Talk:Alice and Bob/Draft

But what about Ted and Carol?

"Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" is the first thing that comes to mind when I see this. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Date of birth?

Do you know when (approximately?) Alice and Bob first appeared? Could they be immigrants from game theory?

As for the additional characters: Were they present in the first edition, too? If so, then this edition should be cited as the "origin" of the names. (If you do not know, I probably can check it.)

--Peter Schmitt 12:11, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't have the 1st edition of AC.

The biography we link to is from a 1984 conference on coding theory. Alice & Bob were not new then; Gordon mentions "some longstanding traditional reason" for the names and says "there are hundreds of papers about Alice and Bob". The original RSA paper, 1978, uses Alice & Bob. Beyond that, I've no idea of their birthdate, or for that matter, their parentage. Sandy Harris 10:07, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

The WP article [1] and a Network World story they link to say the origin is the RSA paper. Sandy Harris 10:12, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I added a link to the Network World story and text that follows them in attributing the names to Rivest. Sandy Harris 01:13, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Comparing to WP

The Wikipedia article [2] has a far longer list of names, most of which I do not think we need. I did add a sentence about creating additional characters as needed.

I wonder about their additions, Arthur & Merlin or Paul & Carole, related to interactive proof systems. I do not know enough about those systems to know if we should add them. Sandy Harris 01:38, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I added them, partly by copying WP text. What, if anything, needs to be done about attribution?

Grammarians, including Chomsky but I do not know if it originated with him, often use John & Mary. I find such examples strange. To me, Mary was my first wife & John is her second husband. Sandy Harris 00:09, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

I have rewritten these additions, therefore WP credit is not needed. --Peter Schmitt 23:30, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Nice work. Should articles such as "Paul and Carole" or "Arthur and Merlin (game theory)" be created as redirects to that section, or even as independent articles? Sandy Harris 02:58, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Approval Process: Review period

Call for review: Peter Schmitt 13:19, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Call for Approval: --Peter Schmitt 13:20, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Approval Notice:

Certification of Approval:

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Please discuss the article below, Alice and Bob/Approval is for brief official referee's only!

Comments

I agree with Sandy that this is ready to be reviewed. --Peter Schmitt 13:20, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Link broken, ref #3. Anthony.Sebastian 15:08, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Works for me (a .pdf file). --Peter Schmitt 20:48, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I checked it incorrectly. Works for me now. Sorry to be a bother. Wonder if we should tell users somewhere that some links may be to PDF files, in which case they would need a PDF reader program for the click to work (I believe). —Anthony.Sebastian 22:33, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I think that the small icon carries this information, but I agree: I prefer more explicit information, too. Thus I have changed the formatting of the references (adding file types). --Peter Schmitt 23:13, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

+++++
←Peter, as you are Editor in both Computer and Mathematics workgroups, the applicable categories for this article, I will put your name on the metadata page as first nominating editor. —Anthony.Sebastian 23:00, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

←Sandy, did you want to leave the Bibliography subpage blank? —Anthony.Sebastian 23:00, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Usually, I prefer the bibliography over references in the article. However, in this case the references are really only pointers that fit well on the article page. I don't think there is a good entry for the bibliography. (We could move all the references there, or we could move the External links subpage there.) --Peter Schmitt 23:27, 18 April 2012 (UTC)