User talk:Robotics1

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Welcome!

Hello, Robotics1, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, please be sure to sign your name on Talk and vote pages using four tildes (~~~~) to produce your name and the current date, or three tildes (~~~) for just your name. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome!

-Poli (talk • contribs) 21:18, 2005 July 26 (UTC)

Hi David and welcome (from a novice)! Although there's lots to do here and you should definitely jump in, did you know there is a wiki devoted exclusively to LEGO topics? There is one called BLACK LISTED HYPERLINK (see below). The MindStorms articles could use some help from a technic head such as yourself so if you have an interest (in particular a detailed article on Forth and pbForth (and their relation to ROBOFORTH) would be most welcome!) come on over. Thanks! ++Lar 21:22, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

 I did not even put in the above link to BRICKWIKI DOT ZAPTO DOT ORG which is now counted as spam.
 That's ridiculous. Consequently I can't even add to my own page. Sorry Poli.
It's a fascinating concept. I think I'll get mindstorms to work with my daughter then I'll be able to discuss it. Thanks to you, Robotics1 13:37, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] robot software

I finally uploaded a few paragraphs to the robot software page. Let's hope it sticks. I made reference to the Mindstorms NXT which I now have with my daughter.

I really hate the way the robot pages are vandalized. I'm glad there are some people and bots that pick them up quickly.

[edit] merging 'structure' in robotics to robot

Hi, You say both editors agree no merge is possible. However I think the original person who suggested a merge had a good point. Robotics is the 'science' of robots and includes robots, industrial robots, mobile robots, robot software etc. Therefore it could easily assimilate all the other articles, merged into it. The task is to cleanly refer to specific issues by linking to them. The section on 'structure' is not really about robotics but is about the design considerations for robots. You will find a section in robot called 'Robotics' and the content is almost the same as the content of this section. Therefore a link to 'robot' from robotics might be worth considering. OR - remove the Robotics section in robot to the robotics article.

What follows is even worse: Common Uses of Robotics is not common uses of robotics at all but is common uses of robots - moreover common uses of Industrial Robots. The content of all these last sections could easily be distributed between robot and Industrial Robot.

The article on robot is excellent but the article on robotics is weak and for a very good reason. There is, as yet no really good definition of the term 'robotics'.

Robotics1 22:59, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

If you think merging the two articles is a good idea, then you should nominate robotics for deletion, stating in your nomination that you think the proper course of action is to merge the two articles at robot (or some other combination of articles). —Disavian (talk/contribs) 23:07, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I really have not expressed myself properly, sorry. When I said the original person who proposed the merge had a good point I didn't mean I agreed with it. See my post in talk:robot as follows:

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. There should definitely be two separate articles. But we need to think about what belongs in what article. For example the very long article on robots contains a section called 'robotics'. Why is that there when there is a separate article called robotics? Then within the article robotics there is a section called structure which *might* belong in robots. On the other hand kinematics might properly be part of robotics and not robots. And then there is that section called 'common uses of robotics'. This really is not robotics IMO; it's common uses of robots.

I'm certainly not advocating a merge of robotics into robots, rather a bit of movement both ways.

It's now proposed that I make some small changes to see if they work.

Robotics1 20:16, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] external links in URBI

Jean-Christophe Baillie of 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?

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.

Thanks, Best Regards, Jean-Christophe Baillie

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)

[edit] My talk page

I'm not sure I understand the confusion regarding leaving me messages. You can either click "Edit this page", scroll down and leave a message, or edit the last section header and make a new section. Most talk pages (user or article) use the convention of leaving new messages at the bottom. OhNoitsJamie Talk 15:39, 6 December 2007 (UTC)