Talk:PNFS

New page
Time for pNFS Page It is correct that pNFS is a particular extension or implementation of the NFS standard. Now that the RFCs are ratified and several products supporting pNFS are coming into the market, I propose a pNFS page.

Douglasof (talk) 17:46, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation
I've changed the PNFS redirect page to be a disambiguation page for the 2 relevant articles. If a redirect page is still wanted for pNFS then please set it up as pNFS and the PNFS redirect (with an uppercase P) can be used for Peak & Northern Footpath Society Douglal (talk) 16:25, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, yes you did. And I undid your change.  The correct procedure after such an action is to discuss, not carry on as if you are the only person in the world.  In case you hadn't noticed, the page actually does have a lowercase "p", but that's irrelevant since WP is case-insensitive to the first letter, so it is the same page as with an uppercase "P" and there is no way to separate them.  If you're wondering why I reverted your edit, it is because many people searching or linking to p/PNFS want the file system, and probably none want the conservation group.  Always hard to be sure of course, but since more people are visiting this redirect/dab than your new article, I think there's a good case to be made.  Read WP:TWODABS.  There are also existing longstanding wikilinks expecting a network file system, and probably external urls.  It needs some consideration before deciding to break them by changing the meaning of the page.  Lithopsian (talk) 19:15, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hello Lithopsian, you didn't mention that my legitimate improvement to convert a redirection page into a disambiguation page was undone by you without consulting me! I would have appreciated a discussion which you suggest is the proper etiquette. I found your action heavy-handed and your response rather rude to be honest. I fail to see that an article about a fashionable technology should monopolise an acronym which is shared by an institution whose good work was praised in the British parliament and that has been active for 125 years. I expect that pFNS may struggle to match that longevity. So please reinstate the disambiguation page which allows any users with any interests in any country (mainstream and topical or more niche but enduring) to locate the relevant article through an impartial list. You clearly have a good understanding about how to achieve this without disrupting other internal and external linkages. As acronyms will acquire alternative meanings over time then I expect that this should be a routine capability for Wikipedia. I don't share your experience so I would hope that you would assist less experienced editors to sort things out and not berate them for trying their best. Douglal (talk) 22:27, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Wikilinks can be chased down using the "What links here" entry (on the left in the default theme, but may be elsewhere in other themes). External urls are more difficult to find, and unlikely to be fixed in any case.  If there is reason to think they exist then that is a good reason not to change the meaning of a page.  There are tools for logging external traffic, although not best-suited for tracking down redirects.  They suggest that PNFS (in its  guise as a redirect) is being hit maybe once per day at most, but there is no way to tell what people were hoping to find from those visits.  I find your take on notability to be skewed, as is everyone's, towards the subject you have the most interest in.  That's not how it works unfortunately.  A WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, if there is one, is determined by what *everyone else* is interested in.  However, you've created an article and if it proves to be visited by several hundred people a day then it clearly needs to be referenced here, perhaps if it is only visited by a few dozen people a day since the Network File System redirect is to a section rather than an acronym for the whole subject.  Or someone else may share your opinion that it already needs to be disambiguated and make the change, or at least speak up in this discussion.  Wider discussion can be forced at WP:RFD, and the consensus there is considered generally binding.  Lithopsian (talk) 14:33, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hello again Lithopsian, I didn't see you response straight away as you forgot to address it to me. Worth noting that the term NFS (for the main NFS article) has its own disambiguation page. That seems to set a strong precedent. Coincidentally NFS also refers to another small UK charity! Also pNFS only warrants a couple of paragraphs in the main NFS article. I do understand your reasons for retaining the PNFS redirect page on efficiency grounds but the flipside to that is the risk of marginalising other valid articles. Therefore there seems to be a compelling case to reinstate the disambiguation page that I set up for PNFS. pNFS is not the only PNFS in the world (to use you own phrase). So, in the spirit of embracing broader international knowledge and being consistent with the NFS disambiguation, please go ahead and change the PNFS page back to my version. Thank you Douglal (talk) 18:50, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
 * You keep trying to frame this decision in terms of "fairness", "marginalising", and other evocative terms. It is none of those things.  There is only one decision to be made when picking between a redirect and a dab page, and that is how to get the most readers/searchers to the right article with the least effort on their part.  There is no attempt to be "fair" to "marginalised" subjects; if a subject is marginalised, then it isn't up to WP to fix that.  I'll say it again, even though you really don't want to hear it, dab pages are not here to promote new articles about relatively little-read subjects and Wikipedia isn't here to force people to somewhere other than where they wanted to go.  That said, it can be very difficult to determine who is hitting a page for what reason, especially with acronyms and doubly so with redirects to sub-sections of popular articles, but in the case two dabs, we really should try because we really should be redirecting to one or other of them if only we can work out which.  NFS is inevitably a dab page because there are nine possible targets and it would be a brave (or foolish) WP editor that argued Network File System was a more likely target than all the rest combined (actually Need for Speed is more popular than all the rest combined, although it is hard to tell if that's what people typing NFS were looking for).  And because there has been an assumption towards making three-letter acronyms into dab pages because of the difficulties in guessing what people are really looking for.  Lithopsian (talk) 20:58, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Well Lithopsian, it seems that the discussion you wanted is one in which you have already decided the outcome. I disagree. pNFS doesn't even have its own article. I am not prepare to spnd any more time on this. Goodbye!