Talk:Ring Indicator

Proposed merger

I'd support a merge too, but RS232 is already 30KB long - this separate article treats the Ring Indicator pin in greater detail. Reswobslc 23:04, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

But this article is pretty redundant with the description of RI in the RS 232 article. The whole troubleshooting section on floating RI wiries (which is unreferenced and appears highly anecdotal to me) doesn't even belong in a Wikipedia article and should be moved into the Wikibooks realm. Good heavens, we're not going to have an article about every pin of every connector. --Wtshymanski 16:58, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Redundant? Not true at all. The only thing RS-232 says about RI is "Asserted by DCE when it detects a ring signal from the telephone line". This article says far more than that. And good heavens, if someone can write a useful article about every pin about every connector, then that is a good thing - just like having an article for every element in the periodic table. Wikipedia is not paper. You may not care, but those of us who are tasked with writing the software and implementing the hardware that utilizes these pins happen to find information like this plenty useful. Regardless, I'd support the merge, though RS232 is still over 30KB and doesn't seem to be shrinking. Reswobslc 18:23, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Still needs references for all this. And look how much redundant context you have to give to explain that it's not a paired pin like CTS/RTS - why does this even matter? This should definitely be part of RS 232. --Wtshymanski (talk) 23:05, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Interesting point - redundancy is in the eye of the beholder. I would guess, by looking at your edits, that you're an experienced electrical engineer. Much of the stuff I've explained is intuitively obvious to you from your experience, or what you are referring to as "redundant". Wikipedia's audience is a general audience, not one of experts who already know everything and therefore wouldn't find the information useful. If the "skill level" for this article is too low for you, that is fine, you are welcome to ignore it (or improve it). But wiping it out or merging it just because you feel that just because it isn't helpful to you it can't be helpful to anyone is counterproductive to the purpose of Wikipedia in the first place. I would thoroughly be thrilled to wipe the article for Paris Hilton since I believe she is of no meaningful importance in the world, and I suppose I could suggest we don't need an article about water since everybody knows what that is anyway. But I'm not welcome to attempt either. Also consider playing fairly. Your attempts to wiping my work for no other reason than you feel it is not helpful to someone with your experience, without any community consensus to go ahead and do that, is perhaps why I am behaving as though somebody is stepping out of line and on my toes. Reswobslc (talk) 07:27, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Every time you pop up an edit box you see If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it.. It's not that "Ring Indicator" is intuitiviely obvious, it's just that it's so out of context on its own. As a couple of lines in rS 232 it would be fine, but to re-explain the whole context here doesn't serve the Wikipedia reader.

A general audience is not served by minutia - we're all drowning in facts, the whole point of an encyclopedia is to give you the important context. If I'm looking for a History of England, I almost certainly don't want a list of all the Lord High Chamberlains of the Royal Backscratcher. You might even agree that of the nearly 2 1/2 million articles now on the Wikipedia, about 1 million are personal vanity projects that will never be seen by human eyes again after their primary editor loses interest. --Wtshymanski (talk) 02:21, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but this isn't a personal vanity project, and your "royal backscratcher" reference has absolutely nothing to do with a technology standard present in the vast majority of computing devices in existence today. Now if you want to seek a consensus that agrees that this article is a waste of Wikipedia paper, then go for it. Until then, I suggest you either contribute, or take a hike. Reswobslc (talk) 21:14, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Should still be redirected

It's still here? Why? This should be a couple of lines in RS-232, not here. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:39, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

this article isn't a couple of lines, and appears to be a very detailed piece about one specific aspect of RS232. As per WP:ROYALBACKSCRATCHER above, I am removing the merge tag. Totnesmartin (talk) 13:42, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

That's just sad. Roll on, Pokemon! --Wtshymanski (talk) 13:49, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

"When is it an encyclopedia?" When is Wikipedia an encyclopedia? I think you should read WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and perhaps refer this article to Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing. Incidentally, WP:POKEMON appears to have fallen out of use. Totnesmartin (talk) 14:02, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I live in hope. If the Pokemon have all been flushed out, then some of the other Wiki cruft may some day get cleaned up also. "I don't like it" is a pretense - this whole project is the product of the averaged prejudices of its editors, let's not pretend that one can put on the Sorting Hat and decide impartially which parts are "consensus" and which parts are personal hobby horses. My experience of Wikiprojects is that their main activity is putting banners on talk pages and that's as far as they get; perhaps I've not been exposed to any competent Wikiprojects (but then, I've only looked at a couple thousand pages, not a statistically significant sample). --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

To the extent that you say Wikipedia is a product of the averaged prejudices of its editors, I agree with you. Not sure why that's a bad thing though. You sound like the sort that would go into a bar to preach about the ills of alcohol, and then write a letter to the local paper's editor bemused and astonished at why none of those silly drunks listened. You seem like a brilliant guy, don't you have better things to do? Wikipedia is for us human folk (the ones with the very same prejudices you complain of), not for aliens on some other planet. You clearly have a different idea of what a "Wikipedia" should be than the rest of us, and fortunately, for people like you, the MediaWiki software is free and so is all the content. Feel free to install it, make yourself an admin, and start your own Wikipedia fork, which you can decruft to your heart's content. (I don't mean that in spite - I have done the same myself, minus the importation of Wikipedia content). I do not care for Pokemon myself, but have not lost any sleep over its inclusion in Wikipedia. But if I felt differently, I would have recourse. You too have at your disposal the opportunity to enjoy a wiki free of Pokemon and royal backscratchers. Look for the "mediawiki" package in your favorite Linux installer utility. Reswobslc (talk) 20:27, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that the averaged prejudices aren't informed prejudices. Why should I start my own Wikipedia when we've got a nearly perfectly good one here that just needs some intelligence exercised in what constitutes an article? If I were brilliant, why would I be here? Brilliant people get paid to write brilliantly. I'm as damaged as the average basement-dwelling Wikipedia contributor. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:35, 6 April 2010 (UTC)