Talk:Alice and Bob

Other languages

What names are used in other languages? Or cryptologist only write in English? 09:37, 22 Jun 2004 80.224.96.250

That's an interesting question! The majority of modern cryptographic research is indeed written in English. Some of the German Wikipedia articles on cryptography use Alice and Bob (e.g. de:Quantenkryptographie). A google search for "Alice Bob kriptografie" gives a Czech page (http://cml.fsv.cvut.cz/~kupca/qc/node25.html) as well as German, so it seems fair to say that Alice and Bob are used, at least sometimes, in other languages as well. — Matt 13:54, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

And there is some discussion on the question of cryptographer / cryptologist at Talk:Marian Rejewski from a Polish language perspective. No comments on names for the 'strawfolk' in Polish discussions however. ww 13:44, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

humor in this article

As the external link shows, the entire subject has been the object of amusement for a long time. This is not out of line here on the WP to note this, in my view, and so the recent deletions of all humourous comment was perhaps too much. Schneier's reference to the Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice movie was itself mostly humourous. In my view, it's harmless, though some of the attempted humour has been a little leaden. ww 19:31, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think we may have discussed this before, but I really don't think such things are OK stylistically in an encyclopedia. Phrases like: "The whiff of Wonderland one gets is not irrelevant." or "Too far down the alphabet, perhaps, or perhaps the movie is not the ubersource" are not the kind of thing you'd expect to see when you whip out Britannica. A reference work, even one as (comparatively) laid-back as Wikipedia, is written in a different style to, say, a weblog, or a chatty textbook (like Applied Cryptography, for example), or a set of lecture notes, or Everything2.

Moreover, humour, in particular, is problematic for reasons other than style; of all the things that don't transmit well across cultures, humour (and "in-references") is probably the worst. Wikipedia is an international project, so we can't assume that everyone either has the cultural context to appreciate the joke, or that they would find it funny. We should be writing for clarity, not subtlety. — Matt 22:43, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Matt, I agree that subtlety can be lost for international audiences, but this is a problem with translation generally, not only humor, and nothing WPians can do or not do will help much with it. This is a problem up with which we will, I expect, just have to put.

I didn't mean translation into other languages; I meant English speakers for which English may not be their first language. There's one very easy thing we can do about such readers missing subtle references and overt jokes -- simply avoid it. The resulting text is much more encyclopedic, and likely to be clearer to a wider selection of people. — Matt 17:36, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Matt, I had in mind just that situation when using (or perhaps misusing) the word translation. It has been my experience, and perhaps also yours, that humor (I'll stick with AE, as that's what my fingers seem to want here) often needs to be explained to those outside the <language, community, educational background, experience context, ...> for whom the humor works. In this case, the humor is that odd 'hacker' perspective in which a comment such as (straining to remember an apt joke), '...and that's why APL is a Chinese programming language', is funny. But the fact of the humorous context is still notable encyclopedically. Just how exactly seems to be the crux of the difference here. Do you agree as to that?

As for clarity, I agree wholeheartedly as you might expect. However, I do think a light tone can sometimes contribute to just that.

Much of point of the whole Alice and Bob thing is the humorous quality of it. Certainly almost all of the context within which it is used is so. The mere meta-syntactic participant aspect is the least significant when discussing it. To leave it (or at least some of it) out is un-encyclopedic, it seems to me, at least on this subject. In particular, I've had it pointed out to me that Alice seems a good choice (however it was originally made, I suppose) as it does have a whiff of Wonderland about it which fits well with the oddities and obscuritites of crypto into which one is plunged following Alice and her compatriots. It's harmless, and to the point.

I'm afraid I disagree...I think it's neither harmless nor on-topic. Sentences like "The whiff of Wonderland one gets is not irrelevant." seem to add little information, and would be very confusing to those who haven't heard of Alice in Wonderland. I believe the article is much better without it. We do note: "The names are ...sometimes humorous". You could, in theory, add something like, "The name of Alice is associated with Lewis Carroll's children's story Alice in Wonderland, and the puzzling and obscure nature of cryptography is frequently compared to the nonsensical Wonderland of the book.", or some such, but it still seems to me as if it wouldn't add much, (and I'd like to see a source before we add something of that nature.) — Matt 17:36, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

To draw a (perhaps not quite on point exactly) parallel, one would, I expect, be doing somewhat the wrong (encyclopedic) thing in a discussion of Gulliver's Travels to leave out some comments on the amusing choices Swift made and to concentrate solely on the political / philosophical / structural elements. This may lead into deconstructional issues and I fervently hope it doesn't -- it is that fear which occasioned the 'not quite on point' observation.

More generally, User:Wetman has some comments on this at his user page which are I think relevant and persuasive. The Britannica style is not, for him, nor for me, what WP should quite be aiming at. And indeed there is much non Brittanical about WP. But, as you point out, we seem to have disagreed on this, and I anticipate that we will do so in future. ww 16:14, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think using an encyclopedic style is what is important, not (especially) Britannica's brand of it. Almost of all of Wikipedia is written in what I would call an encyclopedic style. — Matt 17:36, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Matt and I clearly have some divergence of opinion regarding this article, and indeed style and humor issues generally here on WP. Others surely have an opinion as well. Perhaps they'd like to comment? ww 17:45, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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Random quote I came across: "the Alice of cryptographic fame is neither hermaphroditic nor transgendered" - Neal Koblitz and Alfred Menezes, commenting on a signature scheme in which Alice is able to prove that she is Bob. [1] (http://eprint.iacr.org/2004/152.ps) Arvindn 06:24, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

reversion this date

The elision of a paragraph noting the literary convention has been reverted. The reasoning for the reversion is that a) it is a literary convention, albeit in engineering articles and b) the discussion of the material behind the convention is relevant to what is actually happening and so to an understanding of possible reificational effects of the convention's use. Neither point is off topic (albeit b) is more serious than the tone of the rest of the article) and so didn't deserve deletion. Comments? ww 19:16, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It wasn't reverted, it was reworded as a compromise: I agree with the anonymous editor who removed it originally. The material was:

"One problem with this literary convention is that it oversimplifies reality. Alice almost never makes the computations ascribed to her. Instead she clicks icons on the screen of a computer she purchased from a retailer, who received it from a factory in Asia, where it was assembled from chips designed, fabricated and packaged in half a dozen countries. The software intended to perform the mathematical function (Alice computes...) was downloaded over the Internet accompanied with a cryptographic hash verification value she never checked. It typically runs on a closed source operating system with known security flaws, some of which were corrected in patches she never installed. Her computer is connected to the Internet where it is constantly attacked, and often penetrated, by various forms of malware. The computer sits on a desk where it is easily accessed by coworkers, cleaning people and others. Of what it is really calculating, Alice has no certainty."

The point seems to be that a human doesn't necessarily do the actions, and that it's usually an agent acting on his/her behalf. The new summary retains this point, although I wouldn't have thought it necessary to point this out. Regarding a) I've added the word "conventional". b) I think most of the paragraph is off-topic. The article is about the standard characters used in descriptions of protocols; it's not about the the perils of running closed-source operating systems, accessiblity of desks to coworkers, factories in Asia, and so on. — Matt Crypto 19:40, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)