NEEDED: author for N8VEM article or access to publication

[NobodyIsHere]

Hi
I am looking for an author, editor, or publisher willing to publish a brief article on the N8VEM home brew computing project. If you have the ability to get an article in print please contact me as soon as possible. This has to be a publication like a magazine, journal, or book not an online blog or forum.

Over at N8VEM we are struggling to keep the N8VEM Wikipedia page from being deleted by the Wikipedia editors. Apparently they consider the page as not "notable" and are discussing its deletion.

The Wikipedia editors are not making an idle threat. They've already deleted the P112 Wikipedia page which is somewhat similiar to what we have for the N8VEM home brew computing project. In my opinion, anyone familiar with hobbyist/home brew computing in the last 15 years would instantly recognize the P112 as "notable" however the powers that be at Wikipedia think otherwise.

If someone could volunteer to help I would very much appreciate it. The builders at N8VEM can assist in the drafting of an article and/or provide background information as needed. The scope of the article is entirely up to you and can be as narrow as you like. Easy topics could be the N8VEM SBC, Zeta, S-100 boards, and/or N8 home computer.

Thanks in advance for your consideration. Have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch

 

[mbbrutman]

Hi Andrew,

I can't provide any help here - but I know exactly what you are going through. The editors at Wikipedia can have an extremely narrow focus when it comes to "notability", much to the detriment of their project. Their insistence that notability be established by traditional review mechanisms makes Wikipedia a hollow reflection of those original sources.

Good luck ..

Mike

 

[pearce_jj]

Have you considered getting in touch Google on it? That might seem an odd comment but they are putting stacks of real cash into education of computer architecture and low-level development at the moment, and your project is one-step beyond even Raspberry Pi IMHO.

 

[NobodyIsHere]

Have you considered getting in touch Google on it? That might seem an odd comment but they are putting stacks of real cash into education of computer architecture and low-level development at the moment, and your project is one-step beyond even Raspberry Pi IMHO.

Hi! Thanks! That is an interesting comment but I am not sure what question I should ask Google. Do they have a magazine or access to published literature? We don't need funding rather someone who can publish. Do you have any suggestions on who to contact or how they can help?

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

 

[NobodyIsHere]

Hi
The publication we are seeking does not have to be a large nationally distributed one. I think even a small or tiny publication would work fine as long as it could be cited. There is no particular reason the article has to be even a positive one as long as we can use it to show "notability".

Probably the article could be part of a larger story on home brew electronics or hobbyist projects in a context where the N8VEM home brew computing project makes sense. For example, the resurgence of interest in S-100 computers, Propeller based projects, XT-IDE and/or AT2XTKBD PCBs, etc.

My point is that I think there is a lot of flexibility in what constitutes establishing an external citation. If this could join in another article already being written or planned to be written it would probably save the N8VEM Wikipedia page.

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch

 

[barythrin]

How soon do you need it to be published? Let me reach out to someone and see if he'd be interested. From what I recall he writes articles on anything hacker friendly for Nuts and Volts magazine (if he's still doing that hm.. well from what I just found reference wise he may have stopped). Still, no one on Make Magazine or somewhere has published it yet?? I would think it would have some mention in any geek centric magazine. A bit more off topic (and I've heard enough to know it's just just a fantasy/free money) I wonder if a Homebrew Computing for Dummies book would be useful or N8VEM for Dummies, etc. Probably more collaborative than profitable but I would think it would sell well for anyone wanting to get a start on understanding home brew SBCs.

 

[NobodyIsHere]

Hi

I don't know the timeline the Wikipedia editors are on but probably fairly soon. However, if it takes some time to get an article published we could always just repost the Wikipedia page and/or undelete it once we had the reference.

The ironic thing is that the "N8VEM for Dummies" practically already exists. Please see this guide in the SBC V2 section for "from scratch assuming no skills" guide.

http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/folder.php?folder=Building the N8VEM for the Total Beginner

Please contact your associate. Please feel free to appropriate anything that's helpful from the N8VEM mailing list and/or wiki. Also there are several builders standing by to help once we know what to do. A N&V article would be great but even just a brief mention would probably suffice. Nothing from Make, BYTE online, or the like yet, unfortunately. Not using the latest technologies has its price I suppose -- we are by definition a "throwback" to the olden days.

Thanks for your help!

Andrew Lynch

PS, my head is still reeling from finding out that Wikipedia deleted the P112 page due to not being "notable". Holy smokes, the P112 is not notable? That's just incredible. It's like saying the Altair or IMSAI is not notable. I am stunned.

 

[Tor]

I find that I use Wikipedia less and less. Wikipedia is very different from how it was early on. The vision for Wikipedia in the early days was, as far as I could tell, very much in line with "The Library" as described in David Brin's 'Uplift" series: A collection of all known knowledge, however obscure. So of course you would find P112 there.

But now, with the so-called "notability" guidelines and indiscriminate deletion of articles under the current regime Wikipedia looks more and more like a site intended to just parroting what's written all over the place already. So there's basically no need for Wikipedia, a google search will find the information elsewhere. It used to be that Wikipedia came up top of the list in most of my info searches, now I can't remember the last time that happened (the irony though is that you'll find astro-turfing articles there written by some company with a useless product nobody will write about elsewhere, and those articles are not deleted. Somehow the "editors" seem to be more interested in deleting information about "old" technology, and things they don't know what is: S-100 tech, for example.)

As so many other people do these days I focus my wiki efforts on wiki sites dedicated to the orginal Wikipedia vision: Collect all known knowledge. It's just that we now have separate wiki sites for different themes.

Actually, if Wikipedia died tomorrow I don't think I would even notice - as I said, I almost never see Wikipedia articles popping up anymore when using a search engine. Except for the astro-turfing stuff I mentioned above.

-Tor

 

[NobodyIsHere]

Hi
You may very well be right that Wikipedia complying with its own policies is driving itself out of relevance. The Wikipedia I remember using *was* a store house of arcana and lore. I considered that it's most useful function since anyone could use an encyclopedia or web search engine to find common knowledge.

What makes the P112 wikipedia page situation different though is that the P112 is not arcana or lore -- it is a significant historical event. It was a *major* development in hobbyist computers. Historical in nature, a real "sea change" in CP/M and hobbyist electronics. Prior to the P112, I cannot recall a "home brew" style computer system that reached any sort of "production" phase. Almost everything beforehand (IMO) was one-off prototypes. The only alternative was a commercial system with its massive production overhead. P112 sort of "paved the way" for use low yield just-barely-economically-viable hobbyist systems to follow. N8VEM is just one example of this but there are many others. Reach back in your memory banks and I'll bet you'll find few if any similar projects prior to P112. (with possible exception SB180 or PROF80?)

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch