Template talk:Man

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[edit] Why die.net?

A question. Why choose the man pages on die.net, not others? --Deryck C. 15:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

No particular reason; it was my favoured source at the time I created the template family, and there's no particularly obvious default choice that I'm aware of. –EdC 18:56, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
We should an ad-free page if one is availble. Gronky 15:23, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any. Do any of the major distributions have a WWW-accessible manual page repository? –EdC 20:55, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why the link to die.net?

However, why to explicitly put "on die.net"? I think this is not the same as the {{imdb}} template for linking to the Internet Movie Database for example, because the man pages weren't written by die.net but "only" hosted by them. What do you think? Best regards —surueña 13:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the link should be removed. It is of no navigational or referencial utility at all. It's no different from an ad. Gronky 13:48, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
However, they have been collated and otherwise modified by the hosts (at minimum, through hyperlinking). Also, given that Linux doesn't have a single authoritative man page repository, it becomes necessary to identify sources. –EdC 20:54, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
It doesn't matter how much work the hosts did, and it doesn't matter how needy the GNU/Linux documentation situation is. Compensating unrequested work and fixing another project are not jobs of Wikipedia.
Die.net took a bunch of free docs, and they put them online with a bunch of ads. They're free to have their site, but adding links to that site from 90+ Wikipedia articles is indistinguishable, in execution and in effect, from what a spammer would do. So, no matter how well-intentioned this edit is, wikipedia can't tolerate it. Gronky 16:05, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Except that it's not die.net that are adding the links; it's everyday Wikipedia editors. (Perhaps I should make it clear that I have no link of any kind with the owners of die.net.)
We can omit an attribution link with Template:Man/FreeBSD, because the manual page linked to is the actual FreeBSD manual page, and as such any attribution beyond stating the source of the manual page as a FreeBSD manual page is unnecessary. That is not the case with Linux manual pages, as there is no single authoritative source. As such, for the purposes of citing sources it is necessary to distinguish possible sources from one another (that is, a Linux manual page from one source is not necessarily the same as one from another source).
I am not arguing for a link as a method of compensating the host site, rather as a way to identify the source of the material. Essentially, if the manual page repository is the official repository for that distribution, then identifying the source is unnecessary; otherwise it is.
In any case, even if the attributative link is removed, the manual page itself is still to the site you claim to dislike. If the idea of linking to an ad-supported site offends you, perhaps you would like to switch the default to Template:Man/Linux, after ensuring that links will continue to function? –EdC 17:15, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
I see your point EdC, and I agree that there is no authoritative source for Linux man pages. But the template shouldn't cite the hosting page but the Linux Documentation Project because AFAIK they are the authors of all core Linux man pages [1]. —surueña 13:06, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, it seems that die.net has not only the core Linux man pages but also from other sources. Anyway, die.net aren't the authors, so in my opinion either they are a reliable source so we offer a simple link to the man page (without stating the source), or the aren't and therefore we should offer a link another web page. The responsibility for choosing an accurate source for the man pages is from us, not the reader to click the link or not depending on the name of the hosting page shown in the template. HTH —surueña 13:26, 26 June 2007 (UTC)


I'm not saying we shouldn't link to die.net or any other ad-supported site. We should prefer ad-free sites over sites with ads, but sometimes the only possible source is one with ads, and so we just live with it. What I'm against is the idea of giving them special attribution. It's not necessary and it's contrary to Wikipedia standard practice. Whether you're affiliated with die.net or not is not part of the equation. "a way to identify the source material" before clicking on each link is not "necessary" at all - and for people who want it, it can be done other ways (by the status bar in your browser). Gronky 15:26, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why "Linux man page"?

If you look at nm (Unix) for example, it points to nm(1) and describes it as a "Linux man page". This is unfortunate, because

  1. that man page is explicitly from the Gnu binutils package and not part of the Linux kernel; can in fact be used on various non-Linux OSes. It should probably be called a "GNU binutils man page".
  2. if you follow the link to die.net, the man page footers which state that it's part of binutils are removed in their HTML version. Instead they once again falsely call it a "Linux man page".

In effect, the article provides false information, and I see no obvious way of fixing it and still use this template.

JöG (talk) 21:36, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, if GNU has a manual page repository you could add that. Obviously "Linux" is being used here in the sense of a Linux-based distribution with GNU and other programs; I'm not sure I see the issue here. EdC (talk) 18:39, 9 March 2008 (UTC)