Talk:Flowchart

In the "creating flowcharts" section, there is a reference to UML claiming that flowcharts and UML are the same thing. It would be helpfull to newbies if the two representation methods weren't falsely linked. --213.22.238.125 23:11, 17 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

The aforementioned correction would be helpful to newbies and non-newbies: UML is definitely not the same as flowcharts, the former being a language with a rich notation, the latter a type of diagram. -- nonick 12:25, 12 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

I agree with the above, and also think that the text should mention that creating flowcharts for programs has not been found not worth the trouble in software engineering because they focus too much on how a program does something, while that is what the source code already does.

I have now added a paragraph to take care of all this; please review. Rp (talk) 14:46, 28 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I will take a look at it. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 14:56, 28 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

You have added an interesting perspective. Do I read between the lines, that flow charts are no longer beeing used? -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 22:42, 28 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

It seems to me that as UML is gaining more popularity, the flowcharts are losing ground. After all, UML claims to be U=universal. It would be nice if someone could elaborate this in the article. 212.246.67.77 (talk) 09:03, 19 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, the U in "UML" stands for Unified, not universal.^[1] --EdwardEditor (talk) 03:58, 8 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

From the present article text, it appears to me that flowcharts can be denoted as UML Activity diagrams; in that case UML doesn't replace them, but rather, standardizes (once more) and extends them. In any case, the two are closely related. Rp (talk) 16:39, 24 August 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Again in the "creating flowcharts" section, usage is made of the adjective "awesome", which looks to me as too personal an opinion to be in WikiPedia... More generally, the whole section seems a bit out of place, being more of a HowTo than an encyclopaedic article... -- nonick 12:25, 12 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't see the point in listing general-purpose drawing software in this article. The list should be restricted to tools that feature special support for flow charts. And how does Word fit in this list anyway? It's for text, not figures! I've removed OpenOffice.org Draw, Inkscape, and Dia from the list. --EnOreg 17:17, 16 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

How about Graphviz? 217.169.15.243 (talk) 23:05, 25 March 2009 (UTC)Reply

What about it? The Graphviz article doesn't say anything about flowcharts. What support does Graphviz provide? --EnOreg (talk) 11:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

I re-added Dia (general-purpose diagramming software). Dia can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape. Basically its focus is flowcharts. --talk (talk) 10:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Most drawing programs have these features. How does that constitute a focus on flowcharts? General-purpose drawing-programs like Dia don't have a flowchart data-model that would enable them to perform flowchart-specific transformations. They don't "understand" flowcharts — they only "see" arbitrary shapes. The fact that some of these arbitrary shapes happen to look like flowchart elements doesn't seem a good enough reason to include them in an article on flowcharts. --EnOreg (talk) 11:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Due to possible violation of copyright, see WP:Copyvio, I have removed one or more section of this article for now.

I apologize for all inconvenience I have caused here, see also here. If you would like to assist in improving this article, please let me know. I can use all the help I can get. Thank you.

-- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 15:05, 13 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

I appreciate your concern, but you just removed some material that I originally contributed, including information from Von Neumann's and Goldstine's book that took me considerable time to enter and quote with bibliographical reference (I borrowed the book from the library specifically for the purpose) and I'm not happy to see you erase my work just like that. At least indicate how this material supposedly violates copyrights and which source(s) it is supposed to be copying from. Otherwise I'll just revert your deletion. Rp (talk) 16:30, 13 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

You can just put your own contributions back. However if you choose to refert mine as well you can be held responsable for the copyvio's I might have created. This is serious business. I am sorry I can't go into more details right now, because I have other priorities, see also here.

An other possiblity is that you check all text you put back with the original sources, and rewrite some of it. Than this initial copyvio problem will be solved here, which would be great. If you have further questions place let me know. Again I am sorry. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 16:47, 13 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

P.S. Uiteindelijk zal ik hier binnenkort ook terugkeren en wil ik mijn fouten best herstellen, maar dat kan nog even duren zogezegd. Hierbij zal ik uiteraard jouw bijdragen ook herstellen.

This is the wrong approach. You can't lock this article, it will be modified in the meantime, and my work (and that of others) will be lost. The computer science articles are poor enough as it is, I don't need to see my attempts at improvements deleted for no good reason at all. I don't have time to carefully recreate my stuff whenever a madman comes around. Come to your senses and revert the damage you've already done. There is no copyvio problem with this article in the first place. Rp (talk) 17:02, 13 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

This article is not locked. You can restore your edit, whenever you like. Your contribution is not lost, and I can promise you I will restore it myself before the end of this week, if this is ok with you. I also added some details at the talk:diagram article. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 17:16, 13 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

I will double check the sections I removed here now, and will respond soon. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 17:22, 13 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Ok. The reason why I removed those sections is because of this edit 9 January 2009. There is the whole new about types of flowcharts based on two new sources. The mistake I generally made in all of those 100+ articles is that I didn't use quotation marks and or rewrote the original source. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 17:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Please wait, there is more... -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 17:34, 13 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Ok. Here is some more:

• It have just removed two sections "history" and "types of flowchart"
• It seems I have only created the second section

So I don't see any problem if you restore the history section you wrote. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 17:39, 13 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Marcel, you can't just go in and delete sections without even explaining in detail why you think they are copied from somewhere. You need to discuss this properly before deleting anything. I've reverted the sections back in. --EnOreg (talk) 07:27, 14 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Hi EnOreg, the discussion about this started here on my talkpage, I gave a summary here at the Wikiproject systems, and I have been following the leads or at least I am trying of three mods given on my talkpage and specifically here at the WikiProject Copyright Cleanup. I have just asked for new feed back here to set new priorities. You could say the problems I have cause could be considered huge, and I am urged to take rather dramatic measures. I have edited over 6500+ articles in Wikipedia and created or improved bigger parts in over 250+ articles. The temporary deletion of sections to isolation of the copyvio problems is just the first step. I did so in over 200+ articles now.

You could help just checking the way the 3 to 5 sources are/were used here in the removed text, especially the quotations. This is the way to solve this problem here and in the other articles. Again I apologize for all these troubles. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 07:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Mdd wants to remove information he added on 9 January 2009, Here is the diff of those changes. As far as I can see there were was an additional paragraph inserted at the start of the Overview section and another complete section called "Types of flow charts". Doing a diff between Mdd's second edit on 9 January and today gives these differences. The overview section is gone so that is not a problem. The second section though "Types of flowcharts" has only minor modifications. So I suggest that if Mdd thinks it necessary to remove that section for possible copyright violations he should do so. Mdd you have also contributed other substantial edits to this article 2009-09-15 2008-10-02 (but this second one seems to be just a rearrangement). -- PBS (talk) 09:40, 14 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

I think a more practical way to go about this is for Mdd to attribute the passages in question with ref tags, without making any further changes yet. Then others (who now know what to compare the text with) can help out with the cleanup, turning paraphrases into literal quotes or rewriting them where desired. Rp (talk) 10:12, 14 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Ref tags are not enough. The inclusion of copyright material marked by just reg tags is not within Wikipedia policy see Wikipedia:Non-free content#Text. If the section is removed it is still available in the history of the article. But if the section is removed and an editor reverts that edit knowing that it has been deleted for copyright violations and they re-introduce the text without checking that it is not in violation then they are in breach of the Non-free content policy. --PBS (talk) 11:41, 14 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

OK I've put in links to Google books, and from what I can see the first paragraph needs re-writing and the quotes need to be extended on the last quote to cover a few more words. I suggest that for the first paragraph something like this:

Sterneckert (2003) suggested that flowcharts can be modelled from the perspective of different user groups (such as managers, system analysts and clerks) and that there are four general types: [bullet points as currently in the Wiki article.]

--PBS (talk) 12:24, 14 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Having provided the links to the pages for checking, I had hoped that one of the regular editors would have removed the obvious copyright violations from the section, I have now done so as no one else has. -- PBS (talk) 21:11, 17 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks PBS. I made some additional edits in the text to stipulate an essence I missed last time. -- Mdd (talk) 01:52, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Maybe I can give a little background info here. As far as I have analysed just now, I made the following contributions to this article (beside all edits I undid):

• With my 9 January 2009 edit I added the "section about different types of flow charts"
  • Now if you look at the further changes until the last edit before I removed the section, see here, none of that section changed eversince. It was still in the shape I created it 10 months ago...!?
• At 18 November 2008, see here I made some minor rearrangements
• My 2 October 2008 edit is what I call wikification: just a rearranging as PBS already suggested. (Just for the record I wikified 2000+ articles here at the English Wiipedia and 1000+ articles at the Dutch Wikipedia)
• At 31 July 2008, see here, I added a new quote + reference... which should be checked also
• At 24 June 2008, see here a minor wikification
• At 8 January 2008, see here I copied a section here from the Business Process Mapping, which I believe is properly adjusted in the editsummary.

The Jan 8, 2008 edit was my first involvement with this article. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 12:50, 14 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Is there anything wrong with those edits? I can't see any problem. Rp (talk) 21:14, 14 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for asking. I will give my assessment of these edits. Three out of those six could be problematic:

• First: The 8 January 2008 edit is a copy/paste within Wikipedia which should be properly addressed according to GFDL rules. It did address the source in the edit summary, but I am still not sure if this registration is good enough.
• Second: The 31 July 2008 edit is a copy/paste from:

"a graphical representation of a process or the step-by-step solution of a problem, using suitably annotated geometric figures connected by flowlines for the purpose of designing or documenting a process or program. (ISO/IEC 2382-1:1993 Information technology--Vocabulary--Part 1: Fundamental terms, 01.05.06)"

Source: Lemma flowchart in: Computer Society Software and Systems Engineering Vocabulary. Accessed Oct 15, 2009.

The two things didn't seem ok here: I didn't use quotation marks, and I probably should have registered the original source "the ISO/IEC 2382-1:1993"...!?

In the meantime this quote has been rewriten somewhere in the last 390+ intermediate revisions, see here... but the original source is still in place.

• Third: With the 9 January 2009 edit I cited two sources, which have not been rewritten eversince, see here. I checked the first source, see here, and it seems I didn't copy/paste but made a summary here from that text. The next two sources cited seems to insignificant to be any problem.

Just for the record: More general the kind of copyvio problems, I have created here en masse, relate to:

1. the registration of copy/paste within Wikipedia
2. and the use of quotation marks and/or
3. the need to rewrite secondary sources that are copy/pasted here

Based on this assessment, I don't think this is ok now. These are some of the things I want to discuss first.. and double-check. I do want to improve my performance here. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 00:22, 15 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

• In this edit two sections are copy/paste here from the Business Process Mapping article. -- Mdd (talk) 01:38, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

I still think the article doesn't give a good overview of the different types of flowcharts. Several actions have been taken here:

• June 2008 this subject is already mentioned here ago, see here
• In July 2008 I started a Wikicommons gallery Flow chart gallery, which has been developed some more ever since.
• Wikicommons is also offering a gallery on Flow diagrams
• In Jan 2009 I added a section (see here) about the different types of flowcharts.

Despite these efforts I still think there is not a sufficient explanation about what types exist, their characteristics and their differences!? -- Mdd (talk) 13:11, 19 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

I restored the overview section (see here) which was removed some time ago here. That section seems like a good general introduction to me. -- Mdd (talk) 13:26, 19 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

I've removed the text about the example showing a "loop and a half", because it doesn't!

The text was added over five years ago, but as far as I can tell the diagram hasn't changed.

Loop and a half would describe an outer loop that allowed repeated factorial calculations, if the READ block needed to be duplicated. This situation is shown here.

I actually came to this page after googling for a flowchart of a simple loop and the "loop and a half" comment just confused what was otherwise a straightforward example.

Zaq 42 (talk) 05:00, 9 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

In a nutshell this whole edit war 24.162.243.254 (talk) 16:54, 24 February 2012 (UTC) about an inoccuous external link that lets someone create flowcharts is why wikipedia is just... wrong. You get these little tin dictators that just love the feeling of power they have. Then there are the anarchists who just want to exchange knowledge and information. Ah, you petty dictators. It must drive you crazy when you're forced to think. Wouldn't life be easier if things could just stay the same, constant, forever? Wouldn't it be great if people just stopped making changes to your perfect pages?Reply

So a person adds a link. Verboten! Remove it, cite specious reasons. Person adds the link back. So another partner in the petty power trip steps in and removes the link, citing different specious reasons.. Person agrees with specious reasons, and deletes a few more links.

Get a freaking life, you pathetic petty tyrants. Being lord and master over some number of Wikipedia pages does not make you powerful.

Please have a look at Wikipedia:External links, which is a useful guideline. I just now clicked on the offered link and got a fairly uninformative page with some kind of edit window on it and nothing I could identify as a "flow chart maker". External links should be something that help explain the subject of the article, and should not be just pointers to some scratchpad that is only incidentally related. There would have been a slightly better arguement to keeping this link if it had pointed at a page that worked. This page doesn't even produce flow charts. Its utility to the article reader is non-existent. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:04, 24 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

That's odd, it just worked for me. Are you using internet explorer? IE doesn't support svg. Perhaps you should complain to microsoft? Or perhaps try clicking on the "Save as png" link? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.210.244.67 (talk) 20:22, 24 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

Just worked for me too. Maybe the OP ought to calm down a bit though... 98.189.5.170 (talk) 22:14, 24 February 2012 (UTC)Reply

please see also http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmablaufplan --77.25.105.57 (talk) 19:46, 17 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

I guess, we are more into ISO here. -- Mdd (talk) 23:55, 17 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

David Gries mentions flowcharts in his 1981 book The Science of Programming, but calls them "flaw charts", perhaps as a tongue-in-cheek way of expressing his dislike for them. (Bashing flowcharts and other 1960s-era programming styles was in vogue at the time, during the rise of structured programming.) I have never seen the term used anywhere else, or by anyone else, though. — Loadmaster (talk) 20:50, 15 May 2018 (UTC)Reply

• David Gries, The Science of Programming, p. 275, retrieved 15 May 2018