Talk:Glossary of computer hardware terms

Why no software terms?

Why does Glossary of computer terms contain no terms relating to software? The first sentence specifically restricts the scope of the article to computer hardware, but this makes no sense considering the article title. That article should be Glossary of computer hardware terms. Quale (talk) 23:14, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

There are some non-hardware terms in it now, and it should probably be renamed back. Jeh (talk) 01:38, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Would it be better to split non hardware terms away into a new glossary ? 'glossary of computer science' or 'glossary computer software terms' etc. I found this glossary and started populating it specifically seeking a place to put *hardware* (microarch) terms.. there's a load of redirects now which would need fixing up if it changes? I was already uneasy putting 'microarchitecture' terms in an article talking about 'USB sticks' etc, but there were already terms like 'accumulator' so it seemed to fit. I hope someone implements my 'micro article auto glossary' feature request some day to clean up all this kind of nonsense :) Fmadd (talk) 02:02, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

There's a spectrum. At one end there would be "glossary of terms". Probably too broad. :) So, "Glossary of computer terms" is probably the most broad that could be supported. At the other end I think if you divide it much more finely you end up with a bazillion little glossaries with a lot of overlap, hence a lot of doubt as to where to put things, and a lot of overlap. "Software" vs. "Hardware" looks like it's well-delineated until you start thinking about microarchitecture - things that implement "hardware" behavior in software. Jeh (talk) 03:04, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Just curious there, are you saying 'microarchitecture' terms are straddling the line? I've always thought of these as 'hardware specifics', (things like cache behaviour, ISA details..), although they are considered in low level programming (of software). Before I started populating this page I was thinking of making a separate 'glossary of microarchitecture' for them. I only really came here because someone objected to me adding local glossaries in pages like CPU cache. Originally I wanted to avoid a glossary altogether.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fmadd (talk • contribs) 03:15, 10 June 2016

Surprisingly short

The list all fits on one page. This can't be right.  Card Zero  (talk) 00:31, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Merge discussion

Request received to merge articles: List of computer hardware into Glossary of computer hardware terms; dated: June 2016. Proposer's Rationale: These articles have tremendous overlap. "List of..." was created very recently in apparent ignorance of this one, and barely survived a deletion discussion. Discuss here. Jeh (talk) 02:37, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

• Support. Common sense that these cover the same topic, go ahead and merge, no discussion necessary. Reywas92^Talk 03:50, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

• • Apparently this needs to be stated outright: as the proposer I obviously agree... but this is just one person's opinion. Discussions should last a little longer before we go ahead. See WP:NODEADLINE. Jeh (talk) 20:23, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

• Take a look at my merge attempt i, did I miss anything, anything to cleanup Fmadd (talk) 14:26, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

It looks almost done, but we really should give any objectors a little longer to object. Also, I hate to tell you after all that work, but... every copy to here should be attributed to the previous page (with an edit comment of the form

Merged content from [[<source page>]] to here. See [[Talk:<merger discussion talk page section>]].

otherwise the edit history makes it look as if you wrote all of the new stuff here. See WP:MERGETEXT. Jeh (talk) 17:22, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

ok I guess we can retroactively add these comments, should be easy to figure out from the history. I suppose the original page should be rolled back to before I deleted anything Fmadd (talk) 17:39, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

No, we can't retroactively add them. They have to be attached to the specific edits. Both pages need to be rolled back to before you copied anything. And please don't do anything else here until more time has passed. Jeh (talk) 17:45, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

• Merge - I think someone who has the skills should be bold and merge. 62.64.152.154 (talk) 15:38, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, it's time. I'm going to at least start it early this week. Jeh (talk) 17:21, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Uh... more like late this week. Jeh (talk) 12:41, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

@Jeh: has a consensus been made to boldly merge these two articles, then? Richard3120 (talk) 21:02, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

@Richard3120: Seems like it to me. Do you have time to do it? I obviously have not had. Jeh (talk) 21:07, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

• Merge Practically identical. Andrew. Z. Colvin • Talk 07:39, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

The "List of computer hardware" page was previously nominated for deletion last year, but the AfD discussion resulted in "no consensus". Should it be merged into "Glossary of computer hardware terms"? --George Ho (talk) 16:28, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

• merge. Don't you see the opinions above? People want it to merge, but this is lots of tedious work, and people just move on to something more fun. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:19, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
• Merge Big merge coming on. I can't understand why they have been separate for so long. scope_creep (talk) 10:05, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
• Articles merged- removed RFC tag. --George Ho (talk) 04:21, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Redesign suggestions

Another idea, how about making the articles diverge: EDIT: rename this to glossary of computer architecture the other one a specialised glossary of Personal computer terms .. one list describes things like ALUs , caches, registers, NUMA etc. The other describes drive-bays, mice, webcams etc. Fmadd (talk) 16:16, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

It sounds like a good idea, but how would we ensure they don't overlap? 62.64.152.154 (talk) 16:20, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree it's ambiguous, indeed someone above suggests even 'hardware/software' terms has ambiguity (e.g. do you describe a cache miss as a hardware term or a software hazard?). Fmadd (talk) 16:35, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

I have a bigger suggestion, "micro articles" which could be automatically assimilated by categories in a many:many mapping for automatic glossaries, then you could filter. "glossary of PC ecosystem", "glossary of microarchitecture", "glossary of computing terms" etc, with some definitions shared between each, each definition being it's own 2line page. idea. But I realise that isn't going to happen any time soon. I see ambiguity as a sign of a missing feature, rather than something for humans to puzzle over. Fmadd (talk) 16:41, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

No. "Micro articles" of two lines each are not what we do on Wikipedia. (I've seen a number of ideas from you that summarize as "Let's make Wikipedia something else than what it is.") Anyway, in many cases here we already have complete articles. The typical reader here is either unaware or just barely aware of categories and would be unlikely to use them as you envision. Having two list articles, one "PC parts" and one "computer hardware", either compounds the maintenance job (if one is to be a subset of the other) or will leave many items on the "wrong" list from the reader's POV - the reader shouldn't have to know, in advance, which list to look in. Having multiple articles just makes it worse. Jeh (talk) 17:21, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

I know they're not how it works now. I'm making a platform suggestion that would eventually fix this kind of ambiguity. Everything is a work in progress, including our platforms. Allowing one to make a definition and have it show up in multiple locations would smooth this sort of thing out. Things evolve. Putting things in one hierarchical location is a well known hazard that doesn't fit how knowledge really works. Computers give us increasing numbers of ways of dealing with this hazard as they improve. As it happens, on reflection I can see that the other list is very 'PC ecosystem' centric. Describing cache ways and pipeline stages alongside USB sticks and printers does seem a bit odd. 'micro-articles' would work with the fluid, constantly evolving nature of knowledge (as is possible on the internet) rather than against it (as is needed for traditional print). A one liner snipet of information could be auto assimilated as a glossary def or component of another article whilst it's finding it's place, and provide even more value in improving the flow of concepts. r.e. "The typical reader here is either unaware or just barely aware of categories" -- with 'micro articles' and an auto-generate glossary capability, you could generate a glossary of terms spidering out from *any* article (e.g. gather all the terms that mention the current page, kind of like 'what links here' on steroids, or the reverse - gather definitions of everything here. Fmadd (talk) 17:25, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

I suggest you look at Wikipedia is a work in progress 62.64.152.154 (talk) 17:40, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't think anybody is stopping anyone from assigning more categories to existing articles, categories outside of the existing hierarchical system. Then displaying the category page would give you the list of those articles. Maybe a mod to the WP software would let a category page display each item's lede sentence. In any case I don't think this discussion really belongs here. Maybe at the village pump? Jeh (talk) 03:06, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

(ok point taken about the village pump for my tangent. Just wanted to say,r.e: '"Maybe a mod to the WP software would let a category page display each item's lead sentence. " - yes that's inline with my thinking - then 'trivial articles' (which I called "micro articles") suddenly don't look so bad, because they still appear in these pages, in a bigger context. r.e. Split/Merge, here i'm happy either way; i was just throwing the suggestion out there. Fmadd (talk) 03:29, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

We call very short articles "stubs". They're expected to be expanded in time.

Re. the auto-included text, in addition to defaulting to the lede sentence, there could be a bit of markup (a simple template) that specified "Include this text in the glossary". Could have both displaying and non-displaying versions of that. In the "displaying" case this would be text that would also display when the source article was viewed regularly. "Non dipslaying" would be for "glossary text" that doesn't quite fit anywhere in the source article. Enough of this and we could get rid of a lot of the handcrafted "List articles" completely.

Let me know where you put your proposal so I can chime in. Jeh (talk) 06:35, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

idea Fmadd (talk) 07:08, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Flashcards link

We wanted to learn all these terms in a flashcard format so we built one and made it freely available. Thought it would be helpful for anyone who wanted to learn the content of this glossary in a flashcard format like Anki to also be able to discover that they exist and have access to it from the source.

Was going to suggest it to be added in the external links section like the following but as it is linking to our own site, following the instructions of the Wikipedia guidelines, thought it would be best to leave this in the talk page for other contributors to see if it would be relevant or see if there was a better place/format to put it

• Flashcard version of the Wikipedia Glossary of computer hardware in an Anki-readable format

Darigov Research (talk) 22:31, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

This page is a mess.

This page is in need of some serious cleaning-up. Notably, any technology that is obsolete (Zip drives, USB 1.x) should be marked as such, and our definitions should have more detail. It's a good start though. MightyArms (talk) 21:00, 26 September 2022 (UTC)