Talk:Retrospect (software)/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

"Custom Reporting" sentences after first in prgf., deleted from "Retrospect Macintosh 8" section

This feature is based on modifying the report in a top list pane produced by clicking on an existing category in the sidebar (Activities, Past Backups, Scripts, Sources, and Media Sets), and then clicking on the + button at the right-hand end of the scope bar below the toolbar at the top of the list pane. This brings up a report criteria bar, with which the administrator may change the criteria for the customized report. The administrator may then give the report a name and save it. After doing that the administrator may click on the new report in the Reports category in the sidebar, and click on Edit Report in the scope bar to customize its layout; this may include changing the sort order for a report column, changing the order of report columns, adding new report columns from those items tracked for the report's category, and removing existing report columns. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DovidBenAvraham (talk • contribs) 21:32, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

"Improved client preferences" sentences after first in prgf., deleted from "Retrospect Macintosh 9" section

These include Status preferences (including turning the "Retrospect client" software on or off), History preferences (a restore may be initiated from one of the backups displayed here), Notifications preferences (including after backup, no backup in a specified number of days, and errors on any of the "client's" SMART hard drive volumes—with a request for a Proactive backup if applicable), Privacy preferences (including designations of folders or files as Private, and allowing/disallowing Retrospect to change files on the "client's" system), and Schedule preferences (delaying Proactive backups until after a specified date-time). — Preceding unsigned comment added by DovidBenAvraham (talk • contribs) 22:55, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Concepts prior to Retrospect Windows 7: Corrected use of Catalog in Archive operations vs. Copy/Duplicate operations

For the record, I had this wrong before because I misread the Retrospect User's Guide.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 04:24, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Actually there was a reason I was confused. In Retrospect Macintosh there are two Copy buttons. One button has been in the unchanging Toolbar at the very top of the UI since Retrospect Macintosh 8, and works without using the Catalog File as I have now corrected the "Concepts prior to Retrospect Windows 7" section to say. The other button is in the List View Toolbar of the Past Backups category panel, and works using the Catalog File as I have now augmented that sub-item of the "Retrospect Macintosh 8" section to say.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 00:38, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Lead

Expanded lead substantially in response to KAP03's criticism that it was too short. This section of the Talk page is reserved for discussion of the expansion, by KAP03 or anyone else.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 05:48, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I know that leads in articles are ideally not supposed to be longer than 4 paragraphs. However paragraphs 3 and 4 and 5 read better as 3 separate paragraphs, and they're short, so I decided not to crunch them into 2 paragraphs.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 15:23, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Retrospect Windows "backup server" GUI

I feel I owe readers of the article an explanation of why my expansion of it doesn't cover the GUI of the Retrospect Windows "backup server", especially after the small-scale debacle of my 17 June 2017 edits—which I had to correct on 18 June. There are three basic reasons: (a) I've never used the Retrospect Windows "backup server" software, so I don't really know its GUI. (b) Adding a discussion of it would make the article substantially longer, which would add further validity to 80.221.159.67's "may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may only interest a specific audience" tag. (c) Detailed discussion of the Retrospect Windows "backup server" GUI would require adding at least one more primary source reference, and I've tried to keep such references down to 50% to provide a counter-argument to 80.221.159.67's "relies too much on references to primary sources" tag.

A paragraph's worth of Retrospect history is needed at this point. (Since I have never been an employee of or contractor for Retrospect Inc. or any of the previous corporate owners of the software, this paragraph is based on the third paragraph in the article lead plus the second paragraph below the bulleted items in the "Retrospect Macintosh 10 and Retrospect Windows" section of the article—supplemented by my own informed speculation and by others' posts in unreferenceable forums not under the control of Retrospect Inc..) The "backup server" GUI for Retrospect Mac 6 and Retrospect Windows 6 was basically the same, but it had grown over 20 years into an overly-complicated mess—which of course I can't state in the article because that would violate NPOV. Skipping Retrospect Mac 7, the EMC developers performed a radical simplification and cleanup of the "backup server" GUI for Retrospect Mac 8. It confused the heck out of many Retrospect installation administrators, and that—combined with the bugginess of Retrospect Mac 8—caused many customers to stop using Retrospect Mac. Apparently scared out of their wits, the Retrospect Inc. developers decided to leave the old "backup server" GUI in Retrospect Windows 8 when it was released in 2013—even though its "under the hood" code had been updated to be essentially the same as that of Retrospect Mac 10.

When I started to expand the article in October 2016, I decided it needed an overview of the "backup server" GUI that had just enough detail to show the capabilities of the Retrospect app. Considering that that overview—the third bulleted item in the "Retrospect Macintosh 8" section of the article—takes only 1.25 screen pages, I think I've done pretty well. I couldn't possibly have kept the overview that short if I had instead given an overview, which as I've said above I lack the knowledge to write, of the Retrospect Windows "backup server" GUI.

If any editor thinks he/she can update the article by adding an overview of the Retrospect Windows "backup server" GUI, I invite him/her to try. But I strongly suggest that he/she first post that additional overview on my personal talk page, so that I and others can review it and make suggestions. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 04:10, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

On further thought, I withdraw the invitation—although I can't stop another editor adding an overview of the Retrospect Windows "backup server" GUI. I've just added 3 lines to the Scripts category panel item in the "Retrospect Macintosh 8" section of the article. These lines give a brief mention of the "run document" creation capability that still exists in Retrospect Windows, along with explaining why it has been eliminated from Retrospect Mac. The "run document" capability is AFAIK the only feature of the Retrospect Windows "backup server" GUI that doesn't also exist in the Retrospect Mac "backup server" GUI, except for a couple of Script Schedules niceties that the EMC Retrospect developers decided they could dispense with in 2009. IMHO, given that the article is intended to be an overview of the Retrospect app rather than a replacement for its lengthy User's Guides, an overview of the Windows "backup server" GUI simply doesn't belong in the article. The only logical place for such an overview would be as a "Retrospect Windows 7.5 GUI" section directly following the "Retrospect Macintosh 8" section. Everything in that section would have to be of the form "here's how you do this thing described in the Console item and sub-items of the 'Retrospect Macintosh 8' section, except it's more complicated in Retrospect Windows". Please, do us all a favor and forget about it; let anyone who has read the article and wants to use Retrospect Windows rely on the User's Guide. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 18:41, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Sources

I've just looked for sources for this article to check it meets WP:GNG. I've not had chance to integrate them into the article, but list them below for anyone else who would care to:

• Macworld historical article. Appears to cover the company at least as much as the product.
• PC World product review. Arguable whether this is "in depth".
• TechHive review of Retrospect 9.
• The Register on sale to Sonic.

—me_and 11:22, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

As part of a major enhancement of the article, I've incorporated refs to the above post's proposed first and third and fourth sources into it. The proposed second source, as pointed out in the post above, is not enough "in depth" to be worth integrating. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 03:06, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

For the "Retrospect Macintosh 8" section I've used one ref that may be considered problematic. I cannot find a review of Retrospect Mac 8—probably because it was so infamously buggy, and the Retrospect.com website does not have a User's Guide for that version—probably for the same reason. Therefore the only source I have for the extensive list of new features in Retrospect Mac 8 is Robin Mayoff's e-mail announcing the beta release, which I received in January 2009 because I was on the mailing list. I've got it saved and backed up (with Retrospect, of course), and I can forward a copy to anyone who wants to look at it. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 03:29, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

An EMC press release dated 6 January 2009 just showed up when I Googled "Retrospect" and "software". Its contents are identical to Robin Mayoff's e-mail, so I have replaced the references in the article. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 12:56, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

I deleted the refimprove tag, because I think going from 0 to 12 references (I mistakenly said 14 in the edit descrip.) is quite an improvement. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 05:14, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Actually I have now found uses for refs to the first post's second source. Its mention of confusing terminology justifies my having followed Retrospect's practice of upper-casing the first letter of words with special meaning, and it supports the early inclusion of Tape WORM and encryption. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 02:57, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

The Retrospect.com website does have a User's Guide for Retrospect Mac 8; it wasn't published until 2011, and doesn't have a "What's New" chapter—although I've now used the rest of it as a ref.. Thus it is still true that the only source I have for the extensive list of new features in Retrospect Mac 8 is Robin Mayoff's e-mail announcing the beta release.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 09:30, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

An EMC press release dated 6 January 2009 just showed up when I Googled "Retrospect" and "software". Its contents are identical to Robin Mayoff's e-mail, so I have replaced the references in the article. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 19:39, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

The only remaining need for a ref. to the User's Guide for Retrospect Mac 8 is to show that the UG itself was not published until 2011. I have recently managed to cut primary sources down to 50% of the listed refs., and as part of that effort I have dropped the remaining ref. to the UG from the last sentence of the "Retrospect Macintosh 8" section. I have, however, saved the ref. in this Talk page, in case I need to put that ref. back in the article. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 12:25, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

I no longer think the fact that the Retrospect Mac 8 User's Guide shows a copyright date of 2011 proves anything other than that the EMC Iomega/Roxio developers were otherwise preoccupied in 2009-2010, because the copyright dates of the Retrospect Windows 7.5 and 7.7 (Addendum) UGs are also 2011—and there is nothing controversial about those versions of Retrospect Windows (in fact there are a fair number of administrators still using Retrospect Windows 7.7). I have therefore deleted the clause relating to the publication date of the Retrospect Mac 11 UG from the article, and have deleted the "Ref. to Retrospect Mac UG 8 ..." and References sections from this Talk page.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 09:01, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

In "Retrospect Macintosh 11 and Retrospect Windows 9" section, replaced ref. to User's Guide for Retrospect Mac 11 with refs. to newly-discovered Tidbits review—or to Retrospect Archives for 64-bit Linux clients added in v11.5/9.5. Elsewhere replace refs. to that UG with refs. to User's Guide for Retrospect Mac 14. This replaces one primary source with a secondary source. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 19:24, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Sentences deleted from double-indented Console paragraphs in "Retrospect Macintosh 8" section of article

The [Activities] line columns show the date-time, script name, activity type, first Source, Media Set/volume Destination, and performance in MB/min. The Scope Bar can be used to restrict the list to Scheduled or Waiting or Running or Past or Proactive activities. The buttons on the detail pane are used to show an Overview or Log for the activity.

The [Past Backups] line columns show the start date-time, machine name, volume name, destination Media Set, number of files backed up, and a files/folders browse button....The Scope Bar can be used to restrict the list to Mac or Windows or Other "clients". The buttons on the detail pane are used to show a Summary and Options for the backed-up volume.

The [Scripts] line columns show the Script name, type of activity, last Activity date-time, and next Activity date-time if scheduled. The List View Toolbar can be used to Add, Remove, Duplicate, Run immediately, Save, or Revert a Script. The Scope Bar can be used to restrict the list to Backup, Restore, or Utility Scripts. The buttons on the detail pane are used to show a Summary and to define Sources, Media Sets or Copy Destinations, Rules (the new Retrospect Macintosh term for Selectors), Schedules, and Options for the Script. Backup media actions can no longer be specified for a Media Set; instead each schedule for a Backup Script now specifies a possibly-different media action for its specified Media Set. By dragging in the Sources list of the Summary detail pane view—not in the unchangingly-alphabetized check-box list of the Sources detail pane view, the administrator can change the sequence in which Sources are processed by the Script—which is otherwise determined by the Source's alphanumeric computer name at time it is added to the Script.

The [Sources] line columns show the volume name, the computer it resides on, the OS that computer is running, the volume capacity, how much of that capacity is used, last backup date-time, and a bar graph of percent used. The List View Toolbar can be used to Add or Remove (Retrospect's definition of) a network share or a "Retrospect client" Source and to Add or Remove (Retrospect's definition of) a Favorite Folder on any disk drive; it can also be used to do additional things for "client" Sources. The Scope Bar can be used to restrict the list to Servers or Desktop and Laptop Sources; it can also be used to restrict the list to Local or Client or Share Sources. The buttons on the detail pane are used to show a Summary and to define Options and Tags for Source computers. Because any disk drive can contain Favorite Folders—the new Retrospect Macintosh term for Subvolumes, the List View Toolbar in this category is used to Add or Remove (Retrospect's definition of) a Favorite Folder even if it will only be used as a Member of a Media Set.

The [Media Sets] line columns show the Media Set name, the Media Set type—Disk/Tape/File/etc., the total number of files saved in existing Members, the total bytes used in existing Members, the total bytes free in existing Members, the total bytes capacity in existing Members, the current number of Members of the Media Set, and a bar graph of percent used. The List View Toolbar can be used to Add or Remove a Media Set or to Locate and open its Catalog File; it can also be used to perform additional utility functions on a Media Set. The Scope Bar can be used to restrict the list to Tape or Disk or Optical or File Media Sets. The buttons on the detail pane are used to show a Summary and Backups for a Media Set, and to define Options (which no longer include a media action) and Members and tape drive Bindings for it.

The [Storage Devices] line columns show the device name, status, and location. The List View Toolbar can be used to Scan the selected device for media, to Erase its media, or to Eject its media. There is no Scope Bar for this category. The buttons on the detail pane are used to show a Summary and Options for a hardware device.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 03:58, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Re-purposed this section to save a more extensive set of sentences now deleted from the same sub-items of the article section. If the sub-items work OK with the new deletions, I'll eventually delete this section from the Talk page.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 03:58, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Retrospect Windows 7

With regard to the reference to the developer blog post in the last sentence of the last paragraph in this section, the blog—which AFAIK no longer exists—seems to have been a semi-official one maintained by EMC (which in December 2009 still owned the Retrospect software) on behalf of the Retrospect developers. The man who wrote that post, J. G. Heithcock, is CEO of Retrospect Inc. as of the time I write this. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 18:26, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

After looking at the 2009 parent page for that blog, and noticing that a September 2009 post by Eric Ullman—Director of Product Management for Retrospect—also discussed the Emergency Recovery CD—a new feature of Retrospect Windows 7.7 I consider worthy of coverage, I switched from using J.G. Heithcock's December post to using Ullman's September post as a ref. in two paragraphs. Granted, Retrospect Windows 7.7 hadn't quite shipped yet in September 2009, but Heithcock's December post still exists as evidence it did in fact ship in 2009. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 02:19, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Refutation of conflict-of-interest question raised by a Finnish editor

I am not and have never been an employee or contractor of Retrospect Inc., or of its predecessor corporations. I have paid for every new major release of the Retrospect software I have ever used, either at the new-purchase price or at the upgrade price, including most recently in spring 2017 for Retrospect Macintosh 14. I'm a 76-year-old retiree who looked at the Retrospect(software) article in early October 2016, saw that it was truly a stub that IIRC was at best current as of 2005, and decided to expand it in hopes of getting other people to buy it—so that Retrospect Inc. could stay in business and add new bug-fixes and features I could use. That expansion has proved to be much more extensive than I expected, for reasons I'll discuss on my own talk page.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 20:43, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Documentation

A Finnish editor (evidently the same person as 80.221.159.67, but who now uses an IPv6 address with no talk page) has tagged the article's "Documentation" section with the notation "This section is written like a personal reflection or opinion essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings about a topic. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style."

The Finnish editor is absolutely correct; my personal opinion as a long-time Retrospect administrator user is that over the years since 2009 major problems have developed with the documentation that make it increasingly hard for an administrator to learn to use Retrospect. Starting last October I wrote and expanded the "Documentation" section with two objectives in mind: (a) Warn any potential Retrospect administrator user to be aware of the problems, giving specific examples. (b) Deliver a message about the overall problem to Retrospect Inc.. One way or another, objective (b) has been achieved. Therefore I will now proceed with an attempt to rewrite the section "in an encyclopedic style", with additional referencing. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 03:23, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

I'll take a look at your efforts - thanks for starting the ball rolling - but it needs a whole lot more work than what's there. It's still quite chatty and really not the right tone at all. JohnInDC (talk) 02:20, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

I did not review the references in this section in detail, so perhaps the answer was staring me in the face, but - is there any third party source that describes the shortcomings of the Retrospect documentation in the way that this section reports? Which is it? Thanks. JohnInDC (talk) 03:21, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately there is no third party source, because AFAICT nobody has done a real review of Retrospect Mac 14 or Retrospect Windows 12—just a brief re-hash of Retrospect Inc.'s announcement. If there was a review that mentioned these shortcomings, it would probably subject the reviewer's publication to a lawsuit for commercial libel. The publisher would almost certainly win that lawsuit because the truth of the shortcomings (IANAL) would be demonstrable by a comparison of various versions of older and newer Retrospect Inc. documentation, but why would the publisher want to go through that expense? There exists a first party admission of some of the shortcomings, in a Support Case reply by Retrospect Inc's Senior Support Engineer as quoted by a participant in the Retrospect Forums: "We have a TON of things that need to go into the User's guide. This probably will be less urgent when we fix [bug] .... As you can imagine, the support team would be thrilled to get a real User's guide update. When we do update the guide, it will be a large update comprising of many changes, new screenshots, removal of components that are no longer a part of Retrospect, etc..." That IMHO is about as damning an admission as you could expect to get from anyone working for Retrospect Inc., but it would of course not be considered a reliable source in the article.

However that admission doesn't directly deal with the most egregious shortcoming, which is detailed in the last two sentences of bulleted item (3) in the "Documentation" section. That is, to put it more bluntly than I dared to in the article, that the Retrospect Inc. documentation committee seems to have simply wiped out the contents of the "What's New" chapters in the Retrospect Mac 12 and Retrospect Mac 13 User's Guides (and Retrospect Windows 10 and Retrospect Windows 11 UGs) by successively replacing those chapters with later versions—without moving the information in those chapters to either follow-on chapters in later versions of the UGs or to Knowledge Base articles. In the Retrospect Mac 14 UG or anyplace else, where is any mention of the "Improved Grooming" feature in "Retrospect Macintosh 12 and Retrospect Windows 10", or of the "seeding" and "large scale recovery" sub-features of "Cloud Backup" and the "Performance-Optimized Grooming" feature in "Retrospect Macintosh 13 and Retrospect Windows 11"? I could document those omissions by simply including references to the older versions of the User's Guides, but that might be asking the reader to violate WP:NOR. It would be nice if Agen Schmitz had done that comparison—and written about it—in the Tidbits review referenced at the top of the "Retrospect Macintosh 13 and Retrospect Windows 11" section, but he didn't. Besides, to include references to the older versions of the User's Guides would violate my policy of minimizing the number of references to first-party sources in order to try to counter the "relies too much on references to primary sources" tag put into the article 11 months ago by 80.221.159.67.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 10:09, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. The reason I raise it is that, really all Wikipedia is, is a compendium of edited / rephrased / consolidated information of what other people have said about the subject at hand. Wikipedia editors are just that - editors, and not content creators. Editors shouldn't "synthesize" other material to draw their own conclusions from things that aren't stated in it, or undertake what's called "original research" in order to supply opinions or points of view that don't already exist in the wild. Take a look at WP:SYNTHESIS and WP:NOR for starters. I'll see what else I can come up with to point you to give you a clearer idea of what I'm describing. The upshot of all this is however, that if all that's said in the Documentation section is not directly stated by reliable third party sources, it can't stay in the article. Thanks. JohnInDC (talk) 10:47, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

This article - WP:Writing_better_articles describes a lot about "tone" and the way articles are written. JohnInDC (talk) 11:52, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the WP links; I'll read them again and try to obey them more closely. However, JohnInDC, I've caught you doing the same thing you're berating me for doing. In the first paragraph of your rewrite of the "Documentation" section, you say "... employs idiosyncratic terminology" without any reference—IMHO that's WP:NOR. In the bolded second paragraph (after the 3 brief bulleted items) in the "Concepts prior to Retrospect Windows 7" section of the article I say the same thing, but I have a third-party reference (actually that reference says "arcane terminology"; I'll correct it in both sections). The reason I raise this point is to show it's very tough to avoid violating WP:NOR. Are you saying that, if I make statements of the form "feature such-and-such is described in the "What's New" chapter of the Retrospect Mac 13 User's Guide, but is not described anywhere in the Retrospect Mac 14 User's Guide, or in any Knowledge Base article"—with 3 embedded references as shown, it would not be acceptable in the article because of WP:NOR? If so, then I'll have to move most of the section to the Talk page, because IMHO it's important for a potential user of the Retrospect app to know such facts. If I do that, can I have a mention in the article itself pointing to the Talk page?DovidBenAvraham (talk) 14:10, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

You are right. I did the same thing. What I was trying to do there was to revise the intro to make it more concise & encyclopedic while at the same time preserving some of the points you were making - not doing too much violence to the original text. In that way I was being perhaps a bit too sensitive to the work you'd already put into it, because in the end, I think the entire "Documentation" section is not much more than a series of inferences, and really shouldn't be there at all. As for your broader question, it's really not up to us to say anything about the adequacy or failings of the documentation, or or help interpret it, or any of that, because Wikipedia is - again - just an encyclopedia that just restates what others have already said; it's not a supplemental user guide, or a help desk, or any of that. I guess to say it another way, the point of this article is to tell people what Retrospect is, and to the extent that it has been covered by reliable sources, how it came to be; and maybe the fate of the companies that touched it along the way. The audience we're writing for are members of the public who may ask, "Huh, I wonder what this 'Retrospect' thing is", and not, Retrospect users who may ask, "I've got this software, how can I make best use of it". The page WP:What_Wikipedia_is_not may be helpful in this regard, particularly the section, WP:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_manual.2C_guidebook.2C_textbook.2C_or_scientific_journal. In the end, that kind of user-directed advice doesn't have a place at all here, not in article space or on associated Talk pages (though in the case of the latter it may survive longer before someone thinks to remove it). My quick read of Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines doesn't reveal anything that affirmatively prohibits parking substance there but I am pretty confident that somewhere in one of these essays it would say, "The Talk page isn't a place for material that didn't make the cut for the article. JohnInDC (talk) 14:45, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

OK, here's what I propose to do over the next few days to the "Documentation" section. Please let me know quickly if you don't like this proposal, but if the proposal is OK with you please leave me free to edit the section myself. I propose to meet your "synthesizing"/"drawing my own conclusions" objections by rewriting the 3 bulleted paragraphs in the section as if I was an amateur tech writer version of Ernest Hemingway. That means practically every sentence in those paragraphs will be of the form "Feature such-and-such is described in the "What's New" chapter of the Retrospect Mac 13 User's Guide, but is not described anywhere in the Retrospect Mac 14 User's Guide, or in any Knowledge Base article. Readers will be asking themselves "Why the heck did Retrospect Inc. do that to the documentation?", but I won't give them any kind of answer to the question. I'll almost certainly do away with the bulleting itself, and I will probably move much of the contents of bulleted paragraph (1) upwards in the article to the sections where the features discussed in that paragraph are disclosed. What remains will be boring as the dickens, but IMHO those sentences will not violate WP:NOR—because they will simply state the presence or absence of certain information in certain referred-to documents (which any reader can confirm using the Find feature of his/her Web browser). I may also move portions of the first two sentences in each of the last two paragraphs of the "Retrospect Macintosh 10 and Retrospect Windows 8" section into the first paragraph of this section, because they narrate historical facts that will help the reader come up with his/her answers to the question I am not allowed to answer. I will then rewrite the final paragraph in the section so that it is an inescapable conclusion of the sentences in the preceding paragraphs—and only of those sentences.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 00:42, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't feel a whole lot better about that than what's there. It avoids the express conclusions but it's still written with an editorial slant, picking some facts and omitting others in order to make a point. Even if the point is unstated, that's the essence of "synthesis" - "here's one fact, here's another unrelated fact, here's what I make of it" (or, "... you should reflect on what that may mean"). If some reliable third party has commented on the weaknesses or deficiencies or mysteries embedded in the series of User Guides written for Retrospect, then paraphrase what they actually say, cite them, and leave it at that. If there's no such thing then the discussion has no place here. Again, your audience, our audience, is not an abstract Retrospect user who's looking for a keener understanding of the product, the process by which it came to be, or the failures of the developers or marketers along the way - at least, an understanding that we as editors are supplying ourselves. In Wikipedia we take what third parties say, put it into different (certainly fewer!) words, and type it up. If there's no third party to say it then it doesn't belong. JohnInDC (talk) 01:26, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

But I don't intend to "pick some facts and omit others". What I can do, if it's OK with you, is to systematically enumerate each of the most-major new features in the "What's New" chapter of Retrospect Mac 12 and 13 ((which are the same as for Retrospect Windows 10 and 11), and to say whether each feature's documentation ended up in the next subsequent edition of the User's Guide—the answer in most cases is that it was wiped out. The only other type of documentation deficiency I would like to mention is the limitation of the How-To Video Tutorials to a maximum of 3 minutes length; the example I cite was so difficult to follow that a friend of mine—who is also a Retrospect Mac administrator user—watched it multiple times in order to be able to write an explanatory post that got nearly 700 views on the Retrospect Inc. Mac Forum. Again, I see the only really-important purpose of the "Documentation" section as being to demonstrate to a potential Retrospect administrator user what they are going to have to put up with.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 02:39, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

No. We aren't here to provide guidance, or assistance, or clues, to Retrospect administrators or users. Wikipedia is not a supplemental manual or user guide or tutorial service for this or any other product. Retrospect's documentation and tutorials may be second-rate, and riddled with inexplicable or incompetent omissions, but until a reliable third party reports on those problems, the observations have no place here; and even if such a source can be found, the article here can only reflect what the sources say, and cannot include any editorial gloss by even the best-informed Retrospect user with an account here. JohnInDC (talk) 02:51, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Again, to be perfectly clear: The only purpose of a "Documentation" section is to describe what reliable third party sources have said about the documentation. There is no other, really. JohnInDC (talk) 02:54, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I've now accepted what JohnInDC says is the meaning of WP:NOR, and I have therefore deleted all paragraphs except the first from the "Documentation" section of the article. Interestingly enough, in the process I managed to copy mentions of a couple of documentation deficiencies—but without any "synthesis"—into earlier sections of the article. One of those deficiencies was at the heart of the paragraph that JohnInDC had deleted from the "Retrospect Macintosh 10 and Retrospect Windows 8".DovidBenAvraham (talk) 05:12, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Continuing what JohnInDC has said here: I would myself too discourage against parking unencyclopedic text (guides, how-to) on the talk page. Talk pages are generally used for discussion to improve the subject article, not as a forum for general discussion. For opinions and essays you may find alternative outlets useful, which may allow publishing things Wikipedia doesn't.

Thanks to both of you for seeking improvement. 2001:2003:54FA:2751:0:0:0:1 (talk) 16:23, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

References

Article cleanup

The template tags at the top of the article are correct. The article contains excessive detail, it's written more like an essay or exposition than an cut-and-dried encyclopedia article, and the sourcing doesn't really support a lot of the inferences and asides. I'm going to start paring the article down. I recognize that a lot of hard work has gone into the article as it stands, and also that some of my edits may garble some of the concepts being presented, but the article really isn't in keeping with the project, and the solution here is to do a better job of making a shorter article rather than writing down everything that can possibly be said about the software, its development & use, and the history of the companies who've owned it. Please raise any concerns here before restoring material that I have removed. Thanks. JohnInDC (talk) 03:15, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Little by little I'll be going through and whittling the text down to remove the excessive detail and to try and make the prose more accessible. I should be frank and note that the article requires a good bit of work and is likely to be quite a bit shorter at the end of the process. Once again, Wikipedia is not a user manual, or supplemental support system for commercial software products. JohnInDC (talk) 03:22, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Other than in the "Documentation" section of the article, which I've dealt with in the preceding Talk section, the only inferences and asides I can find are in the last two paragraphs of the "Retrospect Macintosh 10 and Retrospect Windows 8" section. I'll eliminate those, although I see that you have now deleted one paragraph that I intended to re-work—pared down—into the "Documentation" section. As for the lead section of the article, you have already revised it to almost exactly what it was in 23 October 2016, http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Special:PermanentLink/745757304 , which KAP03 objected to on 7 May 2017 as being too short. The problem with that revision is that you have eliminated any vestige of two pieces of of information that I feel are vital to the lead. First, you said above "The audience we're writing for are members of the public who may ask, 'Huh, I wonder what this 'Retrospect' thing is'". Retrospect above all is the only "pull" backup system available (technically there is also Tolis BRU, but they gave up adding new features to match Retrospect's in 2009 and have since concentrated all their software development efforts on improving the GUI for a "desktop archival and recovery application designed specifically for the Music, Film, and Television production environment"). I'd like to put the last two sentences that used to be in the first paragraph of the lead back in (although I guess I could try to pare it down to one sentence); the rest of what you moved to the "'Pull' and 'push' architectures" section can go into a paragraph at the end of the "Concepts prior to Retrospect Windows 7" section. Second, there is a unfortunately a supplementary question that any article-reading members of the public—especially those who are Macintosh users—will ask; it is "Huh, didn't Retrospect collapse as a usable application a number of years ago?" I wrote the third and fourth paragraphs of the lead in May 2017 in order to answer that question. I guess I went a little overboard, because IMHO (as a retired programmer) it is a great story; developers bucking management, failing in their effort because they didn't have enough time, and then pulling themselves off the floor as an independent company over the next couple of years. However I'm sure I could pare that story down to a single paragraph, because the details are in the 3 Register articles I used as references in those paragraphs.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 04:09, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't particularly object to a sentence in the lead that says it's the only "pull" system on the market but here too you are making an observation that, as far as I can tell, is yours and not that of third parties. If that's not a reported aspect of Retrospect, then the observation & categorization is yours, and not that of the sources. As for whether it's still a viable program, the answer is contained in the tense of the verb "is". Plus too, if someone's trying to figure out if Retrospect is still being sold, Wikipedia is not the first place they'll look to find that out. As for the history of the thing IMHO it's too much detail, lots and lots and lots of products have long stories behind them that aren't really much of the larger picture but let's see how it reads. The goal here is, finally, to shorten the article (by a lot), not make it longer! JohnInDC (talk) 10:56, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't want to say Retrospect is the only "pull" backup system on the market, I just want to say in the lead that it is a "pull" backup system—and to state that makes it distinct from Time Machine and CrashPlan (and Windows Backup and Restore). The rest of the "'Pull' and 'push' architectures" section can stay where you have put it. As I've said, I can shorten the history behind Retrospect by a lot—so long as I can put into the lead a mention that corporate turmoil resulted in the disastrous (I had second-party references to back that up) release of Retrospect Mac 8 and the eventual spinoff of Retrospect Inc. as the "recovery company". IMHO that mention is a prerequisite for the reader's understanding the last paragraph in the "Retrospect Macintosh 10 and Retrospect Windows 8" section, because it explains why Retrospect Inc. kept the old Retrospect Windows GUI and doubled the size of the Retrospect Windows User's Guide (although I can't say it in the article, the "disaster" probably convinced Retrospect Inc. that a lot of Retrospect administrator users were incapable of coping with a change to a Mac-app-like GUI and needed a truly hand-holding level of documentation).DovidBenAvraham (talk) 14:28, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

In regards to "if someone's trying to figure out if Retrospect is still being sold, Wikipedia is not the first place they'll look to find that out", the fact is that average daily page views for the article doubled beginning on 20 August—several days before I started making the initial extensive revisions to the "Documentation" section. That date corresponds to when the awareness that CrashPlan for Home—and especially CrashPlan for Home LAN—is going to disappear reached the IT community, which IMHO means that people with a renewed interest in Retrospect are looking at Wikipedia. Of course the number of page views for the article tripled again yesterday, but that's obviously because our paring-down efforts here have become a spectator sport.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 14:58, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Take a look at WP:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section. The lead shouldn't cover more than what's the in main article body, and ideally shouldn't have any of its own references. In the lead you could say, "Retrospect is a 'pull backup system'" (though already that's jargony) but not that it's distinct from the others. That's marketing / use material, to my eye. I have to repeat: This is not a user manual. As for the corporate turmoil, I have real reservations about how much of that Inside Baseball material is relevant at all. In the end the gist of this article is, should be, "Retrospect is backup software. It was introduced in the early days for Mac OS (Classic) and then later OS X and Windows. It has gone through many changes in ownership, suffered occasional quality control issues along the way, but is still viable and in production". The extremely arcane history underlying prior - and long obsolete - versions of the program is inconsequential and in many ways impenetrable, providing as it does a level of detail that is better suited for a tech blog post or article than for the summary that Wikipedia is supposed to be. The idea here is not to pull together everything that's been said about the program into one place as a definitive point of reference but rather to consolidate (and reduce!) those sources into something comprehensible that the average reader can take in without a struggle. Good grief, I'm a long-time Macintosh user (since 1984), I used to use Retrospect, and I can't figure out 4/5 of what's being said here. It's too much! JohnInDC (talk) 15:07, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I really appreciate your willingness to engage, and your patience in addressing the concerns I've raised, but I think we may be talking past each other a bit here and so I've opened up a Request for Comment below. That'll (I hope) draw additional editors here who can help us sort through all this. Meantime I'm happy to keep talking - JohnInDC (talk) 15:24, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I really don't think we're talking past each other; we're just negotiating. I agree that the article is rather long for any reader to plow through, but sections in it have proven extremely useful to link to from posts in the Retrospect Inc. Forums. My friend has just looked through the 29 posts in which he has such links, and only two of the links need to be corrected because of deletions you have already made in the article. I'm sure we can work out a solution that will bring the article down to under 50KB, but will still leave most of what I consider "the meat" in it. I now accept that one candidate for deletion, given what you say is the definition of WP:NOR, is pretty much the entire "Documentation" section. I also now accept that another candidate for deletion is all the bulleted sub-items under the third bulleted item in the "Retrospect Macintosh 8" section, although that third bulleted item itself would have to be slightly expanded. In return, all I really want is a long-enough lead to give a reader an immediate idea of what Retrospect does and enough of a brief history to be able to supply his/her own explanation for weirdness further down the article. If we can come to an agreement, I'll make the changes this weekend. And thanks for negotiating.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 19:25, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Since I haven't heard from JohnInDC for the past 1.5 days, I've decided that our negotiation has successfully concluded. Therefore I've done the deletions I proposed in the paragraph directly above this one, which have brought the length of the article down from 60.6KB to 51KB. I decided that, rather than "slightly" (I thought) expand the third bulleted item itself in the "Retrospect Macintosh 8" section while deleting all its bulleted sub-items, it would save more space to greatly cut down those sub-items. I'll take a further look over the weekend, and see if I can squeeze out another 1KB. I haven't done the slight expansion of the article lead yet, pending further discussions with JohnInDC. I don't really think the RfC is still necessary, especially since it so far has not AFAIK produced any rapid gathering of editors. Thank you, and goodnight and good morning.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 13:53, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

I've now brought the length of the article down to just 50KB. FYI, the only reason I've left any mention of prior Dantz/EMC backup products in the "Concepts prior to Retrospect Windows 7" section is that their references are to third-party sources.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 19:44, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your continuing efforts. I've been quiet lately because, one, you're making progress but two (yes, inconsistently) I don't think that I have been able to convey how significantly the article needs to be pared. When I said earlier that the whole article could be presented in about three or four sentences, I was being only about 30% facetious. Two paragraphs would probably do the trick. We have one editor who's voiced general agreement below (if stated a little harshly) and I'm inclined to wait to see if anyone else weighs in. JohnInDC (talk) 13:12, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Remarks

Some remarks on most of the 14 (!) edits scope_creep made to the article today (NYC time). I have already pointed out to scope_creep on his/her own Talk page that, if he/she had waited about one more day until I had finished cutting out the contents of sections beginning with "Retrospect Macintosh 9" and moving them—greatly cut-down—to the new "Main features" section, I would have been able to make changes to the first three sections to cope with the objections scope_creep and others have been making above. Briefly:

"→‎History: Removed manual section. Nobody cares of the size of a manual increasing": The point of that paragraph plus the preceding one in the "History" section, taken together, is intended to be that Retrospect Windows 8 emerged as a software app that is externally-distinct from Retrospect Mac 10. True, the "backup server" code is—"under the hood"—almost identical.

NOT almost identical, identical. scope_creep (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

But the GUIs are significantly different in both form and terminology, and the "backup server" apps can't be run in an equivalent manner. As I've said way up above in this talk page, the old GUI is a crufty mess—but Retrospect Inc. decided they had to keep it and super-size its User's Guide in order to avoid losing Retrospect Windows customers. (Do I have a reliable ref. for this? Get serious! That's why I mention the UG.)

"→‎History: Minor fixes": Confuses Retrospect Mac 8.0—released in March 2009—with Retrospect Windows 7.7—released at the end of 2009. Watch out when you combine 3 prgfs. into 2!

fix is, but no sales muck. I dont think anyone cares about a user manual, or the fact that it is increasing in size. Nobody. scope_creep (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

"→‎'Pull' and 'push' architectures: copyedit": Nice section name change, scope_creep! I may try to lose the entire section, though.

Architecture is better than 'Pull' and 'push' architectures, which is not WP:MOS, and is not an attractive section head. Software Architecture, or Architecture explicitly defines what it is. scope_creep (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

"→‎History: initial cut copyedit on history": Time Machine needs to be identified as "sofware" [sic]? If the UI has just been identified as a "user interface" why does its terminology have to be identified as "application use terminology"?

To make it readable to the user, and only a small fraction of folk, probably less than 0.00005% of the world population, know what Time Machine is. scope_creep (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Assuming a world population of 7 billion, 0.00005% would come out to 35,000 people—unless I've messed up using the Calculator app. However this section of a WP article (see, scope_creep, I do know how to use an appropriate link) says (next-to-last prgf.) "Apple still managed to ship 2.8 million MacBooks in Q2 2012". That's in a single quarter of a year. In case you're not aware of it, every Mac user since 2007 knows what Time Machine is—including me who finds it not helpful for my purposes. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 01:07, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

"... made significant changes ... than to ...." is a middle-school grammar error. How do you know Retrospect Mac 8 was buggy, when the ref. doesn't say that? IMHO changing my grammatically-correct em-dash to another comma in "One exception ...." turns it into a run-on sentence.

If it wasn't properly designed as a next version, then generally the product tends to be buggy, as they have not spent enough time on it. Take it out if need be, and replace with suitable, or not sentence. scope_creep (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Why were "is", "must", and "is" in the next-to last sentence edited into past tense, when those are in fact still current limitations in the latest version of Retrospect Windows? Finally, if I changed all the mentions of "UI" to "GUI" and put a link into the first one, wouldn't that be sufficient for the presumably computer-savvy readers of the article—since my computer-savvy building doorman knows what GUI means (I asked him tonight)?

You don't say it, and It is dealing with that version of software, which is ancient. Think of the reader. No all readers are computer savvy, very few are savvy. scope_creep (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

"→‎History: copyedit to history": "When Retrospect Macintosh 8.0 was released ... it was a completely redesigned to have more capabilities ...." is a middle-school grammar error.

- fix the grammer.

"copyedit to lede": I've recently learned that Retrospect uses a client-server backup model, which is a distinctly different term not defined on Wikipedia; I'll add a ref. to the Joe Kissell book. Why do "multi-machine network" and "mixed-platform networks" get edited to "heterogeneous network", when both the original phrases were easier to understand and the second edit makes it sound as if multiple businesses are all in one network? Editing the em-dash followed by "and" in "The sales target for its features ... despite changes in personnel and equipment—and despite disasters" turns this grammatically correct sentence into a run-on sentence.

-mixed-platform networks are heterogeneous networks, that what they are called. Remove sales target. It is not a brochure. It is a client-server backup model. It is one of the primary models for network computer systems. Link to a defintion in WP if possible, then put in the ref. scope_creep (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Nobody talks about multi-machine network or mixed-platform networks. I think they are probably a hangover from the 90s, possibly left in the manual. scope_creep (talk) 15:34, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

"→‎Main features: Took out. 'Ever Since' This is not a manual, per WP:NOT": I've just explained again, in a rather sharp exchange on my personal talk page, that making the first letter of certain words upper-case doesn't mean turning the article into a manual; it is simply a harmless, reasonable way of dealing with a few decades-old Retrospect specific terms that have no generally-accepted equivalent. If scope_creep has an alternative method of dealing with those terms, he/she hasn't yet mentioned it; scope_creep just seems obsessed with the idea that handling this problem the way that I have will turn the article into a Retrospect manual—which IMHO is nonsense. Maybe re-wording the two-line bolded notice would soothe his/her soul.

It is not the way it is done on WP. You link articles together, and at some point in the future, all these linked articles will be excellent articles. Some of them are rough now, but but will be better in the future. scope_creep (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC) The uppercase first letter, is outwith WP:MOS.

[no summary]: Fixing the botched link in the first prgf. of the lead into backup server just shows how ridiculous trying to find a link for "backup server" on Wikipedia is; the article for Backup Exec half-heartedly tries to define the term at the very bottom of the page, but IMHO fails. I'll use a ref. to the Joe Kissell book.

The article was already underlinked, and was tagged as so, and you are trying to define everything on this page, when it is already defined somewhere else. Keep the link. There is already an article on backup. Don't define a term, if it has been defined somewhere else in WP. That is the primary definition of a hyperlinked encyclopedia. scope_creep (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

"→‎History: copyedit": This editing of an em-dash to a comma doesn't actually produce a run-on sentence; unfortunately I'm going to delete the sentence, since a new one-line mention under Destinations in "Main features" is sufficient.

"duplicate sentence in lede removed": A monumentally stupid deletion; that's the only sentence in the entire article which reveals that the Retrospect "backup server" software can only run on a macOS or Windows computer, but the "client" software can also run on Linux (or Solaris or classic Mac OS, if you go back far enough) That sentence belongs in the lead.

- Fix it, but it is worth noting the sentence was duplicated, one below the other in the first para. scope_creep (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

"→‎Architecture: minor copyedit": When I wrote "... pushes data to a backup host (which may not be a full-fledged computer)" I meant to include Time Capsules and NASes. I think adding a link to Host (network) complicates that section of the article, but I may be wrong and would appreciate suggestions. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 03:54, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Put them, as they are part of the description of the software. scope_creep (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

scope_creep (talk) 09:04, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I appreciate Scope's edits. I'm sorry, DBA, that you are unhappy that he didn't wait for your edits, but the revisions are overdue, and, Wikipedia's a collaborative venture and he has every right to do it. If he got something wrong, then fix it. Otherwise IMHO the article is still several times longer than it needs to be, loaded with jargon and impenetrable detail, and I hope that you intend to continue reducing it. Thanks. JohnInDC (talk) 10:52, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

PS, Scope - you've got to sign each of your annotations above. It's impossible to tell which comments are yours and which are DBA's without going to the page history. Thanks! JohnInDC (talk) 10:55, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Recent edits

That is a not too bad edit, DovidBenAvraham. I see you are still creating definitions, that are found elsewhere in WP, another editor will link to client server later. Why you have unlinked it, when it is perfectly reasonable definition? You are still underlinking, although it is better. The Documentation section is not needed, as all software has these types of docs and media release channels. The performance section in the Main Features section is not needed. It doesn't provide anything in terms of useful encyclopedic knowledge. It is junk, and looks as it is straight from the manual. Please be careful about concepts. Most of it will have been define somewhere else. scope_creep (talk) 20:24, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Current edits

Hi @DovidBenAvraham:, I see you are still adding in huge chunks of information, that is straight from the manual, e.g.:

These facilities were expanded into an “offline verification” capability, which enables the administrator to specify “No verification” for a nighttime Backup script and then schedule a separate Verify script to run in the morning (accessing the Catalog-File-stored MD5 checksums)—thus effectively making the nighttime a pure "backup window" for the maximum number of Sources.[11]

A Backup script only backs up its designated Source volumes if they are connected by the time the running Backup script starts to back up the network computer a Source volume is connected to. To handle environments in which mobile computers are irregularly connected to the network, Retrospect also has a special Proactive script type that—while it is running—maintains on the "backup server" a queue of its designated Source volumes in the oldest-first order of their most-recent backup date and time. Whenever a Source volume appears on the network, a running Proactive script causes that volume to be backed up next if it is first in the queue.

Your not linking any of this, your still putting in your own defintions on this page, instead of linking to other pages on WP. I see your still putting double quote around items, for no reason. The second one, nobody is going to read it. It is superfluous, and no context.

The table is no of use. Nobody who is reading this article, needs a table, which lists previous and present terminology. It is a software, when its out of use, it becomes useless, and the information is no enclopedic knowledge to the average reader. Your still have a performace tab, listing mundane items, which are also of no encyclopedic knowledge.

Powerful new engine. It sounds like an advertisment? What have a performance tab. You are not selling the software on WP.

scope_creep (talk) 09:33, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Getting better though. scope_creep (talk) 09:34, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

I just saw your post when I tried to post my reply—which this is as slightly enhanced. There is no definition for "client-server backup" anywhere in WP. That's why I went to all that trouble—which we have discussed on my Talk page—to find a viewable copy of the Joe Kissell book to reference, and why I put in a reference to it (which is ordinarily a no-no) in the first prgf. of the lead. A link to "client-server" is of no use for this article. Not all software adds new feature and then eliminates the documentation for them—not the features themselves—in the next major release! My old version of the "Documentation" section described that, but JohnInDC made me drastically cut it because the fact that I had discovered the eliminations with my own mighty eyeballs made the discovery "original research". IMHO the "Documentation" section in its minimal form should stay in until Retrospect Inc. does its promised rewrite of the User's Guides. I think your problem with the Performance sub-section of the "Main features" section is with three little words at the start of the second item in the sub-section: "Powerful new engine". Those three words are, I admit, taken from the EMC announcement of Retrospect Mac 8; I left them in to emphasize that the "backup server" Engine in Retrospect Mac 8 and subsequent Mac and Windows versions is an entirely different beast than what it was before. I'll try to revise that first sentence; IMHO everything else in that item is encyclopedic knowledge. The "offline verification" and Proactive script type are powerful features that not all other enterprise backup apps have; Retrospect Inc. has a U.S. patent on the Proactive script type that only expired last year, and Joe Kissell recommends using it in his book. Anyway, with difficulty I've cut the "Main features" section down to three pages. I've got a severe persistent cough from the after-effects of my bronchitis, and I'm signing off for now. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 10:38, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Try re-reading the last sentence in the paragraph before the table: "Another exception was that Retrospect Windows 8, and subsequent versions, kept the same non-Macintosh-style user interface (which some have found overly complicated[10]) and terminology as Retrospect Windows 7." "... kept the same ... terminology ...." means that's the terminology used in Retrospect Windows 12.5, which is the current version. Today, when you had your Wheetabix this morning—but evidently not enough caffeine. That's why the table is in there, to provide a translator for administrators of Retrospect Windows to use while reading the "Main features" section. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 10:53, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

All of it, still far too detailed, too deep into the weeds. I appreciate the paring that has taken place so far but there's still a lot of clutter and OR and synthesis here. What source, for example, offers up the substance of the Mac / Windows translation table? JohnInDC (talk) 11:24, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

There used to be refs. for the terminology translation, but I mistakenly eliminated them in converting the third prgf. (counting the prgf. with the bulleted items as the first) in the "Retrospect Macintosh 10 and Retrospect Windows 8" section of this article version—a prgf. which contained the translations as ugly prose—into a shorter prose prgf. plus a table. I've now put the refs. back. Now that the "Documentation" section is essentially eliminated, where is this remaining OR and synthesis? DovidBenAvraham (talk) 01:38, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

The article is too long and too detailed and I'm really disinclined to go through what's still left here and critique it line-by-line. I've offered my own alternative, which is (AFAIK) still on the table if the article doesn't come down far enough, but still, I'll identify a few more examples of unsourced claims, OR, synthesis or opinion. Like: "The cumulative size of these backed-up files may be so large, especially for content-producing businesses, that the only feasible destination is a set of tapes—e.g. Linear Tape-Open—that must be written and read sequentially. Alternatively, if an installation has a larger network or a large amount of data to back up, sequential backup is a very efficient use of installation idle time even if the destination is a set of disks". The sourced article doesn't say that. Or - "One exception to that was because of security features added to Windows Vista and beyond, the equivalent of the separate Retrospect Mac Console user-space process and server root process had be a single user-space process under Windows, which could result in problems if the Windows backup server process was not kept running continually. Retrospect Windows 8 (and subsequent versions) provides several methods of avoiding such problems." The entire documentation section other than, "It's manuals, YouTube videos and knowledge base articles" is synthesis (yes I know they paraphrase my words but I was trying to pare slowly.) I have to say that this challenge / response method of proceeding is exhausting, and - after how many weeks now? - proceeding far too slowly. I am increasingly convinced that the article doesn't need to be whittled down but rebuilt, far more modestly, from the ground up. JohnInDC (talk) 03:14, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

As for "The cumulative size of these backed-up files ... set of tapes ... read sequentially", I now have a ref. for that sentence that supports it. As for "..., if an installation has a larger network ..., sequential backup is a very efficient use ... disks", I now have a a ref. for that sentence whose second prgf. supports it by implication IMHO. I've looked for a more explicit "backup window" discussion, but so far can't find it. As for "One exception to that was because of security features added to Windows Vista and beyond ...", the last eight words that I have quoted have in the article a link to a section of the WP article on Windows Vista whose second paragraph precisely supports the statement. However, if you are objecting to "Retrospect Windows 8 (and subsequent versions) provides several methods of avoiding such problems", I have a reference difficulty resulting AFAIK from political problems at Retrospect Inc.. It seems that the developers were thrown for a loss by Microsoft's making it impossible to implement Retrospect Mac 8's beautiful Engine-Console split in Retrospect Windows. They immediately responded by putting in some work-around Preferences options in Retrospect Windows 8, and then added what was supposed to be a more-comprehensive workaround to Retrospect Windows 9. The developers' intent was to have a stand-alone version of the Dashboard application pop up automatically in the case that a user tries to launch Retrospect when it is in the background—which it is if another script is scheduled to run within the default "look-ahead" time of 12 hours. Unfortunately they introduced a bug, not yet fixed 3 years later, which causes a nonsensical dialog to pop up instead. For some reason the developers didn't have time to fix the bug, yet refused to document the stand-alone version of the Dashboard application in the User's Guide until it was working properly. The point is that my friend has this story in a reply to his Support Case on the subject 3 months ago, but I can't use that reply as a ref. because the reply has only been posted by my friend on the Retrospect Forums. I used to mention the stand-alone Dashboard in a paragraph in the old "Retrospect Macintosh 11 and Retrospect Windows 9" section, but I removed that mention on 22 September when I moved the cut-down contents of that section to "Main features"—anticipating that JohnInDC would justifiably call the mention WP:OR because it relied on my noticing an absence of documention. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 03:02, 27 September 2017 Hand-backdated from Revision History because the original last half of the last sentence, along with my signature, was lost by WP when the revision was posted. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 13:11, 27 September 2017 (UTC) On second thought, I think I was researching the last half of the last sentence when I saw what JohnInDC had just done to the article; I then must have hit Save Changes without finishing the sentence or adding my sig, but the hand-backdated timestamp in the post is correct. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 13:21, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Client server and back are two seperate concept, and should be treated as such. Your are still underlinking and putting Restrospect inc, everywhere. Everybody who is reading knows what the context is. Why the double quotes. It is ugly and is not supported in WP:MOS Taking this as an example.

data transfers between a particular "Retrospect client" computer and the "Retrospect server" may also be encrypted

Why does it have Retrospect in front of every mention of the software? People who read the article, know what the context is. That can be shorted to data transfer between the client and server can be encrypted

You just deleted the first two words from the title of the "'Backup server' Editions and Add-Ons" section of the article, but you couldn't be bothered to read the first sentence of the second paragraph in that section! That says "... a user's 'Retrospect backup server' Edition is dictated by the number of macOS Server or Windows Server computers being backed up in the installation." Maybe you are unfamiliar with macOS Server, scope_creep, but—as an evident IT professional familiar with such concepts as "heterogeneous networks", you must surely have heard of Windows Server. The whole point of that second paragraph is that, going at least as far back as EMC, the owners of the Retrospect software have had a "soak the rich" policy of charging a you a lot more money if your "heterogeneous network" includes even one computer running a Server version of either Windows or macOS. If you don't believe me, scope_creep, try running the online Product Configurator referenced in the next-to-last sentence of that section—in doing so you can verify that Retrospect charges are largely based on the edition of the Retrospect backup server licensed (which is why I had those two deleted words in the section title).

If it's not too much of a strain, you might finally try reading two sentences in the "Main features" section of the article. The first, in the "powerful new engine" item in the Performance sub-section, says "All the categories of Retrospect information for a particular 'backup server' are stored by it; when a 'Retrospect Console' (see 'User interface') process is started, its process 'synchronizes' information with all [my bolding] running LAN/WAN 'backup servers'." The second sentence, in the "All-new, customizeable [administrator] interface" item in the User interface sub-section, says "Its window has a sidebar on the left, showing each 'backup server'—there can be multiple ones [my bolding]—on the LAN/WAN."

After you've done the arduous work of reading these three sentences, you'll begin to understand why I have taken pains in the article to distinguish between a Retrospect "backup server" and any other kind of server machine in the installation. If you don't like my convention of using double-quote marks to make the distinction, scope_creep, maybe you'd like me to switch to using initially-upper-cased words per the Retrospect Inc. convention? DovidBenAvraham (talk) 02:56, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

"Certified AES-256 encryption" Why has this got quotations around it, and why is it not linked? AES-256

The cloud backup section is too long, as is the user-interface section. In cloud backup:

In "cloud backup/restore" operations, the "backup server" acts as a "second-level client" intermediary between LAN/WAN "Retrospect client" machines and the actual cloud storage.

Rewrite as: In cloud backup operations, the server acts as a gateway controller between the client and cloud storage provider.

There is a specific name for the gateway controller. Link to Block (data storage). Please start putting in proper links.

scope_creep (talk) 11:46, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

IMHO scope_creep has basically gone off the rails as far as this article is concerned. The appropriate philosophical aphorism is "If you give a man a hammer, everything will look like a nail to him." It appears that sometime in the past, scope-creep obtained two hammers. The first hammer was a course in Computer Networking (or something similar). The second hammer was an introduction to linking on Wikipedia, without any evident training in how to judge whether a particular link is appropriate to the expected audience of the article that is supposed to contain it. For instance, on 19 September 2017, scope_creep changed the term "multi-machine network" to "heterogeneous network" in the first paragraph of the article lead. In doing so, he/she made several mistakes. The first mistake is that the expected audience for the article will include many potential installation backup administrators who don't have an extensive CS background, and will therefore IME have no need for the terminology and level of detail in the article scope_creep linked to. The second mistake is that IME there are many happy administrators who simply have multi-machine networks, but not heterogeneous networks. I, for instance, have on my home LAN 4 drives booting some version of macOS (or OS X if you want to be specific about the older drives). Since I haven't had a computer on my LAN booting any variety of Windows since 2004, am I not a suitable candidate for using Retrospect? And there are hundreds if not thousands of Retrospect-using installations on networks whose multi-machine networks of clients are uniformly composed of macOS or Windows or Linux computers.

No personal attack, you will end up being blocked!!. You don't what audience, it cant be determined expect by research, and nobody is going to buy an piece of expensive software, based on what is written on WP. Nobody uses the term multi-machine network, unless they don't know what they're talking about. It is not proper nomenclature. scope_creep (talk) 15:53, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Now let's apply this to what scope_creep is proposing immediately above. If we look at Mike Lonash's review of Backblaze B2 referred to in the "Cloud Backup" item under LAN/WAN/Cloud in the "Main features" section of the article, we see that it says "At the moment, B2’s web interface is incredibly basic, offering only standard upload, download, delete, and some reporting functions." That why I said that a Retrospect backup server as a "second-level client" would "thus [be] compensating for cloud providers who may on their own have a 'nice but limited web environment' and 'limited reporting options'." No, I'm not talking about Retrospect's ability to serve as a gateway controller between the LAN and the cloud provider, but its ability to perform much higher-level functions that the Engine and Console perform—for which I coined the term "second-level client". Otherwise, we might as well change all articles about Arq/NetBackup/SuperDuper! to speak of them as gateway controllers, and delete all mention of their other features.

second-level client is WP:OR. Don't use, it doesn't accurately reflect the type of technology and how it used. scope_creep (talk) 15:53, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Next let's apply this to scope_creep's question on why "Certified AES-256 encryption" is not linked. Has scope_creep even looked at the WP article on the Advanced Encryption Standard? It's highly mathematical, and I'd certainly have to pull out my textbook on matrix algebra to have even a hope of one day understanding it. Why does scope_creep think it would be useful to the likely audience for the Retrospect article? IMHO most of them would be happy to know that AES-256 encryption is considered pretty good.

That is nature of life. I don't understand how quantum mechanics works, but the sun still comes up every day. This is an encyclopedia. Linking terms to other articles is one of the most fundamental aspects of the Wikipedia. Whether it is complex or not, WP is hyperlinked encyclopedia. Unlinked articles are outside WP, as no use to anybody. Link all terms that need links, and take out definitions, that have been defined elsewhere on WP. WP is not on the business of subverting itself to satisfy a particular audience. scope_creep (talk) 15:53, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Now let me finish by answering scope_creep's question of why there are double-quotes around "Certified AES-256 encryption" and "Powerful new engine". Yes, those are quoted from an EMC announcement of the release of Retrospect Mac 8. But after a discussion of WP copyright rules in October 2016 on my Talk page in October 2016, Diannaa said "You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and cite the source using an inline citation." I've done that for the announced names of Retrospect features, because I'm not creative enough to beat skilled technical writers at their own game. Dianaa kept a watch on the article, and she evidently considered my paraphrases of feature descriptions acceptable. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 05:12, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

That is all true, but you can go overboard with it, and putting in far too much information, for a fairly simple product. It it is a common term, which I choose specifically AES, e.g. link to it, and then leave the definition out. Take this example,

"Console for iPhone"—application released as a view-Activities-only experiment around 2010. Later expanded to view all categories and to run and stop scripts, documented in the "Retrospect for iOS" appendix of the User's Guide

Why not say: iOS client. Released in 2010. Simple as that.scope_creep (talk) 15:53, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Your still writing the article, as though it is a help guide for retrospect users, which it is not. This Later expanded to view all categories and to run and stop scripts, documented in the "Retrospect for iOS" appendix of the User's Guide is the manual link and currently the article still violates WP:NOT, and is slightly promotional. It is much better than it was, it definitely better. scope_creep (talk) 15:53, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

This as an example. "backup server" You have 17 copies of this statement in the Features list. Do you not thank the average reader, knows what you are talking about the server, at this point. It also breaks WP:MOS and basic common sense.

Also worth mention, nobody uses Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 products. Please take this out.

According to this article on The Register, the use of Windows XP in British NHS systems dropped from 15-18% in December 2015 to only 4.7% in June 2017. But that second figure was after the appearance of the WannaCry malware, which as it turned out didn't infect Windows XP systems because it crashed them. Also, according to this article on The Register, the British Web hosting business Fasthosts denied customers access to their backups for 6 days because it feared their Windows Server 2003 systems were vulnerable to WannaCry. Fasthosts said 82 customers were affected, "however [says El Reg] we believe those customers vary in size – for example, some are IT contractors for small businesses." DovidBenAvraham (talk) 00:27, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

These can be linked: WebDAV, Amazon S3, Archive, NTFS, AES-256, MD5, HFS+, Block, Google Cloud Storage, script,

Hi @DovidBenAvraham:, Taking each point in turn. scope_creep (talk) 15:53, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

You also have 74 Retrospect words in the article. A good 80-90% of them need to come out. That many is clearly promotional, and violates WP:NOTADVERTISING. Such advertising is against Wikipedia Terms of Use, and puts Wikipedia licence at risk. Please remove them. scope_creep (talk) 16:04, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Request for Comment - article length, level of detail

Does the article contain too much detail, and Synthesis / OR? (NB - discussion has been civil & respectful! Just soliciting more points of view.) JohnInDC (talk) 15:22, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Survey

• Comment What a complete mess. The article completely violates WP:NOT, with whole sections of the manual being copied into place. Wikipedia is not a manual. A bulleted list can replace all that's past the opening lede. Its an article that nobody will read and has zero encyclopedic value as it stands. It is summary of the manual, and in this context has zero value. What is this:

Ever since the software was first released, its UI has made the first letters of certain words upper-case to indicate a specific Retrospect meaning. The remainder of this article preserves that convention, which helps to clarify terminology that some have found "arcane"

Does the WP:MOS somehow not apply. If the filing editor had done any work, would have realised it is common nomenclature in the computing industry. A severe copyedit is required to save the article. As it stands, the article qualifies for WP:TNT and as such is a good WP:AFD candidate. Its a complete mess. It is a manual, and has no purpose or context on WP. scope_creep (talk) 07:34, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

I guess you must be young, scope_creep. The 23 February 2005 reference at the end of the bolded paragraph you have quoted, if you can be bothered to look, says "... the application's continued use of arcane terminology such as "sets" and "volumes ....". Dantz Development Corp. developers invented the Retrospect terminology in the mid to late 1980s, and they probably took Computer Science classes—if any—in the 1970s when set theory was still not being widely taught and OS terminology had not yet been standardized. One example of the latter is Retrospect's use of the term Snapshot, as defined in the article's "Concepts prior to Retrospect Windows 7" section. It goes all the way back to the 1980s, when Snapshot (computer storage) was at most a dream in the minds of Unix/Linux/Solaris developers. The change in meaning of "snapshot" evidently bothered the EMC developers enough that they eliminated Snapshot as terminology with Retrospect Mac 8 in 2009—with consequences that used to be mentioned in a section of the article until JohnInDC deleted it as "speculation and "original research"; the Snapshot is still a key facility in both flavors of of Retrospect, and it is still terminology in Retrospect Windows. The reason the "Retrospect Macintosh 10 and Retrospect Windows 8" section of the article is 1.5 pages long is that it must deal with the GUI and terminology split between Retrospect Mac and Retrospect Windows, whose reasons I have discussed in the second paragraph of the "Retrospect Windows 'backup server' GUI" section of this Talk page.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 17:00, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

No; we don't need to delve into Retrospect's arcane terminology at all. At all. This is not a user manual, it's not a guidebook - for the current version or - worse still - obsolete versions of this software. JohnInDC (talk) 20:48, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

• Comment: far too much operational detail, relative to content based on genuine third-party sources. (I read the first source cited, and was amused to see the reader-comment at the bottom "Nowhere does it say if this new version actually works. I've had nothing but trouble with Retrospect. I would suggest anyone who uses it to make sure you can restore your backups, because it very rarely works."). The final sentence of the lead says that Retrospect users still use tapes for their backups – is this really true, now that cloud storage is cheap? Maproom (talk) 07:25, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

You forgot to include the comment underneath that 2012 comment, replying to it, Maproom. It says "I've used Retrospect since the mid-1990s in both home and business settings with mixed groups of up to 25 Macs and PCs. I've never experienced a problem with a restore to a Mac. I have had a few problems with PC restores because windows ...." That's been my experience too, and I've used Retrospect since 1995—with a 5 year break in 2010 when my "backup server" machine died of old age. Five months ago the HDD in one of my Macs (a laptop) died; I had restored the complete contents of that drive onto a portable HDD within 2.5 hours, and booted a deskop Mac from it for the next two days until I could use Installation Assistant to restore from the portable HDD onto my Mac's new SSD. As far as the article's lead section, that was extensively trimmed by JohnInDC on 6 September—pending negotiated restoration by me when I've finished removing the "operational detail". Right now the final sentence in the lead says "The cumulative size of these backed-up files may[my bolding] be so large, especially for content-producing businesses, that the only feasible destination is a set of tapes." Yes, some Retrospect administrators use tape for the reason stated in the preceding sentence, but I've been using portable HDDs rotated off-site since 2015; Retrospect can backup to cloud storage, but my upload speed is so slow it doesn't make sense. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 09:50, 17 September 2017 (UTC) I used to have a sentence in the lead section mentioning that Dantz/EMC/Roxio didn't always do a great job of rewriting manufacturers' tape drivers, but that was deleted because the nearest to a reliable ref. I could find for it was a comment on a The Register article on Retrospect. Thank you, Maproom, for indirectly telling us what should go back into the lead section. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 10:44, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm not claiming that the user comment was reliable or justified. But it was such a relief to read it, after reading the WP article, which is written entirely from the point of view of the company. Maproom (talk) 07:13, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

I'd love to find more referenceable reviews that take a jaundiced view of Retrospect, but they're practically non-existent. The only ones I've been able to find are the Derik DeLong article and two Adam Engst reviews, and I've quoted the critical bits—one set of quotes at the end of "Retrospect Macintosh 8" hasn't yet been moved to "History. The difficulty is that Retrospect's major problems were in the past—namely from about 2004 up through 2009. Besides AFAIK the laws of commercial libel (IANAL) tend to put somewhat of a damper on the negative remarks of a reviewer working for a sueable publication; that's why you find most uninhibited negative remarks in either un-referenceable comments on articles (which are no doubt toned down by publishers) or on blog posts. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 11:21, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

• Cull dramatically - summoned by bot. I agree that this is waaaaay too much detail and weeds. The repaired article should have the lede, first three paragraphs of the History section, the Architecture section and then maybe a table with versions and their release dates, which would probably be best as a subset of the history section. I wish I could have focused everyone's time spent discussing this on article repair; the article would be fixed by now. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 06:23, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Don't waste your time editing and fine tuning and rehashing this unless you are culling it like I suggest above. Someone is going to come in and make this change. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 20:02, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

Hi, It is not WP's purpose to support external sources, for those needing help on forums. That is the purpose of the company itself and is no business of WP. The article as it stands at the moment violates WP:NOT. It needs to be drastically copyedited, down to about 5-10k, explaining what it is, what it does, it main feature, and what differentiates it. from it competitors, and that it. Acronis True Image which is the leading product is this segment, is an ideal article to determine how to structure this one. scope_creep (talk) 09:45, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, scope_creep, for being a near-perfect "straight man" for my argument. First of all, you have obviously not re-read the lead of the article, which I rewrote about 6 hours before you posted. The lead now essentially provides what JohnInDC requested on 12 September. Second, you obviously haven't noticed a key word in the first sentence of the lead paragraph of the Acronis True Image article: "... provides data protection for personal users ..." [sorry for the bolding, but sometimes it's needed]. That means, AFAICT, that Acronis is a "push" backup system in which each individual conceptual "client" pushes data to a backup "host" (which may not be a full-fledged computer) at its non-"host"-controlled option (that's from the "'Pull' and 'push' architectures" section of the article, which you also probably didn't read). To understand the inadequacies of "push" backup for "small and medium-sized businesses", consider a thread that recently appeared on the Ars Technica Mac forum. The person who started that thread is evidently a consultant to an organization with 25 Mac-using workers, soon to be expanded to 35 workers. The workers' individual Macs have been supposedly being backed up to a macOS Server computer using Time Machine, but it turns out that more than half of the machines never finish their backup—because the Server computer can't handle that many LAN computers writing simultaneously to the same Server disk drives. A "pull" backup app is a solution, because the "backup server" computer can run a script to backup each "client" computer one at a time overnight. And that's one fact I have tried to make clear, along with the reasons for other Retrospect features, in the article. This is one reason the article is justifiably longer IMHO.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 16:05, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

I side pretty strongly with Scope on this. When we're addressing issues raised by a consultant raised in a technical discussion forum, we are going way, way too far into the weeds. For perhaps the fifth time - it's not the function of Wikipedia to assist software users in making the best use of the products they've purchased (or to assist them in deciding what other products to purchase). JohnInDC (talk) 20:46, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

IMHO the article doesn't need to be a whole lot longer than the 3 lead paragraphs. Literally it could trimmed that far, with perhaps a table a la Acronis to show what OSes are or have been supported. JohnInDC (talk) 20:51, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

No one in that Ars Technica thread "used Wikipedia to assist software users in making the best use of the products they've purchased (or to assist them in deciding what other products to purchase)." I just used the consultant's problem as an example of what happens when you try to use a personal backup app to solve a "small and medium-sized business" backup need, because of the difference between "push" and "pull" backup. Please everyone, read preceding posts thoroughly before replying.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 21:31, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

I did read it, and my objection is not to responding to what might have been said or requested in the Ars forum but rather our undertaking here to address or assist in addressing the problem (implicitly) identified there. It's not the encyclopedia's role to identify or articulate a problem with a particular software architecture for small or medium businesses and then guide sysadmins or consultants to the better solution. If this particular issue - "pull" vs "push" backups and their suitability for particular classes of clients - were well covered by third party sources, that is to say, an issue that gets a lot of press and is well-understood by small & medium size network admins to be an active concern - then maybe we could appropriately make a passing reference to it here. In the absence of that we have no business in writing about it. JohnInDC (talk) 21:43, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

[1] is one discussion of the "push" vs. "pull" issue. [2] is another discussion. Both of these could be considered third party, in that they are written about competitors to Retrospect. The first competitor, Econ Technologies' ChronoSync, is a commercial product. The second competitor, LBackup by Lucid Information Systems Ltd., is an open-source product. I used the second discussion as a reference in the article. There is a third discussion in Joe Kissell's "Backing Up Your Mac", but Google Books wouldn't let me view pages in it anymore—so I've just paid $15 + tax for a downloaded copy. BTW, that third book classifies Retrospect as a "client-server" rather than a "pull" backup app; it has quite a bit about Retrospect, including mention of the terminology changes in recent Retrospect Mac versions.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 01:05, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't question the distinction. I question whether the distinction, accurate as it may be, is meaningful at all when the subject is "Retrospect", a software program for backing up personal computers. As I said above, perhaps a sentence that says, "Retrospect represents a 'pull' type backup system, wherein X happens, rather than a 'push' system, which relies on Y". Beginning, middle, end, all right there. The distinction as applied to Retrospect doesn't seem to have registered on any third party who's written about this, and it's not for us to manufacture the discussion. Really it's not for this article at all unless it's a salient, 3d-party-noted feature of or drawback to this software program - like, "Vista was buggy" or "no physical keyboard really distinguished the original iPhone from its Blackberry competitor". JohnInDC (talk) 01:56, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

As I said two paragraphs up, the Joe Kissell book has an extensive discussion of Retrospect as a "client-server" backup app. It is my impression that any "client-server" backup app is also doing "pull" backup, but I can easily change the article to say "client-server" instead of "pull"—and will do so ASAP. In addition, by Googling "'client-server' backup, I also found a Technopedia article [3]; I'll use both the Kissell book and the Technopedia article as references.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 08:27, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Comment Regarding a reply to above. I think your misconstrued my comments. I wasnt making a tech comparison between Acronis and this product, merely a structural comment about what the article should look like. You need to whittle it down, remove all the tech stuff, keep the most important features of each one, per production version in a table perhaps, and keep the article below 10-15k. I have spent 25 years or more in the computing field, and No one is going to use this as referance manual, as backup is too important to mess up. Please clean the article per advice above, otherwise at the end of the RFC I will need to do it myself. scope_creep (talk) 12:04, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

As far as "what the article should look like", I think a much more applicable model would be the article on NetBackup. At least NetBackup appears to be some kind of "client-server" backup app, although I'm not exactly sure what "... a central master server which manages both media servers (containing the backup media) and clients" means (probably some kind of two-level "client-server"). That article doesn't have the most-important features in a table by production version, but as bulleted sub-items beneath bulleted categories. And that article's size is just over 10KB.

But that article has some pitfalls that I'd want to avoid. The most notable is that it is using enough NetBackup-specific terminology that I find mentions of some of the features incomprehensible, for instance "snapshots" (are those Retrospect-style Snapshots or Unix-style snapshots?) and "replicas" and "multiplexed" and "multi-streamed". Also notable is that the article has been tagged "needs additional citations for verification"; some of the references are unreachable for me because they are now behind a "sign-up wall" (thank you, Veritas Marketing).

So how would I avoid those pitfalls? One way would be to slyly introduce the terminology now in the "Concepts prior to Retrospect Windows 7" section of the article as part of descriptions of "core features" Another way would be to put the non-bulleted paragraphs of the "Retrospect Macintosh 10 and Retrospect Windows 8" section of the article into a preliminary "History" section; those paragraphs need to remain in the article because they reveal the splitting of the Retrospect app into separate Mac and Windows apps—which have essentially the same underlying code but different GUIs and terminology. A final way would be to leave as many as possible of the 31 references from the current version of the article in the new version, favoring third-party ones over first-party ones.

The result would not be a 4-paragraph article, or even a 4-page article. My guess is that it would be at least 5 screen pages long, and maybe as much as 7 screen pages long (based on taking the 42 features—4 more than for NetBackup—described in the current article and assuming each one can be reworded in one line). The article would have a size of around 20KB, because the close-to-31 references would take up more behind-the-visible-text bytes than the 13 references in the NetBackup article. And I think it would be an ugly article; if JohnInDC "... used to use Retrospect [presumably before Retrospect Mac 8], and I can't figure out 4/5 of what's being said here", IMHO—based on my experience in reading the NetBackup article—he wouldn't be able to figure out 7/8 of what is said in the new version of the Retrospect article. Therefore I'll give you people a weekend to think it over. I've come down with what is probably the flu, so I won't be able to do much work on the article over this weekend. Please let me know no later than Monday 18 September whether you still want me to do the major revision I have proposed, or whether you've decided that the current version is preferable.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 02:55, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

• The present article has an unsuitable level of specific detail. WP is not a place for changelogs, nor lists of minor or routine features. It is intended to provide information for the general reader who has heard of the program, not for the user or prospective user. The product has its own website, and that's where this material belongs. For a very few of the most famous programs we go into some detail, but still not to the level here--and the general principle is at WP:EINSTEIN. If the people who know about the program don't cut it, I will. DGG ( talk ) 04:41, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

The present article doesn't have "changelogs, nor lists of minor or routine features". The exceptions are in "Retrospect Macintosh 13 and Retrospect Windows 11", where I mentioned "Faster Catalog [File] Rebuild" just so I could mention why that feature is sometimes needed, and also a couple of mentions of improved e-mailing/reporting—which of course I would consolidate into a single feature in the rewrite. I wrote the back end of the article in chronological sequence mainly because there were two crises in the development of Retrospect: one when/before Retrospect Mac 8 was released in early 2009, and one when Retrospect Windows 8 was released in 2012. I've written about how I would deal with those crises in my "So how would I avoid these pitfalls" paragraph above.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 08:43, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

I appreciate the link to NetBackup but rather than aspire to that as a model for this page, the better course would be to trim a lot of the junk out of that one. It's not really very good. JohnInDC (talk) 11:02, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

I see it is well known, notable software, very well regarded and respected in the industry. I think your missing the point DovidBenAvraham. Your are still confusing structural intent, with some tech comparison. Regarding the NetBackup software, it is not a particularly good article, but look at the sentence in the lede:

NetBackup features a central master server which manages both media servers (containing the backup media) and clients. Core server platforms include Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Tru64, Linux and Windows

That is all you need to do explain the tech, in Retrospect. Look how small it is! One sentence. Not the content itself, but that length of text, and the structural layout within in. That is all. In the feature list you can add most the most important features in a table, and that is all the article needs. Simple really. 10-15k is all you need, or thereabouts. The Acronis article is a good example of what you need, in terms of structure. Ignore the fact it is not the same tech. The structure is what your looking for, of that size or thereabouts. scope_creep (talk) 12:19, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

OK, here—I hope—is a is a permalink to the current version of the article as of the morning of 15 September 2017. I'm very afraid that, during such a complete rewrite, I might mess up and not be able to do any more copying from the existing version. DovidBenAvraham (talk)

You can always get to a prior source by bringing up an older version of the page, then Editing that to grab whatever text you may need. JohnInDC (talk) 17:04, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

What I don't think you realize is that asking me to use the Acronis article as a model is like saying "Here's a very good-looking article on yearly feature changes to a kiddy-car; you should use that as a model for your article on Range Rover utility vehicles". The reason that app is named Acronis True Image is because it started out as a disk imaging app, which is not at all the same thing as a file backup app. It now appears to also support file backup, but there is no indication in the article that it supports file versioning or de-duplication—or any of the other good stuff that even full-featured push backup apps support. The entries in the "Versions" table read like compacted equivalents of my sections of what is now the old version of the Retrospect article; no wonder that comments in two sections of the Acronis article's Talk page have said "It reads more like an advertisement." Since it appears I'm going to have to substantially rewrite the Retrospect article, I think I would get more understandable results by rewriting it with a "Main features" section like the NetBackup article; that section is subdivided by feature type. But Heaven give me the power to do better than the paragraph that scope_creep quotes in his/her second paragraph in the post directly above my posts; it assumes that readers know the terminology for NetBackup (and remember that, because all 3 backup apps we are discussing started development somewhere between 1985 and 2001, there is no standardized terminology). DovidBenAvraham (talk) 17:10, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

I can't let pass the observation that the Range Rover article - dealing with the entire history of a venerated automobile brand whose inception dates to 1951 - is about 3/5 the length of this article. JohnInDC (talk) 17:24, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Your still conflating the two points. I'm not talking about the technology, I'm talking about the layout of the article and how it should look. It is nothing to do with a tech comparison, nothing. Its hows it looks and the level of tech in it. People are losing patience with you. scope_creep (talk) 17:49, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

I would start with something like this: User:JohnInDC/sandbox, adding at most a paragraph or two about program mechanics, corporate history, things like that. Needs to be cleaned up of course - really it's barely more than a mockup. Comments welcome. JohnInDC (talk) 19:40, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

JohnInDC, It's a good article, and close to what is needed. If doesn't mention the primary fact however, regarding notability, that the product was widelely considered the favourite, best in class backup sofware for macs in the 1980s/1990's before time machine came along, and was well respected for use on pc. If you had sources for that, it would be complete. scope_creep (talk) 22:36, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

The Joe Kissell book is a source for that; I'll include it. The book also says "Retrospect has enjoyed a comeback. It now has a much-improved interface; it also supports cloud storage destinations ... and delta encoding ...." The next paragraph is even more complimentary on Retrospect's capabilities for client-server backup.DovidBenAvraham (talk) 23:52, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Actually, the 20 August 2017 version of the article—kindly frozen with this link on my Talk page thanks to 2001:2003:54FA:2F79::1—had those facts in the second paragraph of the lead. I used as reference the Derik DeLong article in Macworld; the entire second paragraph of the lead was deleted by JohnInDC on 6 September 2017. So make up your minds, people! DovidBenAvraham (talk) 20:44, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Tweaked now. I intend to substitute this version soon. User:JohnInDC/sandbox. JohnInDC (talk) 23:19, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

I'll find a good source for it. scope_creep (talk) 01:22, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm starting to recover from my bout of the flu (with bronchitis, which is a complication I always get), and am starting to revise the article. I'll do a first-draft of the "History" section before I go to bed, and will start on the "Features" section tomorrow. That will take a while, because it involves a great deal of rewriting for tightness. I'm sorry, but the Versions table JohnInDC wants would make the revised article longer and less clear than necessary, because there averaged four not-necessarily-related feature additions/improvements in each major release of Retrospect. Dantz/EMC/Roxio/Retrospect Inc. could do that because they have a multi-person developer team, whereas IMHO it looks as if Acronis True Image has had a one-person developer team except in 2010. Please let me do my rewrite first, and then you can decide if your version would be better. One thing you might consider in the meantime is where to put an revised version of the last sentence in the fifth paragraph that used to be in the lead as of 20 August 2017 (permalink now italicized above). Maybe it belongs in the "'Client-server' and 'push' architectures" section, but the idea I want to get across is that it's fundamentally impossible to back up more than a few "client" computers to a single "backup server" unless the backups are forced to be done in sequence (that's what's at the heart of the Ars Technica-posting consultant's problem I mentioned above). I can't find a reference for that; would "ask any technically-competent 12-year-old child" be acceptable? DovidBenAvraham (talk) 04:20, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I've now found a reference that can be adapted from the second prgf. in this link. Client-server backup restricts "the number of clients connecting simultaneously" to one. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 05:24, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

By all means take the first crack but it needs to be clear that the draft in my sandbox is intended as a complete replacement for the article, not just for the introduction. Whatever trimming you need to do should be on that order of magnitude - no explanations of idiosyncratic Retrospect terminology, no listing of feature sets; no observations like the one you propose to make. The whole article: What is Retrospect, why do we care about it, who makes / made it, and what's the state of the thing nowadays. JohnInDC (talk) 11:36, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I accept that there should be no explanations of Retrospect terminology, and I accept that you don't want me to make the proposed observation—even though it is a key part of "why do we care about it". However I don't understand why I can't list the feature set in a very compact way. After all, the "Versions" section of the Acronis True Image article does exactly that, disguised as a chronological listing. That section takes up nearly a screen page. If I can do the same thing for Retrospect, which is as I have pointed out a much more multi-featured app, in less than two screen pages would you be willing to accept that? I have the feeling that you people are trying to punish me for not having reduced the size of the article last October. I don't think you are entitled to do that, and I'll fight against it if necessary. But I hope it won't be necessary, because I'll take every reasonable step to comply with your demands. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 14:36, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't object to a one-line annotation for each year in the version table. As for your implication (or is it a plain accusation?), I wasn't around for discussions last October. JohnInDC (talk) 17:52, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

But it can't be a one-line annotation; as I said above, it would average out to 4 lines for each year in the version table. That's why I'm making the changes as a "Main features" section per the NetBackup article, as I've said above. If—after I've done the changes—you want me to change that section over to a "Versions" table I'll do it, but it will just make it take up more space while making it more confusing to the reader. As for my implication, I know that you weren't around for discussions last October and neither was scope_creep. However 2001:2003:54FA:2F79::1 was around, and I assumed that he/she brought you folks into the discussion in early September. If I'm wrong, please correct me. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 19:27, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I've already opined that Netbackup is not a good template article. If not then I will say it here. It's barely more than a jargony feature list in places and is itself a good candidate for cleanup. Acronis is better both in terms of prose and scope. I'm - really getting tired of saying the same things over and over. The article needs to be much, much shorter and much or most of what you would continue to include in it is unsuitable. JohnInDC (talk) 19:50, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I totally agree with you about the lack of quality of the actual NetBackup article. I'm just trying to use the "Main features" approach of that article as a model for a "NetBackup done right for Retrospect" article. I've explained two paragraphs above this why I think this approach makes more sense for Retrospect, and I have offered to convert that into a "Versions" approach if you are still convinced that your way is better after you see what I'm in the process of doing. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 21:13, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Comment just got my RFC. Skimming the article my immediate reaction is "Why tell me this as a reader of an encyclopaedia?" The User's manual increased in size did it? Goood... I guess... Not being a Retrospect user, I am sure it must be a very nice product, and worth an article, but for WP I reckon that article should be trimmed, as mentioned above, to say a single screen page. Items like "Concepts prior to Retrospect Windows 7" read like something out of an unhelpful sales brochure. Omit all that. The "Main features" section is ridiculous and should be totally rewritten as one short paragraph in the lede, not as a sales blurb, but as a description of the functions that justify its existence as a product. (It backs up your data whether you like it or not -- that sort of thing.) The Push/pull architecture, if regarded as being of interest should be extracted into an article of its own and linked to, or if it is regarded as not justifying an article, mentioned as a feature or totally omitted. As it stands, the article is totally unacceptable. JonRichfield (talk) 09:54, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

You're talking about an article that is in the process of being rewritten in-place. The sections "Concepts prior to Retrospect Windows 7" and "Retrospect Windows 7" had been eliminated by 22:15 hours on 17 September UTC; about half of "Retrospect Macintosh 8" has now been eliminated. If you feel the new "Main features" section is too long, why not wait until it is finished? It looks like that whole process won't be done until tomorrow evening, because I have to go sit in the Emergency Room for several hours today so MDs can figure out whether I have pneumonia or merely very bad bronchitis (sorry if that is over-sharing, but life intrudes sometimes). I agree with you about the push/pull architecture; I thought about an independent article, but the only reference would be the book by Joe Kissell that covers Retrospect along with other Mac backup programs. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 11:39, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

I hope the respiratory problems are clearing up (really!) I did understand that adjustments were in progress, but could only respond to the RFC in the context of what I saw, not what for all I knew might have been in some pipeline. As far as I can see the bulk of what I then said, with possible adjustments to the examples I chose, remains applicable. Incidentally, as for changes that I appeared to have overlooked at the time of writing, it might be relevant that I am in a more easterly time zone than the US. JonRichfield (talk) 06:33, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

If you're living in Britain or somewhere east of there, you may be getting up early in the morning and missing updates I make until shortly after midnight NYC time. As a result of delays caused by a technically-tricky reference problem that scope_creep attempted to help with, and which you can read about on my Talk page if you're interested, I've still got another 3 sections to cut and fold into the "Main features" section. However I can confidently say that "Main features" is going to end up just over 2 screen pages long—as I predicted, in spite of the fact that I've been cutting each feature description to what I consider the bone. I should be finished late today, and we'll then have to have a serious discussion about the definition of "the functions that justify its existence as a product." As to the respiratory problems, they turned out to be merely a very serious case of bronchitis; I think it's beginning to clear up, and thank you for your concern. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 08:36, 22 September 2017 (UTC)