Template talk:File sharing sidebar

Networks and Services

I don't think we should add clients as services in this template, because the clients named are always an arbitrary choice and can only serve as an example for the given network, while at the same time not being as notable as the other things in a "series on File sharing". There are other templates (network specific templates) where it is useful and even required to name the respective clients. Here is not the right place for doing it. Let's keep this clean, OK?

Greetings, Old Death (talk) 15:40, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Sure, let's try this out. Keep in mind though that most users will know the fasttrack network as "kazaa" and gnutella as "limewire". http://www.google.com/trends?q=fasttrack,+kazaa,+gnutella,+limewire . In many cases the client will be more important than the network (morpheus vs kazaa etc.) –M^T 01:05, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

True, however, I don't think the clients sould be the thing to focus on here, since else we would need to add not only two or three as example, but basically all clients of importance, which would defeat the purpose of this template which is, in my eyes, to give a quick link from the major articles about filesharing to each other. Also remember that this is mostly because of the advertisement and presentation of the leading clients: They basically all hide more or less the information about the network they are connecting to to the normal user (it is easy to find out, but it won't be shown by default or underlined), in order to keep users who just want to try out something different 'becasue it is there' at a minimal number.

Greetings, Old Death (talk) 14:32, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

\ There are only a handful of currently-active and notable clients. Which ones were we missing? We certainly don't have a problem with clients flooding the list at the moment. The other thing is that clients aren't just facades for their networks. On this view The Pirate Bay is just a site that implements a tracker protocol. Clients and services have their own details and history, in many cases much more notable than the networks themselves. –M^T 01:40, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Notability depends on your reference choice: For example, LimeWire may be notable for its user base, however gtk-gnutella is notable for the fact that it is the most used Unix client, while Phex (as well as others) are notable for its support for features LimeWire blocks now for a long time. (etc. etc.) And this is only for Gnutella. You could add a similar list for eDonkey or Gnutella2. If you really would like to include them, maybe do it on a series on famous filesharing clients. This would be a more useful and clean way of doing it, I think...

Also, A client is in my eyes not a service. TPB, however does clearly count as service on BitTorrent. Also, since its tracker controls ~75% of all BitTorrent activity, the site may be notable enough to be listed here...

Greetings, Old Death (talk) 14:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

<undent> Our reference point is WP:NOTABILITY, and the diversity that you're getting at is not a factor. Phex and gtk would not make it on this list[1], and neither would many of the other clients. A client is an interface to a network, and limewire controls a higher percentage of Gnutella than I think you realize. Clients also represent groups and companies (Napster, Sharmin) that have been or continue to be important in file sharing. Do you disagree that the WP:N criteria applies to this template? –M^T 16:10, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I know all of this, I am very much inside this subject (as you may see from my contribution history in here) ;) I only wanted to point out why I think clients should not be in here: they have their history, and they are very important for filesharing, network development etc., but there are more important clients than you could include here while keeping it clean. Also, if we come to add 'important' clients, because of their importance for the development of the networks, we will have to add important past clients also, since only the current userbase doesn't determe notability (and I think you agree here) (see kaaza for example: hardly used as of today, but definetly notable; its the same for some other clients (eDonkey2000 + its company, ...)).

So if you really insist on adding clients to the services list, do so if you think it is the right thing. I don't want to be the blocking guy here. ^^ (Maybe add a section for notable clients and add a comment limiting it to the most important client for each network? Like this we could cover clients while not bloating the template.)

BTW, I know very well what is LimeWires network dominance all about... They are blocking for years now network improvements (such as searches by hash, for example) due to their powerful position (and they impose now their mojito Kademlia DHT to everyone who whants to be somehow competitive)...

Greetings, Old Death (talk) 16:49, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Old Death. WP:NOTABILITY is to establish whether an article should exist. Specific clients should (at least usually) have an article. However, the issue is will this template be useful with every client under the sun included. Even if you start with a single very popular client people will tend to add more and more. It makes the template unusable and obscures the important information. It is often more important to know what not to say. The template without clients gives a good overview of file sharing in general. The various articles on a particular network can take the reader to specific clients. This is hierarchical navigation and is a established organizational technique for information. Bpringlemeir (talk) 14:44, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

purpose of template

What is the purpose of this template anyhow, if technologies that enable file sharing are being removed. It appears merely a duplication of another more appealing template. Kbrose (talk) 20:31, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Which template is that? I think we should discuss and make clear what exactly file sharing is - what the main article is about, but we should do that at that talk page.   M  05:29, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

"Country articles are bad; web hosting is a form of file-sharing;Retroshare is defunct"

So, Distrait cognizance just removed all the File sharing in {country} articles and the RetroShare entry and added Peer-to-peer web hosting with the above explanation.

• I'd like to know why "country articles are bad". Distrait cognizance are you referring to the state of these articles, their relevance here or something else? Why would any File sharing in {country} article not be appropriate for a File sharing template?

• Afaik hosting is not sharing. Sharing would be the active process of sharing what has been hosted - but not the hosting itself. Putting up a website is not file sharing. Uploading a file to a filehoster without at least sharing the link is not sharing. You can see this by various other showcases. I'd like you to prove otherwise with a reliable source (multiple would be better) if you intend to add it to the template.

• Also since when is RetroShare defunct? Last time I tried it, it worked. Also it says "Active" under "Development status" in its article.

--Fixuture (talk) 21:45, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

• There could potentially be over 250 country articles, which seems very superfluous to include in this sidebar. Either create a new one or just let them be as the articles are currently of very low quality anyway.
• The purpose of those protocols is to host through sharing — I don't understand what you mean the issue is?
• That one was actually removed in error, I will restore it.

Distrait cognizance (talk) 09:31, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

• Well, yes there could be hundreds of country articles but there aren't. Also if it's relevant enough to a template than even high numbers of articles have to be included in them - or the template itself has to be modified (renamed or alike). For example see Template:Science fiction which also has a "By region" row. Nothing is more relevant to this template than "File sharing in {country}" articles, so I just readded them. If you want to remove them please establish consensus first.
• It's not explicit sharing or sharing as it's commonly referred to. The clients typically don't even see the websites they host. I think putting this up here is a failure of understanding what "sharing" is in this context, misleads users and also allows for more inappropriate entries. It's a (technical) distribution of content in a p2p way - not (cultural) sharing.
  It can be the basis for actual sharing but not necessarily. It's just storing files on computers whose users have no interest in (with exceptions; the users are interested in the advantages of the technological architecture - not the specific files getting stored on their pcs).
  One might ask some experts about this, invite some WikiProjects for discussion, create an RfC or hold a vote.
• Thank you.

--Fixuture (talk) 18:56, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Collapsed?

Any way to make its start state collapsed, because this thing is quite big. --143.176.30.65 (talk) 23:18, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Should this sidebar focus on pirated file sharing only?

If so, I think entries such as YouTube, Internet Archive, and Daily Motion should be removed. I think most current entries do focus on piracy, so it might make sense to remove the non-pirated entries. I also note the non-pirated entries tend not to have the sidebar in the article, which is a violation of WP:BIDIRECTIONAL. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:10, 16 February 2024 (UTC)