Talk:List of backup software

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This article was nominated for deletion on December 6, 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

Contents 1 Online backup solutions 2 merge 3 demerge 4 comparison 5 Bacula appears twice 5.1 For large networks of systems 5.2 Uncategorized 6 Categorization 7 External URLs as references? 8 What about rsync.net?

[edit] Online backup solutions

Should there not be a section for online backup solutions like mozy.com ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.107.92.135 (talk • contribs).

See remote backup service. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-02-22 00:08Z

Proposed: Merge Managed backup providers into this page. That page would make a good section on this page and then we can have one fewer page full of spam links. -- Austin Murphy 18:58, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Merge performed. The text may need to be edited a bit more. -- Austin Murphy 17:07, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] merge

Wikipedia is not a link repository, and that's all this page was. I have merged the salvageable parts of this article to Backup software. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-02-22 00:10Z

[edit] demerge

For some reason, backup software is a popular category to spam. Everyone and their brother has apparently written a backup software package and wants to register it with wikipedia. Since these edits are being done nearly daily and there is no sign of them stopping, this page is probably the best place for them. Other wikipages dealing with backup software should wikilink here instead of enumerating a list of packages themselves. This page could possibly prevent a plethora of uninteresting stub articles about insignificant backup software packages. -- Austin Murphy 21:45, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

The mass external links are entirely inappropriate for any wikipedia article. WP:NOT a web directory. Please do not add them again. --GraemeL ^(talk) 19:43, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it is entirely inappropriate to delete half the page indiscriminately. Along with the many external links, you deleted the associated list items. In your zeal to stamp out spam, you have decimated a fairly popular page that serves a useful purpose. Instead of dozens of near-useless wiki-pages that are bound to be created in its absence, this page serves as a neutral point of view location to list, categorize and briefly describe any backup software package or service that may be at least somewhat notable, but not deserving separate wikipages. You obviously did not spend much time evaluating your edit, since you left wikilinks to vanity/spam pages like Ahsay & Langmeier Backup.

Wikipedia has several articles about backup related topics and they freqently attract the attention of spammers. Linking to list of backup software at the bottom or those pages keeps those pages clean by giving the spammers an appropriate place to describe their product. Since it is centralized, those "spam" edits, can be quickly noticed by someone who follows the topic and folded into the structure. If you had taken a closer look, you would have also noticed that the links contain no text and the entries are sorted alphabetically. This page (including the links) is useful for someone researching backups and backup software. A full description of every backup software package does not belong in Wikipedia. The use of external links serves to extend the thread of inquiry beyond the limits of Wikipedia.

If you are interested in the topic or otherwise feel you can contribute constructively, I welcome you to help out with editing. Regardless, please refrain from indiscriminately deleting information. -- Austin Murphy 20:45, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Please refrain from making edits that are contested! Other software lists have external links only for red-linked pages. This encourages stubs to be written. If no stub is ever written, or if an article is deleted, the whole entry is removed from the list. This is effective SPAM control and list maintenance (note that WP:NOT says that WP is not for lists of external or internal links!). I've formatted the list as such (removing external links for blue-linked articles & removing entries which have had deleted articles). --Karnesky 01:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

This process has cut the external links from 91 to 30. 30 is still a lot & many of those (particularly the managed backup service providers) will probably be removed eventually. However, I believe this is a fairly semi-objective criteria by which we can judge notability & by which we can remove spam but still encourage articles. --Karnesky 17:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

In that case, how about converting the links to be comments <!-- URL --> after the redlinks? That would remove the advertising factor, but leave a source available for anybody willing to write the stubs. --GraemeL ^(talk) 17:58, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm neutral to this. On the one hand, I think it would help to immediately cleanup the merged backup service providers section (I don't think the other sections are that bad compared to other lists of software). However, actually having external links lowers the barrier for writing a new articles. It also helps with list maintenance--a majority of redlinks that don't have links next to them are for articles that have been deleted (usually AfDed as nn). This indicates they should be removed.

I won't revert if you comment out external links on this page, but neither do I want this to be conceived as a "precedent" to be applied to other pages where the linkspam may not be as big of a problem. --Karnesky 18:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't see it as a precedent, I just thought it a good compromise for here. I'll leave the links intact for those marked as GPL. --GraemeL ^(talk) 18:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] comparison

It would be cool if we knew which operating systems the software was able to back up. Maybe its time we make a Comparison of backup software --Krappie 16:29, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Some rational organization would definitely be nice, but a separate page seems like overkill. I don't think we even need to make this into a table, although that could possibly be useful. Why not just put symbol tags like (WIN), (MAC), (LIN), (SOL), (NOV), etc. following the name and a little Legend somewhere. Most products support either one platform (windows) or nearly everything so this could still end up being a total mess. -- Austin Murphy 22:19, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bacula appears twice

Which is correct? (I can see where an entry would appear more than once, just not a case where it is clearly categorized and then declared uncategorized.)

[edit] For large networks of systems

• Bacula [1] GPL - a set of computer programs that permit you (or the system administrator) to manage backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network of computers of different kinds.

[edit] Uncategorized

• Bacula [2] GPL- Network based backup program.

--KevinCole 20:01, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

It's the former. fixed now. -- Austin Murphy 19:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categorization

I think sections need to be improved. What differentiates a "large network" from a "small network?" Why is 'dump' not in 'for single machine?' --Karnesky 23:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External URLs as references?

Any reason external URLs (which are meant to be fairly temporary--to promote stubs to be started) are now in a reference section? --Karnesky 19:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems like putting the external links in the reference section is just a way of bypassing WP:NOT and the link spam tag. I commented out those ref URLs so now the style is consistent. BTW, I like how you comment out the external links instead of deleting them. I've never thought of doing that before and now I'm commenting out too. I wonder if the spammers get less angry this way? (Requestion 22:42, 9 March 2007 (UTC))

I just read User:GraemeL's suggestion up above about "converting the links to be comments <!-- URL --> after the redlinks." Great idea, thanks. (Requestion 22:54, 9 March 2007 (UTC))

The external links you left uncommented were to the free/open source products that remained for the last purge. They weren't a devious way around linkspam, as they had been explicitly permitted to begin with.

It used to be that I could assume that a redlink with no external link was a deleted article (typically due to lack of notability), so I'd have a robust method to cleanup the list. Now, I don't know how much value the reference links & the commented out links really serve. Instead of external link cruft, we accumulate redlink cruft. --Karnesky 03:12, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Cruft, I know what you mean. It's not the best solution but what I've found on other software lists is that spammers tend to emulate. If they don't see any external links then they are less likely to add one. If they see only blue links then might also be less likely to disturb that pleasant sea of calm and add a red link. So periodically removing the red links might help ward off some of the spammers. Dealing with spammers is a lot like training monkeys, if you don't show them the syntax for adding an external link then they might never figure it out on their own, but then there is always the clever one. (Requestion 03:49, 10 March 2007 (UTC))

[edit] What about rsync.net?

Anyone mind if rsync.net is added to the Managed backup service providers list? I was going to add it but I didn't know the wiki naming convention: RsyncDotNet or Rsync_Net_(website) or ...? Meonkeys 04:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)