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BIG problem: Wikipedia

  • Started by NeoMenlo
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  • Registered: 05-Oct-2006
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This could be a serious problem, and one that's not going to go away easily:

Try googleing Colemak
Look at the second result:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colemak
You'll see:

This page has been deleted, and protected to prevent re-creation.

Guess what their resoning is?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia … on/Colemak

The result was delete. —Cryptic 08:42, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

This is an article on a keyboard layout first released this year. I have doubts as to its notability. Wikipedia doesn't have any guidelines on notability for keyboard layouts, but if the other articles in Category:Keyboard layouts are taken as representative of notable layouts, then Colemak is clearly the odd one out. I'm not aware of any published studies on the Colemak layout in the ergonomics and HCI literature; the author's own web page seems to be the only significant source of information on it.

    * Delete. This keyboard layout is less than a year old, and has not had sufficient time to have been the subject of studies or serious reviews. If it takes the world by storm (which, unfortunately, is not likely to happen), the article can always be recreated.
    * Delete, as per previous posters. I originally created the article earlier, around when it was first released. It made a slashdot mention, so I decided why not. It certainly hasn't become what the author hoped.
    * Keep. Already there are 60 000+ hits on Google for Colemak. The fact that it is a fairly new product does not detract from the usefulness of the information about the product. Or: how about merging this article's content into a subsection of the wiki article Keyboard_layout?l
    * Delete per nom. WMMartin 18:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

This is both an insult and a plain defamation of the Colemak layout!

Notability?
As if having 14 sections of the different placement of symbols in random counties is any more NOTABLE. Each of these 14 QWERTY layout sections only show the minor, unimportant changes in the placement of useless symbols.

Who cares about a Belgian version?

All letters remain the same as on the French keyboard, but some signs (? ! @ - _ + = §) are on different locations.

Wow... How very notable

Lack of Proof?
They deleted this article about a year ago. Alot has changed since then.

04-Jan-2007: Colemak wins CAPSoff's keyboard design competition
25-Dec-2006: David Piepgrass writes a research paper "Why QWERTY, And What's Better?" (PDF).
“All things considered, I believe Colemak is better than Dvorak and the best alternative to QWERTY.”

LETS PROVE THEM WRONG!

We should all compile a very short, convincing, interesting, and factual (with references), article which we will append to this wiki article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_ … and_others

Please contribute thoughts and revisions!
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Keyboard_Layout

Last edited by NeoMenlo (12-Apr-2007 23:16:50)
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David's article and the CAPSoff competition might be useful for the purpose. Other than that, only constant pressure without sounding evangelic about it will work I'm afraid.

The irony of it is how poorly researched most keyboard layouts are in comparison with Colemak (and Dvorak) as far as I know. Ha bloody ha.

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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Thats what I'm saying:
I think their main argument was that there hasn't been any research.

Statistics count as research, and we have plenty of that.
Then we have CAPSoff, and the research paper as well!

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From my post at https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=121:

Checkit said:

I think the reason why the Wikipedia article was deleted was because the Colemak layout was deemed as "non-notable" by Wikipedia standards.  In order for a Wikipedia article to exist, there has to be independent sources (e.g. newspaper articles, scientific studies) written about the subject of the article.  So until the Colemak layout gets some more press coverage, I don't think we will have any luck at having a permanent article up on Wikipedia.

See the following link for more information on what is considered notable on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability

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Shai, would you let me use the colourful keyboard layout picure on the german wikipedia?

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Shai (and I) have released all Colemak images to the public domain and anything that promotes Colemak is welcome. I think I can answer yes on his behalf, provided that a reference is given.

Last edited by DreymaR (13-Apr-2007 11:36:55)

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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Anything really important you guys want me to add to the colemak article on the german wikipedia?

Also, we definiteley need an abbreviation for the colemak layout, its really painstaking to keep typing "the Colemak keyboardlayout..."

How about

COL - Colemak Optimized Layout

? And of course shai needs to approve of it...

Last edited by vilem (14-Apr-2007 13:30:05)
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Uh, "the Colemak" isn't more painstaking to type than "the Dvorak" or "the QWERTY". It's already an acronym you know. And you don't want people to think of colonels, colons or columns instead of the Colemak. I'd say no.

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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kk, but wait till i sue you because of getting RSI because of all the typing...

and by the way, when typing german, I can't really just say "the colemak", it sounds kinda wrong.

How many keys remain the same between colemak and QWERTY again?

Last edited by vilem (14-Apr-2007 13:32:32)
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CKL/COL might be good for in-forum use though.

What about CLK? It kinda sounds like Colemak, but it could abbreviate Colemak layout (for) keyboards


Anyway, we need to dig some stuff up.

Here's an idea that I don't know if anyone here has done or even considered.

Why not GET some press/media coverage?

One idea would be to get Shai to talk to his local newspaper.
This may be getting too personal, but how old IS Shai?
I'm just thinking... "17 year old revolutionizes the modern keyboard"

The thing is, this is newsworthy. I'm just thinking... is there some kind of element that we're overlooking?


Here's an idea to get it in the news, but it's out of my own resources to figure out.
How much does the average person/american type in their lifetime? How many words?
We could translate that into DISTANCE. It would probably end up being thousands of miles/kilometers.

Once you figure out how much the average person types, you can use these ratios:
Number of Words:     3411
Number of Letters (no spaces):     16889
Number of Letters (with spaces):     19857
Translates to
QWERTY:
479.1meters
Colemak:
250.1meters
(Optional)Dvorak
276.1meters

*Leave Dvoark out because these statistics do not really show why Dvorak is not as good of an alternative.
**These statistics were found by using the Keyboard Compare Applet and an 11 page essay that I wrote. They may not be as accurate as needed for the massive translation from something so small to something so large.

By the way, I can do a little spainish. My vocabulary kinda sucks, but I've got better grammar than one of those automatic translators.

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Yeah, I think we need to get someone we know to wite an article or something on colemak. I thought about this before...

And those statistics would be really convincing.

Last edited by vilem (14-Apr-2007 13:33:19)
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ESTIMATE:
100 words a day (most people could do that in less than 3 minutes, so that's very lenient)
365 days a year
60 years (we can't type forever, so it can't possibly be the entire life expecancy. Most cant type for the first 10 years anyway)
is
2,190,000 words

QWERTY:
300,000 meters

Colemak:
160,000 meters


I would expect real, more accurate numbers to show a difference FAR greater than this 14 km (that's 8.7 miles)

Last edited by NeoMenlo (14-Apr-2007 01:15:52)
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i thought it would be quite a bit more too...

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Guys, please, tell me how many keys are the same between COL and qwerty. I counted 12, but i'm not sure that's right... i need it for the wikip article.

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q, z, x, y, c, v, b, a

I'm not counting the (,) (.), but I guess you should since some of the symbols do move, like (;)

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hey, no! the y doesn't stay the same!! i cant trust you i have to count myself... :P ;D

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sorry to let you down. lol

don't know why I put that on there...

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lol no problem... the article is far from finished anyways. i have a pic of what it looks like at the moment... print screen and paste into paint.. :D

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might want to type it up on something that you can save it on (notepad probably)

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i did

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it happened to me scores of times: i was in the middle of writing a beautiful article when, suddenly my pc got mucked up... arghhh!

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this isn't EXACTLY the right use for it

Try docs.google.com
It autosaves, and if you wanted, you could set it up so others can edit it - even while you're still editing it. It's amazing when you've got two people working on it at once.

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Maybe someone doing a dissertation on ergonomics or on learning could be persuaded to include Colemak. Then there would be a scholarly work to mention. It might also be possible to add Colemak as an extension of the qwerty article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwerty

"Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them" - Will Rogers
"...even the dog doesn't think I'm a monster." - Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny (1954)

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Look, NeoMenlo and Vilem: Could you guys try to refrain from spamming down the forum with chat please? Send each other emails if you want to banter; it gets so cluttered up here. Counting the keys that stay the same isn't a matter for the forums but for your eyes (or an email if you cannot count). Nor is discussing timezones in great length and an excessive post number.

Sometimes, a "chat post" in the forums is okay. But in that case, make a new topic so you don't bury something useful with it. Some readers will tire of your jolly chitchat and lose the thread. Others like me, will just get grumpy and lose their cool.  :)

Last edited by DreymaR (14-Apr-2007 09:09:11)

*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
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