Talk:Windows/Archive 1

Untitled Discussion
Hmm. Nearly all links to this page appear to reference Microsoft Windows. Should we redirect there, or what? --Uncle Ed

No. Please, dear lord, no. -- John Owens


 * It should be redirected, since no one can even be bothered to fix the current bad links, let alone take on the job of fixing new ones as they are created. --Zundark 12:52, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Come on lads, this should be a redirect. I'm a SuSE user and I think this page should redirect. Unfortunately, I have no intention of implementing this, as doing so will land me in hell. Anybody up to the job? --Itai 10:12, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I did the bad links, as of 12/2004. Let's see how many crop up as time goes by... Noel (talk) 20:27, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Firstly, I'd like to second John Owens's "No..." ;-). It may make sense to redirect windows to window with a link from there back to windows (computing), but there does not seem much point (and it may make it difficult for the majority(?) of people looking for computing windows--we are on the Internet after all).

Secondly, it strikes me that this disambig. page is becoming cluttered, therefore we should only having one link to computer windows (i.e.: remove references to MS and X Windows). We could put other OSs & windows systems containing the word windows (e.g.: DECWindows) (and indeed list every windows system in existence), and other expression, compounds and phrases refering to windows in the computing sense; but this is probably all best dealt with at windows (computing) and windows system (which would be linked to from windows (computing)).

--Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley 13:22, 2004 Jun 18 (UTC)

Make redirect
After User:Jnc's work 4 months ago of dab'ing links, there are now 124 links to "Windows" and is #76 on the Offline reports/This is one of the most linked to disambiguation pages.

I think it's time to move this page to a Windows (disambiguation); make Windows a redirect; and put an -like tag at the top of Microsoft Windows. Cburnett 21:17, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)


 * This has since been fixed again, but as this page has only 2 entries not mentioned on Window (disambiguation), I have merged it into that. – Smyth\talk 17:43, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

what do y-all think of the new article?

Changing the alphabetical list to put a program in front of the others is not neutral.
 * Generally, a disambig page should have the list in decreasing order of popular use. Enochlau 00:19, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree. --Treekids 16:42, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Link fixup and merge complete
I merged the contents of Windows into Window (disambiguation), and fixed most links to Windows that should point to Microsoft Windows. There are 22 links left, mostly wikipedia articles.

I am making this page a redirect to Window (disambiguation) since it is redundant. At the very least it should be a redirect to something, such as window. Jsmethers 08:05, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

The Problem Doesn't Go Away
As of now, there are another 223 Main namespace links to Windows. I've been looking through them (and fixing them) and can't find a single one that doesn't refer to Microsoft Windows. I think it makes sense to make this redirect there. I understand the distaste with that idea, but it looks like it's a full time job fixing the links. SteinbDJ 00:56, 5 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I strongly agree that Windows should redirect to Microsoft Windows. I understand that some people have an ideological problem with this, but to have Windows redirect to Window doesn't make any sense.  Every link pointing to Windows meant to point to Microsoft Windows, and I'm sure that all future links with do so as well.  This happens all the time; for example see where United States bounces you. --Deville (Talk) 04:42, 8 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm fairly neutral on the subject, overall... I can see merit in doing it either way. A few thoughts:
 * Redirecting to Microsoft Windows as an answer for recently-created articles that wikilink to "Windows" isn't really a solution. Double-redirects need to be squashed no matter where they are in Wikipedia, so it's really just a stop-gap measure until someone comes along and cleans things up (kudos to SteinbDJ for doing this!)
 * The term "Windows" is ubiquitous in computing, so it's quite natural to expect that typing "Windows" into a computer-based service would return the computer-based meaning of the word. But, it's not actually the most common use of the word.  Look around your house, for example... are there more windows, or are there more Windows?  Certainly the former, unless you live in a server room :-) ...  We may be tempted to redirect Windows to Microsoft Windows because we, by the very fact that many of us use Windows on a daily basis, are biased in this association, but that's not a world-wide phenomenon.  The whole world is our target audience, not just people interested in computing subjects.
 * Should someone looking to find information on, say, the movie Windows, be forced to go through the Microsoft Windows page, then the disambiguation page, before coming to the page about the movie?
 * Okay, I typed all that out and I guess I am leaning a bit in favour of having the redirect go to the disambiguation page. Let's see if we can get some more viewpoints in here and come to a better consensus as to what to do... this really is tricky. Warrens 21:43, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it should be redirected with a disambig at top. None of the other alternatives make much sense at all given common usage - I.E. you wouldn't expect to be taken to "Window (computing)" when you type in "windows". `RN 06:45, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

No- NPOV dicates that a merely popular point of view should not subsume the others- people searching for the general concept of windowing should not be directed to Microsoft as if it is the only implementor of the concept. --Treekids 20:07, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Looking at this the wrong way
The decision as to how to organise pages like this is supposed to be based not on what links (ie Wikipedia editors who wrote the links) use the term to refer to, but what readers use the term to refer to. The fact that most links refer to Microsoft Windows is therefore irrelevant, and in any event we have AWB for fixing disambig links. Cynical 10:54, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that when a user types "Windows" in the search box, they usually expect an article about Microsoft Windows. Not windows in any sense of that word. - Sikon 14:38, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I think a person who hears "you need to hide those windows" and goes searching for "windows" will not want a Microsoft OS discussion but rather an article of what windows are in a computer context. A disambig makes a lot more sense and fits the NPOV principle a lot better.  Please read WP:D, with an "typical user" in mind that might not be a Microsoft devotee. --Treekids 20:07, 24 July 2007 (UTC) (revised --Treekids 16:44, 5 September 2007 (UTC))

Disambiguation
Disambiguation has this to say in Section 3.3.2:

"When there is a well known primary meaning for a term or phrase, much more used than any other (this may be indicated by a majority of links in existing articles or by consensus of the editors of those articles that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings), then that topic may be used for the title of the main article, with a disambiguation link at the top. Where there is no such clearly dominant usage there is no primary topic page."

"Microsoft Windows" is by and large what is referred to by "Windows". People are not looking for the plural of the noun "window"; they would have searched for or linked to "window" if that's what they wanted. While there are other uses of "Windows", such as Windows (film), they are not nearly as prevalent. In addition, most pages linking to Windows want Microsoft Windows and it requires ongoing janitorial effort to disambiguate them.

I'm making Windows a redirect to Microsoft Windows. I think that Microsoft Windows should move to Windows, since now we have Windows (disambiguation). This would be consistent with the situation for Linux: there is Linux, the "operating system", which is named after the Linux (kernel), and which some people claim is called GNU/Linux, and there is a Linux (disambiguation) page for any confusion, linked to from the top of Linux.
 * This is hardly a decent comparison. Linux has never been anything but a computer term. --Rebroad (talk) 18:40, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, please refer to the Wikipedia article on systemic bias to get an understanding of why this article must redirect to Window. Thanks, --Rebroad (talk) 18:40, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Before reverting this, please let it stand for a while so that people see and can weigh in with negative or positive reasons for or for not doing this here. --Chris Pickett 17:09, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't a disambiguation page, with a link at the top saying something like "Looking for Microsoft Windows?", be better than simply directing it there? What if someone is looking to see what has been written on windows, is doing a paper on the history of them, or doing something else like that? It's idiotic that it be linked directly to MS 'Dows, especially considering that according to US courts, and common sense, "windows" does not = MS Windows. 72.138.179.83 00:15, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

"Windows" is the plural of "Window" ???
I am not exactly the biggest fan of Microsoft Windows, but cuh-MON. As said above: if anyone types "Windows" they are in 99.99% of the case going to be looking for a thing called "Windows", or they would have typed "Window". In 99.99% of *those* cases, they're going to be looking for Microsoft Windows. This should be a redir to Microsoft Windows, which should have a hatnote to Windows (disambiguation).--NapoliRoma (talk) 20:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Redirect
After recently disambiguating hundreds of links to Windows, guess how many I found that were not intended for Microsoft Windows? 1! It was an article about Conversion (barn) and this was the one page that I did not redirect. Unlike all these. I have no love for MS or for Windows but I do love Wikipedia and want to save database space, bandwidth and cpu cycles. Editors have more important things to do than disambiguate a link that, 99% of the time, goes one place. Even if you hate MS and use Xfce or KDE think of how this is the right thing to do when it comes to Wikipedia.

The majority of the comments above are for a redirect, as is D.

For these reasons I am redirecting this page to Microsoft Windows and copying content this page to Windows (disambiguation). Faradayplank (talk) 05:36, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Just want to add thanks and support for doing this as I'd also fixed a lot of Windows disambiguation links recently. I did find more than one article that was not intending to link to Microsoft Windows, but no more than ten! Even then they were incorrect links to a plural, so should have been linked as windows. Thanks. fifty quid  ( talk ) 20:03, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

There was a clean-up job done somewhere between 1 and 2 years ago, to ensure that any links to Windows were correct. If there are a number of articles pointing to Windows now that are instead supposed to be pointing to Microsoft Windows, then those articles are in error, and should be corrected. Please refer to the wikipedia article on systemic bias. Windows should redirect to Window, not Microsoft Windows. --Rebroad (talk) 18:38, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, looking at Special:WhatLinksHere/Windows, it appears this page is wrong. The first example it shows is AbiWord, but I've just checked the article, and it doesn't link here, despite the special page saying it does! --Rebroad (talk) 23:44, 11 February 2009 (UTC)