Talk:Computer museum

Untitled
This article is awful.

A museum is not "a collection", it is an institution that maintains, studies, conserves, and displays a collection. A private collection maintained by a hobbyist is very unlikely to qualify under this definition.

I'm going to try and improve it a bit, but it's so bad I'm not confident...

82.5.195.72 (talk) 16:38, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Therefore I take it, as a logical extension to your argument, that a raft of online activities must immediately cease. We begin with Wikipedia ( It is not an Encyclopedia which one can take off a shelf ), 'online shopping' ( not shopping because there are no fabrics to touch ) and all online Galleries. After all, no one can hold photographs in an online gallery, can they?

An Online museum is the same. There is nothing deceptive about it: the title explains it, and common sense prevails. I have corrected your other mistake ( old-computers.com are online since 1995, not 1996 ). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.43.212.88 (talk) 12:15, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Someday I'm going to go back through the history of this talk page and reinstate the stuff that you (I assume you're deadPC even when you write anonymously) have deleted. It's completely ridiculous to delete my arguments from the page but leave your rebuttals. (You've also deleted some of your own arguments after I rebutted them).

I've never said you can't have an online museum. I've even referred you to articles written by professional museum curators discussing the concept and how it can be made to work. All I've said is that a museum is a scholarly institution that studies, documents and preserves the artefacts of the past. It is not a hobbyist collection of photographs with anecdotal captions. Mhkay (talk) 23:06, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Selective 'standards'
You seem to be very sympathetic to anything emanating from the U.K., perhaps because you're British. In reply to your question some time ago - and having observed your lack of concern in the meantime - yes, I do think you're a xenophobe. Having read the terms of talk pages, what you 'contributed' was personal waffle. Even the name of your company suggests you're a xenophobe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.125.57.174 (talk) 02:31, 31 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I assume that by "you" you (whoever you are) mean me. I'm sorry that you're so bitter about something I wrote over two years ago that you feel it necessary to resurrect the quarrel. I myself thought there was no point in pursuing it because the discussion was clearly not going to have a constructive outcome, but you then interpret my silence as "lack of concern"! My original criticism of your contribution (much of which you have deleted from the record) was that your personal collection of photos and annotations did not amount to a "museum" as the term is understood by those working in the museum profession. That criticism was not in any way motivated by the fact that you are irish and I am British, and it is very insulting to suggest so. I spent several years working for a company based in Dublin, and my Irish colleagues were among the best people I have ever had the pleasure of working with. As for my company, 95% of my customers are from outside the UK. The name of the company derives partly from "SAX", the "simple API for XML", partly from an association with AElfred, which was an early Canadian XML parser, named after a Saxon king, and partly because I was born in Lower Saxony, a province of Germany. Mhkay (talk) 00:47, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

You are entitled to your opinion, if your point is that a certain amount of 'dumbing down' of the strict concept is at play, I agree that this is so. However, as in other online examples which I have cited, it is a major strand of our current reality and therefore deserves inclusion in my view. As it happens, I deleted said comments accidentally. Deadpc (talk) 21:45, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

For clarity, I should probably add the following also. There seem to be a number of issues being discussed here: my main objection to what you wrote ( and the part which I actually did intend to delete ) was a reference to my 'attempt at glory', or words to that effect, in referencing my 'online'museum as being the first in Ireland. While I am extremely reluctant to touch anything written by others, this is a misrepresentation of my intentions and therefore I felt justified in deleting it( although as previously mentioned, I made a bit of a mess of the editing, for which I apologise )

It is also quite a personal remark, which does not reflect very well on me. I was annoyed to find this via a friend's direction quite high up a 'Google' search of my website's name. It is a flaw of Wikipedia itself that comments remain nested within the site pertaining to subject matter which is no longer on Wikipedia ( without any warning to users ). I have no problem with opinions, but as a believer in the right to reply, it is helpful to be aware of them in the first instance.

To anyone in this country - following 30 years of intense I.T. activity ( at one point Ireland was the World's biggest exporter of software, and a leading exporter of hardware for some time ) - this 'first' statement would certainly be of interest. I followed the rules of every book that I have ever read on the subject of the internet: "So what's different". I approached the description from that angle, not looking for cheap P.R. Did I want to garner a bit of attention? - of course! It was not the primary aim though.

I also completely deny the assertion that anything I have done or am doing is misleading. I do not mislead anyone. If I used the term 'Museum', yes, that would be misleading. I referenced my efforts as 'Online Museum', along the very same model of several other sites which have been online for up to nearly 15 years.

In fact if anyone is interested, how about a page specifically concerning online computer museums? All I can find is a reference to the 'Virtual Computer Museum'. This is about an actual standalone museum, rather than the subject encapsulated within a genre - based article. This is what I find particularly confusing about Wikipedia, and is probably a better example of the glory - hunting which you accused me of: one example to the exclusion of others.

I have not been able to find a category specifically related to same, though material pops up frequently on Wikipedia referencing same. I agree with you in principal, but not in general and this would be a way of redressing the situation.Deadpc (talk) 22:32, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Explanation of edit
I came across this when going through the backlog at Category:Wikipedia external links cleanup from July 2011. It was a complete mess, and a duplication of List of computer museums. I have removed all the museums previously listed. At first, I was going to leave a few but they are mostly all mentioned in the lead anyway. I also removed an unnecessary paragraph about online museums and some overlinking. There is still much room for improvement in this article but I think the way forward should be to extend the prose with information from reliable third party sources. Previously it was not only a duplication of the list but a violation of WP:ELNO and WP:LINKFARM. Sarahj2107 (talk) 13:45, 15 December 2016 (UTC)