Talk:Jargon File

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Bad link to Chicago Manual of Style

I clicked the link, and it takes me to page 242 of a book about Final Cut Pro. Seems unrelated. No idea how to find the real source to cite? — Preceding unsigned comment added by BenXO (talk • contribs) 12:49, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BenXO (talk) 12:51, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Jargon Wiki

Why not make the jargon file a wiki? --Anon.

I recently started such a project not knowing about this discussion (great minds think alike, eh?). Anyrate, it's over on Ursine. --BalooUrsidae 07:08, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I saw a link to a jargon file wiki on one of the websites listed at the bottom, i'm not sure if it had the contents of the actual file on it or not, but it certainly exists MichaelBillington 05:36, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Charles Spurgeon?

A paragraph in the article:

In Spring 1981, a hacker named Charles Spurgeon got a large chunk of the File published in Stewart Brand's CoEvolution Quarterly (issue 29, pages 26-35) with illustrations by Phil Wadler and Guy Steele (including a couple of the Crunchly cartoons). This appears to have been the File's first paper publication.

From some reason I highly doubt that Charles Spurgeon (died 89 years before that date) managed to somehow hack and get a portion of the File as stated in that paragraph. Is it the hacker's true name, or a nickname? Or maybe it's just wrongly-spelled? In any case, maybe the link shouldn't lead to Charles Spurgeon's (who was more of a Baptist preacher than a hacker) page? --85.65.13.27 01:12, 11 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed the link now to Charles Spurgeon (hacker). —Pengo 04:25, 11 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Item with bad source

"Particular instances that attracted much attention were the addition of tendentious pro-Iraq War and pro-gun ownership entries"

This links to a Slashdot article. The entire text of the article is "As reported by NTK, ESR appears to have embarked apon the process of recasting the Jargon File in his own image, adding terms like "Aunt Tillie" and "GhandiCon" that he dreamt up and seemingly no-one else uses, and various terms from (of all places) the warblogging community, where he is active. He's also updated the "Hacker Politics" page to be more closely aligned with his own views."

This contains no mention of Iraq or gun entries. Eric himself already objected on the Eric Raymond page to that and claimed it was false and there were no such entries.

I'm going to rewrite this as an allegation unless someone can come up with an Iraq or gun entry he added. Ken Arromdee 19:01, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

anti-idiotarianism would seem to be one entry that comes close to this, though it doesn't specifically mention Iraq.

hereafter

Overdone. Kashami 23:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

1950s as start date

User:68.36.192.168 changed the start date of the Jargon File from the 1960s to the 1950s at 09:18, 11 August 2006, citing Steven Levy's Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution. I don't have access to the book, so I can't confirm it. Can anyone confirm it? Phelan 13:49, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Any 1950's reference would almost certainly be to the MIT model railroad club thing, not to computer slang as such... AnonMoos (talk) 06:54, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See http://www.science.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/t/tmrc.html etc. AnonMoos (talk) 07:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Explain more

I tried reading it but as I have never heard of it before making out what it really was grew hard. Can someone make a section just simply account for it. Keldon 12:43, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ursine:Jargon fails

The interwiki link is yielding the following error from the Canadian system:

Not Found

The requested URL /Jargon was not found on this serveruy.

Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2 PHP/5.2.0-8 mod_perl/2.0.2 Perl/v5.8.8 Server at ursine.ca Port 80

Are you getting something different? -- David Spalding (☎ ✉ ✍) 18:13, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think I see ... the Interwiki link is fixed, but Wikipedia's internal [[Ursine:Jargon]] shows the earlier, broken link. What has to be done HERE to reload the change? David Spalding (☎ ✉ ✍) 18:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

needs more sources for the raymond criticism

The section about critics of raymond's version includes phrases like "Critics lament that…", "Some hackers have become dissatisfied…", "He has also been criticised for…". These are weaseley and should be sourced: see WP:WEASEL. --jacobolus (t) 06:41, 12 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've added the criticism over ESR's handling of the JF directly from ESR's page. rone (talk) 23:03, 9 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Debating abbreviations tag

14-Oct-2007: I've read and revised the entire article, but it does not contain excessive acronyms, IMHO. Keeping that abbreviations-tag would be like complaining that an article about corporations had too many abbreviations, such as AT&T, GM and IBM, or an article about television shows was overrun with acronyms: TV, ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN & CNN. I've moved that abbreviations-tag lower inside the article, but I really want concensus to remove it totally, and refer to this debate for the decision. Most acronyms have even been wikilinked, so warning about the acronyms seems absurd. Has this tag issue been decided in a similar article? -Wikid77 14:31, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Computerese

Computerese? --Abdull 20:05, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What about it? --FOo (talk) 07:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mark Crispin and Jargon File

"In 1976, Mark Crispin, having seen an announcement about the File on the SAIL computer, FTPed a copy of the File to MIT. He noticed that it was hardly restricted to "AI words" and so stored the file on his directory, named as "AI:MRC;SAIL JARGON"."

Is this meant to be a self referential joke, cause it sure sounds like it. Gigitrix (talk) 16:29, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Plagiarism

Unfortunately, much of this article has been directly plagiarized from the jargon itself at [[1]]. I don't know enough about the background to rewrite it - should we tag this for cleanup or similar? Verin (talk) 14:20, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't go so far as to call the situation unfortunate. Fortunately the jargon file is in the public domain, so there's no copyright violations to deal with. I do think it should probably be copyedited to be more encyclopedic. -FrankTobia (talk) 15:59, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's been "plagiarized" in exactly the way its author intended it; see http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/online-preface.html -- The Anome (talk) 19:54, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The JF being public domain is fine, but Wikipedia is not supposed to be based on what one person said. There should be third-party sources discussing the JF and its relevance (which IMO is little; it is often quoted to make the quoter sound clever but rarely really used). 86.166.74.199 (talk) 00:19, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Crunchly"

Could someone please add to this article a brief definition of "Crunchly"?
"Crunchly" redirects here, and the article briefly mentions "the Crunchly cartoons" but will be of little help to anyone not already familiar with them.
(Please add any info to the article - not just here on Talk.)
Thanks. -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 15:53, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Living document or icon?

Has the Jargon File passed from living document to icon once again? The present hiatus since the last update in 2003 is now almost as long as the 1983-1990 hiatus before the document was revived. *Dan T.* (talk) 14:57, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

> I emailed the address given in the file [jargon@thyrsus.com] with this question today (9/24/11 10:00 PM EST) and while the actual thyrsus server seems to be up (I went to thyrsus.com) the email bounced back. I believe this should be confirmed and hope that someone takes up the project of keeping this document alive. I think it is also important to note that while the HTML on the website claims to be v4.4.7, the file's homepage claims to be 4.4.8, and WAS updated Oct 2004 according to the top of the page. 108.7.217.138 (talk) 02:38, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If somebody picks the project up, they should probably name a revamped verson "5.0". *Dan T.* (talk) 17:48, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Updates since 2004?

The jargon file doesn't seem to have been updated in almost 8 years. Does this development merit its own section in the article? Lukeritchie (talk) 15:49, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unix NOT the first source-portable OS

That was Burroughs MCP, in 1960, written in extended ALGOL and NO assembler. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.175.225.22 (talk) 20:18, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

404

It's gone. If there are any mirrors, change the link. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.111.103.116 (talk) 00:08, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The main URL http://www.catb.org/jargon/ is working for me. If you mean something different, please be specific... AnonMoos (talk) 07:04, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yash Tulsyan / Cosman246

A cursory googling reveals that no one other than yourself is linking to your supposed fork. I understand wanting to attain notability, but this is not the place to do that. Come back and re-add your link AFTER you attain notability. As I said before: I could fork the jargon file tomorrow, but that doesn't make my fork notable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.251.27 (talk) 05:24, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, sorry. I just thought it was in a murky gray area of notability, given that it has gained some linkage from areas such as barrapunto. Sorry about that. There is some outside linkage, but I do recognize that much of it is my own.Cosman246 (talk) 06:03, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In the years since the above was posted, the newer version has gained significant notability, as a Google search for "JARGON FILE, VERSION 5.0.1" clearly shows. The Yash Tulsyan version has gained in popularity, mainly because the Eric Raymond version is not being maintained and has received significant criticism from notable hackers such as Richard Stallman [2][3] over its politics[4] --Guy Macon (talk) 18:20, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

67.160.251.27 is misapplying WP:Notability. That guideline pertains to entire article subjects, not mere mention in articles. It's entirely reasonable to mention that someone had continued to work on the JF for several years after Raymond abandoned it; I've re-added mention of Tulsyan's version (though Tulsyan should not be editing about himself, per WP:COI). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 10:39, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Concise source on Jargon File / NHD history

Encyclopedia of New Media: An Essential Reference to Communication and Technology by Steve Jones (2002) [5] — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 10:29, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Chicago Manual of Style expansion

This section here should be expanded, as the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style was published in 2017. It is "Impact and reception."

The Chicago Manual of Style, the leading American academic and book-publishing style guide, beginning with its 15th edition (2003) explicitly defers, for "computer writing", to the quotation punctuation style – logical quotation – recommended by the essay "Hacker Writing Style" in The New Hacker's Dictionary (and cites NHD for nothing else). The 16th edition (2010, and the current issue as of 2016) does likewise.

Enzopalmer27 (talk) 22:20, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Typo

"More than half of the entries now derived from Usenet and represent jargon then current in the C and Unix communities"

This sentence doesn't make sense - there's a verb missing in the first clause but i don't know what it's supposed to be. "were now"? "had now been"? TheSnowyPlains (talk) 16:19, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind, found the original sentence. Corrected TheSnowyPlains (talk) 16:40, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

computerese redirect too specific?

Is computerese redirect here too specific? As someone who got into computer programming/science/engineering (and other 'hacking') in early 1990s, I love The Jargon File. However, I don't think it's synonymous with 'computerese' which several/many other texts address/detail. Netspeak also has its own article, but if anything, there should be a computerese article with netspeak merely being a section.--dchmelik(talk|contrib) 23:32, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I associate "computerese" with techspeak mainly of the 1960s-1980s (i.e. before large numbers of ordinary people started dealing directly with computers). It's rather different from Internet slang, which is often spread by means of computers, but isn't necessarily about computers. The Jargon File records much computerese, but it focuses on certain communities, and favors informal terms in use among programmers over official terminology found in documentation and manuals. The article Computer programming in the punched card era has some classic computerese terms. AnonMoos (talk) 00:02, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]