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Secure multi-party computation

Secure multi-party computation (also known as secure computation, multi-party computation (MPC) or privacy-preserving computation) is a subfield of cryptography with the goal of creating methods for parties to jointly compute a function over their inputs while keeping those inputs private. Unlike traditional cryptographic tasks, where cryptography assures security and integrity of communication or storage and the adversary is outside the system of participants (an eavesdropper on the sender and receiver), the cryptography in this model protects participants' privacy from each other.

The foundation for secure multi-party computation started in the late 1970s with the work on mental poker, cryptographic work that simulates game playing/computational tasks over distances without requiring a trusted third party. Traditionally, cryptography was about concealing content, while this new type of computation and protocol is about concealing partial information about data while computing with the data from many sources, and correctly producing outputs. By the late 1980s, Michael Ben-Or, Shafi Goldwasser and Avi Wigderson, and independently David Chaum, Claude Crépeau, and Ivan Damgård, had published papers showing "how to securely compute any function in the secure channels setting".

History
Special purpose protocols for specific tasks started in the late 1970s. Later, secure computation was formally introduced as secure two-party computation (2PC) in 1982 (for the so-called Millionaires' Problem, a specific problem which is a Boolean predicate), and in generality (for any feasible computation) in 1986 by Andrew Yao. The area is also referred to as Secure Function Evaluation (SFE). The two party case was followed by a generalization to the multi-party by Oded Goldreich, Silvio Micali, and Avi Wigderson. The computation is based on secret sharing of all the inputs and zero-knowledge proofs for a potentially malicious case, where the majority of honest players in the malicious adversary case assure that bad behavior is detected and the computation continues with the dishonest person eliminated or his input revealed. This work suggested the very basic general scheme to be followed by essentially all future multi-party protocols for secure computing. This work introduced an approach, known as GMW paradigm, for compiling a multi-party computation protocol which is secure against semi-honest adversaries to a protocol that is secure against malicious adversaries. This work was followed by the first robust secure protocol which tolerates faulty behavior graciously without revealing anyone's output via a work which invented for this purpose the often used `share of shares idea' and a protocol that allows one of the parties to hide its input unconditionally. The GMW paradigm was considered to be inefficient for years because of huge overheads that it brings to the base protocol. However, it is shown that it is possible to achieve efficient protocols, and it makes this line of research even more interesting from a practical perspective. The above results are in a model where the adversary is limited to polynomial time computations, and it observes all communications, and therefore the model is called the `computational model'. Further, the protocol of oblivious transfer was shown to be complete for these tasks. The above results established that it is possible under the above variations to achieve secure computation when the majority of users are honest.

The next question to solve was the case of secure communication channels where the point-to-point communication is not available to the adversary; in this case it was shown that solutions can be achieved with up to 1/3 of the parties being misbehaving and malicious, and the solutions apply no cryptographic tools (since secure communication is available). Adding a broadcast channel allows the system to tolerate up to 1/2 misbehaving minority, whereas connectivity constraints on the communication graph were investigated in the book Perfectly Secure Message Transmission.

Over the years, the notion of general purpose multi-party protocols became a fertile area to investigate basic and general protocol issues properties on, such as universal composability or mobile adversary as in proactive secret sharing.

Since the late 2000s, and certainly since 2010 and on, the domain of general purpose protocols has moved to deal with efficiency improvements of the protocols with practical applications in mind. Increasingly efficient protocols for MPC have been proposed, and MPC can be now considered as a practical solution to various real-life problems (especially ones that only require linear sharing of the secrets and mainly local operations on the shares with not much interactions among the parties), such as distributed voting, private bidding and auctions, sharing of signature or decryption functions and private information retrieval. The first large-scale and practical application of multi-party computation was the execution of an electronic double auction in the Danish Sugar Beet Auction, which took place in January 2008. Obviously, both theoretical notions and investigations, and applied constructions are needed (e.g., conditions for moving MPC into part of day by day business was advocated and presented in ).

In 2020, a number of companies working with secure-multiparty computation founded the MPC alliance with the goal of "accelerate awareness, acceptance, and adoption of MPC technology."

Definition and overview
In an MPC, a given number of participants, p1, p2, ..., pN, each have private data, respectively d1, d2, ..., dN. Participants want to compute the value of a public function on that private data: F(d1, d2, ..., dN) while keeping their own inputs secret.

For example, suppose we have three parties Alice, Bob and Charlie, with respective inputs x, y and z denoting their salaries. They want to find out the highest of the three salaries, without revealing to each other how much each of them makes. Mathematically, this translates to them computing:

If there were some trusted outside party (say, they had a mutual friend Tony who they knew could keep a secret), they could each tell their salary to Tony, he could compute the maximum, and tell that number to all of them. The goal of MPC is to design a protocol, where, by exchanging messages only with each other, Alice, Bob, and Charlie can still learn $F(x, y, z) = max(x, y, z)$ without revealing who makes what and without having to rely on Tony. They should learn no more by engaging in their protocol than they would learn by interacting with an incorruptible, perfectly trustworthy Tony.

In particular, all that the parties can learn is what they can learn from the output and their own input. So in the above example, if the output is $z$, then Charlie learns that his $z$ is the maximum value, whereas Alice and Bob learn (if $x$, $y$ and $z$ are distinct), that their input is not equal to the maximum, and that the maximum held is equal to $z$. The basic scenario can be easily generalised to where the parties have several inputs and outputs, and the function outputs different values to different parties.

Informally speaking, the most basic properties that a multi-party computation protocol aims to ensure are:
 * Input privacy: No information about the private data held by the parties can be inferred from the messages sent during the execution of the protocol. The only information that can be inferred about the private data is whatever could be inferred from seeing the output of the function alone.
 * Correctness: Any proper subset of adversarial colluding parties willing to share information or deviate from the instructions during the protocol execution should not be able to force honest parties to output an incorrect result. This correctness goal comes in two flavours: either the honest parties are guaranteed to compute the correct output (a "robust" protocol), or they abort if they find an error (an MPC protocol "with abort").

There are a wide range of practical applications, varying from simple tasks such as coin tossing to more complex ones like electronic auctions (e.g. compute the market clearing price), electronic voting, or privacy-preserving data mining. A classical example is the Millionaires' Problem: two millionaires want to know who is richer, in such a way that neither of them learns the net worth of the other. A solution to this situation is essentially to securely evaluate the comparison function.

Security definitions
A multi-party computation protocol must be secure to be effective. In modern cryptography, the security of a protocol is related to a security proof. The security proof is a mathematical proof where the security of a protocol is reduced to that of the security of its underlying primitives. Nevertheless, it is not always possible to formalize the cryptographic protocol security verification based on the party knowledge and the protocol correctness. For MPC protocols, the environment in which the protocol operates is associated with the Real World/Ideal World Paradigm. The parties can't be said to learn nothing, since they need to learn the output of the operation, and the output depends on the inputs. In addition, the output correctness is not guaranteed, since the correctness of the output depends on the parties’ inputs, and the inputs have to be assumed to be correct.

The Real World/Ideal World Paradigm states two worlds: (i) In the ideal-world model, there exists an incorruptible trusted party to whom each protocol participant sends its input. This trusted party computes the function on its own and sends back the appropriate output to each party. (ii) In contrast, in the real-world model, there is no trusted party and all the parties can do is to exchange messages with each other. A protocol is said to be secure if one can learn no more about each party's private inputs in the real world than one could learn in the ideal world. In the ideal world, no messages are exchanged between parties, so real-world exchanged messages cannot reveal any secret information.

The Real World/Ideal World Paradigm provides a simple abstraction of the complexities of MPC to allow the construction of an application under the pretense that the MPC protocol at its core is actually an ideal execution. If the application is secure in the ideal case, then it is also secure when a real protocol is run instead.

The security requirements on an MPC protocol are stringent. Nonetheless, in 1987 it was demonstrated that any function can be securely computed, with security for malicious adversaries and the other initial works mentioned before. Despite these publications, MPC was not designed to be efficient enough to be used in practice at that time. Unconditionally or information-theoretically secure MPC is closely related and builds on to the problem of secret sharing, and more specifically verifiable secret sharing (VSS), which many secure MPC protocols use against active adversaries.

Unlike traditional cryptographic applications, such as encryption or signature, one must assume that the adversary in an MPC protocol is one of the players engaged in the system (or controlling internal parties). That corrupted party or parties may collude in order to breach the security of the protocol. Let $$n$$ be the number of parties in the protocol and $$t$$ the number of parties who can be adversarial. The protocols and solutions for the case of $$t < n/2$$ (i.e., when an honest majority is assumed) are different from those where no such assumption is made. This latter case includes the important case of two-party computation where one of the participants may be corrupted, and the general case where an unlimited number of participants are corrupted and collude to attack the honest participants.

Adversaries faced by the different protocols can be categorized according to how willing they are to deviate from the protocol. There are essentially two types of adversaries, each giving rise to different forms of security (and each fits into different real world scenario):
 * Semi-Honest (Passive) Security: In this case, it is assumed that corrupted parties merely cooperate to gather information out of the protocol, but do not deviate from the protocol specification. This is a naive adversary model, yielding weak security in real situations. However, protocols achieving this level of security prevent inadvertent leakage of information between (otherwise collaborating) parties, and are thus useful if this is the only concern. In addition, protocols in the semi-honest model are quite efficient, and are often an important first step for achieving higher levels of security.
 * Malicious (Active) Security: In this case, the adversary may arbitrarily deviate from the protocol execution in its attempt to cheat. Protocols that achieve security in this model provide a very high security guarantee. In the case of majority of misbehaving parties: The only thing that an adversary can do in the case of dishonest majority is to cause the honest parties to "abort" having detected cheating. If the honest parties do obtain output, then they are guaranteed that it is correct. Their privacy is always preserved.

Security against active adversaries typically leads to a reduction in efficiency. Covert security is an alternative that aims to allow greater efficiency in exchange for weakening the security definition; it is applicable to situations where active adversaries are willing to cheat but only if they are not caught. For example, their reputation could be damaged, preventing future collaboration with other honest parties. Thus, protocols that are covertly secure provide mechanisms to ensure that, if some of the parties do not follow the instructions, then it will be noticed with high probability, say 75% or 90%. In a way, covert adversaries are active ones forced to act passively due to external non-cryptographic (e.g. business) concerns. This mechanism sets a bridge between both models in the hope of finding protocols which are efficient and secure enough in practice.

Like many cryptographic protocols, the security of an MPC protocol can rely on different assumptions:
 * It can be computational (i.e. based on some mathematical problem, like factoring) or unconditional, namely relying on physical unavailability of messages on channels (usually with some probability of error which can be made arbitrarily small).
 * The model might assume that participants use a synchronized network, where a message sent at a "tick" always arrives at the next "tick", or that a secure and reliable broadcast channel exists, or that a secure communication channel exists between every pair of participants where an adversary cannot read, modify or generate messages in the channel, etc.

The set of honest parties that can execute a computational task is related to the concept of access structure. Adversary structures can be static, where the adversary chooses its victims before the start of the multi-party computation, or dynamic, where it chooses its victims during the course of execution of the multi-party computation making the defense harder. An adversary structure can be defined as a threshold structure or as a more complex structure. In a threshold structure the adversary can corrupt or read the memory of a number of participants up to some threshold. Meanwhile, in a complex structure it can affect certain predefined subsets of participants, modeling different possible collusions.

Protocols
There are major differences between the protocols proposed for two party computation (2PC) and multi-party computation (MPC). Also, often for special purpose protocols of importance a specialized protocol that deviates from the generic ones has to be designed (voting, auctions, payments, etc.)

Two-party computation
The two party setting is particularly interesting, not only from an applications perspective but also because special techniques can be applied in the two party setting which do not apply in the multi-party case. Indeed, secure multi-party computation (in fact the restricted case of secure function evaluation, where only a single function is evaluated) was first presented in the two-party setting. The original work is often cited as being from one of the two papers of Yao; although the papers do not actually contain what is now known as Yao's garbled circuit protocol.

Yao's basic protocol is secure against semi-honest adversaries and is extremely efficient in terms of number of rounds, which is constant, and independent of the target function being evaluated. The function is viewed as a Boolean circuit, with inputs in binary of fixed length. A Boolean circuit is a collection of gates connected with three different types of wires: circuit-input wires, circuit-output wires and intermediate wires. Each gate receives two input wires and it has a single output wire which might be fan-out (i.e. be passed to multiple gates at the next level). Plain evaluation of the circuit is done by evaluating each gate in turn; assuming the gates have been topologically ordered. The gate is represented as a truth table such that for each possible pair of bits (those coming from the input wires' gate) the table assigns a unique output bit; which is the value of the output wire of the gate. The results of the evaluation are the bits obtained in the circuit-output wires.

Yao explained how to garble a circuit (hide its structure) so that two parties, sender and receiver, can learn the output of the circuit and nothing else. At a high level, the sender prepares the garbled circuit and sends it to the receiver, who obliviously evaluates the circuit, learning the encodings corresponding to both his and the sender's output. He then just sends back the sender's encodings, allowing the sender to compute his part of the output. The sender sends the mapping from the receivers output encodings to bits to the receiver, allowing the receiver to obtain their output.

In more detail, the garbled circuit is computed as follows. The main ingredient is a double-keyed symmetric encryption scheme. Given a gate of the circuit, each possible value of its input wires (either 0 or 1) is encoded with a random number (label). The values resulting from the evaluation of the gate at each of the four possible pair of input bits are also replaced with random labels. The garbled truth table of the gate consists of encryptions of each output label using its inputs labels as keys. The position of these four encryptions in the truth table is randomized so no information on the gate is leaked.

To correctly evaluate each garbled gate the encryption scheme has the following two properties. Firstly, the ranges of the encryption function under any two distinct keys are disjoint (with overwhelming probability). The second property says that it can be checked efficiently whether a given ciphertext has been encrypted under a given key. With these two properties the receiver, after obtaining the labels for all circuit-input wires, can evaluate each gate by first finding out which of the four ciphertexts has been encrypted with his label keys, and then decrypting to obtain the label of the output wire. This is done obliviously as all the receiver learns during the evaluation are encodings of the bits.

The sender's (i.e. circuit creators) input bits can be just sent as encodings to the evaluator; whereas the receiver's (i.e. circuit evaluators) encodings corresponding to his input bits are obtained via a 1-out-of-2 oblivious transfer (OT) protocol. A 1-out-of-2 OT protocol enables the sender possessing of two values C1 and C2 to send the one requested by the receiver (b a value in {1,2}) in such a way that the sender does not know what value has been transferred, and the receiver only learns the queried value.

If one is considering malicious adversaries, further mechanisms to ensure correct behavior of both parties need to be provided. By construction it is easy to show security for the sender if the OT protocol is already secure against malicious adversary, as all the receiver can do is to evaluate a garbled circuit that would fail to reach the circuit-output wires if he deviated from the instructions. The situation is very different on the sender's side. For example, he may send an incorrect garbled circuit that computes a function revealing the receiver's input. This would mean that privacy no longer holds, but since the circuit is garbled the receiver would not be able to detect this. However, it is possible to efficiently apply Zero-Knowledge proofs to make this protocol secure against malicious adversaries with a small overhead comparing to the semi-honest protocol.

Multi-party protocols
Most MPC protocols, as opposed to 2PC protocols and especially under the unconditional setting of private channels, make use of secret sharing. In the secret sharing based methods, the parties do not play special roles (as in Yao, of creator and evaluator). Instead, the data associated with each wire is shared amongst the parties, and a protocol is then used to evaluate each gate. The function is now defined as a "circuit" over a finite field, as opposed to the binary circuits used for Yao. Such a circuit is called an arithmetic circuit in the literature, and it consists of addition and multiplication "gates" where the values operated on are defined over a finite field.

Secret sharing allows one to distribute a secret among a number of parties by distributing shares to each party. Two types of secret sharing schemes are commonly used; Shamir secret sharing and additive secret sharing. In both cases the shares are random elements of a finite field that add up to the secret in the field; intuitively, security is achieved because any non-qualifying set of shares looks randomly distributed.

Secret sharing schemes can tolerate an adversary controlling up to t parties out of n total parties, where t varies based on the scheme, the adversary can be passive or active, and different assumptions are made on the power of the adversary. The Shamir secret sharing scheme is secure against a passive adversary when $$t < \frac{n}{2}$$ and an active adversary when $$t < \frac{n}{3}$$ while achieving information-theoretic security, meaning that even if the adversary has unbounded computational power, they cannot learn any information about the secret underlying a share. The BGW protocol, which defines how to compute addition and multiplication on secret shares, is often used to compute functions with Shamir secret shares. Additive secret sharing schemes can tolerate the adversary controlling all but one party, that is $$t < n$$, while maintaining security against a passive and active adversary with unbounded computational power. Some protocols require a setup phase, which may only be secure against a computationally bounded adversary.

A number of systems have implemented various forms of MPC with secret sharing schemes. The most popular is SPDZ, which implements MPC with additive secret shares and is secure against active adversaries.

Other protocols
In 2014 a "model of fairness in secure computation in which an adversarial party that aborts on receiving output is forced to pay a mutually predefined monetary penalty" has been described for the Bitcoin network or for fair lottery, and has been successfully implemented in Ethereum.

Practical MPC systems
Many advances have been made on 2PC and MPC systems in recent years.

Yao-based protocols
One of the main issues when working with Yao-based protocols is that the function to be securely evaluated (which could be an arbitrary program) must be represented as a circuit, usually consisting of XOR and AND gates. Since most real-world programs contain loops and complex data structures, this is a highly non-trivial task. The Fairplay system was the first tool designed to tackle this problem. Fairplay comprises two main components. The first of these is a compiler enabling users to write programs in a simple high-level language, and output these programs in a Boolean circuit representation. The second component can then garble the circuit and execute a protocol to securely evaluate the garbled circuit. As well as two-party computation based on Yao's protocol, Fairplay can also carry out multi-party protocols. This is done using the BMR protocol, which extends Yao's passively secure protocol to the active case.

In the years following the introduction of Fairplay, many improvements to Yao's basic protocol have been created, in the form of both efficiency improvements and techniques for active security. These include techniques such as the free XOR method, which allows for much simpler evaluation of XOR gates, and garbled row reduction, reducing the size of garbled tables with two inputs by 25%.

The approach that so far seems to be the most fruitful in obtaining active security comes from a combination of the garbling technique and the "cut-and-choose" paradigm. This combination seems to render more efficient constructions. To avoid the aforementioned problems with respect to dishonest behaviour, many garblings of the same circuit are sent from the constructor to the evaluator. Then around half of them (depending on the specific protocol) are opened to check consistency, and if so a vast majority of the unopened ones are correct with high probability. The output is the majority vote of all the evaluations. Here the majority output is needed. If there is disagreement on the outputs the receiver knows the sender is cheating, but he cannot complain as otherwise this would leak information on his input.

This approach for active security was initiated by Lindell and Pinkas. This technique was implemented by Pinkas et al. in 2009, This provided the first actively secure two-party evaluation of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) circuit, regarded as a highly complex (consisting of around 30,000 AND and XOR gates), non-trivial function (also with some potential applications), taking around 20 minutes to compute and requiring 160 circuits to obtain a $$2^{-40}$$ cheating probability.

As many circuits are evaluated, the parties (including the receiver) need to commit to their inputs to ensure that in all the iterations the same values are used. The experiments of Pinkas et al. reported show that the bottleneck of the protocol lies in the consistency checks. They had to send over the net about 6,553,600 commitments to various values to evaluate the AES circuit. In recent results the efficiency of actively secure Yao-based implementations was improved even further, requiring only 40 circuits, and a much smaller number of commitments, to obtain $$2^{-40}$$ cheating probability. The improvements come from new methodologies for performing cut-and-choose on the transmitted circuits.

More recently, there has been a focus on highly parallel implementations based on garbled circuits, designed to be run on CPUs with many cores. Kreuter, et al. describe an implementation running on 512 cores of a powerful cluster computer. Using these resources they could evaluate the 4095-bit edit distance function, whose circuit comprises almost 6 billion gates. To accomplish this they developed a custom, better optimized circuit compiler than Fairplay and several new optimizations such as pipelining, whereby transmission of the garbled circuit across the network begins while the rest of the circuit is still being generated. The time to compute AES was reduced to 1.4 seconds per block in the active case, using a 512-node cluster machine, and 115 seconds using one node. Shelat and Shen improve this, using commodity hardware, to 0.52 seconds per block. The same paper reports on a throughput of 21 blocks per second, but with a latency of 48 seconds per block.

Meanwhile, another group of researchers has investigated using consumer-grade GPUs to achieve similar levels of parallelism. They utilize oblivious transfer extensions and some other novel techniques to design their GPU-specific protocol. This approach seems to achieve comparable efficiency to the cluster computing implementation, using a similar number of cores. However, the authors only report on an implementation of the AES circuit, which has around 50,000 gates. On the other hand, the hardware required here is far more accessible, as similar devices may already be found in many people's desktop computers or games consoles. The authors obtain a timing of 2.7 seconds per AES block on a standard desktop, with a standard GPU. If they allow security to decrease to something akin to covert security, they obtain a run time of 0.30 seconds per AES block. In the passive security case there are reports of processing of circuits with 250 million gates, and at a rate of 75 million gates per second.

Implementations of secure multi-party computation data analyses
One of the primary applications of secure multi-party computation is allowing analysis of data that is held by multiple parties, or blind analysis of data by third parties without allowing the data custodian to understand the kind of data analysis being performed.

title: Secure multi-party computation


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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Batlabs

 * Insignificant. Advertisement-ish wording. I'm in favor of deleting it, but not strongly so. Fredrik 15:20, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: Only around 14 sites seem to link to them. --bodnotbod 16:36, May 10, 2004 (UTC)
 * Insignificant, borderline vanity, definite ad. Delete. - Lucky 6.9 16:37, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
 * About 1000 hits at Google (german). But, even so, too much ad, too less information and importance. Delete. Sid 17:04, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Amazing how people spend their time online, eh? Keep. I'll de-Wikispam it. Alcarillo
 * Amazing how other people can take wasted time and hard drive space and turn it into something useful! Keep as a useful NPOV stub.  I withdraw my delete vote. - Lucky 6.9 20:43, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Batlabs


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Talk:FoxTrot

Untitled

 * Maybe someone can put up the 2005-05-08 comic onto the page, since it's content is about wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.66.219.193 (talk • contribs)
 * It's there. See the popular culture section. - Mike | Talk 20:28, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Such a long lapse, here's the correction, that cartoon reference was on the 7th, sisters and warthogs and rabies. Oh my!  WurmWoode  T   21:13, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

 * I have copied and pasted the peer review also to the link directed to by the template - so both versions work. Hopefully, this will clear up a bit of the confusion. –-  kungming·2 | (Talk ·Contact) 05:59, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Compliments to the chef, this is great! -- user:zanimum - I'm curious who 172.194.154.79 is...seems like some of the changes they made almost seem to be selling FoxTrot...maybe an editor at the syndicate...or, dare I say it, Bill Amend himself? who knows...

--JonMoore 19:02, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

 * More likely, 24.107.41.241 is AndrewDavis who is Bill Amend.

 * cryptic grin* Because I know something you don't :D

 * crud --JonMoore 19:09, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I saw that Paige's biology teacher was called Mr. Wu. I looked at an old FoxTrot comic and found he is named Dr. Ting, and I changed it. Is there an older one calling him Mr. Wu?

No he was never called Mr. Wu.

^He was called Dr. Wu in at least one strip before he was known as Dr. Ting.

I know what you know too. It is that you are Bill Amend's editor! That was for you Jon Moore.

If you came here looking for the morse code translation, it's "I will rule you all."

I think the morse code was "Someday I will rule you all." Wclark3 04:02, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I've always suspected he was the uncle Phobee and Eugene were visiting in "encyclopedias brown and white" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.112.229.94 (talk) 02:18, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

A Few Comments
Should we link the Warthog article to Paige Fox? Also, who is Dave. I have read every FoxTrot anthology and have read the comics almost everyday for the past four years, and I don't remeber a Dave. I don't even rember anyone besides Jason who writes computer programs, particulary .net programs. Also, I think Andy still is a newspaper columnist, despite what the article says. Mred64 21:21, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
 * No, it's probably not necessary to link Paige to Warthog. Such a minor mention in one little strip (albeit THE strip that mainstreamed Wikipedia, which made me jump for joy earlier when I read it) isn't enough to link the page itself to the page in question . We can talk about it all we like on this talk page, however. --DXI 05:29, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I meant it as a joke. Although, do you know about Dave? I still don't remember hearing about him. And I thought Andy still was a newspaper columnist. If you can show me a comic that proves me wrong, I'll gladly go along with it. Mred64 23:54, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, Andy is still a newspaper columnist. --Brain 00:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Pictures
The main characters list seems a little uneven with just Paige's picture and no one else's. I realize that the picture in question was originally added for some humorous vandalism, but could it be possible to get similar pictures of the rest of the Fox family? --DXI 01:52, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
 * You could. However, I think that image of Paige is a link on the Foxtrot website. I can't remember if each family member has a picture. If you can somehow take those images and place them in Wikipedia, without violating copyright laws, then someone with the know-how can probably get an image of each character from the website. Would someone break copyright law if they were to directly take the images from the FoxTrot website? Also, could someone copy those images, if acceptable, from the website and paste them into Wikipedia? Mred64 22:57, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Maybe we should ask Bill Amend for permission. Obviously, he must frequent Wikipedia (hence the comic) and, frankly, the first thing I would look up if I were he, is this article (or Bill Amend). Logic dictates that Amend has seen this article, maybe even edited it (which could explain some of the cryptic comments above). Please Mr. Amend, let us use your drawings!--[[User:JonMoore|—Jo nMo ore  20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 02:59, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Even if he wanted to, he may not be able to give permission. The one we are using was uploaded under a "fair use" justification. That may be OK, but I don't know if using all of the pictures from that profile page would be fair use. Jonathunder 03:09, 2005 May 13 (UTC)
 * My only concern is how it looks compared to the rest of the main characters' profiles. It seems weird with only Paige there without the rest of them. I'd upload more images myself, but images really aren't my specialty on the 'pedia. Of course, it would be cool if Amend himself were to upload the pictures, as long as it doesn't create any conflict of interest with the rest of the article's content (hint hint, Bill, if you see this, haha). --DXI 22:04, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Since people are talking a lot, even if not about the subject I want to know, does anyone know about Andy and Dave? Did Dave exist in the comics? The article talks about someone called Dave. Second, the article gave me the feeling Andy isn't a newspaper columnist anymore. I thought she still wrote a column, and I haven't read anything in the comics to make me feel otherwise. Granted, she hasn't been seen writing for the paper in the comics for a while, but I think she still writes a column. Also, how can we get permission to use the other FoxTrot characters' pictures? Mred64 17:06, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
 * The topic at hand isn't Andy's career or a character named Dave, it's about what to do with the character pictures. Personally, I say we should remove Paige's picture if we decide against uploading any pictures of the rest of the family. --DXI 04:25, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

New Section in Article
I'm thinking of adding a new section to the article, along the lines of "Places in FoxTrot." It would discuss the various places the Fox family goes to, mainly in their vacations. There could be a section on Fun-Fun Mountain, Cactus Flats, Uncle Ralph's cabin, etc. Would this be appropriate, or since these places really don't come up again often in the comic, would it be better left out? Mred64 21:54, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
 * It would seem no one has any objections to me creating this section, so I'm going to start working on it sometime this week. If you feel this section is inappropriate, or would like to make a comment about it, please tell me. Mred64 22:55, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Anyone notice that the FoxTrot home is not mentioned as a "Places in FoxTrot." If that is where most of the comic happens, should it be mentioned?
 * Above comment by User:205.166.175.2 at 08:54, 29 June 2005

 * I think most people skipped it because, we don't know much about it. We know it is in a suburb, it has a basement, and it is at least two stories. The comic never adresses that much about the house. Rooms have different background colors even in the same strip. Spatial relations between rooms seem to depend on punchlines, as do decorations and knick knacks. I just don't think putting it in would do that much, because we can't definitively write much about it. Mred64 07:41, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

 * Also, the beginning of the Fox Family section seems to provide a lot of information about where they live. If people think its wise, then perhaps that section should be moved under a Fox Family Home heading in "Places in FoxTrot." Mred64 07:52, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Featured Article
Does anyone else think that this article could be worthy of Featured Article status? I mean this article looks really, really good. It seems very wikified in that it links to many other articles, it is facutally accurate, and it has almost all the relevant information one could ask for. If anyone thinks so, maybe someone could put it up for nomination. Mred64 22:17, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

 * I think we should put it up for Peer Review first, and get a feel for it. --[[User:JonMoore|—Jo nMo ore  20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 22:40, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * OK then. I didn't really know what Wikipedia Peer Review was. Who thinks we should submit a request that it be peer reviewed? What should we stress that people specifically look at, etc? What should we say about the article? -- Mred64 15:02, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

 * The problem is that it doesn't use too much encylopedic language currently. "who unfortunately turned out to be a total dweeb" - doesn't seem that way. Should be corrected. I don't have the time now. -- Natalinasmpf 01:00, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * I think some of the wording is OK, because the example you gave is a quote, and some of the other things are paraphrased from the comic. But I'll look at it. Mred64 18:28, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

 * I suppose this article could be up to something. However, it does need bit of a cleanup. But for sure, this article has gone a long way since I last saw it, which was probably about 2005 or something. I would definetly nominate this if I knew how. -HuBmaN!!!! 14:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Help!
I'm having a hard time finding answers to some of the questions asked in the peer review. I have tried to Goggle search whether FoxTrot has won any awards, and as far as I can tell, it hasn't. I have been unable to find out how many newspapers it is run in, or anything abouts its circulation. Can someone help me? Also, to answer the merchandising question, has anyone ever heard of bootleg or illegal FoxTrot merchandise?Mred64 04:48, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

 * I just added a merchandise section, but it could use some help. Mred64 05:00, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

More about Bill Amend
Some quick things I have to say about that last section. One, is it really necessary? I mean, it's just a copy-paste of part of the website's FAQ. Two, if it's about Bill Amend, shouldn't it go under his article? Mred64 03:59, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I'm being bold and getting rid of the FAQ. It's not encyclopedic, it's a copy of the website, and it just seems really out of place.  Mred64 05:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

 * If anyone really wants the FAQ, I guess they could put reword the information from it and put in the article, but I would not recommend putting the entire FAQ back or even putting that information in. None of the other comic strip articles seem that way.  Mred64 05:09, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Quotes from FoxTrot and "More about Bill Amend"
Yes, I agree that the FAQ should be taken out... it just seemed out of place in the whole article. Also, I think personally that all quotes from FoxTrot should been taken out of the article - they should be transferred over to the WikiQuotes page for FoxTrot and not to the Wikipedia article.

Also, can anyone scan in pictures of all the characters? Also, I just added the whole list of the collections and anthologies (the pictures were from Amazon.com, thanks to them!) and it would also be great if someone who knows the range of the comic strip dates could enter that information into the WikiTable...

--Kungming2 01:03, 17 January 2006 (UTC)Kungming2

It's Katie O'Dell, not Kate. Kungming2 18:26, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

 * The pictures are a nice touch. Mred64 03:36, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Second stab at Peer Review?
Should we submit for a second peer review and see what's the response?

Kungming2 07:41, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I say yes. The article has now incorporated most of the changes from the last peer review that we could do.  Mred64 03:41, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

 * I was looking at the old peer review page and I've got most of it ready for a second submission. HOwever, I can't find the original request for peer review and it says that you are supposed to show where it is.  Can someone find it?  Mred64 22:47, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Russian Roullete edit
Somebody forgot to check their sources. In the Jason character subheading, it mentions that he plays TV channel russian roulette, a game in which Jason or Peter toggles the remote until the other asks the first to stop, and then watching that channel for thirty minutes. Somebody linked "TV Channel Russian Roulette" to Russian Roulette (game show), although the two are entirely unrelated.

Critique needed
I think that a section about criticism is needed. FoxTrot has been critiqued as boring, white, unfunny, and so forth. This belongs.

--Defenestrate

 * That's a good idea, but I've never heard that before. I don't know how well we could put that in without specific sources, because it may just come off as random views without them. Mred64 01:11, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

To clarify, some discussion about how FoxTrot compares to other cartoons, positively and negatively, would be useful. And you're right: boring, white, unfunny are words I would use, and I'm not sure where the sources are.

Defenestrate

Yeah, you're right - but it will be a big hassle trying to find comic strip reviewers. Also, One thing I noticed - it seems as if everybody wants to put in their favorite incident that happened in FoxTrot into this article - that makes for a bloated, kind-of boring, and very unencyclopedic article. We should not do as such.

-Kungming2 06:17, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree about the criticism section. But this is just my opinion, but I think Foxtrot is a lot better than most of the other comics in my paper. (cough)Marmaduke(/cough) 216.250.1.243 (public)

 * "White" is a word that can be used to critique something now? Wow... TheUncleBob 06:21, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Need More Eyes
If we really want to try to put this up for Peer Review again, we have to find the original peer review request. Has anyone else tried to look for it? Who made the original request? Does anyone know what could have happened to it? I can't find it the archives. Mred64 02:40, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
 * For the record, the first PR is here: Peer review/FoxTrot/archive1. Powers 02:04, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * It's not the first Peer Review we need (that was easy to find), it's the first Request for Peer Review. Mred64 01:16, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the article is bloated and boring.

Jason's GPA
I know this is a minute detail, but if we're going to mention it at all, we should be accurate. The current article reads that Jason has an A++++ average, but I can recall a strip in which Jason complains about getting an A+++ on his math test because with such a grade, he'll never keep up his "A+++++ average". Does anyone have a definitive answer for this? If it changes, than we probably shouldn't mention it at all. --Kahlfin 15:28, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I think that we should refrain from putting an exact "A++++" score - it would just lead to confusion among different people who would swear that they had seen something in an archive that it was in fact something different, and so on. Just the fact that he has a really high (maybe impossibly-high) GPA and grades is enough - this is a small matter.

Kungming2 05:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC

Character List Controversy
I say that the character list should stay on the page. It's beneficial to the article. I mean, a FoxTrot article without any descriptions of the characters? It doesn't make any sense. --scotty 01:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that the character list is important to the subject, but not to the article. There is just too much information there on the main page. Additionally, the article is too large following Wikipedia's article size conventions. We could potentially leave the "Main" character section on this page and have a link to an article to the effect of "List of other FoxTrot characters." Any thoughts? Dana
 * IMO, we should shoted the main chracther bio, put the stuff we have in a new actrilce for each one
 * Hmmm.... I don't really know. On one hand, I think it's really nice that we have the characters in the main article so someone who actually wants to learn more about FoxTrot can view it along with the rest of the information - that's the system they still use on Calvin and Hobbes. However, I think that people in general add too much stuff and detail to the characters list that it loses relevance and becomes a mere listing of various events that character went through. My opinion is that the main list should be made into a new article, but that a small explanation of each character remain on the Main Page, along with a link to that character's section on the second page. What does everyone think?

Kungming2 02:47, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I think that kungming2 is right, if there is not enough room to mention the main characters, then this article has too much in it. The main characters should come back and the minor chracters should go to a different page.

Mbatman72
 * I concur with Kungming2. Powers 14:48, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with Kungming2 as well. Maybe we could put all the character pictures in that article too. Mred64 01:42, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Hey everyone, I am not involved in the FoxTrot article, but I am an active contributor of the Lost page, as well as many other. I suggest a format similar to many television show pages -- a list of the characters (so that information is included on the main page) and a separate article on the characters of FoxTrot. I definitely think the article is getting sort of long and a "Characters of FoxTrot" page is appropriate. Kungming's suggestion seems good! Danflave 03:32, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Kungming2, but I originally created a seperate article for Jason Fox on a seperate page with a link from the main article, but that was added to the FoxTrot article. I have no idea why, but it seems that we want to do something that's already been done and prevented. --redwhite 18:34, 14 May 2006 (UTC) 22:18, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * When did you make that a separate article? If you did it a long time ago, the article may not have been long enough to merit creating a separate article for Jason.  Also, the new article that we are talking about would include all the main characters, not just Jason, so it would be longer and seem more relevant. Mred64 05:01, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I checked the page, and it appears the Jason Fox page was created on 15 January 2006, not by the user redwhite, but actually by another user named Scottishlad0932 . I was the one who redirected it back to the main article, as its length at that time did not merit the creation of a seperate article, and that also none of the other characters had their own seperate articles. Furtheremore, the Jason Fox page was basically a repeat of the content on this main FoxTrot page. –-  kungming·2 | (Talk ·Contact) 06:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

As the consensus appears to be for spinning off the Characters list, I will begin doing so within a few days. I will also spin off the table of books, just like the Calvin and Hobbes article. –-  kungming·2 | (Talk ·Contact) 18:42, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you kungming. If you need any help, let me know. ---You're My Juli e t 15:16, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The list of books have been spun off to List of FoxTrot books. I'm still going to do the Characters page, but it's maddenly complicated and I'll probably work on it in my sandbox first. –-  kungming·2 | (Talk ·Contact) 18:31, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

"An homage" versus "a homage."
There has been a constant edit war between having the line about the Calvin and Hobbes snowmen to be "an homage" or "a homage." Could we reach a consensus please? Why don't we go to the original comic and see how it is worded there. --You're My Juli e t 11:44, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I know I have the strip in one of the books I own but going through each strip (even if I just stick to winter strips) looking for it is not feasible. If we could narrow it down to a year, I could do it.  Powers 14:44, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I think it's in one of the books in Foxtrotious Maximus, because I don't really remember this particular strip and that's the only set of books I don't have. --You're My Juli e t 02:43, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Good call. I found in I think early 2003 (they're not dated but it's the second winter after the 9/11 strips).  It's "an homage".  Powers 12:38, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Excellent! An example of how well Wikipedia can work. From now on, it's settled as "an homage," NOT "a homage." ---You're My Juli e t 14:08, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Doomulus prime
This is a real WoW item, checked thottbot. "Citation needed" tag removed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 146.246.233.10 (talk • contribs).
 * I think you misunderstand the purpose of that tag. It's not meant to say "someone thinks this is untrue"; it means "this fact needs a source".  Saying you looked it up isn't good enough; that's not a verifiable reference.  We need a real, reliable source.  I've put the tag back.  Powers 22:52, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure how citation works, so someone will need to do the nitty gritty for me, but here's various sites that cite. I'm so witty. http://www.thottbot.com/?i=53171 http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=22348 http://www.wowwiki.com/Doomulus_Prime

And the comic in question... http://www.pheardomo.com/forums/uploads/post-5-1138627678.gif Note that the Doomulus Prime in the comic and the Doomulus Prime in the game have different stats. Otherwise that'd be bad.

Amusingly, Jason finds it in the "Serpent Lord's Lair," when in the game you need to defeat a boss modeled after a Snake (known as "Snake Boss", amazingly enough) in order to get it.

-Ryanbomber 22:07, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Please help add references
Hi, I'm adding references to the article. Please help if you can, using the compilation books as a source. Thank you! - Addaone 02:36, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Forking
At 61KB, this article desperately needs to be forked off. I started with List of minor FoxTrot characters, but that only brought it down to 58KB. How about having the family members be forked off into List of FoxTrot family members? All the popular culture stuff should be forked off into something else, too; I don't know what to call it. List of FoxTrot references? Things? Items? Hbdragon88 00:36, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Removing the family members would cut it down to 31KB. Hbdragon88 00:44, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

 * I have spun off the family members but both that page and the remaining section could be better cleaned up. Eluchil404 01:30, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Don't Make another page for "Family Members" that is what this comic is all about, it belongs here, do it for minor characters. Mbatman72 20:20, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

 * I've redirected the list of supporting FoxTrot characters here. We're not writing FoxTrot encyclopedia here. List important characters and their characteristics here.  If you want more, start a blog or a fan site. --Tony Sidaway 23:05, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Redrict?
Why does "FoxTort" redrict to to the disambiguation page? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by NFAN3 (talk • contribs).
 * I'm not sure, indeed FoxTrot used to be the title of the page on the comic. I have switched the target.  Eluchil404 01:29, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I have notified an admin and I am hoping to move the article back to FoxTrot soon. - Mike 18:12, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Now moved. - Mike 18:18, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Hatnote
Should the article include a hatnote linking to Foxtrot (disambiguation)? I think such a link would be usefull to users for various reasons and should be included, but the page has been reverted back and forth between the various versions and so I thought a general discussion was called for to determine consensus. Eluchil404 22:53, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * The answer is no. Please see Disambiguation. (If you wish to change the guidelines, that is also the place to discuss it.) Dagnabit 23:11, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that you are misinterpreting the guideline, not that it needs to be changed. That's why I'm asking here what others think.  I will abide by the locally determined consensus, but it will take several days (at least) to assess.  Eluchil404 23:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * You are seeking to change the use of disambiguation notes -- not for disambiguation but for a case of a (not very likely) misspelling. You may discuss changing the guideline at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation. Dagnabit 11:38, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Huh? I thought a hatnote would be obvious in this case.  How is "FoxTrot" not an obvious possible "misspelling" of Foxtrot or Fox trot?  Powers T 19:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Just for the record, the hatnote was originally added by on August 10 2004 diff.  It has been removed by Dagnabit 3 times between September 30 and October 8.  Eluchil404 23:32, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

under Scientific references
I found this "Both these elements add a layer of superfluous complexity to the strip, and juxtaposed with the odd circumstances in which they appear, give FoxTrot a uniquely surreal air." (!) new to wiki but not new to encyclopedia. the article should stick to the facts. Critique has no room or should only be done under a seperate heading by known experts(?). Let me know. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Armybrat (talk • contribs).
 * Absolutely correct. Pop culture topics traditionally get a bit of a pass on such things, but this may be crossing the line.  You could stick a fact tag on it, which will give an indication that the assertion needs to be cited.  You could remove it entirely, making sure to specify why in your edit summary.  Or you could bring it up here, as you've done, and wait for someone else to take care of it.  =)  Powers T 01:06, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

No longer a daily strip
From a news release at amuniversal.com, 2006-12-05: "Bill Amend’s popular FoxTrot comic strip will go to a Sunday-only publication schedule as of Dec. 31, 2006, announced Universal Press Syndicate today. The last daily will be Saturday, Dec. 30. Reruns of dailies will be available for Web usage." "'After spending close to half of my life writing and drawing FoxTrot cartoons, I think it's time I got out of the house and tried some new things,' said Amend. 'I love cartooning and I absolutely want to continue doing the strip, just not at the current all-consuming pace. I've been blessed over the years with a terrific syndicate, patient newspaper clients, and more support from readers than I probably deserve, and I want to assure them all that while I'll be now a less-frequent participant on the comics pages, I'll continue to treat my visits as the special privilege they are.'" — Loadmaster 19:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Amend could just hire someone else to take over some days of the week if he wants more free time to do other things. This sunday-only format will probably result in a decrease in popularity for the comic strip.24.118.227.213 05:40, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Split again
Someone crated the List of FoxTrot family members, which had been reverted and moved back here. I'm splitting it off again. This article is 80KB and insaney long. Splitting it off brings this article down to 46KB. Not bad, still could be shorter, but I think this is a far better solution than to keep it all in this giant article. Hbdragon88 23:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Comic moved to Sundays only http://gocomics.typepad.com/laughtracks/2006/12/foxtrot_goes_su.html —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.78.121.92 (talk • contribs).
 * We know. It's in the section right above this one.  Powers T 13:52, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

While I support splitting off the main character list, I would like to see some summary of that page still in the main article. As it stands there is basically no coverage of the family members which seems rather odd. I'll move over the first paragraphs of the family listings and reword them slightly (which is what I did when I split off the article the first time) unless someone has a better idea. Eluchil404 14:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I think there needs to be more of the minor character stuff moved to the minor character page - keep a brief summary of them on the main page as is done with the main family members, but right now, those characters are getting most of the space. (for ref, I'd call them 'reoccurring characters' since they're not family but nor not minor.) --Masem 19:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Awards and Misc Info
The peer review suggested we get any awards FoxTrot has won and the number of papers it runs in and put it in the article. The press release for the Sunday only format has this information, but I'm wondering where we should put it. I'm thinking the introduction?

http://www.amuniversal.com/ups/newsrelease/?view=468

FoxTrot to Cease Dailies Kansas City, MO (12/05/2006)  Bill Amend’s popular FoxTrot comic strip will go to a Sunday-only publication schedule as of Dec. 31, 2006, announced Universal Press Syndicate today. The last daily will be Saturday, Dec. 30. Reruns of dailies will be available for Web usage.

“After spending close to half of my life writing and drawing FoxTrot cartoons, I think it’s time I got out of the house and tried some new things,” said Amend. “I love cartooning and I absolutely want to continue doing the strip, just not at the current all-consuming pace. I’ve been blessed over the years with a terrific syndicate, patient newspaper clients, and more support from readers than I probably deserve, and I want to assure them all that while I’ll be now a less-frequent participant on the comics pages, I’ll continue to treat my visits as the special privilege they are.”

Amend, who started the strip in April, 1988, and who has more than 1,000 client newspapers, is taking time to pursue other creative outlets. “In addition to Sunday newspapers, we may see FoxTrot entertaining us in other kinds of media platforms,” says Lee Salem, president and editor of Universal Press Syndicate.

Amend has more than 30 published FoxTrot comic collections and has licensed his characters for calendars and wallpapers for cell phones. He was nominated in 2006 as a finalist for cartoonist of the year by the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award.

Creator(s): Bill Amend

Contact(s): Kathie Kerr

Mred64 01:52, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Bulletproof Plastic
"Evidently, it is made of bullet-proof plastic (just like the original G3 iMac on which it is based)"

Do we have a source for the original imac g3s being bulletproof. I have not been able to find any confirming source for this statement.

 * I known the G3 was made of polycarbonate plastic. This can, when laminated, be bullet-resistant as in bullet-resistant glass; but I never heard that Apple actually treated the polycarbonate to reach that result. Here are the developer notes on the G3. The reference to using polycarbonate plastic is on page 14. Delfeye 14:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

tag added
This article is 58 kb now, which is quite hefty. I went ahead and added a tag to it, in hopes that someone will help to split it up some. In my opinion, a lot of the prose needs tightening, but I'm too lazy to do it right now. (Just kidding.) If anyone wants to help, he or she may. TenPoundHammer 04:47, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Time Travel?
I think somebody vandalised this thing. I don't claim to have read every strip, but I don't think it would include something like time travel. I'm going to delete that part of Jason's section until I see that strip or I am convinced of its occurance.

 * I distinctly remember a series in which Jason wanted to attempt time travel. It's in the book "I'm Flying, Jack... I Mean, Roger". The story is that he wanted to travel back in time to undo something embarrassing he said to Eileen. TenPoundHammer 19:51, 4 March 2007 (UTCO

Okay, I got that book from the library and read those strips. But this said that Jason went back in time and made the dinosaurs extinct! It also said that he was selling alchohol with the help of Morton Goldthwait. I doubt that guy has ever even seen alchohol.

Trimming the prose
There's a lot of stuff in this article that I think is unnecessary. We don't need to include every nitpicking detail. The article's really bloated, so I'm going to deflate it some. If you think I've deleted something important, please feel free to put it back -- within reason. TenPoundHammer 13:44, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Unbalance in minor character pictures
Might I ask why there is a picture of Denise and none of the other minor characters? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nichlok (talk • contribs) 01:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC).

Too much info
I think that this page is too indiscriminate. Way too indiscriminate. I've been plucking some of the excess info out, but it's still way too long. I need your help! TenPoundHammer 12:23, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Particularly, make a List of minor FoxTrot characters and move the list from here to there. - A Link to the Past (talk) 19:42, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * "List of minor FoxTrot characters" has been made already. Do you mean that I should make another page for "Supporting characters" (Denise, Steve, etc.)? TenPoundHammer 00:24, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I believe (or at least feel) this would include Denise, Steve, and the others. The only characters that should have a section on the main page should be the Fox family and Quincy and even then, these should be brief because there's already the list of Major characters page.--Masem 00:29, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Then what I intended to say is to merge the supporting characters list into the minor characters list. - A Link to the Past (talk) 01:08, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

 * Given that on other pages (like video games) where parodies and allusions, unless well cited and highly significant, are generally removed or reduced into a singular statement, I think that 50% of the current page can be cut out via a similar means. It's fair to say that "Bill Amend has included a number of popular culture references within Foxtrot, from movies, music, computer and video games", but to go and extensively list everything with only reference back to a strip it showed up it is not only excessive, but also very speculative at times as well (getting back to what is encyclopedic and what belongs better on a fan site).  I'd rather see these sections removed and the main character bios brought back to the main page than what the page is now. --Masem 20:21, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I've reduced a lot of the content on parodies and similar stuff. However, there's still far too much cruft on this page so I put the fansite template on. Ten Pound Hammer  • (((Actions • Words))) 23:05, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

"McAmends"
I have seen every detail of every FoxTrot comic, and never once have I seen "Amend Motor Company" I would like to. So, if someone, (anthologies only) can give me a page number and anthology book, exception:Houston you have a problem, I will be grateful.--B1029 15:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I own all the FoxTrot books and I haven't seen it anywhere. Nor have I seen McAmend's for that matter. The only time I recall seeing Amend in the strip (besides Bill's signature) is an opening panel from the early 1990s. It features Andy doing a crossword puzzle; the clue she reads is "a five letter word for 'humility'", and the blanks A M _ N D are shown. Ten Pound Hammer  • (((Actions • Words))) 23:06, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

"Redirect"
Can someone put a link from the foxtrot(dance) page to foxtrot (comic) page? Arthritix (talk) 18:16, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Raison De Etre
I don't think that this french word is neccessary, and that some person with a big ego who wanted to sound smart just edited it into this complicated phrase. I suggest it be reverted. 151.203.33.81 (talk) 01:27, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * You can always be bold and do it yourself. I trimmed that paragraph down. Ten Pound Hammer  and his otters • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps) 04:05, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Question
Where's the page for the minor characters? WAVY 10 Fan (talk) 20:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Fansite problems. – sgeureka t•c 20:40, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Comics B-Class Assesment required
This article needs the B-Class checklist filled in to remain a B-Class article for the Comics WikiProject. If the checklist is not filled in by 7th August this article will be re-assessed as C-Class. The checklist should be filled out referencing the guidance given at Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment/B-Class criteria. For further details please contact the Comics WikiProject. Comics-awb (talk) 16:32, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Third Paragraph of Intro
The third paragraph of the introduction is totally unreferenced, opinionated, and unnecessary. It looks like someone sat down and wrote an opinion on art and writing style from over the years, complete with useless era names. "The Wonder Years" is amongst them. See NPOV. Should it be removed? 74.68.114.111 (talk) 20:36, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Strip Location
On the 8/24/2005 strip (http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2005/08/24), Paige has her phone number on her shirt. Assuming the area code is one of four possible combinations; 432, 437, 932, 937, of which only two are assigned, they could be in either Texas or Ohio. In Ohio, within that area code (937), there happens to be a town by the name of Trotwood. Possible lead or mere coincidence? Yos233 (talk) 05:38, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Likely a coincidence. They've been pretty firmly established as being in Chicagoland, as Andy at one point goes to a Bulls game.  Powers T 02:52, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I can confirm this for another reason: In one comic where Paige is starting high school, she's sitting with Nicole on a bench outside, and in the background we can see the U.S. flag as well as another flag below it. I saw that the second flag is mostly white. Illinois and Massachusetts are the only states in the U.S. where their flags are mostly white. California's flag is also mostly white, but it has a red stripe, which isn't seen in the comic.JH2006 (talk) 17:43, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:FoxTrot


text:
Robin Cook (American novelist)

Robert Brian "Robin" Cook (born May 4, 1940) is an American physician and novelist who writes largely about medicine and topics affecting public health.

He is known best for combining medical writing with the thriller genre. Many of his books have been bestsellers on The New York Times Best Seller List. Several of his books have also been featured by Reader's Digest. His books have sold nearly 400 million copies worldwide.

Early life and career
Cook was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Woodside, Queens. He relocated to Leonia, New Jersey when he was eight years old, where he could first have the "luxury" of having his own room. He graduated from Leonia High School in 1958.

Subsequently, Cook graduated from Wesleyan University and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and finished his postgraduate medical training at Harvard.

Cook managed the Cousteau Society's blood-gas laboratory in the south of France. He later became an aquanaut (a submarine doctor) with the U.S. Navy's SEALAB program when he was drafted in 1969. Cook served in the Navy from 1969 to 1971, attaining the rank of lieutenant commander. He wrote his first novel, Year of the Intern, while serving aboard the Polaris-type submarine USS Kamehameha (SSBN-642).

Novelist
The Year of the Intern, was a failure, but Cook began to study bestsellers. He said, "I studied how the reader was manipulated by the writer. I came up with a list of techniques that I wrote down on index cards. And I used every one of them in Coma." He conceived the idea for Coma, about creating illegally a supply of transplant organs, in 1975. In March 1977, that novel's paperback rights sold for $800,000. It was followed by the Egyptology thriller Sphinx in 1979 and another medical thriller, Brain, in 1981. Cook then decided he preferred writing rather than a medical career.

Cook's novels combine medical fact with fantasy. His medical thrillers are designed, in part, to keep the public aware of both the technological possibilities of modern medicine and the socio-ethical problems associated with it. Cook says he chose to write thrillers because they give him "an opportunity to get the public interested in things about medicine that they didn't seem to know about. I believe my books are actually teaching people."

The author admits he never thought that he would have such compelling material to work with when he began writing fiction in 1970. "If I tried to be the writer I am today a number of years ago, I wouldn't have very much to write about. But today, with the pace of change in biomedical research, there are any number of different issues, and new ones to come," he says.

Cook's novels have anticipated national controversy. In an interview with Stephen McDonald about the novel Shock, Cook admitted the book's timing was fortuitous: "I suppose that you could say that it's the most like Coma in fact that it deals with an issue that everybody seems to be concerned about. I wrote this book to address the stem cell issue, which the public really doesn't know anything about. Besides entertaining readers, my main goal is to get people interested in some of these issues, because it's the public that ultimately should be able to decide which way we ought to go in something as ethically questioning as stem cell research."

To date, Cook has fictionalized issues such as organ donation, fertility treatment, genetic engineering, in vitro fertilization, research funding, managed care, medical malpractice, medical tourism, drug research, and organ transplantation.

"'I joke that if my books stop selling, I can always fall back on brain surgery,' he says. 'But I am still very interested in it. If I had to do it over again, I would still study medicine. I think of myself more as a doctor who writes, rather than a writer who happens to be a doctor.' He explained the popularity of his works thus: 'The main reason is, we all realize we are at risk. We're all going to be patients sometime,' he says. 'You can write about great white sharks or haunted houses, and you can say I'm not going into the ocean or I'm not going in haunted houses, but you can't say you're not going to go into a hospital.'"

Many of his novels concern hospitals (both fictional and non-fictional) in Boston, which may have to do with the fact that he had his post-graduate training at Harvard and lives in Boston, and/ or in New York.

Personal life
He is on leave from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

Cook is a private member of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees, directed by chairman Joseph B. Gildenhorn, are appointed to six-year terms by the President of the United States.

Books

 * Year of the Intern (1972), ISBN 978-0-451-16555-8
 * Coma (1977), ISBN 978-0-451-20739-5
 * Sphinx (1979), ISBN 978-0-451-15949-6
 * Brain (1980), ISBN 978-0-399-12563-8
 * Fever (1982), ISBN 978-0-425-17420-3
 * Godplayer (1983), ISBN 978-0-425-17638-2
 * Mindbend (1985), ISBN 978-0-451-14108-8
 * Outbreak (1987), ISBN 978-0-425-10687-7
 * Mortal Fear (1988), ISBN 978-0-425-11388-2
 * Mutation (1989), ISBN 978-0-425-11965-5
 * Harmful Intent (1990), ISBN 978-0-425-12546-5
 * Vital Signs (1991), ISBN 978-0-425-13176-3
 * Terminal (1993), ISBN 978-0-425-15506-6
 * Fatal Cure (1993), ISBN 978-0-425-14563-0
 * Acceptable Risk (1995), ISBN 978-0-425-15186-0
 * Invasion (1997), ISBN 978-0-425-21957-7
 * Toxin (1998), ISBN 978-0-425-16661-1
 * Abduction (2000), ISBN 978-0-425-17736-5
 * Shock (2001), ISBN 978-0-425-18286-4
 * Seizure (2003), ISBN 978-0-425-19794-3
 * Death Benefit (2011), ISBN 978-0-425-25036-5
 * Nano (2013), ISBN 978-0-425-26134-7
 * Cell (2014), ISBN 978-0-399-16630-3
 * Host (2015), ISBN 978-0-399-17214-4
 * Charlatans (2017), ISBN 978-0-735-21248-0
 * Viral (2021), ISBN 978-0-593-32829-3
 * Bellevue (2024), ISBN 978-0-593-71883-4

 * Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery series
 * Blindsight (1992), ISBN 978-0-425-13619-5
 * Contagion (1995), ISBN 978-0-425-15594-3
 * Chromosome 6 (1997), ISBN 978-0-425-16124-1
 * Vector (1999), ISBN 978-0-425-17299-5
 * Marker (2005), ISBN 978-0-425-20734-5
 * Crisis (2006), ISBN 978-0-425-21657-6
 * Critical (2007), ISBN 978-0-425-22288-1
 * Foreign Body (2008), ISBN 978-0-425-22895-1
 * Intervention (2009), ISBN 978-0-425-23538-6
 * Cure (2010), ISBN 978-0-425-24260-5
 * Pandemic (2018), ISBN 978-0-525-53534-8
 * Genesis (2019), ISBN 978-0-525-54215-5
 * Night Shift (2022), ISBN 978-1-529-09877-8
 * Manner of Death (2023), ISBN 978-0-593-71389-1
 * Bellvue (2024), ISBN 978-0-593-71883-4

Movie and television adaptations

 * Coma (1977) has been adapted for both film and television:
 * Coma (1978), a feature movie directed by author/doctor Michael Crichton and produced by Martin Erlichmann for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
 * Coma (airdates September 3–4, 2012) a four-hour A&E television mini-series based on the 1977 novel and subsequent 1978 movie, directed by Mikael Salomon and produced by brothers Ridley and Tony Scott.
 * Sphinx (1979) was adapted into the feature movie Sphinx (1981), directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, produced by Orion Pictures for Warner Bros., and featuring Lesley-Anne Down and Frank Langella.
 * Harmful Intent (1990) was adapted as the CBS television movie Robin Cook's Harmful Intent (broadcast January 1, 1993), directed by John Patterson and produced by David A. Rosemont
 * Mortal Fear (1988) was as an eponymous TV movie, broadcast November 20, 1994, directed by Larry Shaw
 * Outbreak (1987) was adapted as the movie Virus (Formula For Death) (broadcast May 1995), directed by Armand Mastroianni.
 * Terminal (1993) was adapted as a TV movie, directed by Larry Elikann.
 * Invasion (1997) was adapted as an eponymous NBC TV mini-series (airdate May 4, 1997), directed by Armand Mastroianni.
 * Acceptable Risk (2001).
 * Foreign Body (2008) resulted in a 2008 prequel, produced as an eponymous web series by the production companies Vuguru (owned by former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner), Cyber Group Studios (owned by the former Walt Disney executives Dominique Bourse and Pierre Sissmann), and Big Fantastic (owned by the creators of the web television series SamHas7Friends and Prom Queen). The series, which played from May 27 through August 4, 2008, comprised 50 episodes of approximately two minutes each, with a new video posted every weekday.

title: Robin Cook (American novelist)


text:
Talk:Robin Cook (American novelist)

Disambig
The page on Robin Cook (novelist) should be left as is, for the purpose of disambiguation.

novels
i will be adding links to the book titles i just don't have time right at this moment --Larsie 16:10, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I made some major modifications from the original page, with the hope of improving it's appearance, and broadening it's information.Paul1966 02:46, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I made some minor modifications, some minor typos are fixed Paul1966 12:43, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

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Robin Cook's "Abduction."

--Crwriter 06:20, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I've just finished this book and initially thought it shallow. Then I realised perhaps it was I who was a bit shallow. A society who has nothing better to do than enjoy life after conquering all aspects of technological possibilities leaves little to be desired.

But therein lies the rub for me: It seems, throughout the book, that the desires of the "Middle-Earth" folks are clear and singular -- get it when you can and all the time and in as many ways as possible. Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like. Middle-Earth men and women do not adandon themselves to freedom of the arts and bliss in access to all kinds of personal fulfillment, they abandon themselves to bodily bliss. I see no solace in that kind of existence.

I've often said that money is the root of all social ills. Pile it up and burn it all. Cook's Middle-Earth, Utopian society accomplishes this. But to cheapen such a society by giving them nothing better to do on the surface but have a good time with a bunch of primitives leaves no room for the true possibilities of such a society. And to endow them with a superficial innocence leaves even more to be desired.

You could have done better, Robin Cook.

Medical Practice
Is there anything available on this? The article suggests he is or has been a practicing physician, researcher or teacher. 66.142.57.70 18:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC) 18:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

"By writing medical thrillers, Dr. Cook has given a new and eerie angle to the thriller genre" "Cook got a taste of the larger world " "Keeping his lab coat handy helps him turn our fear of doctors into bestsellers" etc, etc.

This bio reads like it's a marketing review for his books - the writing is too embellished and it sounds as though some portions were lifted from a jacket cover.192.206.151.130 (talk) 14:37, 10 January 2008 (UTC) edit: grammar and spelling 192.206.151.130 (talk) 14:56, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Abduction
I'm a little disappointed in Abduction, in both content and errors. The author consistently used the word "base" when referring to a low musical tone. Even his editor(s) apparently let that slip by.

4.165.195.13 (talk) 12:20, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Cook is also an "ass" writer in the sense that a character never can "go outside" but must "take his ass outside." This sort of vulgar tone permeates the dialogue. Perhaps some editor suggested that Cook vulgarize the dialogue because the medical information is so relatively arcane for the typical nonphysician reader? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.44.147.74 (talk) 01:16, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Rewritten paragraph
"Cook ran the Cousteau Society's blood-gas lab in the south of France. He later became an aquanaut with the U.S. Navy's SEALAB program when he was drafted in 1969. "

I have just rewritten this paragraph into the form I have quoted because the previous version of the paragraph was taken directly from the article cited, clearly violating copyright. Gildir (talk) 18:53, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Robin Cook (American novelist). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071016063803/http://www.bookpage.com/0109bp/robin_cook.html to http://www.bookpage.com/0109bp/robin_cook.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050205000922/http://www.wam.umd.edu/~vmacker/robincook.htm to http://www.wam.umd.edu/~vmacker/robincook.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070515083120/http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=about.trustees to http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=about.trustees

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

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Source for first spouse
Hi @Urbanwriter, thanks for your contributions. I've re-reverted the sentence about Cook's first spouse, because none of the sources seem to be reliable, and I can't find any other reliable sources for it in searching on my own. I understand that you know this from your personal experience, but Wikipedia requires verifiable sources (WP:VERIFYOR). Best, Politanvm talk 02:10, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The Encyclopedia.com source is mirroring Cengage, which would probably be fine, but it doesn't mention the spouse's name.
 * Prabook isn't a reliable source because it's a mix of user contributed and scraped information from other unreliable sources (like Marquis Who's Who as described at WP:RSP). Sometimes it also scrapes Wikipedia.
 * InformationCrade.com is another unreliable web scraper (see Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 258).

title: Talk:Robin Cook (American novelist)


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Subaru Pleo

The Subaru Pleo is a kei car made by the Japanese automaker Subaru since 1998.

The Pleo is taller than conventional kei car hatchbacks, but shorter than the definitive microvan, the Suzuki Wagon R, and is available with a variety of 658 cc I4 engines: SOHC, DOHC, and supercharged in two different trim levels. It competes with the Honda Life, Daihatsu Move, and the Mitsubishi Toppo in the tall wagon segment of kei cars in Japan.

The name "pleo" is Latin meaning "to fill" or "to fulfill."

First generation – RA1/RA2/RV1/RV2 (1998-2009)
The first-generation Pleo first went on sale in Japan on October 9, 1998, replacing the Vivio (a conventional kei car hatchback), when Japanese regulations dictated a size change in the kei car tax bracket, and every kei car model from every make was redesigned as a result. The car was available with three variations of the EN07 engine; a naturally aspirated one with 46 PS, a sporty supercharged one with 64 PS, and also a "mildcharged" version which aimed for power characteristics similar to those of a one-liter car. The mildcharged version has a supercharger (with lower boost pressure) and 60 PS. The original television advertisement for the Pleo broadcast nationally across Japan throughout the fourth quarter of 1998 featured a hip hop remix for the aria Un bel dì vedremo from the opera Madama Butterfly by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini as its background music. The Vivio continued to be sold alongside the Pleo until the Vivio was discontinued on October 31.

In June 1999, Subaru launched a retro-styled and better equipped edition of the Pleo, called the Nesta. This has a whole new front design, including new fenders, to accommodate a chromed grille and (twin) round headlights. It featured the entire engine range of the Pleo. In October, a sporty edition was launched, called the LS. At the 1999 Tokyo Motor Show, an LPG-powered prototype with a modernized version of the Nesta's front end was shown, with the name "Pleo Nicot," (stylized as NiCOT) although it was not to enter production for another year. In December, an Le edition was launched.

In May 2000, Subaru launched a G Edition of the Pleo Nesta. In October, the first facelifted edition was launched. In December, the cheery-looking model called the Pleo Nicot was finally launched. Using single round headlights and a small smile-shaped grille, it used the Nesta's model-specific front fenders in a more modern way. The only engine option was the (gasoline-powered) mildcharged version.

In May 2001, a more upgraded sporty version of the Pleo was launched, called the RS. This model is sometimes called the RM. In October, a second facelifted edition was launched.

In January 2002, the L Plus Package and F Special editions were both launched. In May, three four-wheel drive editions, the RS Limited II, the LS Limited and the F Limited, were launched to commemorate Subaru 4WD's fortieth anniversary. In October, a third facelifted edition was launched.

In May 2003, four editions of the Pleo, the FS Limited, the FS Special, the L Special and the Nesta GS Special, were launched. In June, the RS Limited and LS Limited were both facelifted. Meanwhile, a new edition of the Pleo, the L Special Color Selection, was launched. The R2, was introduced on December 8. After 2003, the Pleo was sold alongside the R2. As of January 2004, the supercharged engines were no longer available, leaving only the naturally aspirated version as the Pleo was repositioned beneath Subaru's newer kei class offerings. The mildcharged option returned twelve months later, only to disappear definitely in June 2006, after the Stella's introduction.

In June 2007, the F model was discontinued. The discontinuation left the Van A model as the only trim level.

In December 2009, the Pleo was discontinued.

Second generation - L275F/L285F/L275B/L285B (2010-2018)
The second-generation Pleo first went on sale in Japan on April 20, 2010. Due to Subaru's corporate investment by Toyota, this second generation is manufactured by Daihatsu instead of Subaru, and is a rebadged Daihatsu Mira.

title: Subaru Pleo