Talk:Floppy disk

Locke Cole has made a massive change to this article which has changed its content from covering all "Floppy Disk" art to just covering "Standard Floppy Disk" art, i.e., in his opinion the "most popular (and commercially available)" art, which gives us the alternative of renaming the article or reverting the changes, which IMO amount to disruptive editing. This comes from an ongoing discussion as to what qualifies as a "floppy disk" which never reached consensus. Cole believes the term is limited to the high-volume standardized ones but there is no question that are floppy disks other than the so-called "standard" include ones such as the frequently called super floppies that were popular and in high volume. The article now reflect his opinion; to cite a few contradictory reliable sources:

• "The Zip Drive and its high-capacity floppy disks never really replaced the standard floppy, but of the many “superfloppy” products that tried, only Iomega’s came close." (PC Magazine, 2022)!
• "SuperDisk is a type of high-capacity floppy disk that provides increased storage compared to traditional floppy disks " (Lenovo, 2025)
• Jim Porter, a market analyst and storage historian, for at least 8 years (1992-1999) published a series of market analysis reports that categorized as high capacity floppy disk drives the ZIP, SuperDisk and all of the other drives collectively known as super floppy disk drives
• There is no dispute that ZIP was commercially available and very popular while some of the FDs remaining were not very popular
• (Laser Servo-120) A high-capacity floppy disk from 3M, Compaq, Panasonic and O.R. Technology that was introduced in 1996, but never caught on. (PC Magazine, current)

This seems to me to be sufficient to establish that such drives and disks belong in an article entitled "Floppy disk." FWIW, Cole denigrated Porter as dead wood, the challenge in finding RSs is that this is about dead products one has to go back to dead wood for RSs. My experience suggests there will be lots of RSing in the in contemporaneous product literature and market analyses but IMO the above is sufficient. So if there is agreement we can revert the Tendentious edits or we should retitle the article and include at least statement that there were other sizes and capacities. Comments? Tom94022 (talk) 19:44, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

Restore – Locke Cole is trying to push their somewhat strange conviction that only those formats commonly known as "8-inch", "5.25-inch", and "3.5-inch" are proper floppy disks, apparently even requiring a Shugart interface on their drive. They totally ignore the 3-inch floppies used by Amstrad computers during the 1980s, SuperDisks in the exact same jacket as "3.5-inch", and also 3.5-inch-sized Zip disks. Drives were or still are available with Shugart, SCSI, PATA or USB interfaces, without somehow making the disks anything else than 'floppies'. That newly introduced distinction is entirely arbitrary and artificial. Floppy disks are flexible disks in a thin jacket, period. The name points out their physical distinction in contrast to hard disks. --Zac67 (talk) 20:10, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

@Zac67 You can see my analysis of the sources Tom provided below. But suffice it to say, they seem to support the notion that these other formats are not "floppy disks". We also won't be !voting away sitewide policy, so you can skip the bolded !vote. It means nothing without evidence to support it. —Locke Cole • t • c 14:34, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

@Locke Cole: I still cannot comprehend why a high-capacity floppy disk shouldn't be a floppy disk. A green house is a house, isn't it? And a racing car a car? --Zac67 (talk) 10:38, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

Recalling that WP:NOR is a thing, what do our reliable sources say? The sources provided by Tom (provided above, discussed at length below) carefully qualify "high-capacity floppy disks" from "floppy disks" (sometimes qualified as "traditional" or "standard" where the term may be ambiguous, but otherwise, just "floppy disk"). The first source in this article is Encyclopedia Britannica, which really only discusses "traditional" or "standard" floppy disks, explicitly making this statement: They were made of flexible plastic coated with a magnetic material and enclosed in a hard square plastic case. The first floppy disks were 8 inches (20 cm) across. In the late 1970s, floppy disks became smaller, with the arrival of 5.25-inch (13.3-cm) models, and the final floppy disks, which debuted in the 1980s, were 3.5 inches (9 cm) in diameter. No talk of LS-120/SuperDisk, Zip Disk, Jaz Disk, or any other minor format. And Britannica explicitly says 3.5" floppies were the final floppy disks. You can disagree with the sources here on the talk page, but we don't get to use WP:SYNTH or WP:OR to inject what we personally believe into our articles. —Locke Cole • t • c 14:45, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, but you're completely ignoring the fact that ED, SuperDisk and ZIP are 3.5-inch floppies. Still, 3-inch floppies are also a thing which you try to exclude here – for what exact reason? They are of low capacity and their drives use the Shugart interface. Your definition for floppy disk is still very hazy. Please use less wording and more precision. --Zac67 (talk) 06:25, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

FWIW, Mee's 1998 book states in a chapter entitled "Data Storage on Floppy Disks" that "From 1971 to 1991, flexible disk capacity increased by a factor of 17.5. ... Today's most popular flexible disk sector servo drive is the 3.5-inch Iomega ZIP^TM drive, having a user capacity of 100 MB. ... Forecasts indicated that only 10% of the total number of flexible disk drives marketed in 1997 would be of the high-capacity or superfloppy type." ^[1]. Not quite a dead tree since it is likely behind a paywall but this should put an end to Cole's tortured use of English to somehow exclude high-capacity floppy disks, like the cited ZIP disk, from this article. I suggest the WP:BURDEN is now on Cole to find RS's to support is POV that high-capacity FDs are not FDs! Tom94022 (talk) 17:08, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

ZIP is not a 3.5" floppy. SuperDisk is a similar shape, and drives are backwards compatible, but they are still different. 3" floppies were a thing, but not to our WP:RS which don't consider them alongside the more widely known 8", 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disks that were widely available and commercially successful. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:07, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Cole is entitled to his POV that somehow ZIP disks are not floppy disks, but this is the Mee, cited above! Mee includes ZIP in his history of Data Storage on Floppy Disks and that should be dispositive. Jim Porter doesn't yet get a Wikipedia article, but this storage industry recognized analyst and historian who published the DISK/TREND Report – Flexible Disk Drives from 1977 to 1994 and was widely cited by manufacturers and institutions makes a similar statement. There couldn't be two more reliable sources. Coles's continues editing of two articles in pursuit of his POV for an extended time without support of other editors is the definition of tendentious editing. Tom94022 (talk) 01:19, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Cole is entitled to his POV that somehow ZIP disks are not floppy disks It's also the opinion of most of the sources you've shown so far that are at least accessible. but this is the Mee, cited above! Mee includes ZIP in his history of Data Storage on Floppy Disks and that should be dispositive. The link you provide above goes to a PDF that is $35. But from the abstract, I can see a chapter titled "High-Capacity Designs". Now I'm not regularly a betting man, but my gut says the discussion of Zip and similar "floppy disks" occurs within that section/chapter. Regardless, it's a source from 1999, and one source, at that. Meanwhile, all three of the sources you provided at the start of this discussion refer to such disks as "high-capacity floppy disks", and only refer to the classic 8", 5.25" and 3.5" as "floppy disks" with no further qualifier. Your DISK/TREND partial examples provided below likewise utilize the qualifier "high capacity" and lack enough context to be convincing. And one source, who stopped publishing in the late 1990's is not as convincing as more recent sources such as two you provided: "The Zip Drive and its high-capacity floppy disks never really replaced the standard floppy, but of the many “superfloppy” products that tried, only Iomega’s came close." (PC Magazine, 2022) and (Laser Servo-120) A high-capacity floppy disk from 3M, Compaq, Panasonic and O.R. Technology that was introduced in 1996, but never caught on. (PC Magazine, current). There's also the Britannica source which lists 8", 5.25" and says the format ended with 3.5" disks. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:11, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

• "HIGH-CAPACITY DESIGNS" is not a chapter in Mee's book, it is a section of a chapter entitled, "Data Storage on Floppy Disks," There are no separate sections devoted to physical size or capacity. It seems clear that Mee considers high-capacity FDs and FDDs a sub-set of FDs. BTW the chapter was written by Dave Noble, the person credited with leading the team that developed the first flexible diskette and drive.
• Wikipedia categorizes the ZIP drive as The Zip drive is a discontinued removable floppy disk storage system .... I suspect Cole will now change this article to reflect his POV
• An Iomega spokesperson describes the ZIP drive as ... 3.5 inch floppy disks have recently jumped from the ubiquitous 1.44MB floppies to the 100MB Zjp^TM disk^[2] Note Briggs even describes it as a 3½-inch disk which is approximately correct.

I really fail to understand Cole's attempt to use the compound adjective "high-capacity" to exclude a whole class of devices from this article just because sometimes the sources compare "high-capacity floppy disk drives" with just "floppy disk drives" leaving off an implicit "standard" or "low-capacity" adjective. Even Cole imputes an implicit "standard" above. That is no evidence supporting his POV, it is ambiguous at best, so burden still remains on him to produce an RS that "high-capacity" floppy disks and drives are not floppy disks or floppy drives. After all standard floppy disks have a lot of sub-categories such as SSSD, DSDD, ED, HD, etc, and I am sure I can find sources that say some were more or less popular or succeeded one or another, but such history and categorization does not make then not floppy disks.

Finally I suggest that relying upon categories contemporaneously published by Jim Porter, a recognized storage analyst and historian, in his the DISK/TREND Report – Flexible Disk Drives from 1977 to 1994, widely cited and used by manufacturers and institutions and by used by Denis Mee who wrote the book on Storage History is a far better approach than continuing with Cole's unsupported POV about the ambiguous writings of current authors who possibly know little or nothing about the history of floppy disks and drives Tom94022 (talk) 21:11, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

• "HIGH-CAPACITY DESIGNS" is not a chapter in Mee's book, it is a section of a chapter entitled, "Data Storage on Floppy Disks," OK, and in the chapter there are six sections with one devoted to "High-Capacity Designs". Seeing that this chapter makes up such a small part of the book makes me even more convinced that they don't directly refer to high capacity formats as straight "floppy disks", but rather always qualify their references to them. It seems clear that Mee considers high-capacity FDs and FDDs a sub-set of FDs. One that is considered on its own, with its own qualifier, "high capacity". BTW the chapter was written by Dave Noble, the person credited with leading the team that developed the first flexible diskette and drive. History is replete with examples of creations being named something their creators didn't intend. Noting, again, this source is from 1999, in the middle of the switch from floppy disks to other formats (at the time it was still unclear what would replace floppy disks, would it be Zip disks, CD-RW or...? as it turned out, it was USB mass storage devices that would ultimately replace floppy disks).
• Wikipedia categorizes the ZIP drive as The Zip drive is a discontinued removable floppy disk storage system .... I suspect Cole will now change this article to reflect his POV So... WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS? his POV You keep saying that, but it's our sources POV. You appear very very determined to enforce your POV however, by misreading and deliberately mischaracterizing sources, and so far the only ones that aren't fully addressed are ones stuck behind paywalls or not digitized (and regardless, are 25-30+ years old!). It strains logic to think there isn't easily accessible reliable online sources that can back up your claim that high-capacity "floppy disks" are actually just called "floppy disks".
• An Iomega spokesperson describes the ZIP drive as ... 3.5 inch floppy disks have recently jumped from the ubiquitous 1.44MB floppies to the 100MB Zjp^TM disk Note Briggs even describes it as a 3½-inch disk which is approximately correct. A company spokesperson attempting to aid in the marketing of a product as a "floppy disk" calling it a "floppy disk". In 1996. The modern sources you provided initially clearly consider Zip/Jaz/LS-120 separately and distinct from the traditional 8", 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disk. I would not consider an Iomega spokesperson, nor anything based on statements made by such a person, to be reliably sourced.

That is no evidence supporting his POV, it is ambiguous at best, so burden still remains on him to produce an RS that "high-capacity" floppy disks and drives are not floppy disks or floppy drives. As stated previously, it is not my POV, it is our sources. The WP:BURDEN still rests with you to prove your claim that ZIP/LS-120/etc. are "floppy disks" (not "high-capacity floppy disks" or some other designation) and that such designation is widely supported in WP:RS. Finally I suggest that relying upon categories contemporaneously published by Jim Porter, a recognized storage analyst and historian, in his the DISK/TREND Report – Flexible Disk Drives from 1977 to 1994, widely cited and used by manufacturers and institutions and by used by Denis Mee who wrote the book on Storage History is a far better approach than continuing with Cole's unsupported POV about the ambiguous writings of current authors who possibly know little or nothing about the history of floppy disks and drives So.... lots of words to say, "disregard recent reliable sources because I don't like what they say and they don't support my POV". Obviously I think deferring to sources that are over thirty years old is a mistake, there are more recent sources and just as consensus can change, so too can the opinions of reliable sources looking at a topic retrospectively. —Locke Cole • t • c 14:41, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

@Locke Cole, your rejection of Tom94022's paid-to-access references would appear to contradict WP:PAYWALL. These types of reference are allowed and cannot be rejected on those grounds alone. Making a request at WP:RX is the most appropriate way to resolve this. 11WB (talk) 02:25, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

@11wallisb I did not reject the source because of the pay-wall (I didn't reject the source at all, actually). I did wager the source would not support Tom's claim because, based on the abstract/chapter list, it's already clear the source also uses the more definitive term "high capacity". Also because of the age of the source relative to more recent sources which have the advantage of having more modern understandings of the formats. I do have a request in for access to the Wikipedia Library which should allow me to access most of the paywalled sources (I requested this nearly seven days ago, so it's unclear how long it takes to get a reply). —Locke Cole • t • c 02:49, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

It was to my knowledge that you only needed to be Extended confirmed to get access to the Wikipedia Library. With over 19k edits, you should have automatically received access a long time ago. 11WB (talk) 03:00, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

I was granted access, and while IEEE Xplore is one of the resources available through the Wikipedia Library, the specific article Tom is professing is a source is not covered by TWL's subscription apparently. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:56, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

@Zac67 Since someone is using your !vote as a basis for their !vote, I guess this needs a longer reply. First, thanks for the ad hominen attack, I'm sure since we've jettisoned logic out of this discussion your comment about a "strange conviction" will shine as a beacon of truth to those who agree with you. ... apparently even requiring a Shugart interface on their drive I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about here. Can you point to something I've said that supports your claim of what I have a strange conviction for? They totally ignore the 3-inch floppies used by Amstrad computers during the 1980s, SuperDisks in the exact same jacket as "3.5-inch", and also 3.5-inch-sized Zip disks. Do you know who else ignores them? Our sources. They refer to them as "high-capacity floppy disks" or by their brand names (SuperDisk/LS-120/etc, Jaz Disk, Zip Disk, etc). So far the only sources produced in this discussion refer to floppy disks as 8", 5.25" and 3.5" disks, and nothing more. Drives were or still are available with Shugart, SCSI, PATA or USB interfaces, without somehow making the disks anything else than 'floppies'. Their interface has nothing to do with their status as a floppy disk, you're conflating a discussion at Talk:Parallel ATA with the separate discussion of what the primary topic of this article is. That newly introduced distinction is entirely arbitrary and artificial. You should go write our sources and let them know they're wrong. The name points out their physical distinction in contrast to hard disks. That's not the only thing the name points out... —Locke Cole • t • c 19:16, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

@Tom94022, let's take your issues point by point:

• You can see why I made my massive change directly above in #Remove tag bombing of article?. You can also see the steps you'll need to take to restore that material according to policy. You won't be achieving a consensus here to overturn sitewide policy, so any vote you hold here is irrelevant and really wasting time you could have spent finding reliable sources to support the removed statements.
• I'm not sure of the distinction you're making between "floppy disk" and "standard floppy disk", those are the same things, you're just putting the word "standard" in front of it which makes it longer..?
• in his opinion the "most popular (and commercially available)" You do realize the diff you provide shows me removing the passage "most popular (and commercially available)", do you not?
• which gives us the alternative of renaming the article or reverting the changes You left out other options: 3) Finding sources for the challenged material and restoring them one by one. 4) Leaving the article as-is and continuing to improve it from here.
• which IMO amount to disruptive editing It's disruptive to productively edit articles now? I checked that link and didn't see anything about productive editors being considered "disruptive"...
• This comes from an ongoing discussion as to what qualifies as a "floppy disk" which never reached consensus. Correct, and as the WP:BURDEN is on those wishing to include challenged material, without a consensus, the material should not be included. Calling every single product with a magnetic circle and a plastic outer shell a "floppy disk" in the absence of reliable sources supporting that statement is a clear violation of WP:V.
• Cole believes the term is limited to the high-volume standardized ones but there is no question that are floppy disks other than the so-called "standard" include ones such as the frequently called super floppies that were popular and in high volume. I'm not sure if you're just being deliberately obtuse, but you even say the quiet part out loud in this quoted passage. floppy disks other than the so-called "standard" include ones such as the frequently called super floppies... do you see it? They're not called "floppy disks", they're called "super floppies".
• The article now reflect his opinion No, the article reflects the sources. You might remember those are the things required by WP:V, a sitewide policy with BROAD support. It's the policy that makes Wikipedia more reliable to our readers and verifiable to our critics. Unless your goal is to make Wikipedia less reliable...?
• to cite a few contradictory reliable sources Let's take these one at a time, since you're misreading these to the point of being WP:CHERRYPICKING...
  • "The Zip Drive and its high-capacity floppy disks never really replaced the standard floppy, but of the many “superfloppy” products that tried, only Iomega’s came close." (PC Magazine, 2022)! Let's start with just the quotation you selected... first, they don't refer to them as "floppy disks", but "high-capacity floppy disks", they use the term "superfloppy" in reference to Zip disks (and similar formats), and then note the product "tried" and that Zip disks "came close". If this source was supposed to be supportive of the notion that Zip disks are just "floppy disks", it's not off to a great start. As we start reading the article, you'll note that 8", 5.25" and 3.5" and referred to as simply floppy disk with no additional qualifier. Finally we arrive at item #5, the "Zip Disk" (not the "Zip floppy disk" or the "Zip high-capacity floppy disk", just "Zip Disk"). We're back to qualified terms, in this case, high-capacity floppy disks. This is also where your chosen quotation resides, which again, is not very supportive of the idea that Zip Disks are floppy disks. Throughout this section and the following one, #6 "Jaz Disk", these products are never directly referred to as just "floppy disks". Rounding out #5 is But timing is everything. Zip Drives were caught between the era of the floppy and the onslaught of writable CDs that could seek data much faster, plus local networks that made file transfers much easier. EMC bought Iomega, and soon partnered with Lenovo before killing off the Zip drive line. Now "Zip Disk" is between the era of the floppy implying a Zip Disk is not a floppy disk, and the onslaught of writable CDs. When we get down to item #8, "Memory Card", we get another clear delineation between "floppy disks" and, well.. everything else: Originally, memory cards were meant to replace floppy disks or even the high-capacity ones like the Zip. After that, "floppy" isn't mentioned again in this article (which goes on to cover other storage mediums, such as optical discs and SSD's).
  • "SuperDisk is a type of high-capacity floppy disk that provides increased storage compared to traditional floppy disks " (Lenovo, 2025) This appears to be a support article from Lenovo about SuperDisks. Confusingly, this doesn't seem to support Tom's notion that Zip disks or LS-120 disks (or SuperDisks as they're called by Lenovo) are "floppy disks". Some select quotations to drive the point home:
    • SuperDisk is a type of high-capacity floppy disk that provides increased storage compared to traditional floppy disks. Directly compares "floppy disks" (which it notes as "traditional") vs. "high-capacity floppy disk".
    • How does SuperDisk differ from traditional floppy disks? (section title of the article)
    • The SuperDisk offered a middle ground between floppy disks and optical media in terms of capacity and compatibility. It could store 120 MB of data, making it more capacious than standard floppy disks but less so than CDs or DVDs. Unlike optical media, SuperDisks retained the magnetic storage method, which allowed for backward compatibility with floppy disks. Here it's more direct, noting that SuperDisk is a "middle ground" between "floppy disks" and optical discs. This passage does note the backwards compatibility the LS-120/SuperDisk drives have with "floppy disks", but backwards compatibility with something does not grant that future product the moniker "floppy disk" by association...
    • Its ability to read and write standard floppy disks as well made it a versatile tool during its peak usage, especially for users transitioning away from floppy disks. Again, source directly separates LS-120/SuperDisk from "floppy disk".
    • The SuperDisk, or LS-120, primarily supported the FAT12 and FAT16 file systems, which were prevalent during its era. These file systems were extensions of the ones used for traditional floppy disks and early hard drives, facilitating a seamless transition for users moving from standard floppy disks to SuperDisks. Same as before.
  • * Jim Porter, a market analyst and storage historian, for at least 8 years (1992-1999) published a series of market analysis reports that categorized as high capacity floppy disk drives the ZIP, SuperDisk and all of the other drives collectively known as super floppy disk drives Here Tom is telling on himself again, he even bolds the phrase "high capacity floppy disk drives". His external link uses the term "floppy" one time, in this passage: The reports covered optical drives (CD, DVD), floppy disks, hard drives, and removable storage, like ZIP and Bernoulli disks and provide a long-term record of the global storage industry unlike any other. Again, ZIP and Bernoulli disks are separated and distinct from "floppy disks" in this listing. LS-120/SuperDisk does not even merit a mention here.
  • There is no dispute that ZIP was commercially available and very popular while some of the FDs remaining were not very popular Not sure what this bullet is meant to prove, but...?
  • (Laser Servo-120) A high-capacity floppy disk from 3M, Compaq, Panasonic and O.R. Technology that was introduced in 1996, but never caught on. (PC Magazine, current) Again, never called simply floppy disks, there is a qualifier used throughout, in this case, high-capacity. It notes the backwards compatibility with floppy disks which is not disputed, and then has this caption for a drawing of the disk: LS-120 media looked like floppy disks, but held 80 times as much. Despite this, it never achieved commercial success. They "looked like" floppy disks and never achieved commercial success. But we're supposed to call them "floppy disks" in Wikipedia's voice to appease Tom?
• This seems to me to be sufficient to establish that such drives and disks belong in an article entitled "Floppy disk. If you can read my analysis of your sources above and come away with any idea that we should call them "floppy disks", you and I are clearly speaking different languages.
• FWIW, Cole denigrated Porter as dead wood, the challenge in finding RSs is that this is about dead products one has to go back to dead wood for RSs. I referred to the source you provided as "dead wood", and not having access to the source to review it for accuracy and authenticity makes using such a source... difficult. There are plenty of sources in print only that are perfectly reliable, but it seems suspicious that something about technology (especially something you are so fiercely arguing for here) wouldn't have any easily accessible digital sources for support.
• My experience suggests there will be lots of RSing in the in contemporaneous product literature and market analyses but IMO the above is sufficient Product literature is not WP:RS, it's actually something we actively avoid precisely because product literature is written by marketing departments, and of course they will refer to themselves as "floppy disks" to try and sway uninformed or easily influenced readers into blindly believing them. It's self-serving, and no evidence of... anything? Except marketing departments lie? Water is also wet, in case you wanted something else obvious.
• So if there is agreement we can revert the Tendentious edits or we should retitle the article and include at least statement that there were other sizes and capacities. *sigh* Tom, there is nothing tendentious about my edits. WP:V is very very clear on this. Verifiability is non-negotiable. You will not be !voting away a core pillar of Wikipedia on some far-flung talk page. 100 people could show up and support you and we would still not do what you're asking because we'd be restoring unsourced and unverifiable statements. As noted above at #Remove tag bombing of article?, you had one whole year to find even some sources to support the statements I removed. You did not. If this article means so much to you, I strongly suggest you use the link I provided above as a courtesy and review the statements labelled as needing a citation and set about finding reliable sources to support them. That is how you will "revert" my changes. Not by casting aspersions about my motives and character, or attempting to utilize cherry picked sources which, upon reading, don't even support what you're trying to say!

TL;dr: The sources don't say what you seem to think they say, or want them to say. You're casting aspersions about my motives and behavior despite the fact that I initiated this conversation over at Talk:Parallel ATA over a week ago before even making any edits to try and see if I had just missed something. No sources were presented, and after a significant amount of back and forth, I edited to remove statements that were not supported by the provided sources. As to the more drastic changes here, there were dozens of unsourced statements in the article that you were well aware of for over a year. You have shown no interest in resolving those issues, referring to the matter as "tag bombing" in a prior discussion above. I'll close by again noting WP:BURDEN and WP:ONUS. Anywhere on this project, the person wishing to add or restore challenged statements is the one who must provide the sources to support those statements. You do not simply get to vote away sitewide policy. —Locke Cole • t • c 14:32, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

@Stepho-wrs and Nightscream: Pinging users from the discussion above, and also the discussion at Talk:Parallel ATA since Tom is now trying to hold discussions in multiple places simultaneously... —Locke Cole • t • c 14:36, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

I won't bother to respond in detail, but I will make three points:

1. The fact that Cole cannot access the Porter material is irrelevant but FWIW I will put a few links online.
   * Porter published "Disk/Trend Report-Flexible Disk Drive" market analyses from 1974 to 1994 mentioning "high capacity floppy formats" as early as 1987 and including them as a separate category beginning 1991, noting "The high capacity and low profile floppy drive designs now entering the production phase are proof that innovation in floppy disk drives is a continuing process."^[3]
   * From 1994 thru 1999 Porter then included floppy disk drives in his "Disk/Trend Report-Removable Data Storage" from 1995 to 1998 including two categories of floppy disk drives, "low capacity flexible disk drives" and "high capacity flexible disk drives."^[4]
   Clearly Porter, probably the preeminent storage industry analyst, and a distinguished industry historian, segments all Floppy disks into two types "high capacity" and "low capacity."
2. We must be speaking a different language - at least in the grammar I am familiar with, when an adjective modifies a noun it can create a subset of that noun, as in large dogs. Here we have a compound adjective "high capacity" modifying a compound noun "floppy disk" or its equivalent "flexible disk" used extensively by Porter when the products were in production and continuing to date in multiple online RS citations. Collectively these RS's establish that Floppy Disk accurately and completely includes at least high-capacity FDs and low-capacity FDs. Cole's POV is that the adjective somehow excludes the noun. Note that the Magazine article has a section on High-capacity magazines linking to a separate High-capacity_magazine article. I personally am indifferent between one or two articles but the WP:BURDEN and WP:ONUS is on Cole to find a reliable source that "Floppy Disk" does not include high-capacity FDs and in its absence his massive edit should be reversed. Cole is free to create two articles if that is what he thinks appropriate, but then this article becomes, Floppy disk (low capacity)!
3. Cole chose to combine two issues into one series of interrelated edits, scope of the article and the many {{cn}} tags. If it is agreed that the definition of FD is inclusive, then the simplest fix is to revert his massive change. He can then remove the material that needs to be removed at his leisure. AFAICT Cole has never made an edit to this article, so it is not clear he has the knowledge to decide that any material "needs an inline citation" other than the date of the tag which doesn't seem to be a particularly strong reason to remove material. FWIW as one who does have experience in this subject area it appears to me that most of the tags do have supporting RS's but it is not worth my effort to find such material. I suspect most of the other editors who actually contribute to this article have felt the same way.

Unfortunately, the {{cn}} tag talk above did not provoke any discussion so I took no action; hopefully this one will. Unlike Cole I will wait for a concensus before editing, and to encourage discussion I am notifying editors who have made recent or significant contributions to this page: @Bubba73, ReadOnlyAccount, Surv1v4l1st, Comp.arch, Hairy Dude, Okterakt, Andritolion, Matthiaspaul, and Wtshymanski:

Tom94022 (talk) 20:48, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

As you've resorted to WP:CANVASSing, this discussion really isn't going to go anywhere. If you wanted to solicit additional input, you should have considered other WP:DR options such as WP:3O or even a WP:RFC. I will say that it's funny that you won't respond in detail, but then take issue with what made up such a small portion of my reply (the Porter material) and ignore the issues with every other source you provided. WP:COMMONNAME applies to this matter as well, as so far all the sources referring to simply "floppy disks" seem to always refer to the 8", 5.25" and 3.5" formats that were in wide use, not the successor formats which never reached the same success. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:05, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

• I have responded in sufficient detail in #2 above, following your strange use of English grammar, 3½-inch FDs are not FDs because they replaced or superseded 5¼-inch FDs. Big Bird is not a bird, but most birds described as big birds, are birds: the burden is on you to find an RS that a high-capacity FD is not an FD. The best way to organize this article would be to follow the Porter taxonomy of 8-inch, 5¼-inch, 3½-inch and high-capacity. Tom94022 (talk) 19:39, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Restore per the reasons given by Zac67 above.--Surv1v4l1st ^{╠Talk║Contribs╣} 21:15, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

• An AfD for this article was just closed after only 5 hours as WP:SNOW keep, it appears as a result of the discussions in this talk page dispute. My concern are mostly policy related, insofar as I believe a couple have been violated, namely WP:Canvassing above where @Tom94022 pinged 9 editors, of which only 4 are significant contributors to the article in question (according to Xtools). Subsequently, one of the non-significant editors gave his support (@Surv1v4l1st). The AfD was then opened (see above) which I believe violates the WP:FORUMSHOP policy. Would it be possible to resolve WP:COMMONNAME by renaming the article to a hypernym name that encompasses all names, sizes and standards of floppy disk drives, perhaps 'Floppy disk drive', to match the articles Hard disk drive and USB flash drive? I think this is something to consider before any more pages are opened on other parts of the site or before any other policies are potentially violated. 11WB (talk) 07:50, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

  (I don't know why those hyperlinks are below my message. Apologies if I messed up the formatting for this discussion. I added my comment in the editor, rather than as a reply.) 11WB (talk) 07:51, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

  You didn’t do anything wrong, see {{reflist-talk}}. —Locke Cole • t • c 13:12, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for this. Just wanted to be sure! 11WB (talk) 14:03, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

I notified editors who have made recent or significant contributions to this page (emphasis added). The article is quite old and most of the significant contributors have not made recent edits so I notified all editors who made 2025 contributions; this is appropriate notification and not in any way WP:Canvassing. The article as it stands could be renamed "Floppy disk (low-capacity)" following the Porter taxonomy but then the deleted material should be resorted some place or it could be reverted and errors, omissions and need references fixed. At this point there hasn't been a lot of discussion but there still is no support for leaving it as it is nor for deleting as Cole apparently suggested. Tom94022 (talk) 19:39, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

I can't comment further on the canvassing claim. My initial message was to point out what I saw, along with the AfD which really shouldn't have been opened. 11WB (talk) 21:23, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

For the article name, as I said in the AfD, having multiple articles for different types of floppy disk would come under WP:BADFORK. 11WB (talk) 21:25, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

I've had a look over everything again (including the now closed AfD, this dispute and some of the other discussions) involving @Locke Cole and @Tom94022. This is coming from someone who has been uninvolved, at this time I genuinely don't see any issues with the article itself. The first few lines of the opening (A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a fabric that removes dust particles from the spinning disk. The three floppy disks are the 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch floppy disks.) take care of all the issues surrounding WP: COMMONNAME. There is also the Floppy disk#Sizes section which lists all the different sizes in grid form. New articles for each different variant are not required. If what I've read is correct, Tom wants the article to remain as it is without different articles for different standards, whilst LC wants to WP:TNT the article for a complete rewrite (even though copyediting would achieve this). If so, I would oppose what LC is proposing regarding deleting or WP:Page blanking the current article. I don't believe pinging 9 editors or starting an AfD were the best choices when (as LC said above) different types of dispute resolution procedures exist. My hope is this will be resolved in an agreeable way, as both editors are clearly very knowledgeable of the subject matter and have a strong understanding of which sources are reliable. 11WB (talk) 23:52, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

The thing is, that article intro you quote with "The three floppy disks are the 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch floppy disks" is WP:POV, since it ignores the existence of the other types - those three might have been the most commercially successful versions, but they certainly weren't "The three floppy disks", when many other sizes, like Famicom Disk System discs (which also got removed from the table) or the 3" discs Amstrad pushed existed. It's like a home video tape article which says "the home video tape format was the Video Home System (VHS)" and pretends the likes of U-Matic, Betamax or Video 2000 didn't exist.

Basically, big parts of the article already got TNT'd by LC in effect. The article as it stood definitely needs work, but that's not the same thing as what LC did. - Psi-Locked (talk) 09:24, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Those can easily be added to the 'Sizes' section, or a different section specifically listing different types. Your claim on WP:POV I personally don't see in that section. Without looking over the history I can't comment on which editor wrote it, however it is informative and neutral from my perspective. I think if Tom and LC can work out a way to keep the article without splitting it off into new articles, whilst including all agreeable content, this article could very well be resubmitted to WP:GAC (it was WP:FA until 2006, however I think we're a ways off that). Unfortunately, per WP:QF, this article would not qualify point 4 of the criteria. LC has undertaken cleanup, now what remains is to establish exactly which types of floppy disk should be written about (with the rest being listed in the grid). 11WB (talk) 09:39, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

POV is explicit from statements made by LC here and in the AfD. The line originally said "The three most popular (and commercially available) floppy disks are the 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch floppy disks." and they removed the qualifiers (implicitly as WP:UNDUE). What's left is a statement in the intro that there are only three types of floppy disk, which is entirely false. - Psi-Locked (talk) 10:26, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

On POV and whether the article currently has issues with this, I think posting at WP:NPOV/N might be a good idea. 11WB (talk) 11:19, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

If this is the point of contention, then adding a line such as, 'There also other types of higher capacity floppy disks such as...', kept short and brief, with a RS would surely take care of the issue? 11WB (talk) 13:57, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

What's left is a statement in the intro that there are only three types of floppy disk, which is entirely false I'm glad you think that. Do you have reliable sources to back that statement up? Are you absolutely certain you're giving these also-ran formats (that never gained the type of wide commercial success or wide reliable source coverage of actual floppy disks) due weight? Or is it entirely possible you're pushing a fringe theory? Recall that every single source Tom provided above qualified "floppy disk" with additional descriptors, typically "high-capacity floppy disk". Consider also, MOS:SCOPE and WP:OOS: When the name of an article is a term that refers to several related topics in secondary reliable sources, primary topic criteria should be followed to determine if any of the uses of that term is the primary topic, and, if so, then the scope of the article should be limited to, or at least primarily, cover that topic. For example, Cat is limited in scope to the primary topic for cat, the Domestic cat (which is a redirect to Cat), even though lions and tigers are considered to be "cats" in the broad sense of that term. The primary topic of this article, based on the sources provided so far, are the 8", 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disks. The other variants, which were never widely released, commercially successful, and definitely not widely covered in reliable sources are out of place in article about "floppy disks". They certainly may make sense in our (already existing) Floppy disk variants (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) article, but other than linking to that article from a small note about the variants the primary formats inspired, there's no valid reason to include them here without sources to back that up. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:49, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

I ought to add, those are only suggestions. I apologise if that came across autocratic in any way. That was not my intent. 11WB (talk) 09:42, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

This is why following the steps at WP:DR such as asking for a WP:3O or starting an WP:RFC would have been better. Of course people who have edited this article directly and left much of what is under discussion untouched/unchallenged are implicitly biased towards maintaining that content. What you did was a clear example of WP:VOTESTACKING. —Locke Cole • t • c 19:00, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

• Restore per Zac67. This is ludicrous. - Psi-Locked (talk) 20:02, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

  @Psi-Locked, Surv1v4l1st, Zac67, and Tom94022: Which one of you lot is going to be finding the WP:RS since you appear to be !voting for restoring dozens of unsourced statements? Or is it your intent to ignore WP:BURDEN and pretend WP:LOCALCON doesn't apply? —Locke Cole • t • c 19:02, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Happy to see this restored as long as it can be referenced. Per WP:BURDEN that's the responsibility of whoever restores it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:44, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

@ActivelyDisinterested and Locke Cole: Since the consensus is to revert I will do so, I will then reference all material that "needs" RS's and finally edit the article to define FDs per the several RS's. This will likely take many hours over several days and I will use appropriate templates to flag whether the article is under construction or in use. I would appreciate it if editors would abide by the suggestions of the templates and thereby making the task more difficult thru unnecessary edit conflicts. Tom94022 (talk) 18:09, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

That's fine with me, BURDEN must be met but there is no deadline. I suggest using the {{in use}} template to warn editors, it's helpful to stop edit conflicts. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:52, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

I am very concerned that the editor most involved with this article is the one deciding there is "consensus". Also, while WP:DEADLINE is a thing (an essay), WP:BURDEN (a policy with wide community support) doesn't carve out an exception for using "no deadline" as an excuse for restoring challenged material that is unsourced. The better solution would be to work on a userspace sandbox version and then integrate the changes once they're ready. WP:LOCALCON is clear that a small group here cannot override the will of the community. It's also distressing to see all of these variations of the floppy disk here again, when none of them are considered floppy disks by our reliable sources. —Locke Cole • t • c 22:32, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

I think that we're taking this from the wrong approach entirely. The thing about article titles and scopes is that the scope has to come first. That is you say "What is this article about? Okay, what's a good name for that?" What you don't say is "The article's current title is floppy disk, and I found a source claiming that a Zip drive is a floppy disk, so that should be in the article called floppy disk!"

In my experience, we talked about floppies and Zip drives as being in separate categories. That suggests that there should be an article that is (a) about 'basic' floppies (8", 5.25", 3.5") but (b) not about every kind of storage medium that used a similar technology. So my question for the folks who want to add what we would have considered non-floppy disks content is: If the article dedicated to floppies-as-narrowly-defined isn't at this page, where is it/should it be? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:51, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

If the article dedicated to floppies-as-narrowly-defined isn't at this page, where is it/should it be? What's really distressing here is that the answer already exists: Floppy disk variants. An article which was created with this edit summary split from loppy disk for length. Floppy disk underwent significant by @Thumperward and looked like this after a day of trimming/reorganization, and then about a month later, it looked like this (diff for comparison's sake, diff of article prior to Thumperward edits). I'd argue the expanded "historical sequence" table would be more at home in the Floppy disk variants article, and a trimmed back version to just the actual "floppy disks" would be more at home here.

And recall, this all stemmed from my attempt to get sources for the claim that floppy disk drives utilized Parallel ATA as their connector, which none of them did. And, to date, no source has been provided to support that claim. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:44, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

Well, you're never going to find a reliable source that says all floppy disk drives used parallel ATA/IDE, because Big Blue didn't own the world, no matter how much they pretended to. Whether any of them did is something I wouldn't know. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:52, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

Late to this party but Locke Cole (talk · contribs) was entirely correct to remove enormous amounts of long-unsourced trivia. If this needs to be removed piecemeal so as to not to invite the accusation of "mass disruptive editing" (laughable) then I'll be happy to do so. Tom94022 has a predilection for wanting super-articles full of every single possible permutation of a given phrase, which is at this point almost an entire sub-genre of WP:SYN in itself (except that the synthesized title already exists). This results in unreadable garbage. We should not advocate for nor action in favour of unreadable garbage. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:13, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

As for the pile-on supports for reverting, they're perfectly summarised by the very first one: the argument that house should talk exhaustively about greenhouses, because a greenhouse is a house. (A greenhouse is not a house.) Unserious arguments more concerned about stuffing articles full of extraneous trivia than they are about building a readable encyclopedia. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:17, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

The problem with the greenhouse analogy assumes that the purpose is to have the article's subject match the title. It's the other way around: First, what do you want to write about? Only second, what should you call that?

Compare, e.g., Ketogenic diet. The subject is a medical treatment for refractory pediatric epilepsy, which happens to be called a ketogenic diet. The subject of the article is not all the diets have been called ketogenic.

If editors believe that this page should be about traditional floppies, then it should exclude super floppies (or mention them briefly, by way of contrast). And if editors believe that this page should be about every storage device that has any flexible, disc-shaped magnetic medium, then it should include both traditional and super floppies and anything else meeting that criterion. But you make this decision first, and only later decide what the title is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:36, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

We basically have three options.

1. Make this a disambiguation page, which does nothing but point at other articles.
2. Make this a summary page, which treats this as a super-subject but leaves most of the content to sub-pages. (This is closest to where we are now, except that far too much content in here is still trivia.)
3. Make this an article on the subject that most people think of as a floppy disk, which is the mainstream removable file format briefly popular in the second half of the twentieth century.

Wikipedia has always, always favoured the third, everywhere, on the grounds that this is first and foremost a resource for the common person to gain information on subjects in a readable manner. It is not a directory of every single thing to have ever existed. It is not an attempt to taxonomise things which may only be loosely related to one another. It is a place where, if you go to the article on floppy disks, you expect it to talk about the thing you understand to be a floppy disk, based on the principle of least surprise. If you go to that article and it spends half its time talking about 70s laboratory experiments or things that were briefly popular in the Bulgarian software pirating industry at the fall of the Cold War then you are going to be confused and disheartened.

There's the core of a useful article in here, but the only real question should be "how much space needs to be devoted to 8-inch disks as opposed to the two massively more popular successors". The entire category of super floppies warrants a single paragraph labelled "related technologies" and then an article elsewhere. That's the endgoal here.

Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:26, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

I specifically want to address the assertion that zip disks are 3.5" floppies. This is arrant nonsense. They are a removable storage medium specifically designed to have a similar form factor to 3.5" floppies. They do the same thing, in a much more complicated manner. A platypus has a bill and can swim in a lake. This does not make it a category of swan. Whether a source can be found that calls them "floppy disks" or not is irrelevant, because you can find an order of magnitude or more sources which treat them as different things. The people making this argument fundamentally do not understand that when it comes to names on wikipedia, "floppy disk" means the specific thing that an average person would expect it to, and not "every single thing which looks like a disk and can be flexed". The latter has to be wholly rejected. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:34, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

@Thumperward you are certainly entitled to your opinion as to what FD means but before you force it into Wikipedia shouldn't you have an RS? At this point we have RS's from the inventor (1996), the preeminent storage industry analyst (1998), a distinguished storage industry technical writer (1988) and the Computer History Museum (2025) all of whom explicitly state that the ZIP disk and drive are FDs or FDDs. After all this discussion, it is probably true to say that Today some observers mean "low-capacity" FDs when they use the term FD. but I think that is OR. So if you can find an RS that the language has changed then perhaps such a note in the article would be appropriate but to expunge material based multiple reliable sources seems to me the anthesis of Wikipedia. Tom94022 (talk) 17:05, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Do you expect to find a source that says "Wikipedia ought to have one big article on all the many disks that stored data on thin plastic disk coated with magnetic material", or one that says "Wikipedia ought to have two different articles, one that is focused primarily on the 5.25 and 3.5-inch disks, and separate one that covers super floppies"?

Because the question here isn't "Where's a source that says ____ is/isn't a true floppy?" The question here is how editors choose to organize the information. To quote WP:N, Editors may use their discretion when deciding whether a subject is better handled as one big article or two smaller ones. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:36, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

I'll look for sources which explicitly distinguish between floppy disks and the latter inventions. Proving a negative is of course difficult, but if it helps to resolve this nonsense then so be it. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:06, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

@Thumperward, I agree with you: Editors are allowed to choose one of the other options, but I think this page should be about what "the common person" will "understand to be a floppy disk, based on the principle of least surprise". Which is to say that I never once called my Zip drive "a floppy", and I'd be WP:SURPRISED if anyone had asked for "your floppy" instead of "your Zip drive". It might technically be true that Zip drives used floppy technology, but it's not relevant.

I particularly agree with you that "Whether a source can be found that calls them "floppy disks" or not is irrelevant, because you can find an order of magnitude or more sources which treat them as different things".

But in the end, article scope has to be decided by consensus.

Maybe the path forward is to split Floppy disk variants#Superfloppy into a separate article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:49, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

My preference is #3 from your list. We already have Floppy disk variants, History of the floppy disk, Floppy disk drive interface, List of floppy disk formats, Floppy-disk controller, and a number of supporting articles such as Berg connector, Floppy disk hardware emulator and tangentially related articles such as Floptical, Magneto-optical drive, Bernoulli Box, Jaz drive, SuperDisk and Zip drive. As you say, those last six or so should be summarized in one or two sentences along with the variants article I linked at the start of that list.

This article should have a very short summary of History of the floppy disk (especially as it relates to the original 8" (very briefly), 5.25" and 3.5" drives), a section that describes the mechanics of how a floppy disk works in a way a layperson can comprehend, individual sections that describe these three "floppy disks" and their most common formats, and then leave the discussion of how operating systems interacted with them to articles on those OS's.

Right now, the article is (IMO) a clear instance of WP:IINFO/WP:NOTTEXTBOOK/WP:NOTEVERYTHING. It's why I attempted to run this article through AFD after the canvassing occurred above with the suggested resolution being WP:TNT. The article as it exists now belongs in a personal blog or something where your goal is to retain as much technical information as possible. For an encyclopedia reader, this article is not what a reader would expect.. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:16, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

CONTINUING EDIT DISCUSSION MOVED TO NEW SECTION

The claim about IBM PS/2 soft-eject drives and DOS EJECT command appears technically accurate but requires specialized documentation (IBM PS/2 technical manuals, DOS command references) to verify specific models and versions. PC DOS 5.02 existence is confirmed via IBM documentation. Respecting the good faith of the editor who originally contributed this material and given my own limited expertise in this technical area, I am reluctant to delete it and suggest it remain until editors with more time and specialized knowledge can resolve any reliability issues with this material. Tom94022 (talk) 21:56, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

I'll have a look to see if I can find anything. I've changed {{verification needed}} to {{citation needed}}, the former is a redirect to {{verify source}} and there is currently no source to verify. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:01, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

The IBM PS/2 feature was called "Electronic eject" as shown by the maintenance manual and the EJECT command was introduced in PC-DOS 5.02. That last ref is probably good for the EJECT command, but I can't find anything that details the "electronic eject" feature (the maintenance manual doesn't explian what it is). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:38, 29 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts. My issue with {{citation needed}} is that it doesn't link to discussion, there are likely sources which I have identified but can't get to. This happens on older topics where there are likely sources in dead trees not accessible online. I'm struggling with the same issue on how Apple FD's recover from read errors. If I can't link to a talk discussion a less informed editor at any point could delete the material without at least being aware of the situation. Under current policy I can't stop that but at least I'd like to be able to warn one - any suggestion? Tom94022 (talk) 19:08, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

Dead trees, hard to access, or only accessible with great effort, it doesn't matter. Accessibility doesn't effect reliability, urls are only a courtesy to help make verification easier. I'm pretty sure the PS/2 data can be found in the IBM FTP server (I haven't had time to check), making it inaccessible without dedicated software (just finding out ftp has been removed from modern browsers).
I'm a bit busy over the next fews days, once I get time I'll see if I can find something for the Apple FD error recovery if you haven't already. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:51, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

Maybe https://openlibrary.org has scanned some old computer manuals? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:16, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

Sorry I spent several hours last night but I couldn't find anything for error correction on Apple FDs. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:02, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

At this point the article IMO is in pretty good shape, at 90k somewhat bigger than in the past but with all the old CN's ref'ed and the unwarrented deletions restored. The major issue I see with the article as it stands now is that it has high-capacity FD/FDD material is split between this article and the Variants article which is awkward but may be acceptable.

One issue with major restructuring is that much of the drive mechanisms is common across all types and is more or less covered in the one "Structure" section. Major restructuring might produce

Thumperwald suggested some options but I think a more complete list, based upon not eliminating referenced material ("trivia?"), are the following options:

1. Make this a disambiguation page, which does nothing but point at five articles, 8", 5¼", 3½, HC, Other.
2. Make this a summary page, which treats this as a super-subject but leaves most of the content to four main articles, LCFD, HCFD, Variant FD, FD Mechanics.
3. Remove all material related to high-capacity FD/FDDs either to the Variant article or to a new HCFD article.
4. Move the high-capacity FD material from the Variant article into its section in this article.
5. Create a new HCFD article from the materials in this article and the Variant article
6. Leave it alone, minor edits from here on.

As I said, I am very busy on interesting project that requires immediate attention, so I am not going to finish the major edit for a day or two. So, I'd like to hear from other editors as to which direction the article should go. I've already spent too much time here so I am not willing to work on all the options, IMO and in rank order only 4, 6 and 5 are worth doing, so in addition to expressing opinion I would suggest a willingness to do the work might be useful. Tom94022 (talk) 17:11, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

3 needs doing regardless. The question is whether 5 constitutes synthesis. I would say it does. There are multiple overlapping examples of this genre which do not claim to be part of a specific group. We might organise them together in a variants article, but picking a term (e.g. "HCFD" or "super floppy") and ascribing this to all of them is not appropriate. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:09, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

My intent is to do 4 as it is less work than 5 or 3. I don't see why 5 involves synthesis and would appreciate examples. There are lots of reliable sources that establish the all FDs are similar in structure with the fundamental difference being servomechanisms in HCFDs - so I suspect most apparent syntheses can be resolved if the consensus is 5. Tom94022 (talk) 20:40, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Chris, #3 makes the most sense. But Tom has been adding additional HCFD content here and changing redirects to point to this article (see Super floppy and Superfloppy). I don't believe there is a consensus for inclusion of this content that is out of scope for an article on "floppy disks". Tom, you will not achieve what you wish by presenting editors with a fait accompli. —Locke Cole • t • c 19:45, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

And just to add, Tom has now started edit warring over Parallel ATA and the inclusion of floppy disk as a format that ever used the connection (no floppy disk drive ever used PATA). —Locke Cole • t • c 19:47, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

On the reverse side of 3.5" floppies (opposite of the label side), there's an oblong indentation under the write-protect icons. It looks like it might be for a label but it's not clear what the function of this actually is. What is the function of this feature? ~2026-14255-03 (talk) 18:59, 5 March 2026 (UTC)