Talk:Tux/Archive 2

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Folks please sign your comments with --~~~~. It makes the flow of the article so much easier to follow. --Eric M Gearhart 11:02, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

Haha, yes, we must also be sure to do it while instructing others to do so :P --Joshua David Williams 11:03, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

Comments

  • Bad grammar and/or awkward wording
  • "Mark Lehrer, however, insisted that Windows 95 was the real competition - not FreeBSD, and that they should instead use a penguin smashing a window, to which Alan Clucas replied should be combined with Alan Cox's suggestion, killing two birds with one stone, to borrow the colloquialism."
  • Linus has often expressed his affinity for penguins, once jokingly claiming that he developed a disease called "penguinitis", which "makes you stay awake at nights just thinking about penguins and feeling great love towards them", after being bitten by a ferocious penguin.
  • Intro is too brief.
  • Article assume the user knows a lot already.
  • Uses the first name "Linus" without even saying who he is!
  • Introduces characters -- Matt Hartley, David Christiansen, Mark Lehrer, etc. -- but does not say who they are. Does it need mention them by name even?
  • As of April 10th, 2007, this image is still available from its original location on the University of Helsinki's FTP server (see the External links section). - Dating things like this seems sloppy. Why not just upload the image to CZ if the licensing permits and include it in the article? Or ask Linus for permission?
  • "According to a USENET message he posted, a small pigmy penguin nibbled on his finger." - We don't need to write this way at CZ! We are not writing to satisfy WP deletionists but for readers. Just create your narrative...and let it flow!
  • Sections read like sections! Needs improved overall narrative cohesiveness and flow from beginning to end, section-to section.

Stephen Ewen 14:53, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

I've created a draft page to work on your suggestions. As long as we keep references to the original posts, I think you're right in saying that we shouldn't mention everyone's name. --Joshua David Williams 15:11, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
I moved the draft to User:Joshua David Williams/Tux/Draft after a couple complaints. Please feel free to edit it if any of you find ways to improve the flow of the article. Thanks! --Joshua David Williams 17:01, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

LOL, at the same time I was moving it to User:Joshua David Williams/Sandbox! Josh, keep your sandbox but just blank the it I suppose. :-) Stephen Ewen 17:08, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

Haha, yes, I received half a dozen messages within 15 minutes of creating it :P I'll send you a message when I'm ready for you to take another look at it :) --Joshua David Williams 17:14, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

other editors?

Josh, did you ask any other editors to approve of the Tux article? Robert Tito |  Talk 

Yes, I left messages on about a dozen editors' talk pages, but only one of them appeared to have ever been active in the past several months. If any of these articles are to be approved, we may need some staff intervention. --Joshua David Williams 17:32, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
Perhaps it's for the best at the moment. Should we wait until Stephen's suggestions have been implemented? --Joshua David Williams 17:33, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
Not really, the article contains some flaws but since this article will be linked from from the linux article where linux is introduced and explained I see no problem. This article is according me not meant to be a stand-alone article as it is only one little penguin attribute that is clearly linked to linux (in nearly every taste). Any improvement should be part of approved 1.1 - once it found its proper place in the linux article. Ensuring that will make many of the arguments of Steve superfluous - if however this is meant as a stand-alone article his arguments make very good sense. Again I assume you see it as part of the linux article - appropriately - since it has no other reason to exist. Robert Tito |  Talk 
Well, that is actually very interesting, this idea of stand-alone article vs. what Rob is calling a linked article. One thing Encarta has is what they cleverly call "sidebars". These are not full articles but are generally one paragraph, just a real brief description of something that, once clicked, show up as a window within the main article window. I actually very much like the idea of something like sidebars, but the Wikimedia format seems very unkind to it - unless Jason and Greg can work some magic, of course. It seems to me, therefore, that articles need to be readable as standalones. That's my take. Stephen Ewen 18:56, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
I've been wondering about this myself. My original take on this article was that I had just jumped into the middle of an article on the history (or perhaps culture) of Linux, and I can imagine that in the future people will typically reach this article by following a link from elsewhere. This may or not be the case (the Linux penguin may become such a familiar icon that people will come looking for it specifically), but in either case, I don't see why approval of a "linked" article has to be contingent on approval of the article(s) linking to it. In my opinion, this isn't an issue that should hold up approval. Greg Woodhouse 21:58, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

Steve, suppose you have an article about a pressure cooker, one part is about the hull, another about the lid and again another one about the pressure safety valve system. Apart they make no sense so to make them readable as standalone article is not really what one would intend to. If however I want to look for the linux penguin I search for linux penguin - because I know what it is. Else the linked idea (as explanatory article) seems the more approachable way to proceed. Robert Tito |  Talk 

Believe it or not, I'm actually on the fence of whether my own article should be approved or not. On the one hand, Steve has pointed out some very clear problems in the readability of the article. But on the other hand, Rob is right in saying that this particular article need not explain EVERYTHING. It's not this article's job to tell what an operating system is or what each person's role in the community is (though a three or four word description, in my opinion, would be great).
However, I believe the question of approval deals mostly with the accuracy of the facts. If we are all agreed that the facts are accurate, then I move that it be approved, with the next version coming as soon as possible to improve the readability. Does anyone agree? --Joshua David Williams 21:59, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

According CZ:Approval Process, editors cannot actually mark the page approved, only add the {{ToApprove}} template, so I wasn't quite sure what you were asking. that part has already been done. Of course, it may be that this procedure has been changed, and I'm not aware of it.Greg Woodhouse 18:02, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

I know this was discussed earlier, but one aspect of this article that does concern me is that it reads a bit like an article for "insiders". On a mailing list or newsgroup focused on Perl, I'd expect that everyone would recognize "Larry" as referring to Larry Wall, but I wouldn't expect every programmer or computer user to know this. Similarly, the name Linus will be instantly recognized by many, but not al readers. I say this with some ambivalence, because I rather like the informal/casual style of this article, and it would be unfortunate to lose it. Perhaps a "side bar" that is somehow visually set off from the rest of the article providing a little background would be useful. Greg Woodhouse 22:10, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

The fact that Linus was not introduced with his last name is actually a problem that arose from an edit after the initial writings, and I never intended it to be that way. But I do really like the idea of a universal sidebar. Perhaps we should start a forum thread to request such a feature, preferably as a dynamic AJAX page. --Joshua David Williams 22:16, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
Folks, the question of approval deals with BOTH the accuracy of the facts and style/readability. See CZ:Policy_Outline#Article_Standards. —–Stephen Ewen 22:19, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
A very good point, but note that the article is not specifically speaking of approving articles, but of "good" articles. So I think the question remains of whether an article is approved of only to re-assure the readers that the facts are correct, or to also state that the article must be written very well. But regardless, this debate is pointless. I believe we are wasting our time with this discussion when we should be editing the article instead. Thus, I move that this article remain as a "To approve" until the given date (the 14th). If the article is not cleaned up by that day, then I suggest the tag be removed until everyone is agreed that it is written clearly and concisely. --Joshua David Williams 22:35, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

It's not right to use "Linus' original description" as a section heading (encyclopedias don't refer to people by their first names, or not without explanation), and to use the first name without the last name, as the article now does, makes this a nonstarter for approval. It needs to be cleaned up some more, and indeed aimed at people who aren't totally immersed in the Linux world. (Obviously, anyone interested in "Tux" must know something about Linux, I imagine; we can assume something.)

It's incorrect to say that the article simply needs to be error-free in order to be approvable. As CZ:Approval Process states, it must meet our standards, which I would encourage all of you to read. (I think we need to add one more bullet point there, by the way: something like "completeness.")

I'm curious why anyone thought it was necessary to have a "mascot" for an operating system in the first place. Is this known? --Larry Sanger 22:21, 10 April 2007 (CDT) [edit conflict!]


This is the only information I've been able to find on the subject:


All the other logos were too boring - I wasn't looking for the "Linux Corporate Image", I was looking for something _fun_ and sympathetic to associate with Linux. A slightly fat penguin that sits down after having had a great meal fits the bill perfectly.


What I really want to know is how Larry Ewing became involved in the first place, but no reliable source seems to remain, as most of these pages have been dead for years. I wrote Larry and asked him about it, but he hasn't responded yet. (I hope he still uses the same e-mail; it's been quite a few years.) --Joshua David Williams 10:25, 11 April 2007 (CDT)
I'm not sure of this, but I believe the BSD "daemon" (in quotes because I'm referring to its use as a mascot, not because of the spelling) predates the penguin. At any rate, I'm sure the daemon as character/mascot started out life as a convenient icon for Unix prior to the NetBSD/FreeBSD/OpenBSD split. I first saw it on the cover of one of the "The Design and Implementation of ..." books. There is now a BSD version, a FreeBSD version, and even an OS X version, with slightly different versions of the "mascot". Another mascot that I believe pre-dates the penguin is the camel (dromedary) that has long been used as the mascot of the programming language Perl. (Python, of ourse, is named after Monty Python, so it has a kind of non-visual icon). two other factors that I think came into play here is the early introduction of the Red Hat Linux distribution with its distinctive logo, and the "Nutshell" series published by O'Reilly. Each title in the series has a different animal on the cover, and the animals appearing in this series (such as the Sendmail bat) have effectively become widely recognized identifiers for a particular tool or technology. Greg Woodhouse 10:53, 11 April 2007 (CDT)
The BSD Daemon has a copyright of 1988 according to the FreeBSD site. For a quicker verification, John Lasseter of Pixar fame did a 1994 rendition.
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