Talk:Computer network

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Definition of ...[edit]

I am not necessarily thrilled with how the definition looks right now. But I like that I took some scattered pieces of definition and put them all in one place, so we can all work on it. It's almost like no one was quite happy with how it was defined, so people added their own definitions here and there in the article, under more focussed headings. I hope what I did today moves toward a better solution for the definition - I don't necessarily consider that this would be a good one as it stands this morning. My intent and hope is that if we put all the definition statements right at the top, all in one place, we will have a better chance of getting a really good one to happen! So ... I was "bold" today ... but in the spirit of inviting collaboration to get to a good solution. I think this can become a B-class article this year. I understand the definition is a bit tricky with Telecommunications as one article and Internet as another and Local Area Network as perhaps another (and one that needs work). Ideally, we could define computer network here and then point into these other articles, without overly duplicating what's under their Telecommunications or Internet? Such is the goal, whether done with collaborative editing or some Wikimedia techniques - however it can best happen. Let's see how the community responds to what I did today ... !!! But I definitely thought I would "talk" it, since I made changes that appear right at the top of the article! Maura Driscoll (talk) 13:44, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Computer networks are very definitely a type of (tele)communications network. These are all just different sorts of (tele)communications networks.Teapeat (talk) 14:26, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
I don't think anyone would have much argument with that, Teapeat. I certainly don't. Maura Driscoll (talk) 14:47, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for being bold. I've done some smaller improvements. -—Kvng
Kvng - thanks for getting the location statement out of there. Technically incorrect. Was going to remove this weekend. It came from trying to be nice - trying to salvage someone's uncited stuff by incorporating it instead of wholesale deleting it. Trying to salvage uncited stuff is nothing anyone should have to do - it is time-consuming, produces poor results, and introduces errors, every time. Sigh.
Thanks for catching that!
BTW, I was disappointed that you removed a new contributor's statement about similar and dissimilar computers. I think it's a wonderful point, especially in the lead, and one that can be built on with cited material in the article itself. Sadly, I'm going to let it go and not fight for it, but I thought it was a wonderfully relevant point about the "computer" end of "computer network". I also thought it was especially cool to get a new contributor - my entire goal in being bold, myself, is to foster a welcoming environment for new contributors.
The amount of uncited material and the wikilinks leading to even more uncited material is an enormous problem in this article.
There is absolutely no point in going back and trying to cite stuff that the original contributors didn't even bother to cite themselves.
But moving forward with a lot of new contributors, in a welcoming editing space, where citation is much encouraged and where experienced wikipedians set the example by citing --- I think the article could be lifted out of its sub-B-class state if that happened, slowly replacing the uncited material with new, up-to-date, cited material. I don't know that I see another viable way to get this article to at least B-class, fwiw. I absolutely do not think it's reasonable to expect anyone to come along and cite someone else's uncited material, however, replacing the uncited material with cited material might work. Such was my thinking in being bold, fwiw.  ??? Maura Driscoll (talk) 11:55, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
PS - Finally catching up to my formatting mess here on the talk page (apologies - now fixed). Maura Driscoll (talk) 00:58, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
Small proposal: "A computer network ... Data is transferred in the form of packets." This definition is too narrow. As the article briefly talks about, there are circuit-switched networks which do not transfer data in the form of packets. Proposal is to omit this phrase or reword it to be more general. 50.161.20.237 (talk) 06:22, 10 November 2014 (UTC) zach

A little intro re-writing tonight[edit]

Reverting this edit is perfectly okay with me. I do think the intro needs to be refocussed if no one has the time to work the article content, though. My particular cut at it might not be the way to go - but I like the overall idea of it, which was to refocus the intro to match the content of the actual article as it stands today. The intro seemed to be going in a lot of different directions, but the article itself ended up being pretty focussed on dated local area network technology. That's not a bad thing - there just seemed to be a mis-match with the intro, that's all. I had hoped to have the time to match the article to the intro, at one point, but I'm afraid I don't, so I thought I would try to match the intro to the actual article. It's a good article, even if quite a bit dated, as long as the intro doesn't make promises it isn't keeping??? IMHO. Please feel free to rewrite or just revert. Thought I'd give it a try anyway. Thanks Maura Driscoll (talk) 03:39, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

PS - Does the intro really have to say this?:
Two devices are said to be networked when a process in one device is able to exchange information with a process in another device.
It sounds to me like, at one point, a full encyclopedic (is that a word?) treatment was planned for this article but didn't happen as such. This is a good statement, but I feel like it's in the wrong place. It seems too detailed for the intro, but unfortunately, the article doesn't really touch "application process" which is up in the TCP layers, and instead mostly stays focussed on the IP end of things. This is a very good statement, but seems in need of a different home, to me. Any thoughts on that??? Maura Driscoll (talk) 04:22, 27 May 2013 (UTC)