Talk:Richard P. Gabriel

sourcing and POV
Was this written by RPG? It's full of all sorts of details that are very difficult to historically authenticate. (Almost got accepted to MIT and Harvard? As far as I know, all college admissions processes are designed to be totally opaque to the users.)  I could ask Winston if the thing about his being offered a position at the AI lab is true, but I suppose it's not that important. This article just seems kind of fanboyish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saccade (talk • contribs)


 * No, I wrote it.
 * It is sourced from some of the autobiographical entries. See the external links. Generally, if the subject volunteers the info, we don't accept it (since it isn't published anywhere), but that doesn't apply here.
 * And would you ask Winston? RPG has looked this article over, and I have no reason not to trust him, but it'd still be best to get independent confirmation. --maru (talk) contribs 16:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the . 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. 

move, explained below. &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) Seen this already? 22:25, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

requested move to Richard Gabriel
Richard P. Gabriel → Richard Gabriel – There was a one-sentence stub at Richard Gabriel and this excellent biography at Richard P. Gabriel; the latter should be at Richard Gabriel and the stub at Richard S. Gabriel or Richard Gabriel (cricketeer) or suchlike. I started to do this, moving the stub to Richard S. Gabriel, then discovered to my chagrin that I couldn't move the biography onto where the redirect is... - Greg Price 07:54, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Oppose moving "Richard P. Gabriel" to "Richard Gabriel". Such a move implies that most folks looking for the name Richard Gabriel would expect to find this person. It is better to have "Richard Gabriel" as a disambiguation page, leaving this article where it is. --KSmrqT 19:42, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Weak Oppose. I've never heard RPG referred to as simply Richard Gabriel. Dick Gabriel, yes, but never simply Richard Gabriel. --maru (talk) contribs 23:09, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Is that how people who know him refer to him? I don't know him; but I've seen his name before, and I knew that "Richard Gabriel" was a certain Lisp hacker, founder of Lucid, and author of "Worse is Better", but never knew his middle initial. I'd certainly have looked under Richard Gabriel.

Doing a Google search, I find that everything RPG wrote says "Richard P. Gabriel" or his email address or initials, and nearly everything he didn't says "Richard Gabriel" (which makes sense since people are used to ignoring most people's middle names.)

So I think the conclusion is that the page should be titled Richard P. Gabriel, since that's what he calls himself; and since it's definitely true that most people looking for a "Richard Gabriel" will be looking for RPG (the alternative is a cricket player with a one-line stub created because someone wanted cricket players to have articles), Richard Gabriel can be a redirect, with a dablink to Richard Gabriel (disambiguation).

I'll leave it for a day in case someone disagrees. Greg Price 21:31, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Since noone opposes having a redirect from Richard Gabriel to here, I see no reason not to move this page to there. &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) Seen this already? 22:25, 26 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. 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.

Richard Gabriel vs. Dick Gabriel vs. rpg
In the computer community, people call him Dick Gabriel. In the poetry community, people call him Richard Gabriel. He publishes his poetry as Richard P. Gabriel. He signs his emails as rpg.

Publication Credits
When someone broke up External links and References into two sections, they left Gabriel's poetry book under the references section which doesn't make any sense organizationally. So the poetry is now moved under external links though I still don't find this completely satisfactory. Ibar88 17:56, 16 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm guessing you're new to Wikipedia. You can find out who made what edit and why by checking the edit history, available by clicking the "history" tab at the top of the article page. (The one at the top of this page gives the talk history, which is different.)
 * The partition into "References" and "External links" is a Wikipedia standard, which you can find documented in the Manual of Style. Also per that guide, the Drive On book belongs in References, not External links, so I'm reverting (undoing your move). --KSmrqT 10:23, 17 October 2006 (UTC)