Patent Category

[HaaTa]

Hi all,

So, I've been keeping a list of patents I find on keyboard related things.
Some for keyboards, others for switches.

Now, what I am proposing is to add another Main category for "Patents"

Comments?

[chimborazo]

You and I are the majority here. Therefore the proposal is accepted, and passed. No further action is required.

[HaaTa]

So I've added a Category for "Keyboard Patents" in general for the moment.
http://deskthority.net/wiki/Keyboard_patents

Most likely, the switch patents list will get rather large, so it should probably be split into a separate page. But this should be good for now.

I've added most of the patents I am aware of (at least those in my list).

When I get another chunk of spare time, I'll fill in the missing data in the table that I know. Much of it is just reading the patent though.

[chimborazo]

Haata ,i see for example patents US4482932, us4584444 and so forth. just out of curiosity … so we're in the same page, did you add those to the spreadsheet after verifying what i had uploaded before? i only see four (according to the cache of course) that show up. for example, us5406059 is there in the page you created, even though an article was never created (if i ever did i don't remember). anyway. part of it was my fault. i should have followed a pattern when i created those articles since we are just creatures of habit. it's too late. my apologies in advance. and i refuse to create other articles and merge. unnecessary clutter.

[HaaTa]

No I just added whatever I had in my spreadsheet from before (and I haven't really added much since April last year).

As far as pages you have created, it would probably be best if you linked any relevant patents from the table to your pages since it would be incomplete to leave out patents.

[chimborazo]

haata, hopefully you are not working on the missing fields. seventeen hours and forty six minutes later it was done, except the relation fields of the switches for each patent, that needless to say, need to be revisited. datahand, george risk, stackpole components, the singer company, just to name a few.

[HaaTa]

Nope, I've been busy with RealLife™.

As for relations, I do know quite a few of them. And have examples of a bunch of them in my collection.
Unfortunately, many of these are not on the wiki yet (though I do have pictures) either in terms of the switches or keyboard or even the company that made the keyboard.

Hmm, atm, I feel like patent hunting again. So I think I'll add some patents.
Perhaps next week I may get some time to add some of the needed switch pages to the wiki.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Regarding switches, please check first that the page hasn't already been created in the meantime — a lot of what's on your to-do list is already a stub or better, but possibly not under the same switch name as what you would have called it.

I added one for Mitsumi MX mount before realising that it already existed under a different name :) Figuring those Mitsumi mechanical switches out and merging the pages back together is in my long to-do list … Probably somewhere in Firefox window 1/8 where the tabs are reduced to favicons. (If I realised I'd become Switch Kitten ][ I would have bought a sample pack from Mr Interface before he ran out of some of the more exotic switches like Mitsumi and Yali ;-)

Glad to see that a few more people are getting involved now.

OK, back to patents …

[Daniel Beardsmore]

This is one page that could do with a rework:

http://deskthority.net/wiki/Topre_switch

The page starts by quoting a huge chunk of a relevant patent. Probably should split the patent off onto its own page and reference it. The whole page needs a rethink anyway.

[fseventsd]

Hi all,

So, I've been keeping a list of patents I find on keyboard related things.
Some for keyboards, others for switches.

Now, what I am proposing is to add another Main category for "Patents"

Comments?

Excellent idea! This may come in handy some day

[webwit]

Imo there should be some balance between making categories easy to find and adding them as a main category for this purpose, and having too many main categories. I.e. if you have 10-15 it's ok, if you have 40 you are burying the important ones. Whether patents would make the final cut in a theoretically completed wiki, I don't know, and my personal interest is of no importance (the average interest is), but so far there's room for some more main categories. The current number (8) also has its strengths, as it is a number of main categories which can be remembered easily, although that may be difficult to maintain in the long end anyway. Maybe put it to a vote? Or just do it and see if someone complains and reverts it. At this point there may be not enough opinion for a vote anyway.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Every page really needs one, so that you can locate it. If you have lots of patent pages (as chimborazo is making), they may as well have a category of their own. Looks like his patent pages are not yet categorised. There's a lot more than HaaTa's one page, but they're not yet categorised.

[webwit]

Just for clarity, with Main category I mean a category which is visible in the sidebar and has its own box on the front page.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

ohhhh. gotcha. Yeah I wondered he added it was a main page category.

[HaaTa]

Since I only have one page right now, I felt that it didn't warrant a Main category. Perhaps in the future though.

A vote would be good. But maybe after the Patents section gets a bit more content, since it's only been in existence for less than a week so far

[chimborazo]

i think i mentioned the 'visibility' part before (maybe to myself). and as far as voting, i agree and disagree w/ webwit in that a category ought to have an affixed number , but then again, the whole purpose of subcategorizing becomes an obsolete afterthought remedied with vote counting. insofar the results of an opinion may simplify the process in which the categories include certain patents, either way the aforementioned wiki is reducible, for if the number of patents is limited by voting, so are the keyboard patents that may be voted against, for these keyboard patents disassociate and unlink related patents.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I think you misunderstood him too :-) This must be the "Everyone Misunderstand webwit" topic.

[chimborazo]

i don't think i misunderstood him.

let's take walter cherry for a spin (and for a spin i don't mean disrepect whatsoever, just as a starting point here). walter cherry came up with what it is, as of today, perhaps the most used (popular) switch in history. the question that lingers in the air, and that shouldn't be lingering in the air, is this: would it be fair to him to exclude certain patents that contributed to the switch, and patents that walter cherry himself claimed as his, and patents that were granted to him?

Back to categories. If the purpose of a vote is to categorize the important patents, would it be just to exclude the other patents? It would be, if said patents are unrelated to the important patents. if they are (important) or if the patents are related to keyboard patents, hence my above post in which i said: it is a reducible wiki because no matter what a voting does, will be reducible in the end.

what is a mechanical keyboard made of?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I meant, these "affixed numbers" .......

[chimborazo]

daniel. please. for the sake of this discussion, let's not take things slightly out of context, in the sense of 'affixed', 'fixed', and even 'rigid' for that matter.

webwit raised valid questions which i responded to.

ask haata if i did or did not mention the 'visibility' part in a pm i sent him.

i genuinely have the same questions with the categories and the patents. what is the solution? or perhaps the best viable option is like webwit said and let this thing be, until someone reverts edits?

is a disagreement in the wiki easier to contain than in the forum? heck. i'd like to think so.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Dear me. I need to ship you some sense of humour pills … :)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I think there's some confusion here!

There's two parallel patent sections:

a) [wiki]Category:Patents[/wiki] (PS your wiki tag needs fixing, webwit …)
b) [wiki]Keyboard patents[/wiki]

Is there any value in having copypasta pages that duplicate Google Patents? It's an awful lot of work replicating so many patents, and unless someone is prepared to keep at it, day and night for months on end, it seems like it's best to just refer to Google Patents or some other reliable patent source.

[webwit]

a) In case of complaints, I always blame phpBB
b) http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=thread necrophilia

[Daniel Beardsmore]

In this dark and empty wilderness, a few members of the walking dead won't be noticed …

[chimborazo]

Is there any value in having copypasta pages that duplicate Google Patents? It's an awful lot of work replicating so many patents, and unless someone is prepared to keep at it, day and night for months on end, it seems like it's best to just refer to Google Patents or some other reliable patent source.

Daniel, you said the same thing over and over. but perhaps it's my comprehension level.

if what you meant is to write the sources from google, instead of linking each patent to google, i agree.

the way i envisioned it, was to redirect each patent to the european patent office. (that was, of course, before you became increasingly aggressive towards me).