Talk:Acorn Archimedes

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August 2024 Editing Bonanza

I see that considerable enthusiasm has been directed towards editing this article recently. Although it was indicated that the article was too long, and as a significant contributor to this article, I will admit that my own prose has not been outstanding, some of the recent edits have not exactly preserved the level of clarity or even coherence. To start with, the introduction now says this:

"These systems were powered by Acorn's own ARM architecture processors and ran on proprietary operating systems: Arthur and RISC OS."

Of course, what is meant is that they "ran proprietary operating systems" as opposed to "ran on" those things. Then the editing activity has introduced contradictions. For example, it is noted that the FPA10 was available for the A540 but then, in the section on floating-point hardware, it is stated that "[i]ts availability remained unclear". In the performance section, the correct statement noting the delivery of the FPA10 is given. I find myself with the unappealing task of proofreading casual edits by people who evidently don't know the history of these products.

And on that note, I see that a lot of the historical context has been cut. I appreciate that my own verbose prose needed condensing, but without context, people fail to understand things like why this range of machines wasn't more popular, why it didn't appeal to people, and so on. Ultimately, the way the technology and a strategy around it was developed determined the fate of Acorn itself. If that level of detail isn't interesting to the "TL;DR" brigade, it is possible to make separate articles covering the available software and various expansions and applications.

And it was certainly possible to discuss major edits on the talk page instead of going on a three-day bonanza that, reviewing the history, has produced some pretty destructive edits to this article. I find it all pretty disrespectful, really, not just from my own perspective but also from the perspective of those who provided the historical record that enabled this article to be written. PaulBoddie (talk) 20:55, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Speaking of the editpalooza, this edit "fixed" some spelling, asserting that "This is done because the alternate spellings are more widely accepted although the acorn was admittedly sold to a British audience." As a Yank with little sympathy with any fellow Yanks who are bothered by non-US-spelling, I restored some of them and put a {{Use British English}} template at the top; I left the "ize" vs. "ise" alone after discovering that there's such a thing as "Oxford spelling". If you think the article should use Oxford spelling, go ahead and change {{Use British English}} to {{Use Oxford English}}; if you don't, feel free to restore the "ise" spelling. (And, yes, go ahead and fix or restore anything you think is appropriate.) Guy Harris (talk) 21:33, 12 August 2024 (UTC)