Talk:TWiki

Neutrality of the article

(Self-confessed noob here - don't bite me please) Article reads like an advertisement. 7/8ths of the references are from twiki.org/twiki.net. Many edits done by [[|User:PeterThoeny|Peter Thoeny]] who is not neutral, being the creator of the software. I therefore evoked NPOV. I suppose I will follow up with a request for deletion? Help.
--dbastien (talk) 21:53, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Now that Dougbast (who registered today on Wikipedia) raised the NPOV, I would need to know some specific details why NPOV was raised. I am editing the article more frequently than others, which is the case for many other open source projects listed on Wikipedia as well. I did my best to write the article in a NPOV; if there are any parts that are questionable I (or anobody else) can fix that. Please be specific. I am going to remove the NPOV note in a few days if I do not see specific feedback. -- Peter Thoeny - 00:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I just did a fact check: In the last 12 month there have been 10 edits by PeterThoeny and 42 edits by other other people. -- PeterThoeny (talk) 00:37, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

A data point on the references to twiki.org/twiki.net claim: 1. Most references are pointing to technical details for readers who want to learn more. 2. For comparison, the reference list of the MediaWiki article has 14 entries, 11 of which are pointing to mediawiki.org or wikipedia.org. Personally I find this OK. Same standard for all wiki engines? -- Peter Thoeny - 07:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

This article may not be the most well written article that I have seen but it certainly does not seem to contravene the NPOV guidelines. I would suggest that the NPOV Dispute banner be removed. ProductBox (talk) 10:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Quoting from the NPOV article:

"The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth", in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader, not just the most popular one."

I fail to find multiple or conflicting perspectives within this topic. The fact that a significant author of an article also happens to be the founder of the project that is the subject of the article does not automatically evoke NPOV issues. The article is informative about Twiki features, etc. but does not appear to be vastly different in this respect than articles for other software projects/products. Thus, I would say this is no more "advertising" than what the accepted standard appears to be.

I removed the POV tag. TRosenbaum (talk) 13:00, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

References

Merged "Projects based on TWiki" and "Projects inspired by TWiki" into "Related software projects" section

Refactoring done without deletion: I merging the "Projects based on TWiki" and "Projects inspired by TWiki" sections into "Related software projects" section. I moved the JosWiki info from the top to the "Related software projects" section. TWiki was a continuation of JosWiki, not a typical fork. TWiki developers sent patches to JosWiki developers and vice versa until the JOS project was abandoned (and with it, JosWiki). If anyone finds this refactoring work objectionable, please discuss here instead of reverting the change. -- PeterThoeny - 05:08, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

You have repeatedly removed important information regarding the FOSWiki fork from this page, and attempted to move any mention of the fork to the appendices - can you please explain why? Most of this information was cited, and related to a major issue in TWiki's history that has a huge impact on its current viability. 121.73.73.40 (talk) 14:16, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you're barking up the wrong tree. The Foswiki mention is present in the appropriate section and there to stay, so that dispute is pretty much over with. Steven Walling 18:48, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Marketing

This reads like a marketing page. Where is the information that twiki.net is trying to supress? This article is not really giving a good picture of the overall situation.

--82.95.71.210 (talk) 07:40, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Continual removal of negative information by PeterThoeny

I note that it is extremely perilous to NPOV for criticisms of the project to be edited by a person with a personal fiscal stake in the profit of a private enterprise. PeterThoeny continues to edit this article under guise of statements like "refactoring without deletion" in which the origin of the project "a fork of Joswiki" becomes "a continuation of Joswiki" (thus implying the start of TWiki was all perfume and roses, while the beginning of Foswiki, after Peter's lockout of the people who had built the project, was an ugly fork. Note that the Foswiki developers have sent patches to TWiki, such as for the recent cross-site scripting vulnerability. These patches were briefly credited on twiki.org and then references to the Foswiki programmers were removed. While hiding under the "refactoring" blanket, PeterThoeny has essentially applied public relations balm with every edit and, understanding that he cannot remove critical material, has sought to soften it and move it deep into the appendices. 67.242.45.72 (talk) 01:33, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

The rest of this talk page is also worth a read - most of it relates to this same topic, despite the different headings used. 121.73.73.40 (talk) 14:17, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Pivotal events following change in project governance

I believe that the events subsequent to the project's change in governance—the departure of key contributors to create a fork—are a significant development and challenge in the history of the TWiki project and so merit a very brief mention the lead paragraph. Any comments? Isaac Lin (talk) 04:42, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the change in governance is an important turning point that deserves mention in the lead, and the current version does include it by saying "In October 2008, the company TWiki.net, created by Thoeny, assumed full control over the TWiki project." What's not worth mentioning in the lead (it's in the forks section) is Foswiki. Per the article's AFD it's clear that Foswiki isn't notable. What is notable is the change for TWiki, and that's what is mentioned and sourced. None of the news references are about Foswiki, they're about TWiki's governance. Steven Walling 04:46, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

The change in governance is not particularly notable in itself, except for the fact that it caused a change in the development community. I believe that the challenge TWiki has had to face, which is described in the cited article, is a notable event in the history of the TWiki project. Note that whether or not Foswiki has independent notability is an aside; even without this, Foswiki can be notable within the context of TWiki's history. Isaac Lin (talk) 04:55, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I propose modifying the last sentence in the lead to mention the events of a fork and change in developer community, as this is what makes the change in governance notable in the life of the project. Isaac Lin (talk) 20:41, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Per our style guidelines the lead section is for summarizing the contents of the rest of article, and should speak in generalities, not explain detail not present in the rest of the article. I think if you want to expand the forks section to explain more of why Foswiki came about, go ahead. But I think mentioning specific forks is a lean to recent events rather than a strong overview of the entire subject. In other words, it's undue weight. Steven Walling 03:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I do not propose mentioning specific forks in the lead, but just that the change in governance led key contributors to create a fork, in order to show the notable consequences of the direction taken by the project. Otherwise, the final sentence seems disconnected, as it does not explain how one company assuming full control of the project is notable. The article already mentions the fork resulting from the organizational change, and so the lead would indeed have information contained in the rest of the article. Isaac Lin (talk) 04:43, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable to me then. Steven Walling 05:05, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Lots of useful media sources for this issue are listed at the bottom of this page. 121.73.73.40 (talk) 14:11, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I am not in consensus with your proposal and active efforts to sanitize this

page. It presumes erroneously that the brand and the content/work are inseparable. Most of the time there is a clear unity and legal (or at least moral) equivalence between the work and the brand. When a corporation locks people out of hardware it has held in trust and seizes a domain name for its own unilateral use, it forfeits the right to the sort of deference that your proposed lead section would entail. Those responsible for the bulk of the current state of this codebase (I reiterate, the *bulk* of the development) were divorced from credit and their consultancy pages deleted. This is documented by reliable sources. The current state of the TWiki *code* (as opposed to brand) is hybrid, with both branches newsworthy, and notable by virtue of their wide deployment. That Foswiki itself has few reliable sources documenting its notability as a brand (few, certainly not none) does not remove its notability as a codebase attached to the developers that made it and continue to develop it, though I am prepared to admit a minority dissidency but accept a consensus (in the interests of Wikipedia amity) for larger coverage to make coverage of Foswiki as a separate brand moot. But to ignore the current reliable-source documentation of the hostile lockout of the developers of this codebase and the appropriation of their work to a corporate brand is highly NPOV, and both sides of the code development split should be mentioned in the lead. Thus my reversion of your revert, with apologies. 67.242.45.72 (talk) 00:09, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea what most of that rant is about, but suffice it to say that Wikipedia isn't here to discern the truth of anything. It's here to report as a third party on what reliable, secondary sources have verified as facts. Foswiki's article was deleted as non-notable for lack of source material, and this article is about TWiki, not the place to continue any debate Foswiki's contributors might be having with TWiki.net. Please take your grievances elsewhere, because Wikipedia is not the place to air them. The lead section of an article is for a summary of the rest of the article's content, not the place to introduce new, unreferenced material that promotes a fork. Steven Walling 00:13, 7 October 2009 (UTC)ÍÍ

Removal of NPOV flags

Please don't remove the NPOV flags (I noticed this was removed by Steven Walling with no discussion) - as evidenced by this talk page, there's clearly an ongoing dispute. NPOV flags are supposed to remain until this has been resolved. 60.234.45.173 (talk) 04:28, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Unless your IP address has changed, I can assume that you're not one of the anonymous users who've been participating in the discussion thus far. NPOV tags exist to denote an article that is currently under discussion, not to be a tool for pushing opinions on to an article. If you'd like to stick around and participate, you're more than welcome. But adding a tag and then doing nothing except talking about others shouldn't remove it is not okay. Steven Walling 04:45, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm not part of the discussion, but with all due respect removing an NPOV tag without reaching a resolution isn't OK - whether or not I take part is irrelevant. I put the flag back earlier today because you seem to have removed it without any discussion actually taking place - the flag was on the page for less than a day, despite there being a pretty obvious dispute going on in the talk page. As the flag states, "Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved" - that seems pretty clear to me. 60.234.45.173 (talk) 08:27, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, tags shouldn't be removed if there's an ongoing dispute...but there was no ongoing debate about NPOV so far as you're concerned. There was a consensus among a couple editors and one IP spamming for Foswiki, and you weren't a part of any discussion. If there was no ongoing discussion, then there was no reason for the banner. Steven Walling 18:48, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Could someone pls indicate what precisely the NPOV issue is, maybe we can change the respective statements and bring the article in a better state. NPOV status should trigger improvements, not debates. --Edoe (talk) 01:05, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm considering TWiki and a few other candidates for an upcoming project. I just came here to read the article, and followed the NPOV tag to this discussion. From my non-editor's point of view it just wasted my time. In my opinion there is no ongoing dispute given that no specific POV issues have been identified. Perhaps Wikipedia has some sort of disclosure or conflict of interest policy that would be relevant here, but NPOV is a non sequitur at this point. 76.247.43.67 (talk) 18:56, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to remove the NPOV flags now, since the dispute above is clearly not continuing. If there's no debate currently, then the banner is inappropriate. Steven Walling 20:00, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Rename article to TWiki and Foswiki

I would like to suggest, that the page should be renamed "TWiki and Foswiki" instead of TWiki alone. Foswiki is where almost all developers went and where all the new programming takes place. The Foswiki-article was recently redirected to this page. That is, why I think, this is right to do. --Kalyxo (talk) 16:53, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Terrible idea. Foswiki was deleted and redirected here after a consensus was reached that it's not notable enough to have an article of its own yet. If it wasn't notable enough to have a standalone article, there aren't enough reliable, independent sources to merit dividing the attention of TWiki's article. Clearly Foswiki advocates have spent considerable time and energy trying to promote their project on this article and others, but that doesn't change the fact that their software isn't considered notable by Wikipedia's standards. Steven Walling 20:42, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd point out, with due respect to Steven Walling, that the "consensus" he refers to was reached at the point of a gun, so to speak, with many erudite arguments dismissed by a few Wikipedia deletionists with their grab-bag of catch-phrases ("delete per nom.", etc) which provided no engagement -- nor, one might add, any opportunity for rebuttal. That is no consensus. But Wikipedia has its procedures -- and thus the opportunity for wikilawyering -- and I think we can all be a bit more patient since apparently some media coverage is in the pipeline. The migration to Foswiki of some of the largest internal TWiki instances -- Motorola, Yahoo's (in progress, and perhaps the world's second-largest wiki behind Wikipedia) -- would seem, if not to convince deletionists here, to at least invite coverage sufficient to make their arguments more unconvincing than they already are. 67.242.45.72 (talk) 17:32, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

If you think there are enough independent, reliable sources covering Foswiki to merit creating a new article, you can go ahead and do that. But renaming the article it was merged with is not an acceptable way of sidestepping the fact that it was deleted as non-notable, whatever you may think of the consensus among Wikipedians. Steven Walling 00:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

If you read my earlier comment carefully, you see that I propose exactly that out of an abundance of deference. Where I differ with you is in two areas. The minor point is that you imply that I and numerous others are not Wikipedians. We may not have your administrative privilege, but there is abundant disagreement with your interpretation (and thus claim of consensus) here and on the deletion pages. Please give us the respect of acknowledging this voice by not claiming false consensus where it does not exist. The larger point is that the Foswiki programmers, codebase, and project do not exist in isolation: they were forced from a name by a trademark claim. Many articles exist celebrating and noting the contributions under the previous name. Please inspect the talk page of the Wireshark project, which forked in May 2006 because of a fairly similar trademark issue (the manner of the fork was somewhat different). Wikipedia covered Ethereal, the fork, as a notable project immediately and in fact as development essentially ceased under the previous name, within a year it was redirected to Wireshark. The circumstances are different here. Instead of all developers moving, 16 of 18 did. Instead of all development changing over, 90% of it did. I'm curious how you would reconcile the Wikipedia discussions over Wireshark (which were numerous, but in which notability was *never* mentioned) with the Foswiki issue, in which a primary significant difference would seem to be the presence of the trademark owner loudly arguing the issue against notability of the project where the programmers reassembled after their eviction. 67.242.45.72 (talk) 05:17, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Foswiki is already relevant, it has more developers, deploys and it had many versions published since it was created. One of the best references for wikis is the http://www.wikimatrix.org and foswiki has an article there since the fork. If you look on their statistics page you will see that it is the 7th most viewed (out of 146). I don't see any reason to not have an article on its own. +1 to create the foswiki page and let both communities follow there own path Jonas Fagundes (talk) 12:43, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that at the deletion discussion and deletion review for the Foswiki article the notability of Foswiki under its new name could not be established. We have no process for dealing with forks in which only one side retains the old name, and the impression that some Foswiki people tried to manipulate the deletion discussion has led to a defence reflex in some Wikipedians who at first didn't understand the situation, and then probably doubted that they were being told the truth. For psychological/sociological reasons it's still too early to revisit the deletion decision now. The best solution would of course be if someone could point to publications other than wikimatrix (which doesn't count much here) that discuss Foswiki (not TWiki) in some detail.

In the meantime we have this article for the discussion of both TWiki and Foswiki. It's normal for encyclopedias to discuss several related topics in a single article. It hardly gets more related than these two wikis, so a single article for both is currently an excellent solution even ignoring the notability problems. If one side tries to monopolise this article and marginalise the other, we have ways of dealing with that. The proposed name change would make some sense, but I am not too enthusiastic about the idea. Hans Adler 18:04, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

In Foswiki in the News you can find several links of about Foswiki (even if you remove the blogs from the list). Jonas Fagundes (talk) 17:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that's slightly better than what I found when I last looked for sources establishing notability, but still probably not enough. I think it would probably be enough to prevent deletion under normal circumstances, but I doubt it's enough to get the Foswiki article undeleted. Unfortunately many of the news portal articles don't contribute to notability since they are either critical coverage or there is no editorial control. I realise that this must be very frustrating, but the English Wikipedia's notability requirements are different from those of the German Wikipedia: for some topics weaker, but for software generally stronger. With these sources I wouldn't risk a new attempt yet. It's too soon after the last one and the sources are still too marginal.

I think we would be in a much better position if someone wrote a full article about how to use Foswiki, for publication in a computer magazine. Some magazines, such as freeX, appear to publish even articles that were written by their readers, so this might not be such a hard thing to do. Just look at articles about other wikis for inspiration, but make sure to avoid plagiarism.

If the success of TWiki is based in part on its creator's marketing abilities, then you may have to learn from him in the Foswiki community. This is probably important for more than just getting a Wikipedia article. Hans Adler 20:23, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

The point is not about foswiki marketing or helping then to get notability. They already have it, a lot of buzz was caused in the free software community when TWiki locked all developers out of the version control system. The question here is the ability of wikipedia to handle this case. I see wikipedia as a reliable source of information and I really appreciate the fact that is free and open to everybody to contribute (actually is one of the main cases of high quality content generated by the community). Demanding that a software to be in the print media is a little bit strange because most of the print media are migrating to web and there is a crise in the print media (lots of newspaper and magazine are just closing their doors). But what is ironic to me is demand to have editorial control to recognize the article. The wikipedia itself is an example that editorial control is not best way to create high quality articles :) . Anyway, foswiki is there, it has notability in the free software community and it annoys me that wikipedia does not recognized it (it is the first time that I don't find something on wikipedia). I am not a foswiki devoleper, I am a free software advocate but I give up of trying to improve this article. Hans, thank you for your explanations and for your positive contributions to this matter. Jonas Fagundes (talk) 16:58, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Jonas, just in case it's not clear: When I talk about "notability", I mean the technical term as defined in WP:N. Of course Foswiki has more than enough notability in the normal sense of the word, and so under normal circumstances an article would easily survive by just staying under the radar. But it doesn't (yet) satisfy the technical criteria, which is why, when someone started a deletion discussion on its article, a lot of diplomacy would have been necessary to let it survive. What happened instead was that suddenly a lot of Foswiki supporters arrived here, voting at the AfD and doing nothing else, and logging in here so rarely that no real communication was possible. At least one was also irate most of the time, which really didn't help. In this context, see meatball:DarkSideOfCommunity.

The sociology of this place is quite different from the German Wikipedia. The fact that in contrast to the German project we have no separate notibility rules for software and therefore have to apply the standard rules, which are notoriously unfavourable to everything that happens mostly in the internet, also doesn't help us here at all. I did my best to save the article at the AfD and then the deletion review; at those times I thought there was a chance. But I strongly doubt that we have a chance if we revisit things in the next few months unless we have very strong new sources. Hans Adler 18:43, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi Hans, again, thank you for all your efforts. I think that foswiki has much notability as twiki! I know, these zealots makes more harm than good for the cause (or for any cause). Thank you for your persistence on this subject. Jonas Fagundes (talk) 22:08, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Guys, Foswiki is already for years old and it has a lot of activity in the project. When it will be allowed to have its on page on wikipedia? I'm not asking to remove the Twiki page but to allow both to have their own separated page. Jonas Fagundes (talk) 21:39, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Read through the section again for the reasons. Find answers to the concerns raised and then it's worth discussing. Ravensfire (talk) 21:46, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Do you think that foswiki is not relevant or do you think this page is under attack? Both statements are false and Foswiki outplay Twiki by any criteria you want. Foswiki had many realeases in those years and it has a large community around it. Wikipedia should not judge the fork or its merits but let both softwares have their own page. Jonas Fagundes (talk) 16:17, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for ignoring my comment and all of the points raised previously. There was a serious point to my comment which is the reasons for not having seperate articles have been pointed out and need to be addressed. You haven't bothered to respond to those reasons. Until you make a serious attempt at that, not worth my time or effort. I don't do homework for others when it's been pointed out what is needed multiple times. Ravensfire (talk) 16:22, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

None of the points raised are valid anymore (and they arguably were accurate), Foswiki is relevant (and there are articles about it) and no one is trying to takeover the Twiki page anymore. So I have no idea about what you mean about homework. Ravensfire, your argument is a fallacy (more precisely an argumentum ad hominem fallacy), remember to be friendly (or at least polite) in your answer to help to keep this conversation helpful to wikipedia readers. Jonas Fagundes (talk) 20:58, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Guys, does any see any problem to have a separated page for foswiki now (the fork was in 2008)? I talked about this subject 2 years ago with Hans Adler and we agreed that that wasn't the moment because of the troubles caused by the foswiki zealots. My question is, what about now? Jonas Fagundes (talk) 20:58, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

"Foswiki -- Very large, active development team"

People against a separate page/article on Foswiki, please have a look at the facts from the statistics by Ohloh:

Over the past twelve months, 29 developers contributed new code to Foswiki.

This is one of the largest open-source teams in the world, and is in the top 2% of all project teams on Ohloh.

For this measurement, Ohloh considered only recent changes to the code. Over the entire history of the project, 49 developers have contributed.

This is not a forum for discussing whether Foswiki should have an article. Steven Walling 21:05, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps instead of wikilawyering you could then suggest such a forum? You have kept a very close eye on this article over the last two years and your friendship with Peter Thoeny, I would maintain, has created the possibility of the appearance of impropriety (note, not impropriety itself -- merely the possibility of its *appearance*). With the gentlest possible suggestion, perhaps a little more distance would be more appropriate, or instead of using rhetorical devices to create inertia, then assisting?67.242.45.72 (talk) 04:43, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Why does FosWiki redirect to TWiki?

I was looking for the FosWiki article to learn more about it, but was redirected to TWiki. I wasn't able to find the FosWiki section; was there one? FosWiki is one of the few free and open source enterprise wikis, so I'm quite surprised that there isn't a separate FosWiki article, especially after reading why in early talk page entries. Normally, my experiences when looking up things in Wikipedia are wonderful, but this time it was so disappointing that I wrote about it in the talk page, which I almost never do. 12.163.172.130 (talk) 19:25, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Whatever the past history, FosWiki is now an established platform separate from TWiki. See, e.g., [1] and [2]. I am not sure there ever was a real consensus to keep it off Wikipedia as separate article. Regardless, consensus can change. Someone who is knowledgeable should change the re-direct into a separate article. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 15:16, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

You are incorrect. If you think there's enough for a separate article, you might want to try deletion review first. That's the least-dramatic way to see about recreating the article. Editing Foswiki from a redirect to an article again without that will just cause a lovely amount of wiki-drama. Ravensfire (talk) 19:35, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

O.k., I'll bite, how does one "try deletion review"? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 21:56, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Is it possible to access the original Foswiki article? The WP:Articles for deletion/Foswiki didn't seem to have any convincing reasons for deletion. Also, the comment "I have closed this early due to the new accounts that were showing up." by User:Deskana seems to suggest that the Article did not receive the normal discussion period related to its proposed deletion. Actually, it is quite clear that this deletion action was rushed through. Perhaps the individual that proposed deletion feared that continued discussion would have resulted in sound arguments for keeping the article that complied with Wikipedia policies. ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.163.172.130 (talk) 22:47, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Administrator Deskana refused to let me take a look at the seleted page, see User_talk:Deskana#Foswiki. At the same time I failed to find enough evidence that foswiki has gained sufficient attention in sources other than blogs. I guess, you have to wait until at least rel. 2.0 for it to become prominent enough for wikipedia. :-) Lorem Ip (talk) 18:31, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Boldface for Thoeny

Peter Thoeny redirects to this article. Please see the instruction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirect#What_needs_to_be_done_on_pages_that_are_targets_of_redirects.3F . Lorem Ip (talk) 17:52, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

The article only says that it will "often be appropriate". I do not believe it is appropriate in this case to set Thoeny's name in boldface when the topic of the article is an open source project that has a broader scope than him. Isaac Lin (talk) 19:21, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

He is founder and defacto owner of twiki today. His name redirects here. How can it be inappropriate? The breadth of scope is irrelevant. Boldface is not used to signify importance: it is purely "eyeball search" convenience trick for redirects. Lorem Ip (talk) 00:46, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

The subject TWiki is not just about Thoeny; it is about the entire software product and community. As an analogy, if there were an architect whose only notability was designing a particular famous bridge, the architect may not warrant a separate article and so the architect's name could redirect to the article on the bridge. It would seem inapt, though, to place the architect's name in bold on the article, as the bridge is not just the product of the architect. Isaac Lin (talk) 02:42, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I am afraid you didn't read the guideline. The guideline is not about notability; it is about th ease of search of a particular item when redirected. In our case, a reader clicks the name link and pops at the article about bridge. The firt thought is "WTF??? Did I click a correct link??" Unless the reader immediately sees the name in question. Lorem Ip (talk) 21:18, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

P.S. I don't understand why to see the name of the architect of a famous bridge is "inapt". Lorem Ip (talk) 21:38, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

The guideline gives an example where the redirecting term is not set in boldface; it is not a simple cut-and-dried rule to follow. The initial sentences are supposed to make it clear why the redirection happened; I fear you may not have noticed that the guideline does not say that the redirecting term must be set in boldface. Wikipedia's guideline on the first sentence remains applicable. By putting a mention of a subject in boldface when it has a broader scope than the article's topic, the subject is being diminished, and this makes a value judgment on the subject. Isaac Lin (talk) 22:15, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Nothing is diminished. Project's founder is as notable as the project itself (and founder may be not notable more the project, so there is no separate article about founder). I fail to see that project's founder name impairs value judgement. I fail to see how "Format of the first sentence" relates to the issue. Lorem Ip (talk) 22:34, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Recall that everyone visiting the article directly will also see the boldface, and will bear in mind the guideline for Wikipedia's guideline on the first sentence. The article's subject is what is set in bold, and so unless there is a very clear equivalence between each of the bold terms, it will be misleading to readers. "Foswiki" redirects to this article, but it would be misleading to set "Foswiki" in bold, as it is not equivalent to the article's subject. Isaac Lin (talk) 22:45, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

<sigh> I suspect you have a grudge against this Thoeny guy (I guess not without reason), and I don't want to waste my time on the issue. My only final argument that I have seen artcles about books with author redirected/boldfaced without a separate article. This is quite close to the situation at hand. But you may have it in your way, since nobody joins the chat to break the tie. I guess it isn't worth a dime. Lorem Ip (talk) 03:26, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Not at all — the two subjects just aren't synonyms for each other. The subject of Thoeny isn't solely limited to the TWiki project, and vice versa. The reason why the guideline on article redirection suggests considering using boldface is because redirection is commonly used for synonyms of the target article's title. In this case, though, the two are distinct. Isaac Lin (talk) 05:01, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

It seems there hasn't been much discussion about when to bold and when not to bold, or maybe I just can't find it. But the following seems to describe our pretty universal and uncontroversial practice quite well: We use boldface for the actual title and for alternative titles that could also in principle be used for essentially the same article, provided they are markedly different from the actual title. This rules out bolding the founder of a project (since an article named "Peter Thoeny" would be a biography). It also rules out something like "sometimes incorrectly spelled Twiki" (not sufficiently distinct).

Foswiki is a borderline case. Foswiki is in many respects the same thing as Twiki, e.g. the two share most of their features and most of their history. If the TWiki article was renamed to "Foswiki", not much would have to be changed. The current solution (italics for "Foswiki") looks like an excellent compromise to me. Hans Adler 19:31, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Letting the past stay in the past

I recently made my first ever edits to this page (AFAIK) and cleared off some statements which spoke more to TWiki's development history than to what it IS as a web application. Those changes were then undone by 132.236.6.93 - someone who won't even identify themselves by name, but who claims "The test is relevance, not pleasance" This condescending and page-owning attitude isn't how wikipedia is supposed to work as far as I know. I reapplied my changes, and I intend to do so again as needed.

I recommend anyone interested in Foswiki work on Foswiki, and promote Foswiki, without going to lengths to disparaging TWiki. If they want to write about the TWiki/Foswiki split, they can do that on a page about Foswiki, not a page about TWiki.

-- PaulReiber 02:01, 17 April 2012 (UTC).

Paul, I totally agree with you. There is no reason to create a separated page for Foswiki.Jonas Fagundes (talk) 03:06, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Jonas I didn't say there's no reason to create a page for foswiki - quite the opposite. (did you accidentally omit "not" - as in "no reason not to"?) The foswiki redirection to the TWiki page creates an artificial pressure for the TWiki page to somehow represent both web applications, even though they're no longer the same at all. -pbr 4/20/12

Please familiarize yourself with the history of this page, argued in part below, where a fragile consensus has emerged with a redirect such that this page at this point in time represents both projects, which are after all similar codebases, similar authors, etc. The idea of being bold is that if you want to propose a wholesale reorganization and a split into two pages, do it. I suspect, however, that a considerable amount of wiki-drama would emerge. The claim that the material you removed is "fluff" requires substantiation. I require you to stop requiring things of me. -pbr 4/20/11 It would appear to be a vital part of the history of both projects, which are presented on this one page. due to a poor decision about redirecting foswiki here -pbr 4/20/12 A quick web search also reveals your affiliation and vigorous advocacy for one of these projects. A deeper search would reveal much more. I feel almost a parent to both projects. -pbr 4/20/12 Neutral parties would be far better editors. I am a neutral party - I love both projects/products however I'm saddened by how both groups behaved as well. -pbr 4/20/12 The "I intend to do so again as needed" attitude is hardly consistent with wiki-culture. The tell-me-what-is-and-isnt-right attitude while speaking from only your IP address isn't consistent with wiki-culture either. I had someone simply undo my updates without discussing that with me - not consistent with "wiki culture" either. Eat your own dogfood. -pbr 4/20/12 74.79.147.25 (talk) 02:25, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Articles aren't about just what something currently is, but also what it was, how it evolved, etc. For larger entities, articles are split as a single article would be too massive. This is a fairly short article and the split was a fairly notable event in Twiki. The current section on the fork does a good job of summarizing the event without giving undue weight. Ravensfire (talk) 03:41, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Ravensfire, no, the current article does not do a good job, the point is not the fork but foswiki itself. Both softwares should have their own page. There were 15 foswiki releases since the merge and the community is healthy and alive. I asked about that and no one gave any reason to not create the page. +1 to the Foswiki page creation. Jonas Fagundes (talk) 04:46, 20 April 2012 (UTC) +10,000 more. Agree fullheartedly. Let Foswiki have its own page. -pbr 4/20/12

Spartz removed the page and put it back the redirect, I put back your version (with the warning). How should I proceed to revert the old AFD decision? Jonas Fagundes (talk) 04:57, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Ravensfire, Spartz, this is an interesting short description of what happened with opinion from both sides: http://www.cloudsurfing.com/site/3640-TWiki/reviews/384-TWiki-is-dead/ FALSE - I am not on the "TWiki" side - I was there, but did not take part in the "split". I simply lived through it. -pbr 4/20/12 where you can check the level of the conversation (one side was presenting facts and the other was trashing talking, have a look to take your own conclusions). I checked both irc room on freenode.net. #foswiki is active (right now 39 active users and it has logs where you can verify the activity); #twiki is empty (only 9 users, no logs, no conversation in the last hour, there is a bot asking anyone that enters in the room to send any questions to the company support). I talked to the #foswiki guys and they were quite helpful and polite. (They even asked me to "note: don't make more enemies on wikipedia than we already have, please no matter how hard any comment by some of the wikipedia admins or deletionists might be: stay calm and professional.", what I think is a good advice for any discussion :) ). Jonas Fagundes (talk) 06:24, 20 April 2012 (UTC) Jonas, this isn't about friends/enemies. I love TWiki, and I love Foswiki too - I was part of making both of them what they are today. This is about extricating the two from each other, so we can somehow, soon, hopefully, let the past stay in the past. Re: IRC - ask me and I'll explain why TWiki doesn't do much IRC anymore. -pbr 4/20/12

Please continue the talk on the notability of Foswiki at Talk:Foswiki. Nuddlegg (talk) 09:49, 20 April 2012 (UTC) Will do - see you there. -pbr 4/20/12

Foswiki has its own page now

I applied edits some weeks ago intended to STOP airing the dirty laundry that happened years ago between the TWiki and Foswiki projects. I'd like to re-apply those changes to the TWiki page without having them reverted by anonymous IP addresses. Can I get an agreement on re-applying those now, since Foswiki has its own page, where its history can be documented, without having to sour TWiki's history? I'll re-apply the changes in a month or so if I don't hear objections.

The changeover in the developer community was a significant event in TWiki's history, and as such, warrants the current references in the article. They are matter-of-fact, very briefly describing the event, without undue bias. More details on how the TWiki community has progressed post-split would be welcome additions to the article. isaacl (talk) 04:33, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Merge Foswiki to TWiki

The Foswiki article is currently a fork of this article with slight modifications to represent the changes made to TWiki codebase over time. As these two articles significantly overlap in their scope (both mainly cover TWiki), I propose to merge all verifiable information about Foswiki's subsequent development into this article. Such merge would benefit both subjects:

• TWiki served the basis for Foswiki, so covering the latter would help to make the coverage of pre-split TWiki more thorough.
• Foswiki would eventually be covered the way its own genuine peculiarities would not be overshadowed by the common legacy.

Any comments? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 22:33, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

• oppose The Foswiki article isn't a CFORK of the WP Twiki article, but Foswiki itself has forked from Twiki. The WP article is not a forked article, merely a reflection of reality. There is also a question of article primacy, as which is the leading product post-split is far from clear.

Some Twiki developers do not accept this and both continue with Twiki, and have a somewhat distant relationship with Foswiki. The nominator of this merge has already nominated Foswiki for a failed AfD that has only just closed. They have even nominated a previous Foswiki redirect to Twiki for deletion. As the nominator of a supposed merge has already tried to delete the resultant redirect, one has to wonder just how effective such a merge would be in the future. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:13, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Misrepresenting an issue is not a good way to go. I nominated the redirect for deletion because there was no content related to Foswiki. Now there is content, which is a copy of TWiki article with slight modifications. As the separate notability of Foswiki is at least questionable (see the closing comment of AfD), and several editors are passionate about the coverage of the article, I'm now seeking a compromise solution to avoid 4th AfD nomination. Now, as in AfD discussion you failed to draw any arguments, I would ask you to express at least something viable here. Do you state that these projects don't share significant part of codebase (and consequently their features)? Or may be you believe there is a good reason to describe the very same implementations of the same features in different articles? Or may be any other comment besides history of Foswiki and of its AfD and RfD nominations? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 00:28, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• oppose Merging Foswiki to TWiki is only one solution out of four. The other three are: (2) merge TWiki to Foswiki, (3) create an article called TWiki_and_Foswiki and redirect both TWiki and Foswiki to it, (4) create an article called Foswiki_and_TWiki and redirect both TWiki and Foswiki to it. So I have to oppose as long as these alternatives haven't been considered. Furthermore, we might run into issues while merging the articles when wikipedians don't agree on the facts presented, e.g. deployments in fortune 500 organizations, numbers of installations etc. Some presented numbers simply aren't verified by secondary sources. Now, when bringing Foswiki and TWiki together on one page, the problem becomes even more obvious. Maybe it will be a healthy process to improve the article. But it won't be an easy experience at all affecting the named companies as well. When it comes to a merge, please help out calming down the edit wars ahead. Thanks. Nuddlegg (talk) 06:43, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Wait what? Are you familiar with WP:COMMONTITLE? BTW, as I get it, you are supporting the merge, but want to discuss the name? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 10:54, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
    • No. I am against any sort of merge. But your proposal has to be rejected just for the simple fact that the name of the article won't properly reflect what it is about. A merge would have made more sense if there were two articles describing the same thing. But TWiki and Foswiki aren't the same thing. With regards to WP:COMMONTITLE, only naming the article TWiki won't comply with Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy. Please consider the alternatives. There are so many other reasons why a merge is inappropriate ... Nuddlegg (talk) 11:12, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
• oppose The projects have been separate for 4 years now, and to the best of my knowledge (I am a Foswiki developer and until 2008 one of the main TWiki developers) there has been no little or no new code shared between them in that time. The codebases are still, to the best of my knowledge, architecturally similar, but in detail have diverged as the two projects have focused on different requirements (Foswiki on being the best open source, free wiki, and TWiki I guess on being a stable, revenue-earning commercial product). With regard to feature sets, Foswiki has grown a large number of new features which, due to the architecture of the base system, are optional for end users. In a wikipedia notability sense, both projects are victims of their own success. By drawing in and hosting third-party contributions (extensions), those contributions have become identified as not independent of the subject. Add to that a "just do it" culture in Foswiki that fosters real contributions rather than empty rhetoric. I note that Ohloh records Foswiki as having required an estimated 3898 years of development effort, versus Twiki's 518 years. In absolute terms the numbers are meaningless, but I would say they are probably a fair reflection of the relative project sizes. Swandodger (talk) 12:43, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
• oppose We already had a long discussion about deleting Foswiki page four months ago and the decision was to keep the page. None of the arguments presented then became invalid. This discussion here is just noise. The foswiki page is a valid one, can it be improved?, yes, is this a reason to delete it?, no. Jonas Fagundes (talk) 20:50, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

• oppose Same comment as Jonasfagundes Nasa-verve (talk) 00:17, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

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