Talk:Thinking Machines Corporation

Business problems

Manarudubshinki wrote "... and failure to ship products on time and performing at an adequate level." I moved this here for discussion. I am unaware of external sources that make this claim. Are the any citations to support this? --Zippy 03:08, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Claim...

Removed from the page: "A claim was made that a small CM-5 was once placed aboard a nuclear submarine, but this claim has not been substantiated." If a claim was made, there should at least be a ref to where the claim was made. --mikeu (talk) 19:01, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

The claim was made anonymously to a Usenet news group, possibly comp.arch or comp.parallel. The claimant themselves were not certain. Hillis was not asked, but could be easily contacted, but also might not be able to respond. 143.232.210.45 (talk) 21:34, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Business: numbers

The article should likely cite the numbers of delivered or manufactured systems by model. It is my understanding that only 6 CM-1s were delivered before work began on the CM-2. Only 1 site, LANL, purchased 2 CMs. Etc. These numbers vastly exceed the Goodyear MPP. 143.232.210.45 (talk) 22:58, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Recent move

Was the renaming of Thinking Machines to Thinking Machines (company) really necessary? Since the only other article it needed disambiguating from is about fictional robots from a science fiction story, wouldn't an article about a real non-fictional US corporation be considered the primary topic? Letdorf (talk) 11:53, 20 September 2010 (UTC).

I suggested it on another page, as Thinking machines and Thinking Machines is a very subtle difference. I'd never heard about the company until a couple of days ago on wiki, I'm not sure how famous it is to those outside the field. I would suggest that the Dune things also be renamed, and a disambiguation page be set up, including Thinking Machine, which goes to Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, as well as a suggestion of Artificial Intelligence It's a bit of a mess as it is. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 12:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I was toying with the idea of a disambig page but that typically isn't done for just two items (Thinking machines vs. Thinking Machines), we usually just do hatnotes instead. I totally missed Thinking Machine (Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen), so now a disambig is probably a good idea. As far as the primary topic, the 1980s company is defunct and certainly took its name from Herbert's 1965 fiction. The thinking machines article needs work but the sources are out there, I have some published discussions/analyses myself but haven't gotten around to improving it.— TAnthony^Talk 22:16, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

What weak arguments I see:

• "I have not heard of TMC until recently..."—So you are an expert in computer architecture, what you have not heard of must not be notable, and cannot be the primary topic.
• "People outside the field [computer architecture] probaly have not heard of TMC"—And people who are not Dune fans have all heard of the scary fictional robots that is being claimed as universal knowledge? People are ignorant of things that do not concern them. An Arts/Humanities person knows nothing of computer architecture, and vice versa (generally).
• "TMC has been defunct since the 1980s, thus it cannot be in the attention of anyone" -- LOLWUT? TMC went down in the mid-1990s so get your facts right. Notability is not temporary. The primary topic is TMC because of contributions made to computer architecture, thus more sources cover TMC than some cliched scary fictional robots. "Cyclon" is about some Ancient Greek thing, not a bunch of scary fictional robots from Battlestar Galactica even though some 2,000 years separates them. Why? Because the Ancient Greek Cyclon is more notable than fancruft.
• "I am sure that TMC took its name from those scary fictionbal robots, thus the child is less important than the parent"—Speculation, you show me a credible citation for that, prefferably an oral histories interview of Danny Hillis, not that it is important since taking the name from Dune means nothing. TMC has more coverage in the literature and thus it is more notable.
• "There is coverage of those scary fictional robots, they've just havn't been added to the article yet"—I did a search on Google Scholar after someone moved the fancruft over to its present title. And guess what I found? One trivial mention in some lit crit publication whose reputation is uncertain to me. So either you show me some proper references or your assertion is without merit.

In summary, this move infuriates me. This is a perfect example of the fancruft bias that is harming Wikipedia's reputation as an encyclopedia. When people used to complain about how Wikipedia treats fancruft as gold and everything else as inferior, barely worthy of a mention as footnotes, I used to think "meh". Now, I think that all fancruft must be sent to /dev/null for the continued viability of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia that provides eveyone with a summary of reality, not whatever graces the imagination of fiction writers. Fucking fancruft. Rilak (talk) 02:59, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Woah, easy boy. One of the disambiguations should be to Artifical Intelligence, which is what is suggested on the Dune characters page. (There are arguably four different items matching the term - and disambiguating through upper and lower case is really, really silly). That I'd never heard of TMC before is not an argument about its notability for inclusion. I hadn't heard of the Dune characters either. It's a question about usability. How will people search for what they want, and how many people typing in "thinking machines" are going to be looking for the company? Wikipedia's reputation is not damaged by having articles on science fiction, it's damaged by having bad articles on science fiction - or any topic. Furthermore, academic articles are not the only sources we use on wikipedia, so google scholar hits don't tell us much, particularly when it's not a topic we would expect to get much treatment in sources like that. The best thing about an encyclopedia is that you get to discover things you never even thought of looking for. So disambiguation pages can be great ways to enhance the reputation of the encyclopedia as a place to find things out.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:19, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Yiiikes, a simple argument would probably have been enough, no need to blow your top ... I boldly moved the TMC but I clearly say above that "a disambig is probably a good idea," and VsevolodKrolikov obviously suggested one in the first place. I may have confused the issue in my subsequently defending the merits of the Dune topic itself, but the original novel was written in 1965 and not every published analysis is easily found on the web, like the Touponce book. Oh yeah, and Cylon is a disambig too, which helps your case but not in the way you meant it to.— TAnthony^Talk 20:41, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Regarding usability, it is impossible to determine what readers are after when they type in a variation of "thinking machines". We cannot determine from the page view statistics alone whether readers ended up at an article because of the random article function, because they searched for a term whose exact construction had escaped them, or because they were unfamiliar with Wikipedia's articles (I myself ended up at the fancruft article once after I assumed the software will take me to the article on TMC by capitalizing the "m" in "machine", which I had left uncapitalized to save myself from hitting the shift key—this was how I discovered that the fancruft had been moved). I would prefer that editors not guess which article recieves the most views from readers as such guesses will be marred by bias from both sides. Thus, I believe that a disambiguation page is the most appropriate course of action here. "Thinking Machines (company)" should be moved to "Thinking Machines Corporation", as this is more natural than the title with the parenthesis (and it has the added benefit of enabling us to refer to the company elsewhere as "TMC", which if I remember correctly, is what the company and secondary sources sometimes used).

Regarding your comments about Wikipedia's reputation, I do not believe that I stated that the reputation of the encyclopedia was harmed because of the inclusion of articles about fiction. My argument was thar it is harmed by the poor editorial decsions of editors who favor fancruft over real-world topics of notability—in this case the move which treated the fancruft as gold, and everything else as unimportant factoids that are casually and ignorantly moved around.

Regarding the appropriateness of using scholarly literature to determine the notability of fictional topics, is it not the norm for academia to perform analysis on concepts in fictional and present an arguement as to how those concepts are relevant in society and culture? For if it is, which I believe is so, then the fancruft is not notable per Wikipedia's policies as it has not demonstrated significant coverage in reliable sources, thus it would be deleted, and we would not be having this discussion. Rilak (talk) 03:59, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I think we're in broad agreement. I'd also like there to be a proper disambiguation page. This involves moving articles around, and I was hoping an admin or someone with more experience would handle it (I've tried it before and messed up). As for the Dune article, I really don't care or know much about the topic, and have no idea about its notability. I don't think there was any attempt to say it was more important than the company - I think the shifting and disambiguating needs to be followed through to the end. If you know how, be my guest! VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 04:04, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Move to Thinking Machines Corporation

Does anyone object to moving this to Thinking Machines Corporation? If we don't want it at Thinking Machines, the official title seems more appropriate than this parenthetical. Cheers, — sligocki (talk) 05:01, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

No problems at all - I just want disambiguation of some kind.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 05:18, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved.—kwami (talk) 09:34, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Thinking Machines (company) → Thinking Machines Corporation—Discussion has resulted in concensus for the creation of a disambiguation page for "thinking machines" and related terms. This requires this article to be moved to "Thinking Machines Corporation", which is the most natural and logical title after "Thinking Machines", as the best title will redirect to "Thinking machines", the disambiguation page. Rilak (talk) 05:09, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

• Did you mean to nominate Thinking machines which would need to be moved for the dab page? This one does not need moving to make way for a dab page in the main name space. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:31, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it will be easier if I just stated my proposal:

• Thinking Machines (company) needs to be moved to Thinking Machines Corporation, which redirects here. The redirect has an edit history of more than one edit, so administrator intervention is needed. The reason for this is so the implausable title the article presently has can be discarded.
  • Thinking machines needs to be moved back to Thinking machines (Dune), where it came from. Administrator intervention is also required here for the same reason as above.
  • Thinking machines (presently about fictional robots) and Thinking Machines (this article's former title) should redirect to Thinking machine which will be the disambiguation page.
  • Thinking Machine, which presently redirects to an article about a fictional character should redirect to "Thinking machine".

In summary:

• Thinking machine should be the disambiguation page
  • thinking machine, Thinking Machine, thinking machines, Thinking machines, and Thinking Machines should redirect here to the above
• Thinking machines (Dune) should be about the fictional robots
  • thinking machine (Dune), Thinking machine (Dune), Thinking Machines (Dune) should redirect here to the above

Rilak (talk) 07:39, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be much easier to have all case permutations of "thinking machines" and "thinking machine" to go to the same disambiguation page. It's much simpler that way. Artificial intelligence should also be one of the options, as should Thinking Machine (Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen). Sometimes people aren't quite sure of the proper nomenclature; the subtleties of plural versus singular and which words start with upper case are simply putting obstacles in the way of the user which are more problematic than a general disambiguation. With the exception of the company, it's not clear whether any of the others should be plural or singular. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 09:57, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Which is exactly what I am suggesting. I've revised my previous comment to be more clear. Rilak (talk) 11:57, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Then you need to nominate the other pages. But I'll add that article names are generally singular and not plural. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:23, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I also created a dab page so some of this has been cleaned up. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:38, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree with everything except I think Thinking Machines should forward here (Thinking Machines Corporation) because that is what that capitalization unambiguously applies to (there should also be a hatnote pointing to the dab page). Cheers, — sligocki (talk) 21:32, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Support, per Rilak's proposal, and sligocki's amendment. Thinking Machines Corporation would appear to be the most appropriate name for this article, following the WP:NCCORP guidelines. Letdorf (talk) 11:58, 29 September 2010 (UTC).

Support, per above; Thinking machines (Dune) should never have been "un-disambiguated," this proposal makes great sense.— TAnthony^Talk 20:41, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Slogan

Why did https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Thinking_Machines_Corporation&diff=598927103&oldid=598926941 remove the cool slogan? I thought that was pretty good. :(

Does "Thunkos" need a citation as it last appeared in the article?

The "Thunkos" portion of a statement in various forms but lastly:

"Thinking Machines alumni (known as "Thunkos") ..." (emphasis added)

has been repeatedly reverted by Andreldritch because as he put it "Most Thunkos references online come back to the Wiki page, which is circular citation" Actually this is his admission that many pages show that Thinking Machine alumni call themselves "Thunkos" as is stated parenthetically in the above reversion. I think this falls under WP:BLUE, you don't have to cite the obvious. I could easily find a cite as Andreldritch did but I dodn't want to clutter the article and unlike Andreldritch I don't want to edit war. If other editors agree, then I will once again edit the article and if Andreldritch reverts I will report him for disruptive editing. Tom94022 (talk) 00:25, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Doesn't look like your entry on "known as Thunkos" was reverted at all. Are we missing something here? What else needs to be edited? Cheers. Ipanemo (talk) 14:07, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

You are correct, so far it has survived. I got confused by too many notifications. My apologies. Tom94022 (talk) 19:13, 1 September 2019 (UTC)