Talk:URBI

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[edit] external links in URBI

Someone at URBI wrote to me:

Hi David,

I've seen the edits you've done on the URBI wikipedia page.

You mention the fact that the links are all related to profit making websites, which is false since URBI is free: you can download it for Aibo, Lego or iRobot and the SDK is open source GPL.

I'm wondering if we should also consider deleting links and wikipedia pages to Microsoft Robotics Studio then?

I'm available to discuss with you how to make the URBI page suitable for wikipedia and do the necessary changes with your help. URBI is a new programming language available for the community for 4 years now, with 25 universities using it in the world and thousands of community users. It's coming from the academic world and deserves a fair audience.

My answer is this: I agree that Microsoft get away with commercial links that exceed the boundaries set by Wikipedia. But they are so big and millions of people know who they are. I am not an administrator but links I and others put in Wikipedia have been deleted for two reasons: one is that external links are not allowed - "Wikipedia is not a collection of external links" - or at any rate not welcome, and the other is that there were so many links to Gostai which has products and services for sale or license. Commercial links are not allowed and in fact the whole of Adept Robotics was removed not long ago. If we can keep the URBI page as information and avoid falling into the trap of making it like a huge press release then I think it will survive. It needs to be more factual and less enthusiastic, with more explanations of the terms for laymen. You can see I have left in references to Gostai because that is a fact. But the links have been removed. It *might* be permissible to put a link to Gostai in the external links section.

I also have a software system called ROBOFORTH. This has hundreds of users so it seemed reasonable to me to mention it but you will not find any links to it.

An encyclopedia should be a collection of facts so what I think personally about URBI should not enter into it but for what it's worth I think it is a great system and way more useful than Microsoft Robotics Studio - which frankly I still have not figured out. The instructions for use just go round in circles. How my users will ever cope with it I can't imagine. But they are Microsoft! However I do intend to check it for external links.

Yes I would love to work with you to get an article which fully describes URBI without being too commercial. You may notice that I have added an explanation of what parallelism is in the robot software article. It's important to respect wiki users who will come to these articles without any understanding of the terms used. May I suggest a further edit?

Robotics1 08:44, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

The external links I initially added where meant to point to relevant complement of information, but I should have read more carefully the wikipedia rules before, I agree.

Go ahead with your further edit suggestion. Also, one question I have: there are several scientific articles published in international conferences and talking about URBI. Would you include such references in the article?

Jcbaillie 12:48, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Jean-Christopher, misunderstanding. I meant I suggest that *you* do a further edit. I would not know enough to do such an edit. Also I have my work cut out on some of the other robot pages which collectively are a bit disorganized.

As regards references I am not sure. I think the principles behind wikipedia are that the articles provide up to date information on the subject, honed by input from many 'editors'. Such information is ideally supported by references. Therefore if the scientific articles can be used as citations to support statements in the content then they would be a very good idea. However to mention them to prove that the new language is popular might not be so good. But please don't think I am going to edit out anything I don't like. I would not be so presumptuous. All I was going for was commercial links. The rest is up to you. Robotics1 18:36, 8 August 2007 (UTC)