years ago, most people had a fairly wide view of what demonstrated "intelligence", and every time machines start getting good at something, we tend to "move the goalposts" (sorry for the American slang) and decide that maybe what they can do is not a good measure of intelligence after all. Since the meaning of the term keeps changing, it might be best not to try to use it to define what a robot is. Thoughts? - Dan Dank55 ( talk) 00:01, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
of the reference to the early Westinghouse robots that I just reverted? I left a note on the user's talk page offering assistance to try to find a reliable source for that information. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 04:37, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
- Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 02:43, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
I just reverted the IP edit that added a couple of links to Super Why!, per the invisible html comments on the article page asking people to discuss links first, and per this talk page. I also left a message on the user's talk page offering help in finding articles to link to. This issue comes up from time to time, so I'm asking again: does anyone think that we shouldn't revert undiscussed and improbable wikilinks and external links on sight (with a nice message on the user's talk page, of course)? The amount of linkspam has died off recently, so maybe that's a good sign; on the other hand, maybe the reason it died off was aggressive reverting, who knows. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 19:31, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Can someone please stop the trend in Wiki Articles of important and positive achievements of mankind surprisingly originating from some Muslim inventor or origin? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.164.5.166 ( talk) 21:53, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
May apply to about the first half of the article - convert some lists to prose and make better text consistency (join alonestanding sentences into articles).-- Kozuch ( talk) 20:39, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Rocket asked me if I was the culprit behind the "citation needed" tags; I was. The edit was http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Robot&diff=208022475&oldid=208006142. In other cases, I've been able to either improve the article myself or come up with a reason to delete inserted material, but I couldn't go either way in this case. The competition looked legitimate to me, so I didn't have a good reason to remove it, but I couldn't find reliable sources and none were provided. We haven't heard from 75.186.81, the original poster, in a while. I guess if the material still can't be sourced after almost 3 months, it may be time to delete it. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 14:58, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually, just reading this list of things, I would be highly surprised if they were not true.
Anyway, this is all text straight from the IGVC web site. Which, surely, is reliable enough to be a reference in itself. If you were interested in entering the competition, and read their web page, would you be highly suspicious of those claims, or would you just accept them? Personally, I'd have no to reason to doubt them. Which begs the question, why not just use the web page as the ref? Rocketmagnet ( talk) 18:29, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
In the first section of this article, there were a couple of references to a forum, which were removed because generally forums are not reliable references. However, in this particular case, I believe that a forum is a valid reference and the best reference.
The point being made in the article was there was a lot of discussion about the nature of robots. What reference could possibly be better than a forum where people are actually discussing the nature of robots?
Of the three references that were there originally, one remains. It points to a news article where several definitions are given, but it does not mention any discussion. Below that is a comments section (essentially a forum) where discussion is happening.
It would seem to me that either this ref is referring to the discussion below the article (the original intent of the ref), in which case refs to forums should be allowed. Or it's referring to the article, in which case it's a bad ref.
I move that we should put the two other refs to forums back in. And opinions? Rocketmagnet ( talk) 11:21, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Fly by comments: I found this discussion via Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard but my comments go beyond just the quality of the sources so I'm replying here instead. The first section is the WP:LEAD, which should be a summary of the material in the article proper. Maybe it would be better summarize the definition contents already in the article (which looks relatively well-sourced) instead of adding this new material? For the forum refs specifically, you would need reliable third party sources to establish why these specific discussions on these specific forums are of enough WP:WEIGHT to warrant inclusion in the article. Robotics as a field should have plenty of reliable and weighty sources available. I don't see why there's a reason to resort to using internet forums as sources. Secondary sources aren't only used to refer to the content itself, but also its weight. If there are no reliable secondary sources, maybe these discussions just aren't of enough weight to warrant inclusion. Siawase ( talk) 12:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm doing a bunch of things to push in the general direction of FAC. In general, the things people like at FAC don't make an article worse, and often make it better, but we don't actually have to go to FAC...I'm open to stopping my work at any time. Warning: I tend to make a lot of edits, it's a function of how my brain works (or doesn't). It will probably be easier to read the diff all at once by pulling up the history, clicking on the last and first edit you want to see, then clicking "Compare selected versions". Btw, WikEd is one of the tools you can opt for at "my preferences/gadgets", and WikEd has a great diff screen that works automatically, even when WikEd is "off", that is, even when you have clicked the WikEd icon so that it's gray and it's not your default edit screen. After you've checked WikEd in your "my preferences/gadgets" screen, and when you're editing some page, click the "toggle automatic improved diff" button (to the right of the WikEd off/on button). It will highlight the diffs in a new screen below the normal diff screen, whenever a diff is shown, that is, even when you're not editing.
I added a ref to what I think is the first relevant Chinese technology, a clock tower from 1088 with mechanical figurines that chimed the hours, and I changed the relevant section heading to the less Eurocentric "500 AD – 1500". ("Medieval" implies Western. "Modern" tends to imply Western too, and it wouldn't bother me to change that to a date range, but I prefer to leave things alone that have been in an article for a while, and generally, a focus on Europe is more okay after 1500.)
People at FAC are pretty brutal about links these days; it's best to have at least an argument that readers are going to want to click on the links, and that they'll be happy with what they find when they do. The argument is that very few readers are going to click on even a fifth of the links provided in the article. The reader doesn't know what they'll find when they click, and we do, so it's our job to enforce quality control. But I'll put off de-linkifying until later in the editing process.
The second paragraph in the lead is currently "While there is still discussion about which machines qualify as robots, a typical robot will have several, though not necessarily all of the following properties:
Everyone arriving at FAC has a certain amount of goodwill to burn through, and having 6 lists in the introductory material of the article will burn through all of ours and then some. I think we can prosify this list, and since I'm adding a couple of paragraphs to the lead to comply with WP:LEAD, we should prosify it IMO. How about something like this?
"There is still vigorous discussion among experts as to which machines qualify as robots; the current consensus might best be described as "I know one when I see one". There is however broad agreement that robots are artificially created and that they will have many or all of the following properties: they sense and skillfully manipulate their environment, make intelligent or programmed choices, move with one or more axes of rotation or translation, act without human intervention, and give the appearance of acting purposefully in the way a human or animal would." Some of the details I'm leaving out of the lead are explained well in the text. - Dan Dank55 ( talk)( mistakes) 18:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)