User talk:B235R

teahouse question, part one
Hi there B235R, as I am looking for sourcing on the Actin article, I am noticing that you have made some errors. This is okay, you are a beginner, errors are expected, but some are fairly serious and lead straight to deletion of the content. In particular, you have uploaded some imagefiles as your own work, but you have included the Energid logo in them, which is almost certainly going to be a trademark violation. Wikipedia *can* have a trademarked logo, but it has to be uploaded using WP:FFU and a proper fair use exception to the copyright laws. However, wikipedia cannot have imagefiles which are NOT logos that utilize a trademarked logo, such as the cool animated GIF you uploaded as your own work, with the moving virtual robot arm. So here are the problem-areas:


 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energid_Technologies_Logo.png

This is almost certainly trademarked, and thus needs to be re-uploaded *to enWiki* (not Commons) as a low-resolution version with a fair-use exception. See WP:FFU and WP:NFCC for the gory details, ask a new question in a new section -- something like "please help me upload a company logo under fair use -- if you get stuck.


 * https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Yaskawa_Fronius_Energid_16_DOF_Coordinated_Weld.gif

This one has the trademarked logo (down in the righthand corner), which is the primary problem. However, it is also a screenshot of the software product, which means it might have trade dress and plausibly even copyrighted look and feel stuff. There are some helpdocs about uploading screenshots of computer software, I've never done it, please see WP:SCREENSHOT for details. If any of the stuff is NOT your actual own work, as in you created all the content not just you took the screenshot, then it is very important to note that. Wikipedia can get into a lot of legal hot water, hosting copyright-infringing material, so please fix these problems ASAP.

And the same goes for other imagefiles you may have uploaded, but those are the two that jumped out at me. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 20:44, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks, that helps. I don't know if we need the company-logo on the product-page, since the company-logo really belongs on the Energid Technologies article.  Will check some other software products, and see what they use.  But definitely don't upload something as 'own work' which is not something you legally own and can therefore relicense under the wikipedia content-license (CC-BY-SAv4 usually).  47.222.203.135 (talk) 23:30, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I'll keep improving the page and eventually get the tags removed. Thank you very much for the help.B235R (talk) 23:38, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm planning to remove the advert-tag myself, which can be done simply by stripping out all the WP:PUFFERY and going for the bare minimum. I will also take a stab at inserting some neutrally-summarized (see WP:NPOV) sentences that are backed up by the sources which I have access to.  There are some wikipedians that will be able to get the paywall'd scientific articles, see WP:The_Wikipedia_Library/Databases, which will further help flesh out the content.  Anything that was a government project, which has now been spun off into a commercial firm, is hard to write about because often the mainstream press does not cover such things.  Which says more about the mainstream press, than it does about the topic-matter of robotics, obviously!  But wikipedia articles have to pass WP:GOLDENRULE, and in the current state the article is likely to get deleted.  I'll try and show you the ropes of how things are done, if I have time, and if not and you still need help when I've gone, you can try asking again at WP:TEAHOUSE, or better yet find somebody that was active at WP:ROBOTICS or a similar topic-specific wikiproject.  With less-active wikiprojects it is always best to go straight to the User_talk:whateverwhatever page of a person, and leave them a personal note, rather than leaving a note on the wikiproject page.  Now, the other thing which needs clearing up, are you financially or legally connected to Energid / Rohai / Actin, in any way shape or form?  If you are, that is okay, wikipedia editors can still work on articles where they have some kind of bias or conflict, but there are some WP:TOU legalisms which specify that folks have to be up-front about the connections, and usually add something to their userpages or to the article talkpages where they have a conflict.  Some helpdocs at WP:PSCOI will explain better than I can, but I can also try and answer any questions you may have, if that is easier for whatever reason.  47.222.203.135 (talk) 00:12, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

teahouse question, part two
Here are some of the sources I've come up with, to help improve the article. Some of these are accessible to me directly, others are behind a WP:PAYWALL which makes things more complicated. (But we will figure it out.) If you can find similar journal/magazine/newspaper/tvNews/book/etc coverage, which helps Actin pass WP:GOLDENRULE, that will be helpful, please post the URLs to Talk:Actin_(software) along with the ones I found. Or if you don't know the URLs, then just post the title/author/date or whatever metadata you do know, and I'll see what I can do.

You please need to remove anything (the source as well as the sentences it was backing up) that is sourced to press releases -- no matter where they are published -- and also to the company homepage, or the product homepage if that is distinct, as well as to subsidiary homepages like Robai. (*One* link in WP:EL section is allowed but not as a reference.) Similarly, WP:BLOGS are not useful. Wikipedia is supposed to summarize books, scholarly articles, newspapers, magazines, television news, that sort of thing, see WP:RS. Of which there seem to be plenty -- but we need to use those and not the stuff published by people with a financial stake in the success of the product. Make sense? 47.222.203.135 (talk) 20:44, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

new sources
While I thank you for doing the work to come up with some new sources, it is important that they be relevant to the Actin_(software) article about the software product, as distinct from the Energid Technologies article about the corporation. I'm not finding Actin specifically in either of these sources:


 * Offshore Engineer magazine, "...running them on a dynamic robotic control system. 'The usual control systems used in manufacturing are used to do repetitive tasks,' he says. 'The drill floor robots will be tasked with much more varied tasks.' RDS worked with Boston, Massachusetts-based robotic software firm Energid on the controls systems for this reason."


 * NASA publication, "Toolkit Readies Robots for Work in Diverse Environments (Cambridge). NASA is looking to complex robotics to reduce the risk and cost of space operations. With NASA funding, Energid Technologies Corporation developed robot control and simulation software for a host of applications. The toolkit automatically converts user-identified constraints into real-time algorithms to control robot joint motions. Control capabilities are possible for multiple robot and joint types having numerous degrees of freedom and bifurcations. Applications include health care, industrial automation, space, agriculture, underwater environments, and military operations."

Can you explain why you think the sources are talking specifically about Actin, please? 47.222.203.135 (talk) 02:32, 13 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Hi Thanks for reviewing. My COI is that I'm an Energid employee and, although it's difficult to verify through Wikipedia allowable content, I know where the software is used. I'm able to find press releases published by online magazines who do not have a financial stake in the success of the product and list Actin. Example: http://www.offshoreenergytoday.com/energids-robotics-software-project-for-drilling-operations-moves-forward/ ← Is this link acceptable? I've added it and a patent reference that lists Actin to the article. B235R (talk) 13:20, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
 * So, in reverse order, patents are not much use per WP:PATENTS, and press releases are not 'any' use per WP:Identifying and using independent sources. We can add some factoids that are boring and non-promotional, such as that "work on Actin was started in 2005" but we might as well just use WP:ABOUTSELF for that kind of stuff, and just directly cite http://energid.com as a "footnote" which is distinct from a "reference" (see the helpdocs at WP:EXPLNOTE).  More important than that, however, is we need to write the meat of the article, using financially-independent publications by journalists and scientists.  Such things exist, see the long list that I posted to Talk:Actin_(software).  I will pick one from the list, https://spinoff.nasa.gov/pdf/IAC%202011%20Quantifying%20Spinoff%20Benefits.pdf, and insert some neutral-per-WP:NPOV sentences which summarize that ref, to show you how it works.  Since you are an employee, you are being paid by the company, and have a financial stake in the success of the product.  That is fine, you are still welcome to be a wikipedian, we appreciate all the help we can get.  As you probably realize, there are not many people that visit the articles of small robotics corporations, who *are* in fact independent of those selfsame corporations.  This makes staying neutral on such topics, which is a core wikipedian value per WP:5, difficult -- not just for the wikipedians that have employment-related conflicts, but for wikipedia-the-encyclopedia as a whole.  You did the right thing and asked for help at the TEAHOUSE, so luckily I have run into you, since I also had a WP:TEAHOUSE question.
 * Now, on the nuts and bolts, I think the case can be made, that Actin passes WP:GOLDENRULE, but the article will need work from the legit sources and must avoid using press releases, patents, corporate partners like solidworks, and so on and so forth. In the worst case, what will happen is that the Actin-materials will be upmerged into a new subsection of Energid Technologies, but I don't expect that will be necessary.  Personal knowledge as an employee, will be essential to you helping me get the Actin article in shape, because no offence, but I have never heard of you.  Given the nature of the company this is not to surprising of course.
 * What you and I need, to write a good article that fully complies with wikipedia standards to avoid article-deletion like WP:GOLDENRULE, are the following things: #1.  peer-reviewed scientific papers published in well-known journals by places like Elsevier which specifically talk about Actin-the-software in multi-paragraph depth.   #2.  journalistic coverage in well-known news media by places like CNN which specifically talk about Actin-the-software in multi-paragraph depth.  #3.  everything else, which can wait.
 * If you and your co-workers can hunt up the sources like type#1, and if they exist yet the sources like type#2, then either myself or somebody at WP:RX/WP:JSTOR will be able to read and summarize the contents. Don't bother scouring the internet for press releases or passing mentions, those are not helpful with WP:GOLDENRULE, we need 100%-independent multi-paragraph-depth journalistic and scientific coverage.  Note that scientific papers *by* Energid employees *do* count as valid refs on wikipedia, per WP:SCHOLARSHIP, as long as the publisher is a respected entity with editorial oversight known for fact-checking.  Make sense?
 * There are some steps you need to follow, which you should do ASAP, about creating a 'homepage' at User:B235R and disclosing your employer there, plus adding your name to the Talk:Actin_(software) and also Talk:Robai and also Talk:Energid Technologies, please see DISCLOSEPAY and do as it says. If you have questions about any of this, you can ask me here, or on the article-talkpage if that is more appropriate.  If I don't respond quickly, you can leave me a link to where you asked me something at User_talk:47.222.203.135 and I'll get back to you as soon as I'm able.  Or just use WP:IRC or WP:TEAHOUSE if you want instant gratification, I'm not on the internet 24/7 although sometimes it seems thataway  :-)  47.222.203.135 (talk) 18:04, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

part three, how to stay neutral
Okay, I've tried to summarize the factoids from the 2010/2011 NASA cite, in this change. Here is the text which was added, stripped of headers and such:


 * Actin is a software toolkit for designing and simulating robots, created by the American firm Energid Technologies of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In addition to their headquarters in the United States, the firm opened an office in India to help sell Actin in Asia (e.g. Japan). Actin began as simulation software and control software, during contract work by Energid for NASA's Johnson Space Center, funded by the Small Business Innovation Research legislation.  Prior to 2011, the firm also began selling Actin as a design and control software package for robotics applications, with an emphasis on user-friendly design-optimization.  The target markets were the military, agricultural, healthcare (see also medical robot), and industrial segments.  Actin is a robotics software toolkit (a type of software development kit), which provides features for designing robotic control systems, and for simulating those robots in software.  Actin can be used for control of most kinds of robots, and provides functions related to robot motion, collision avoidance, and overcoming joint limitations.  Actin supports an unlimited number of joints, degrees of freedom for those joints, and branches.  In addition to the robot-control features, Actin also provides a simulator for the robot which is being designed.  This capability allows roboticists to test their designs in a virtual environment via simulation, prior to actually building a physical robot which implements the design.

That is derived from the following quotation-snippet found in the NASA / International Astronautical Congress source:


 * "Control and simulation software developed under Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts with Johnson Space Center is now providing user-friendly, optimized design and control of innovative robots used for military, agriculture, healthcare, and industrial applications. Created by Energid Technologies Corporation, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Actin toolkit provides for fluid robot motion, enhancing strength and accuracy while avoiding collisions and joint limits. Actin provides control capabilities for virtually any kind of robot, any joint type or tool type, and for any number of joints, degrees of freedom, and branches. In addition, the software provides powerful simulation capabilities, allowing developers to rapidly devise and test robot designs before the robot is built. Energid now has 20 employees (factual but Actin is the wrong article -- this 20-employees factoid belongs in Energid Technologies) and opened an office in India to promote Actin’s capabilities in Asia."

I've struck all the WP:PUFFERY which needed to be removed, so as to aim squarely for WP:NPOV-style neutrality. The only slightly-puffery-like portions I retained were the goals of the Actin software package: to provided a user-friendly environment for design-optimization. And note that I did not say "Actin is user-friendly" but rather the more circumspect "with an emphasis on user-friendly" to indicate that this is Energid's goal rather than an objective claim of truth in WP:WIKIVOICE. This is okay for me to do, since I have no financial stake in the company. For you, on the other hand, if you are attempting to summarize something neutrally yourself, just err on the side of caution, and strike out ANYTHING which might be perceived as WP:PROMO or WP:PUFFERY. Like the old television show says, Just The Facts.

Also worth noting -- usually when you summarize a ref, you will go from 10 sentences in the ref down to ~1 sentence in the wikipedia body-prose. This was an exception to that norm, because the NASA prose was chock full of factoids, and also because some of them were technological jargon that I wasn't sure the average reader of wikipedia would easily understand, so per WP:Readers_first I was careful to explain the concepts involved. I also heavily wikilinked, arguably too heavily, see WP:OVERLINK, but that is the best way to keep a technological-article simple without being simplistic: just link to kinematic chain, and interested readers will be able to find the gory details. No need to explain kinematic chains in the article on Actin, just stick to explaining Actin-the-software, and let the wikilink carry most of the weight. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:19, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

part four, you try one
Here is the Cnet article from 2012. It does not have much about Actin specifically, but it does have a couple factoids worth pulling out, and writing neutral sentences about for the Actin_(software) article. Here is the URL, see if you can write up some neutral sentences, and then save them here on your user-talkpage. I'll critique, and once we are both happy, we can get it into mainspace. Follow the same process I showed you above: cut out everything irrelevant, cut out everything promotional, end up with just the cold neutral facts, in as dry of an encyclopedic tone as you can muster. Also, please see WP:Indentation, when you reply on talkpages it helps readability if you indent your replies. Wikipedia runs on the latest 1996 technology, as you probably have gathered by now :-) 47.222.203.135 (talk) 19:43, 13 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot for the guidance. How about this attempt?
 * Cnet Factoids for review:
 * ...Actin, software from Energid Technologies...was developed for robots at NASA.
 * The system uses a 3D graphical interface.
 * B235R (talk) 17:35, 14 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Okay not bad, but you can be a bit more WP:BOLD, here is my version:
 * (#1) Actin is a software package from Energid Technologies.
 * (#2) It was developed for NASA robots.
 * (#3) In 2012, Actin was used to implement the robot control system of the Cyton Gamma series of robotic arms
 * (#4) (manufactured by Robai which is a subsidiary of Energid),
 * (#5) intended for the remote inspection, manufacturing, and healthcare markets.
 * (#6) The control system for the Gamma provides a PC-based GUI in 3D for the consumer to use when operating the robot arm.
 * (#7) The arm has seven joints (and thus seven degrees of freedom), which according to CNET gives the arm "more dexterity" than if it had fewer joints.
 * (#8) However, the use of that many joints (which the manufacturer calls 'kinematically redundant' -- see robot kinematics and kinematic chain) increases the computational workload that the control system implemented in Actin must be able to handle.
 * (#9) To work, the Gamma must be connected to a PC via a USB cable, where the robot arm can be programmed via the GUI, and where the processor of the PC can perform some of the complex computations that implement the control system.


 * I've used the same ref as you, but if you will look at how I used it, I deleted the blank parameters (no need to clutter things up), and added some params (author= and quote=), plus wikilinked to the publisher (Cnet is better than unwikilinked Cnet -- I also wikilinked the author's name even though wikipedia does not yet have an article on them per WP:REDLINK). You can install a tool to do some of this automagically for you, see WP:ReFill, but generally I just do things manually, when I want to be extra-careful.  You can also see how I've also *reused* the same ref multiple times, by giving it a name= parameter, so that I only have to fill out the Template:cite_web once rather than a dozen times.
 * Important note -- if you use the |quote= param you should only put exact quotations, and not go overboard -- a few sentences, not paragraphs or pages, or the wikipedia copyright-people might complain. If you need to adjust the quote for clarity, then use square brackets.


 * So in addition to the factoids that you pulled, which were fine but a bit cautious, I've pulled out some additional factoids. I skipped the stuff which is not directly related to Actin (as far as the CNET article says at least), such as the mention of the military-robot-arms.  It is probably the case that those also use Actin, obviously, but since the ref does not say that explicitly, I will refrain from putting that in, per WP:SYNTH.  Make sense?  If the ref explicitly says it, we can use it, if it is NOT made explicit, then find a better ref... but don't put any synthesized conclusions into mainspace.  Stick to what the sources say, just rephrase it as neutrally (and facts-only).


 * But the rest of the material that I kept, about the way the robotic arm with the Actin-powered-control-system works, *is* specifically about Actin. It is important that the arm has 7DOF, because that is why you need Actin.  It is important that the arm requires a USB connection to a PC, because that is how 7DOF calculations are performed in realtime.  It is NOT important to the article about *Actin* to say that the Gamma weighs 4.4 pounds, because that is not a software-related-factoid.  (That factoid belongs over in a paragraph about the Gamma at the Robai article however.)


 * Now most of the factoids were new, but some are redundant -- we already knew that Actin was software, and that Energid was the maker, from the 2010 NASA ref. Once again, which I stress is NOT the usual outcome, in order to make the factoids of the CNET article intelligible to a general readership, I needed to write almost as much prose as the CNET article contained.  As time goes by, usually we will be finding more redundancies and repetitions, which means that usually when a reference is summarized, you end up with *less* prose by a factor of ten.  But at this early stage in the article, we are still able to use almost every factoid we run across.  It is not a violation of WP:SYNTH to keep the factoids necessary for the readership to understand Actin, which is the point of the wikipedia article.  It is also not a violation of WP:PUFFERY nor WP:PROMO to state that according to CNET gives the arm "more dexterity" because it is a direct quotation and because it is attributed to an financially-independent third-party reliable-source, in this case a magazine journalist.  I could also have retained the "simple" quotation about the 3D GUI, as long as I attributed it to CNET, but I didn't see it as a crucial factor, since it was not clear to me (from the CNET article alone) whether the operator-GUI was in fact written *in* Actin and therefore directly relevant, or was a separate software component that merely interfaced under the hood with Actin.  (The "simple" quotation, attributed to CNET, would belong over at the Robai article however.)


 * I will go ahead and jam this version into mainspace, and assign you the task of working on summarization of Machine Design please. After you give it a whirl, post your suggestion here on this user-talkpage, I will again critique, and provide a new challenge, and so on.  Whenever you are ready, you can also feel free to just start ramming through the list of refs one by one, taking a stab as summarizing each one neutrally w.r.t. Actin specifically (create a new subsection of Talk:Actin_(software) each time you have a suggested mainspace insertion), and I'll follow along critiquing and then inserting.  47.222.203.135 (talk) 20:33, 14 January 2017 (UTC)


 * And on a separate subject, are you this person?   If so, and you would prefer to keep your IP address private (I edit using an IP but that is not for everyone obviously) you can follow the instructions at WP:Revision_deletion, and contact somebody at  in your browser, then explain that you accidentally revealed your IP address and would like it hidden and then oversighted please per the accidental-self-WP:OUTING policy.  If you are NOT that human, then no problem, I will contact them on their talkpage with my usual welcome-to-wikipedia instructions, but WP:COMMONSENSE tells me it could be you, forgetting to login.  Because of the userbox-disclosures on your User:B235R userpage about working for Energid, it is important that *you* remember to login, of course... if you forget, and edit 'anonymously' as an IP address, there is normally *no* associated userpage and thus no COI-disclosure.  If you want to protect yourself against forgetting to login, you can purposely create a userpage for your normal IP-address, and put the COI-disclosure thereon, but most people prefer to login.  If none of this paragraph makes any sense, please contact me and I'll try to help you out, or perhaps better since I'm not an admin with revdel and oversight permissions, the thing to do if you are unsure is to discuss the situation frankly on IRC at the link above with an administrator on the wikipedia-en-revdel chat channel, and point them to the URL of my comment here.  They will understand what I'm blabbing about, and can advise you on how to fix whatever needs fixing, if anything.  47.222.203.135 (talk) 20:33, 14 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I see what you mean about this article not having much on Actin. My factoids were cautious since I definitely agree the others should be on a Robai page rather than the Actin software page. This talk page is a great reference. Is there a timeline for notability and advert tag removal? I see they are dated January 2017 but didn't see a timeline for removal in the notability guidelines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability#Articles_not_satisfying_the_notability_guidelines B235R (talk) 20:58, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * January2017 just means "put here as of January2017" and sometimes tags stay up for years. Now, in the case of Actin, somebody marked the article for deletion, and you responded on the article-talkpage, and then somebody else removed the deletion-attempt (as 'not obviously promotional' aka to be more blunt 'unclear by maybe might NOT be spam???').  At the time, almost all your refs were patents and press-releases, although now they are somewhat improved.
 * So at the moment, the article is tagged-as-maybe-possibly-failing-WP:GOLDENRULE-notability (only WP:RS will help here), and also tagged-as-failing-WP:TONE-advertising (fixing up the body-prose is all that is needed for that). Somebody else MAY yet nominate it for deletion -- and any trademark&copyright infringements inside imagefiles WILL be marked for deletion at some point -- but I don't see these hurdles as a serious worry, right this second.  Removing the tags is simple:  add enough in-depth independent journalistic and scientific sources to satisfy WP:GOLDENRULE, and remove every last bit of WP:PUFFERY, and the tags will be removed by somebody (probably by myself).
 * This is an ongoing battle, however: there was some WP:PUFFERY inserted in these two edits, which modified one of my plain-jane-straight-talk, stick-to-just-the-facts sentences (switching from "to help sell Actin in Asia" and instead now saying "to promote Actin’s capabilities in Asia").  Was that you, B235R, or some other human, that changed that?  Whoever changed it, needs to understand that management-consultant-marketroid-PR-speak is forbidden in WP:WIKIVOICE, because wikipedia is not for promoting products or boosting sales.  And thus wikipedia should never say "to promote capabilities" when in fact the plain-jane meaning is "to help sell".  Wikipedians also don't call the process of deleting advertising-like sentences by a euphemism, the culture of the site is plain-jane candor, hence WP:PUFFERY rather than a less-harsh name.
 * As far as hard deadlines go, there are three deadlines which matter: first, per WP:COPYRIGHTS and WP:COI, anybody that is editing as an employee/contractor/similar with a financial stake in the company, must fill out the userpage and article-talkpage COI paperwork ASAP, since otherwise they are not in compliance with WP:TOU legalese.  Similarly, because of the legal reasons, any copyright-infringing and trademark-infringing material *must* be removed from mainspace ASAP, and preferably deleted from wikipedia servers.  So for legal problems, the deadline is always yesterday-if-not-sooner.  I believe we mostly have those under control, but see my notes above about making-sure-you-login, and about uploading-a-proper-logo.
 * Second, per WP:AfD, if an article like Actin_(software) or Energid Technologies or whatever is nominated for deletion (again in the case of Actin), there is a seven-day assessment period, which is sometimes extended for another seven days, if not enough wikipedians make policy-backed comments during the first week. At the moment, the article *body* for Actin_software is a bit borderline in terms of WP:GOLDENRULE, but the talkpage list of sources is pretty convincing... though a little thin still, because it is unclear what depth the various academic papers go into, specifically about Actin.  Because somebody removed the deletion-tagging after you responded up above, we are not currently under any deadline.  We has as long as it takes, or as long as it takes for somebody NEW to show up, and decide to nominate the article for deletion.  So simultaneously WP:TIAD and at the same time WP:TIND, one of the zen aspects of wikipedia.
 * Third, per WP:VOLUNTEER, there are some pragmatic quasi-deadlines. Eventually one of us will be run over by a bus, or you'll get a new job, or I'll have my kinda-static IP address rotated by the ISP, or some other unforeseen event that will halt our two-way collaboration.  Or one or the other of us might get bored with Actin_(software) and instead start working on Draft:Oleg Atbashian or maybe Saleh v. Bush or one of the millions of other articles that are in worse shape.  I'm not in a big hurry to get you up to speed and working independently, personally, but I'm also not really interested in spending a month on robotics-SDKs either  :-)
 * It is good that you are starting to read the major wikipedia-policy-pages. But don't get too hung up on them.  WP:GOLDENRULE is the key to satisfying WP:N aka wikipedia-style-notability.  Which has nothing to do with real-world notability and everything to do with amount-of-coverage-by-paparrazi... this is a pragmatic compromise which sometimes screws wikipedia articles up.  WP:5 is the key to behavior -- even WP:COI and WP:PUFFERY and WP:PROMO are all just corollaries to the non-negotiable primordial pillar of WP:NPOV aka wikipedia-style-neutrality.  Which, again, has little to do with real-world neutrality, and everything to do with mirroring what that previously mentioned coverage-by-the-paparrazi-says.  In the really olden days of wikipedia, like before 2006 or thereabouts, things were almost paradoxically simple, see WP:TRIFECTA which says to 1) stay neutral, 2) be omnidirectionally-friendly, and 3) WP:IAR on everything else.  Which is still good advice, but takes some pretty deep understanding of what is really *means* to stay 'neutral' and most especially what it really means to 'improve' the encyclopedia.  Hang around for a few thousand edits or a handful of years, and you too will have mastered the ways of the wiki.  47.222.203.135 (talk) 02:43, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

part five, finishing off the wikipedia paperwork
Okay, you have updated your userpage, now please insert the following additional stuff onto your userpage at User:B235R. Here is the magic incantation, for you to cut-n-paste onto your userpage just this once but update with names of articles as needed:

Additionally, I've inserted the proper 'connected contrib' template thing for you, at the top of the Talk:Actin_(software) page, can you please edit Talk:Robai and also Talk:Energid Technologies to have the following thing *after* any existing templates like talk header but *before* any discussion-sections? Same as I did with the Talk:Actin_(software) page, but you need to know the steps so you can do it yourself, if Energid releases a new product next year which ends up with a dedicated wikipedia page for instance. Here is the magic incantation, for you to cut-n-paste onto article-talkpages as needed:

If you want the details of how these things work, or if you need to give somebody else at Energid or Robai or something the helpdocs on how to do this for their own personal username (one wikipedia usernames per human that edits please), here you go. Rules about listing the articles where COI exists, per helpdocs at WP:DCOI and also WP:COIDISCLOSEPAY, "maintain a clearly visible list on your user page of your paid contributions...." Template:UserboxCOI for the userpage helpdocs, and Template:Connected_contributor_(paid) for the article-talkpage helpdocs.

And since it came up, per WP:NOSHARING please note well that usernames cannot be the company-name, nor can any wikipedia-passwords be shared amongst multiple people -- this is for copyright reasons, when you click edit there is clickwrap legalese before you click save, which assigned copyright of your original work (whatever you just typed) to the wikipedia CC-BY-SA license. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 20:53, 13 January 2017 (UTC)


 * 01:10, 14 January 2017 (diff | hist) . . (+244)‎ . . Talk:Off-line programming (robotics) ‎ (current)
 * 00:37, 14 January 2017 (diff | hist) . . (+243)‎ . . Talk:Simulation software ‎ (current)
 * 23:52, 13 January 2017 (diff | hist) . . (+16)‎ . . Talk:Robai ‎
 * 23:52, 13 January 2017 (diff | hist) . . (+16)‎ . . Talk:Energid Technologies ‎
 * 23:49, 13 January 2017 (diff | hist) . . (+115)‎ . . User:B235R ‎


 * ✅, and thank you. Which was the easy part.  :-)
 * So, the hard part is up in the previous section, about summarizing the Cnet ref. Are you still thinking that one over, or do you want some hints?  I tried to pick a task that was easy -- yet not too easy -- as your first writing-challenge.  But I'm happy to pick a different ref, or to do the Cnet one for you so you can see how I would do it (then give you a different task), or whatever gets you to being a productive self-sufficient wikipedian quickest.  Let me know how you want to proceed, we've satisfied all the formal legalese now methinks, and can concentrate on improving you as a wikipedian, and through you improving wikipedia-as-an-encyclopedia with respect to robotics topics.  47.222.203.135 (talk) 12:22, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

ping
Are you still on your weekend? Or are you back to the grindstone yet? I'm a little busy with WP:TIAD on another article, but if you are wondering what to do and worried about clicking the 'edit' button I do not want to leave you hanging in limbo.

Of course, if you are just busy enjoying the weekend and/or busy with other off-wiki tasks, THAT is no problem, when you have time to get back into the wikipedia-groove, just drop me a note on my User_talk:47.222.203.135 to let me know you are active again. I will caution you that unless you make a habit of editing wikipedia (for at least a few minutes) every other day or at most every third day, you will forget the gory details of WP:PAG and make some beginner-error. Better to build good habits into a long-term behavior pattern, and edit regularly in small bursts, at least for your first year or two. (Once you've been editing every-other-day for a year you tend to have your habits... good or bad... ingrained into long-term RAM as it were). Lemme know how you are doing please, and whether you've forgotten what step we are currently supposed to be hammering away upon collaboratively :-)  47.222.203.135 (talk) 16:24, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Hello?  I see editing, but perhaps this user-talkpage is overwhelmingly-full?  If so, it is permissible for users to delete anything -- even comments by other wikipedians which is USUALLY considered rude, EXCEPT in the case of tidying up one's OWN user-talkpage -- so if you want to remove some of the Lessons In Wikipedia Innards that have begun to clutter this page, you can.  Or better, set up WP:ARCHIVING for yourself, that way you and other future wikipedians, whether other people interested in robotics or wikipedia admins or whatever, can find the obsolete talkpage conversations.  47.222.203.135 (talk) 16:57, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Lesson #839, on the topic of Citation Needed
Dear B235R, you recently made the following change to an article in mainspace, I'm not really sure it was an improvement...


 * 47.222: ...for designing and simulating robots, created by....
 * B235R: ...for designing, simulating, and controlling robots, created by....

Because, looking at the wiki-markup....
 * 47.222: ...for designing and simulating robots, created by....
 * B235R: ...for designing, simulating, and controlling robots, created by....

As you can see, your change has inserted the plaintext phrase 'controlling' as one of the MAIN purposes of the software toolkit. Which is not factually wrong, necessarily (see problem#2 below which discusses sources). And also not necessarily POV editing, either (see problem#3 below). But you have introduced problems, one of them explicit and obvious-in-hindsight (dupe wikilink), but also two more subtle problems which are implicit in the actions you took. In reverse order, from least serious to most serious, the three problems are:

So: I'm coming down like a ton of wiki-bricks, on top of your small and seemingly-minor change, which was a bit silly (since we already wikilink there two words earlier) but definitely a good-faith change that was an attempt to improve the article... and likely motivated because you noticed intuitively that I violated MOS:SUBMARINE with my surprising 'designer'-to-Robot_control wikilink jiu jitsu move... and I'm sure after some discussion we'll figure out an agreement aka consensus that DOES in fact improve the prose, perhaps my compromise-wording suggested above that avoid the MOS:SUBMARINE problem I created... but I'm mostly trying to use this as a teaching moment so that you get a very bleeping clear idea that you need to be walking on eggshells, when you are even THINKING about touching articles where you have a financial conflict. You need to WP:BEBOLD but never reckless (such as making unexplained changes to sourced sentences without providing any sources yourself). Remember WP:TIND here on wikipedia. Better to have the article be slightly incorrect/awkward/whatever, for a few hours/days/weeks, than to get yourself into hot water LATER by forming bad habits NOW. Get in the habit, and stay in that habit, of thinking hard first, discussing with a non-COI wikipedian if there is ANY POSSIBILITY HOWEVER REMOTE that your change could be seen as spam or as POV pushing, and then only editing iff and when you are positive you are ImprovingTheEncyclopedia. In other words, don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes. Lemme know if you are understanding the wavelength I'm trying to transmit here, please. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 16:57, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
 * 1)  First of all, the boring problem:  you wikilinked from 'controlling' to robot control, but there was already a wikilink from 'designing' to robot control, so the first sentence is now redundant.  If you get rid of the plaintext-stuff, and concentrate on wikilinks with their official titles, my version said for robot control and robotics simulator[s of] robots... whereas your WP:BOLD change now makes it say for robot control and robotics simulator[s of] and robot control [of] robots... which is redundant.  Maybe we can come to a compromise, and say something like this alternative phrasing:  "...for designing (specifically controlling) and simulating robots, created by..."  Note the wikilinks please, not all of them are what you might expect on casually reading the prose!  Wikipedia tends not to wikilink to the *obvious* places every single time.  For instance, in political articles, there might be a sentence like "Trump opposed Clinton's tax plan" and while it is certainly not ILLEGAL under the wikipolicies to have the following wikilinks, "Trump opposed Clinton's tax plan" that is considered to be a fairly crappy weakly-supported use of wikilinks.  It is not very helpful to the readership.  They don't want a link to taxation, they already probably KNOW what taxation is, as a general concept, they are reading the political-article in question because they want to know more about the difference between Clinton and Trump, specifically.  Or so one might surmise, from such a sentence.  Therefore, usually I will wikilink to some 'strange' places which the plaintext does not necessarily support, as a means of helping the readership (link to what they WANT to read more about), but also because it is hard to read blue-black-blue-black-blue text generally... which means every wikilink needs to be there for a Good Reason.  See what I did there?  So here is the way I would write such a politics-sentence, not every wikipedian does it this way, but you should be aware that lots of wikipedians do this sort of thing:  "Trump opposed Clinton's tax plan".  And I *might* even rework the prose so that I could wikilink from 'opposed' to the most relevant article.  Readers of the sentence might just care that Trump opposed Clinton's plan, and might not want to know the details of their stances on taxation specifically... but any reader who clicks on 'tax plan' in THAT sentence is going to want a rundown of Clinton's tax plan, and *very* likely any reader who clicks on 'opposed' is going to want a rundown of Trump's reasons for opposing, which we can illustrate by linking to *his* stances on taxation.  So in this hypothetical sentence, because it is bad writing to mash a bunch of different bluelinks all together in a row, instead of saying the potentially-confusing "Trump opposed Clinton's tax plan" I would rework the prose and the wikilink-layout slightly to separate each bluelink by at least a wee bit of black plaintext, like this:  "Trump opposed Clinton's tax plan with his own" or something like that.  So although it is a bit of a boring problem (you inserted a wikilink that is a duplicate of a wikilink two (plaintext) words earlier in the same sentence), there are actually some fairly complicated prose-construction considerations that go into the balance of wikilink-versus-plaintext thinking.  Once you get the hang of 'abusing' wikilinks by pointing from words like 'designing' to articles like roboticist... whatever will help readers most depending on context... then you will find that you can REALLY cut out the fat in your prose.  No need to explain and over-explain, just wikilink to the place which *does* explain-in-context.  But it can hurt readability if you abuse wikilinks, please see the relevant guidelines including WP:SEAOFBLUE, WP:OVERLINKING, MOS:DUPLINK, WP:LEADLINK, WP:COMMONWORDS, WP:LINKCLARITY, WP:SPECIFICLINK, and friends. So in the context of Actin, I linked from 'designer' to robot control since Actin is *used* by robot-designers to design robot-control-systems.  But I think that your well-intentioned correction was heading in the right direction, so I suggest this, it will be clearer if we instead use the compromise-language I mentioned above, and say "...for designing (specifically controlling) and simulating robots, created by..." on that particular sentence.  However, before we change the sentence in thataway, there are two very important issues that need discussion!  Is the change impeccably sourced?  Is the change impeccably neutral?  Per WP:BRD, no more changing mainspace, until we figure the exact wording out.
 * 2) Problem two:  you modified a sentence which was *sourced* to some refs.  In this case, sourced to CNET and to NASA.  When you modify a sentence that is backed up by a source, you are implying that the neutral summarization the sentence previously contained, was either not following the source (aka WP:SYNTH or some other screwup) or in some cases that the sentence was following the source TOO closely (aka WP:COPYVIO in the form of close paraphrasing).  Which you probably didn't mean to imply.  BUT YOU MUST be very careful when you modify sentences that have sources after the period!  Are you sticking with what the source actually said?  Was the wikipedian-or-wikipedian that wrote the sentence before you, failing to do something correctly?  This is what WP:EDITSUMMARY is supposed to be for.  And you are not using them.  So I have no idea why you changed the sentence, I have to guess, you didn't leave an edit-summary.  So, please explain, did you think I screwed up, in summarizing the facts laid out by CNET and NASA?  Or did you think I was coming close to COPYVIO with too-close-paraphrasing?  Or did you just read the sentence and think, hmmmm, it should really say 'robot control' and then jam it in there without explaining yourself in an editsummary  :-)
 * 3) Problem three:  you are modifying the first sentence of an article about a corporate product which is sold by your employer.  You are changing the PLAIN MEANING of the sentence.  To say something else.  And you are not explaining why.  And you are not discussing on the article-talkpage first.  And you are not giving a WP:SOURCE for you change.  And that will get you in hot water with people who are serious about WP:PROMO and WP:COI.  Go read those things again, and pay close attention to the unwritten rules that are between the lines.  Wikipedia is full of people that hate and fear other wikipedians with COI-encumbrance.  Lucky for you I'm not one of them, I appreciate and train such people, to turn them into good wikipedians.  But I cannot say it any more plainly, if you get in the habit of changing sourced sentences with no explanation and no talkpage consensus in mainspace on topics where you have COI, then sooner or later some hard-assed wikipedian administrator is going to block you.  Blocks are supposed to be preventative aka 'prevent harm to mainspace' but there are some admins who will happily block people they suspect are just here to spam wikipedia and plump up their corporate cashflow.  Do. Not. Become. One. Of. Those. People.  ...is my sincere good-faith advice...

File:Actin Software Image.png listed for discussion
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Nomination of Actin (software) for deletion
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