Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Wtshymanski (talk | contribs) at 20:29, 3 April 2011 (Still data sheet data). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Ohm's Law

Hello please read http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Ohm%27s_law this article and help me understanding this problem. I can show you a video in youtube which I made measuring 110 volts =).--Leonardo Da Vinci (talk) 15:05, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Obviously there is a giant conspiracy. Spread the word that physicists and electrical engineers have been pulling the wool over our eyes for too long. You must not waste your powers here. Go, go, for the good of the city! But seriously, so you got a shock from an improperly grounded and faulty power supply? How does this disprove Ohm's Law? --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:44, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

It's simple :). The 110 volts are carriyng too low current yet they don't face a big resistance. So when they hit me (the volts) should be able to kill me yet they can't. 110 are a lot of volts. Another problem is the Zener(Cener?) diode. It is used for stabilizating the voltage and even if you increase the current through it the voltage stays the same. Yet the resistance is the same or maybe the diode is lowering it's resistance. Also why the 110 volts doesn't damage my computer? Why they are not harmful if they don't face big resistance they should carry big current given Ohm's law?--Leonardo Da Vinci (talk) 18:05, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I still don't understand what you're talking about. People get electrocuted by 120 V all the time, sadly. I suspect you need a more tutorial introduction to electricity than you can get from reading Misplaced Pages articles; perhaps a trip to your local library and reading a few professionally-written and -edited books would do more to answer your questions than tweets from anonymous Misplaced Pages editors. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:53, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk:Leonardo_Da_Vinci&oldid=420941776#The_law_is_not_applied_always Here is a good answer to my question from another wikipedian :). I really need to read some professional books and I am currently doing so slowly. They are called "Lessons in electric circuits" and they are great!!!--Leonardo Da Vinci (talk) 21:10, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Pulser Pump

Before claiming the pulser pump principle doesn't work, please read the following about the ragged chute air plant

How it works

Ragged Chute was specifically designed to produce air compressed to 862.5 kPa (gauge). Its intake shaft is 107 m deep and the tunnel-chamber has a blow-off valve to prevent increased pressure. There are control gates to limit the amount of water entering the plant works. As well, the two intake heads, each made up of 72, 36 cm pipes, can be raised or lowered to maintain a constant depth over the bulkhead, usually about 46 cm of water. From the heads, the water is fed into one pipe which widens just before the bottom. This is designed to decrease the pressure in the pipe and allow the air bubbles to collect and merge. At the base of the shaft are two steel-sheathed concrete cones which break the initial impact of the air-water mixture, and direct its flow into the horizontal chamber. The chamber collects the compressed air and channels it to a receiver pipe, 61 cm in diameter. The receiver then carries the compressed air to a valve house where it is transmitted to Cobalt for distribution. The 51 cm diameter stell transmission pipe has telescopic expansion joints every 0.8 km to allow for the effects of temperature change. The pipe is above ground and can expand about a metre each 1.6 km on a hot, sunny day. Compressed air must be dry because through friction, humidity decreases the efficiency of both the pipeline and the motors using the air. Water vapor also causes exhaust freezing in motors; the escaping air expands rapidly, which requires a great deal of heat energy. And, finally, the moisture washes away the lubricants within the motors. The air transmitted from Ragged Chute is much drier than it was before compression because the water temperature is so cold it condenses the moisture in the air bubbles whil still in the intake shaft. The condensation then remains with the water when the air-water mixture separates. The low humidity of Ragged Chute air is one of the most remarkable features of the plant. The blow-off valve is a 30 cm pipe beside the receiver leading to a point underwater on the river bed. It reaches into the tunnel-chamber to the critical depth where it rests in water as long as the air is compressed to 862.5 kPa (gauge). But when the pressure increases, the water level within the chamber lowers slightly, allowing the excess pressure to escape. When it does blow, a stream of water often shoots over 30 m into the air. This spectacular, geyser-like blow-off is most commonly associated with the Ragged Chute Compressed Air Plant.

As you can see, the Rugged Chute air plant is a pulser pump! It pumps water up to 30m high (through the blow-off valve) and it has been in operation since 1910. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rijkbenik (talk • contribs) 20:49, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

But that's air! THe mass of air raised relative to the mass of water flowing through the trompe must be a tiny fraction. In a pulser pump, for every cubic meter of water that passes through, how much can be raised higher than the input? And how does energy get coupled from the main flow to the elevated flow? It's a bit magical and counter-intuitive, you must admit. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:56, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Nobody said it was efficient :-) Thank you for improving the title of the Pulser pump article. (Rijkbenik (talk) 13:47, 26 March 2011 (UTC))

Grrr, Grr...go away

I'm an uncivil editor, I am, I am. I might dare to disagree with you. (I might even, rarely, be right).

B*ching and moaning

Edit warring

If you parse "official" narrowly enough, you can make it mean anything you want...though it helps to have an admin hammer to make consensus. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:37, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Manitoba

Oh thank you, I was *so* worried I wasn't going to have permission from some anonymous person on the Misplaced Pages to have my own opinions.--Wtshymanski (talk) 15:32, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

If arrogance was petroleum, the Mideast and the tar sands would be out of business. --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:33, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd advise using a different example

I'd advise using a different example... Cheers!--Yaksar (let's chat) 15:18, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

After looking at Energy and the environment I'm not sure that also doesn't deserve an AfD. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:23, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I very well may agree with you there. But I only suggested changing it there so that someone doesn't inevitably point it out leading to side conversations and distracting from the main argument and all that jazz.--Yaksar (let's chat) 15:26, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

It's also weak and, once again, you do have the right to ignore my input, I won't be hurt, but hmm. Heh.--Yaksar (let's chat) 15:31, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Please tell me I haven't hit another one this time. But it's useful to see that "...and the environment" produces a whole set of feeble articles. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:41, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

"... management" is another MUAG (Mostly Useless Article Group). Jeh (talk) 22:03, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

And so Environmental management must exist...at least it's not "Management and the environment". --Wtshymanski (talk) 22:19, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd try to delete or merge the worst duplications if I had more time, but it can be stressful and time consuming.--Yaksar (let's chat) 18:31, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

NoPoPo Carbon Magnesium Battery

Hi, I see you deleted my edit and called it vandalism. It was not. But I could see how you thought it would be from the silly name. I put it back. -kslays (talk • contribs) 19:49, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

There were no references, and it was added to a redlink. --Wtshymanski (talk) 22:44, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Capacitor

Wtshymanski, I don't want to get into an edit war, but the Capacitor article is difficult or impossible for a non-specialist to understand, as somebody already complained -- even somebody with a PhD in another field.

The introduction is still pretty difficult. I had a friend who read this article and couldn't understand it. You should at least give a non-specialist an introduction that they can understand and learn something from.

I didn't write my own description of a capacitor; I paraphrased a WP:RS, from an educator at Rice University who was better at explaining electronics to undergraduates and ordinary people than I am. He used a concrete example -- which is an old teacher's trick to make things easier to understand.

I realize that in Misplaced Pages, your outside credentials don't count. But I'm a medical writer by profession, and I explain things to intelligent, educated non-specialists all the time. I found out by talking to them that concepts and terms that seem obvious to me and everybody in the field aren't obvious to them.

An example in your edit is the term "conductor." Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who don't understand exactly what the word "conductor" means. They may have an *idea* of what a conductor is, but doesn't help to use a word like that in the introduction when you're trying to explain other concepts. And what is a "non-conductor"?

The editor of Discover magazine once told me that they were trying to get "extreme clarity." In an introduction, you need extreme clarity.

Before I write something important for publication, ideally I test it on people of the sort that I'm writing for. I actually tried out that introduction to Capacitor on my friend (the one who couldn't understand Capacitor), and she understood my introduction.

Try it. Find an intelligent person who has no particular expertise in electronics, and try to explain a capacitor. Show them your introduction and see if they understand it. --Nbauman (talk) 15:31, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

On the other hand, we don't link every single word in an article either, just in case the reader doesn't know what is means. We can't explain all of physics in every article. Why would someone with no interest in the subject matter be looking at this? Presumably someone interested in such an obscure topic as "capacitors" has some interest in the field and is prepared to look up such obscure words as "conductor" if she/he genuinely has never run across the concept of a conductor before. I don't know that it is meaningful to try to explain what a capacitor does, if the reader doesn't even know what a conductor is.

When I was the proverbial "bright 12-year-old" that our articles hypothetically target, I surely did not appreciate the dumbed-down explanations offered by " The Big Book of Science for Kids" in anything I was really interested in. I think we actively mislead the reader if we say all capacitors are little rolled up tubes of metal foil with wire leads and separated by waxed paper - for that matter, do we have to explain what a "metal" is? Or a "tube"? Or a "wire"? Where does the infinite regress end? And if you're a professional writer, you must be between gigs if you're wasting valuable time here. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:42, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

If you studied engineering, as you seem to have, then you must have been taught the KISS principle. The same rule applies to writing, especially in an introduction. You have to write simply, if you want people to understand it. If you don't care whether people understand it, what's the point of writing it?

It's possible and easy to write a description of a capacitor that non-specialists can understand. The Rice University course material that I linked to did it. They're professional educators. I followed their way. That's the way to do it.

It's not an infinite regress. There are certain words and concepts that are more familiar to undergraduates, and some that aren't. Educators like the engineering professors from Rice know from experience what they are. I'm really saying that you should follow a WP:RS rather than your own explanation.

And your remark about my being "between gigs" is uncourteous. WP:Etiquette. --Nbauman (talk) 16:25, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

None of the people I know who write for pay, write for the Misplaced Pages at all (even between gigs). I can't imagine someone who gets ppaid to write, wasting time here. A failure of my imagination, evidently. Why would anyone think I studied engineering,anyway? Credentials mean nothing on the Misplaced Pages. Where I can find a list of the words and concepts that are familiar to undergraduates so I can dumb down my writing appropriately? And since when are "undergraduates" the target for a Misplaced Pages article, anyway? My prospective alternative wording includes the waxy cylinder with wire leads that Rice evidently described, while also acknoledging the diversity of configurations that real capacitors have. --Wtshymanski (talk) 19:48, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Your edit

In , what is a "buble?" Bubble, or bulb? (Apparently bulb).(Etymologically, the words are probably related). Warmest regards. Edison (talk) 05:29, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Fat fingers and late night typing strike again. Mrs. Farina would be horrified to see how my typing skills have actually declined after 35 years. --Wtshymanski (talk) 12:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

fourier expansion electromagnetic field

If this is nonsense, take it to AfD & explain why. It's not obvious enough for speedy deletion. ` DGG ( talk ) 05:11, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Done. --Wtshymanski (talk) 13:30, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Mergeto on microinverter

I'd prefer to remove the mergto in microinverter. Yes, a microinverter is a subclass of inverter, but then again, a car is a subclass of transport vehicle. We have a separate article for "car", and for exactly the same reasons, I would argue the microinverter needs its own article too. After all, the issue is extremely hot in the industry, and a quick googling will demonstrate the use of the term. Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:22, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, a solar inverter works with several panels, and a microinverter works with one panel - but what is fundamentally different about them? A microinverter does everything that a "solar inverter" does, except it has to do it more cheaply because it's connected to an 80 watt panel instead of a kilowatt array. I must re-read both articles, maybe it will then become obvious why there needs to be two articles. --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:27, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Its all about panel isolation. With a traditional inverter the panels are wired in series, so like bad christmas tree lights, any failure ("failure" including bird droppings or a passing cloud) takes down the entire string. With a microinverter the panels are in parallel so these problems are eliminated. The downside is cost. If the system is small and the total cost isn't much different, you almost always go for it. Maury Markowitz (talk) 21:57, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

2N3055

Wondering if you'd agree to early closure of your AfD. I don't see a consensus forming to delete the article. If someone from the IEEE thinks it's a historically significant transistor, it meets my criteria for tech-cruft, and if it meets mine it's going to meet anyone's. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 03:40, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Let it run! There's still hope for few days. I surely cannot be the only editor tired of dead-end lazy "articles" like this - you might as well write an "article" about every Sparpak hanging on a hook at the hardware store. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:44, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd always assumed that you were some sort of electrical or electronic engineer, but if you AfD'ed the 2N3055, I can only assume not. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:57, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

The preceding comment is pointless and harsh. Wtshymanski is clearly very knowledgable about electronics and electrical engineering, but has never asserted any credentials. As for the AFD, let it run. This particular transistor might be notable, along with a handfull of others, as I said in the AFD, but lots of others would not be. Edison (talk) 19:12, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not halfway harsh enough. For someone who might be assumed to know beforehand the significance of the 2N3055 (just how many transistors are there where you're on "first name" terms with them?), then that's just creating disruption for the hell of it. What is the point of this AfD? Is it a protest at article quality? A common move, often effective, but still disruptive. If it's a sincere attempt to delete something for not being notable, than that can only be explained by a charitable assumption of naivety and editing far outside one's sphere of knowledge.Andy Dingley (talk) 19:33, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Edison. Wtshymanski is anonymous like most of us. His personal credentials are irrelevant. We should focus on whether the article in question clears the bar for WP:NOTABILITY, not trying to guess what other editors do for a living. Msnicki (talk) 20:04, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm like the rest of you lot; a 15-year old with time on his hands because he lives in his parent's basement (or indistinguishable from the same). Let's have an article on "1/4-2 x 3/4 inch bolt" and its ilk. Lazy articles written by people who won't crack a book serve no purpose in an encyclopedia. There's also 300,000 asteroid articles that I'd cheerfully blow away because they have zero content, but that ship sailed a long time ago. (3.8 million articles, 1.9 million of which are robotic rubbish.) Yes, we all have fond memories of '70s magazines where thick-fingered hobbyists were encouraged to coat a 2N3055 with solder while building some power supply or stereo amp - but outside that cozy little pocket, what significance does any particular part number have in the outside world? If this transistor is so important to understanding the world around us today, why did it take an AfD for anyone to pay attention to the article? The point of the AfD is to get rid of parts-list-cruft on the Misplaced Pages ( a very large windmill and Sancho is a long time bringing my spare lance).

Disruptive? To edit is also to cut out. Not every parts list item is an encyclopedia topic. Misplaced Pages's data storage may be indefinite, but human editor time is in short supply.

Editing outside a sphere of knowledge? The Misplaced Pages model disparages subject knowledge.

If you have to explain during the AfD just what sort of thins is a 2N3055, maybe, just maybe, the thing has not enough notability outside the cozy little world of hobby electronics to make it a stand-alone topic for a general encyclopedia. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:52, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with all of your points, I just don't see that this article falls within them.

"Parts catalogue" is wrong, we agree. Each of these transistors / articles needs to show independent notability. I admit, I don't (personally) know the relevance of the BS170 (never knowingly used one, don't have any on the shelf). This is different though, it's a 2N3055 after all, one of the few transistors that is individually well-known. There's nearly forty years of history behind this one particular transistor. Others of comparable note would be the 2N3819, BC107, OC71, OC28, AD161, 2N2926, 2N2222, BC548, BC184 (and their complementary partners).

"Lazy articles" is a problem, but it's not helped by AfD. It's certainly not helped by wasting the time of the people who might be working to fix it if instead they have to faff around pulling them out of AfD instead of doing useful stuff instead. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:51, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

{

If we can't maintain an article, we shouldn't have an article. If you can't feed your dog, you shouldn't have a dog. Some of these partscruft articles have not had a substantive edit in 5 years and still have no more than the Digi Key description (and that's precious little). If it's such a famous transistor, there will be references for it; and no, the RCA parts catalog isn't an independent reliable source. Thanks for listing the other parts, by the way...I'd forgotten about the European style references. I'll check those out and see if they give any "who, what, when, where, why, how" information - I'll be pleasantly surprised if they do. --Wtshymanski (talk) 23:08, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree with your principle that 'If we can't maintain an article, we shouldn't have an article.'. That's equivalent to deleting articles that are in a poor state, and that doesn't scale, articles have to start somewhere. A better principle might be that we don't keep articles that don't see any significant traffic. Point of fact, this article actually has a fairly reasonable amount of traffic, so it doesn't seem that this article is pointless, just badly written. I also think your 'anti parts list' idea doesn't work very well either. Clearly, if any part is notable, then we need to have it; is a Space Shuttle Solid Rocket booster not a part? Yes, and it's notable.Rememberway (talk) 23:28, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

It's notable if it has independent reliable sources. This deletion discussion is about some transistors, not rockets. --Wtshymanski (talk) 23:32, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

So transistors aren't significant in everyday life? I've got a lot more 2N3055s in this house than I have rockets (and I have a lot of rockets). Andy Dingley (talk) 23:52, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

The criterion isn't significance, it's notability, a word being used in a specialized Misplaced Pages context. --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:50, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, exactly. We don't just pick out all components of things in all catalogues everywhere and add them individually with their own article, but if the notability of an individual component can be shown, as seems to be here, then we do give them their own articles.Rememberway (talk) 00:33, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

If we can't maintain an article, we shouldn't have an article. Wrong. See WP:IMPERFECT.

Topics are notable, not the current editing state of articles. We shouldn't have poor, trivial, articles, but we move past them by going forwards to better articles, not by deleting an article that might be trite, but still isn't incorrect or inappropriate. Personally I even support WP:Delete the junk, but these articles are nowhere near that level.

I'm just surprised that you can't distinguish between a 2N3055 and a transistor that is real, listed but really isn't noteworthy. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:31, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

If you're aware of another parts list entry that should be reviewed as a PROD or AfD, please nominate it. --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:31, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I phrased that quickly and badly; what I should have said was "If an article cannot be sourced, it shouldn't be kept.". --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:50, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you

I just want to say thank you for your recent deletion nominations and your continued support for holding articles to the (very clear I may add) GNG guidelines. I have continually found myself frustrated in other areas (namely military history and fictional characters) by the very same problem you address in your WP:PARTS essay. I find it frustrating that some people seem to want to totally disregard GNG in cases related to their area of expertise and I know it's tough to take a stand sometimes, so thank you. HominidMachinae (talk) 00:08, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm often frustrated by parts-list articles. We will have, for example, "articles" on every size of flashlight battery that say nothing you can't read in any random battery catalog. Its hard to do research on humdrum items like individual transistor types, and really, how significant is any given type? Perhaps in the "train-spotter" sense there could be an article written as to why a particular type was thought to be necessary, what company originated it, what issues it was supposed to solve better than competitive types, what market share it gained, when it was introduced, when it was dropped from manufacturing by most companies, etc. - but realistically, that's never going to happen on the Misplaced Pages; the sources are buried in 50-year-old company archives that are inaccessible to amateurs and that wouldn't be citable in Misplaced Pages anyway because we don't do original research on primary sources. Until somebody writes the 1-volume "History of Your Favorite Spare Parts", the topic is useless here and we'd be better served by a table of some common transistor types. Even that will be tough to get going - the electronics project has been around for years and has yet to get Transistor up to GA status, let alone FA. And this is a topic that is on the projects "high priority" ranking and has been there for 5 years. There is no realistic way an article on 2NXYZ is ever going to improve. --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:31, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

What amazes me is how personal the comments can get. It's just a transistor! Msnicki (talk) 01:37, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

See above about not being distinguishable from basement-dwellers. Normal people don't write encyclopedias. We may not have anyone like William Chester Minor, but that road runs past a lot of our houses. --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:44, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

It's the same phenomenon that tends to give us amazing articles on military history, computer programming and many other subjects popular with people that spend a lot of time online. But it's disheartening to see so many people in favor of throwing GNG totally out the window.. I've been considering bringing this to the village pump in fact. I think it might be worth a deeper look as to whether policy needs to be changed here, either way. I would definitely support your WP:PARTS article being put in main essay space at the least. HominidMachinae (talk) 02:01, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

We'll see if WP:PARTS has any legs; if these transistor parts list entries get removed, then I suspect this is an encyclopedia and not the NTE replacement guide. I don't know that it's a popular point of view, though you'd think that now that we have mumblety-million articles the pressure to add filler articles on every diode, asteroid, and wide space in the road would be off. --Wtshymanski (talk) 02:11, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Well control has to start somewhere. The problem I've been seeing is that the fact tendentious groups of fans prevent consensus for the deletion of fancruft in fictional series results in what I call the second-order pokemon argument: "if we have a list of GI Joe characters that don't even exist surely we should have an article on this obscure transistor." This of course results from the other great fan argument "we should have this (unsourced, entirely OR, entirely in-universe) list to prevent creation of 100,000 seperate articles on the same topics." The combination effect is that the bar is set stunningly low where notability and requirement to use non-trivial sources is concerned. HominidMachinae (talk) 04:22, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not just a transistor. That would be like suggesting deletion of the IBM 360, saying it's "just a computer". Notability has never been a serious issue here. Dicklyon (talk) 04:28, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

No, it's not like suggesting deletion of the 360 article. Amazon.com still lists screen after screen of books on the IBM 360. Here's what comes up for 2N3055. I don't think those lists look at all the same. Msnicki (talk) 04:44, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

So, I exaggerate. Still, it's in lots of books, and is among the most popular and influential of its class, not just some random part. The analogy holds. By the way, I have that book IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems; it's pretty interesting. Dicklyon (talk) 07:01, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

transistors and stuff

You ought to try some book searches before suggesting deletion of stuff you know too little about. Dicklyon (talk) 04:26, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Where's the notability? Lots of people updating my talk page speaking of the fame of the 2N3055, but no-one has put any citations into the article. --Wtshymanski (talk) 04:55, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Have you even looked at the article recently? Dicklyon (talk) 06:52, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

We have stricter standards for a garage band to get an article than for random spare parts. Why is this so? It's because otherwise the encyclopedia will be overrun with trivial articles. Is there a historical analysis of where these parts come from, why they were made, who invented or first manufactured them? What was the market share? How important was this part to the semiconductor industry? You might as well write about individual sizes of machine screws. --Wtshymanski (talk) 05:14, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps those who know a great deal about a particular diode or transistor could share some of their knowledge of the importance of the device to the world outside hobby electronics books and first-year electronics problem examples. --Wtshymanski (talk) 05:17, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the etiquette of risking turning a talk page into AfD part 2. But please dicklyon, assume good faith. Many of these articles do not provide assertions of notability. Frankly some of them I would have speedied as A7 (no assertion of notability). If multiple 3rd party sources do not exist, then an article is invalid, end of story, period. full stop, some of these articles have been minimally sourced for years. HominidMachinae (talk) 06:02, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree they need sources to establish notability. My point was that if he wanted to help, he could look for those sources (per WP:BEFORE), like I've done this evening. They're easy enough to find. Instead, he has assumed that "parts" should not have articles about them (see his User:Wtshymanski/parts essay draft), so hasn't bothered to check whether these particular parts are the epitome of their classes. As a deletionist myself, I do always "make a good-faith attempt to confirm that such sources don't exist" first, to avoid wastes of time like this. Dicklyon (talk) 06:56, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes helping a group means not succumbing to groupthink. Nothing like nominating an article for deletion to set off an improvement drive. We'll see if the present state of 2N3055 saves it - many of the others have not had even this much improvement. --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:07, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

• So what's you point here? That the articles are inherently bad (the "parts list" argument) and so they should be deleted anyway, even if superlative? Or the "article quality" argument, where you prefer to AfD and delete articles rather than encouraging their improvement WP:BEFORE? Or is it your "unsourcable" argument, because databooks are too SPS / COI, the hobbyist press is too unreliable and the IEEE is too "obscure"? You seem to want to have it every way, and you change your reasoning according to who's asking the question. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:20, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Then I will repeat again my initial unvarnished position: if all a parts list entry says about an electronics part is the parameter list from some unreferenced data sheet, that part list entry must go. I'm only slightly beginning to be persuaded that the 2N3055 inside its own fandom is notable enough to justify an article in a general-purpose encyclopedia - I don't see fans for the other parts rallying around them. Anyway, it's no longer up to me to weigh in on this, we'll see what happens in a few days. --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:27, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

So (again) what's your point? Does "if all a parts list entry says about an electronics part is the parameter list" mean that they're inherently non-notable, or that the article is too poor to fix other than by deletion?_(sic) You claimed there was no coverage and when coverage was pointed out, you claimed that it wasn't reliable. When the IEEE was cited, you claimed that their journals were too obscure. Now if the article content is expanded, will you then switch from decrying it as just a parameter list and claim that anything with a part number can't ever be notable.

Despite your co-nominator's comments of "Tick tock!" (the clock is running), this is not a contest to see who has the most patience, or indeed how much further time of other editor you can waste. The scatter gun appproach of nominating many articles over a single point is an effective way of diluting debate, and not surprisingly most commenters have chosen to focus on a single article. It is not a question of counting fanboys, nor for that matter your comparison of other editors to a psychotic murderer. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:32, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm at a loss to say anything that advances the discussion further. Nearly all parts are not notable. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:17, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Who is saying anything differently? Andy Dingley (talk) 16:24, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

It sure sounds like a lot of the support boils down to the basic WP:Barely notable phenomenon: "B..B..But you don't understand. This part was important. I had one!" Msnicki (talk) 16:27, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Again, I can't advance the discussion usefully. I've shot my bolt and I'm beginning to repeat myself - repeition is not argument. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:31, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

The 2N3055 is definitely a notable part within the electronics field. But it's a little tough to find the needed references. If someone had bothered to write a history of transistor types, someone like Tracy Kidder perhaps, I could well see the 2N3055 being lauded as "made practical a number of designs that formerly were too expensive to build." But I doubt there's been a lot of writing along those lines, except in poor quality sources like blogs.

This makes me wonder (not for the first time) if some room couldn't be found in, or alongside, Misplaced Pages for what amounts to "lore." I've seen altogether too many people trying to add what amounts to their personal recollections on such things to WP. Of course their material was deleted under the usual onslaught of "OR", etc. And of course such stuff doesn't belong in WP's main namespace. But suppose there was a parallel namespace or project or something called "wikilore" where such non-RS'd things could go? Linked from WP namespace, just the way Wikitionary and Wikimedia entries are? Or is there already something like that that I just haven't heard of? Jeh (talk) 21:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

That sounds like a job for Wikibooks. I don't know anything about that project, but I've often seen recommendations to take someone's epic essay there instead of putting it here. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Component article deletion

I've just deprodded the last couple of articles you proposed for deletion. Please don't AfD them just yet until some consensus has been established as to what constitutes notability in this area. I've raised the issue at WP:AN/I asking them to intervene and attempt to unify these debates: the current arrangement is nothing more than chaos since discussion are taking place on too many fronts simultaneously. Crispmuncher (talk) 15:20, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. If the PROD is contested, these must be added to the AfD discussions otherwise they will be ignored as all the other parts list entries have been ignored. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:27, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not arguing with that: I'm simply suggesting not yet. Hopefully we can coem up with some general principals out of all these AfDs which can then be applied to other parts, rather than going through the whole merry-go-round simultaneously on dozens of fronts. I actually agree with you in many cases but I'm not prepared to actively monitor 20 different discussions at once. Crispmuncher (talk) 15:48, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

If not us, who? If not now, when? The electronics project has been around for at lest 6 years - how many GAs or FAs have come out of it? It's not a slam on those editors, it's generally the case that Misplaced Pages articles aren't very good. Monitoring a dozen AfD discussions is no harder than monitoring 1600 articles for vandalism. I'm wary of general principles, since they seem to be applied inconsistently; inevitable given our editorial model. If I try to make a "class" argument for deletion of parts lists entries on a general basis, some Wikignome will hit me with WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS or similar in-jargon. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:02, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

There is no hurry to make an encyclopedia. What's your rush to have it all done and perfect right now, or it isn't worth ever being worked on or finished at a future time? I see nothing wrong with topics of minor interest just sitting idle.

If quiet vandalism to large compendiums of sizes and parameters is your big concern, that can easily be remedied with a notice at the top of the article that anyone planning to use the data for important purposes should get secondary validation and check the references. DMahalko (talk) 12:17, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Parts lists and substitution manuals are not encyclopedias. An encyclopedia does not have parts lists in it. An encyclopedia serves an entirely different purpose than a parts catalog. Parts list entries do not belong in an encyclopedia. I cannot explain this any more clearly; we either agree on what is an encyclopedia, or we have no common basis for communications. --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:00, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

• You keep repeating yourself - yet who is arguing in favour of keeping articles on topics that are mere members of a parts list? The opposition to deleting 2N3055 etc. are that these are examples of the few that have something more than this. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:06, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes, I do. I keep getting the same objections said by different editors and I'm never sure who's read what. Every AfD I've nominated in this batch was a contested PROD - so someone out there thinks that parts lists entries belong here. There was no referenced source for notability of the 2N3055 before this last weekend aside from various purr words in hobby books; I haven't looked today, hopefully someone has dug up something more credible than a passing mention in Joe Blough's TAB book "How to melt solder for the electronics hobbyist". We'll see what consensus says. --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:17, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
    • I assume you mean that "every AfD was first PRODed", implying that at least one other editor also supports your position. So I checked: Those were just the first two I looked at. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:24, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
      • It's the exact opposite. What I said,or thought I'd said, is that every nomination I made for a proposed deletion had the tag removed by someone else before I nominated the article for an AfD. If someone removes the PROD notice, presumably that means an editor opposes the proposed deletion and is in favor of retaining a parts list entry. I apparently have confused "tagging an article for proposed deletion" with "deleting an article after proposing its deletion". --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:33, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
        • Removing a PROD doesn't necessarily mean they're in favor of keeping, just that it doesn't meet the PROD criteria and deserves to be considered at AfD. Dicklyon (talk) 15:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Would I sound frustrated if I said something like "It's entirely in keeping with the traditions of Misplaced Pages that the criteria for a PROD tag are more minutely observed than the criteria for notability." Process over content, always. I've had a half-dozen PROD nominations that have resulted in deletions in the last week, all for lack of assertion of notability; so, experimentally, it seems to be a valid criterion for deletion. (Oh, wait, here it is under Misplaced Pages:Deletion policy: Articles whose subjects fail to meet the relevant notability guideline (WP:N, WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, WP:CORP and so forth))-- User:Wtshymanski|Wtshymanski]] (talk) 16:13, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

We need a history of early IP address allocations

See here and respond if you like, Mr. Parts Catalog.

• Talk:IP_address#History_of_early_allocations?

DMahalko (talk) 03:15, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

• • Category:IP_Address coming real soon now. --Wtshymanski (talk) 04:26, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Analogies are always bad arguments but...

An article about a semiconductor device that only tells us its breakdown voltage and current rating is as useless as an article about Napoleon that only tells us his hat size and height. --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

This article is a part of Wikiproject Hatmaking, a project intended to improve the coverage of hats on the Misplaced Pages and the quality of hat-related articles. It has been rated "Start" class on the project's Quality Scale, and "Low" priority. Here's some things you can do to improve the article Napoleon: How many hats did he own? Did his hat size change appreciably during his life? Which was his favorite hat? Describe the effect of the Guillotine on the French hatmaking industry. Provide reliable sources to verify that Napoleon did in fact wear a hat - that Bugs Bunny cartoon you saw is not authoritative. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:50, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Hats and hatmaking is as valid a historical topic as any other form of tailoring. Who determines whether or not a topic is worth pursuing? Apparently you are to be (or want to be) the ultimate judge of the value of all articles, regardless of whether you know anything about the topic or not. And if you can't get your way there'll be all sorts of sarcasm and angst thrown about at people who edit and defend these articles, because they are investing time in matters that you personally view as useless or stupid. DMahalko (talk) 17:44, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Hatmaking is to Napoleon as ...oh, never mind, futher explanation kills what little humor was in the joke. --Wtshymanski (talk) 17:59, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Grins

Your edit summary made me grin; thanks! Yes, I have seen such a thing, and it was both astonishing and memorable. __ Just plain Bill (talk) 20:46, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

For every edit summary worth reading, I probably have twenty that say "rv v", so it's good to know they don't all get lost in the revert fog. Well do I remember cleaning up the bathroom one day when my damp dustrag happened to touch the vanity lamp - and I had to spend even more time picking up the broken glass. I don't know why the CFL article is such a lighting rod for this sort of thing. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:59, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

It only takes a few drops from, oh, say, a squirt gun on the hot glass envelope. Don't ask me how I know this, nor how long ago it was. __ Just plain Bill (talk) 00:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

WP-talk:Notability / Are patents notable in and of themselves?

Another one where you probably would want to chime in and rip it to shreds. It's worth asking I guess.

• Wikipedia_talk:Notability#Are_patents_notable_in_and_of_themselves?

DMahalko (talk) 19:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I've been pointing people at WP:GNG for the last few days, and that's already been mentioned there - so there's nothing I can add. --Wtshymanski (talk) 19:40, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Excessive linking/listing

Thanks for your reply on the Talk:Pedestrian crossing page, I personally don’t think it matters either way if country if listed or not but rather that there is consistency in the article. I do agree though that there is excessive overlinking in WP (yes, I ironically linked there!), and it’s good that a potential conflict can be rectified though mature discussion. Have a good day. Zarcadia (talk) 16:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

If I was to articulate a rule of thumb, it would be that if you speak English, you know where the principle regions of the English-speaking countries are; and if not, you can click the link. If you speak English, you won't know the geography of non-English-speaking countries well, and you might need the country name if the city isn't instantly identifiable to an English speaker. German-sounding names could be in Germany, (East or West), Switzerland or Austria, for example and so a country name may be useful. (India is a challenge...I'd tend to add the country, and I speculate even people in India don't recognize the names of every city in the country.) If it's a really small place and doesn't have an article, a link to the next larger unit at least identifies where the place is in the world, approximately. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:34, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the problem stems from the fact that the vast majority of WP editors are from the US so will add country to places in Canada, UK, Australia, etc. while just listing state for US towns and cities. I’m sure most users here know where London, Sydney and Toronto are yet the country is constantly linked to, there is of course the argument that there is a London in Ontario but if it is linked to correctly there is no need to list the country as well. As a keen boxing fan I spend a lot of time remedying this problem in various boxers ‘Professional Careers’ sections. Zarcadia (talk) 16:49, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Group behavior

Saw your comments mentioning the personal attacks. So frustrating, especially the politics of it, that they're so okay, never criticized, from the majority, if large enough. But even the smallest hint of such a thing from the minority, misrepresented willy-nilly in the worst possible light, is pounced upon immediately. If you really are one of only a small number of holdouts, it must be because you're mocking the whole rest of us; there simply can't be another reason. I sort of chuckled when I saw your remark that an AfD is not a vote. Okay. Well, you go with that if you think that's how it works. The Afd for a wrestling referee was another one where I was clearly on the wrong of history. And even if your nomination succeeds, it can sure be crazy getting there. (If you look at my edit count, you see I'm quite a newbie.)

And of course it goes on everywhere. Talk:Bash (Unix shell) is my recent poster child. Notice how two editors have stomped out of the room because even though no one agreed with their revisions to the first paragraph (they didn't even agree with each other), the real problem is that someone (guess who) is a big meanie. Now the page is just stalled because everyone understands that no good deed shall go unpunished.

My other pet peeve is the constant fascination with trying to figure out who somebody is. What part of, judge the content, not the editor are they missing? Twice now I've been the subject of outing attacks. In the most frustrating case, which I concede also gives me insight into what it feels like to have your page questioned or deleted, I had written most of C shell, then started writing this. I concede it didn't start out very good but I was working on it, 'till one day I found it deleted summarily as spam, following an outing attempt. In offline correspondence with the admin, a military officer, his whole argument boiled down to, I think I know who you are even though you've never identified yourself anywhere on WP and that's good enough. It had nothing to do with the content of the article, which he was unwilling to discuss. Another editor rescued it, promising to examine it but there it sits in limbo. Msnicki (talk) 17:01, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

The good thing about a first AfD is that it can be re-nominated after a while, if the problems with the article really are fundamental. I was pleased to see a little bit of notability for the 2N3055 but I still think it's way too specialized a topic for a general encyclopedia. If you're the best insurance salesman in Idaho, you don't necessarily get an article here, even if the Idaho Insurance Association calls you the "grand old man" of insurance. Similarly, even though the 2N3055 is notorious among electrical engineers of a certain vintage, it's doubtful that anyone in the Real World has heard of it. (Oh no...now I've jinxed it and the "2N3055 in Popular Culture" section is coming.)

It's always better to focus on edits than people, anyway. Supposedly we're making an encyclopedia here, this isn't supposed to be a social networking site.

If I were more concerned about keeping my real world identity a secret, I wouldn't have chosen this user name. Even in the dial-up days, if someone wanted to know who I was, it was just a matter of looking me up in the phone book. I stand by my public postings. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:51, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Certainly. Wasn't this part number a recurring plot element in both Mannix and MacGyver? Msnicki (talk)

Well, there's at least one movie in which an electronic spare part was the McGuffin, but that was a krytron, not a semiconductor, and they never gave us the part number. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:05, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

One thing I have to give you credit for is that even though you argued to delete the page, you right away began to pitch in to help make it a better article after the decision was make to keep. I don't know how much other people notice such things, but I do. Good on ya. Msnicki (talk) 20:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I'm still typing in stuff off data sheets, but no-one else has given us the *dates* for these parts. At least using the TI data sheet dates I can show the youngsters that they aren't likely to find relevant resources on-line; the Web is *made* of 1N4148s. TI was listing 1N400X diodes as early as 1966- I wasn't kidding that the interesting source material is locked up in 40 or 50 year old files. An article on "development of silicon transistors" would be a better way to present this. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:29, 3 April 2011 (UTC)