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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)

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)

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)

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)

Inkscape

File:Equal Temper w limits.svg is an SVG made in Inkscape. It doesn't have any parabolic curves, but the vertical lines for the notes in just intonation were placed on the logarithmic scale to more decimal places than anyone could get from a twelve–inch log-log decitrig slide rule. I didn't type in all those coordinates, but pasted them in from a desktop calculator accessory. Might be able to fake a parabola in a similar way with the defining points of the splined curves that Inkscape draws.

Sorry, it ain't AutoCAD. More for drawing pictures than designing shapes, I guess. When I've wanted to draw a curve in Inkscape that looked like the real thing, I've used a bezier curve to trace an imported example pasted into a throwaway layer. Could probably do a similar thing by converting the imported shape to a path, and editing that, but that seems like the long way to go around it. There might be a slicker way; sorry, can't be more help. __ Just plain Bill (talk) 15:10, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

ummm. Was this for me? Though I am interested in turning data plots into a form acceptable to Misplaced Pages, I'm not looking to plot parabolas (this week). What I want is something that goes from a CSV to a PNG in one easy step with a minimium amount of frobbing along the way. I'm still not sure if Inkscape is part of that soluiton; ithas a macro language, maybe someone on the Web has hacked together something that can serve. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:37, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Never mind, then. Life is too short to go polishing up macro sequences, sez I. Since I added a comment to your talk page, changes here and on your user page have shown up on my watch list, and I noticed you whinging about Inkscape in your "Pictures needed" section. Be well, __ Just plain Bill (talk) 15:49, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

There was a time I'd stay up late, learning all the ins and outs of a new package; those days petered out about 1998 or so. The fault is not with Inkscape so much as my lack of motivation to learn "where have they hidden the command to draw a straight line in *this* software" any more. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:00, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm... there is that thingy on the left that looks like a ballpoint pen or a sleeved eversharp pencil... I've noticed that user interfaces have gotten somewhat easier to find my way around in recent decades, largely because a common "language" seems to be growing. Easy examples are the tab key and F1 in most modern packages, although <shift> and <control> seem to swap their meanings in some drawing/image editing applications. I wonder if multi-layer circuit board layout ever got so the operator didn't need to keep a three-ring binder by their station, just to be able to keep from stepping in something nharsti. Glad I left that world; making sawdust and wood chips is more fun. __ Just plain Bill (talk) 16:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Well maybe, but...

They are really different in the market. Basically there's a three-prong fork going on right now; the microinverters, the power optimizers and the "big guys" who generally claim the other two aren't needed (all the while buying up IP or forming relationships with them!). I suspect all three will continue to develop over the next couple of years before any sort of clear patterns develop. I don't think this is all that different than water power. You have Micro hydro and Small hydro, which both are parts of hydropower. All of this is related tech, but the differences are well entrenched. Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Voicing concern

I am somewhat concerned about the pattern of some of your edits. I propose you slow down and ensure you are acting according to consensus.

In the case of the electronic parts that you mass-nominated for deletion, it is clear that consensus has been against you. I note that you revisited most of the articles you previously nominated, tagged them for notability concerns, and then appear to have pared them down as far as you could. Clearly that goes against consensus.

I have just restored the article N battery which you pruned, left for a bit, then changed to a redirect. There was no consensus to do that.

Sarcastic comments such as this may be borne out of frustration but they are not helpful. And if they are borne out of frustration then I suggest that you consider the advice at WP:GETOVERIT.

RichardOSmith (talk) 19:52, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I thought this was an encyclopedia, not the Radio Shack catalog. Whatver happened to WP:BOLD? Why are spare parts articles sacred cows never to be changed? We expect higher criteria of a garage band to get an article in Misplaced Pages, I don't see why the common detritus of technology needs to be exhaustively and redundantly described when all the data is already in a table. I tagged the N battery as a suggested merge, heard nothing, and proceeded to merge it. If we had to clear every single editorial change through the Wikimedia Foundation, it would take a long time to get anything fixed around here. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:52, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Regarding N battery, which you have reverted again, please read the process at Help:Merging. Discussion is required on the talk page and consensus needs to be reached. Given that you do not have consensus for the merge, I suggest you try proposing it correctly, or take it to Misplaced Pages:Proposed mergers. RichardOSmith (talk) 22:09, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I've restored the article once more, on general principles. Dicklyon (talk) 06:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

It would not be AGF of me to speculate here on what that principle is. I have proposed all these fossils get displayed in the same case. --Wtshymanski (talk) 13:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Wireless

I noticed you have made a few edits on the Wireless article, in the Wireless Services section. Your reason was simplifying a complex sentence. You have a point there. However I feel some of the information disappeared in the process. I was wondering if we could reach a consensus on what sentences we could add without unduly compromising on either the complexity or the informativeness of the section. This is the edit I am referencing : This is what I am proposing as a solution:

The term "wireless" has become a generic term describing the use of waves instead of wires to carry signals. These waves are usually, but not always, Electromagnetic waves, examples of which include radio or light. Common examples of wireless equipment include:

Your views are welcome.

--Kknundy (talk) 00:53, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I like The term "wireless" has become a generic term describing the use of radio or light instead of wires to carry signals. because I have yet to see anyone describing equipment as "wireless" that relies on sound waves, ripples on pondwater, ocean waves, gravity waves, or deBroglie waves for communication. Do you not think that overgeneralizing a Misplaced Pages article dilutes its value? --Wtshymanski (talk) 13:21, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Atleast one example of using mechanical waves for communication exists in the form of ultrasonic signals. While they are not colloquially referred to as wireless, they are, beyond doubt, a form of wireless communication. Also even the description above fails, if we consider that even optical fibre uses light to carry signals for communication, but is obviously not wireless. Isn't it better to overgeneralise in two sentences than to potentially misinform in one. --Kknundy (talk) 21:41, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I remember the old-timey ultrasonic television remote controls, too. But is anybody calling that "wireless" today? Sources would be nice, but every time I ask people for sourcees I get my face slapped. --Wtshymanski (talk) 02:21, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

See http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/03/transmitting_da.html for a more recent and rather novel example. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:04, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4632651&tag=1 afaik, this is eligible as supporting my point. Andy Dingley's entry also seems pertinent. -- Kknundy (talk) 10:54, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Ultrasonic_20Wireless_20Wi-Hi-Fi seems like the most suitable example, except it seems unreliable. -- Kknundy (talk) 10:59, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

There's also a protocol for embedding small data packets (URLs) into audio bursts (audible, not ultrasonic). A handheld smartphone or PDA moving past these can hear them, then use high-bandwidth wireless to access that URL and retrieve a web page. There are applications (friends are working on these today) for museum-type exhibits, and the obvious adverts. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:34, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Fine, fine - let's include all waves in the article. God forbid we should be anything but guardedly general in our writing here. I look forward to the RFC describing IP over tin-can-telephone. --Wtshymanski (talk) 13:32, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

What do we change it to then. Is the text I suggested acceptable? Or do any of you have a better suggestion? --Kknundy (talk) 16:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I thought it was fine as it was; do we really need to lump in research projects with Wi-Fi and cordless phones? --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:34, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, we need to. If it was just a question of Wireless, I would have let it lie. But it is also a redirect for Wireless Communication, so the current description qualifies as misinformation. --Kknundy (talk) 16:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I look forward to accessing the Internet via waves on a muddy puddle. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:51, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Besides deviating from the point, such a comment means if you have your way, http://en.wikipedia.org should move to http://simple.wikipedia.org . If I have consensus with anyone at all, I will change it to what I suggested. --Kknundy (talk) 17:19, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

The point? This is the Misplaced Pages - try to explain to anyone in the real world what the point is. Goodness knows there's enough turgid prose on en.wikipedia that needs simplifying; I occasionally whack away at the purpler patches here, but I wouldn't try writing for the simple wikipedia without a week's vacation first. Maybe we should get people to write for simple first before they try here; it would improve the prose style immensely. Go ahead and change it, if you like; it doesn't matter, anyway. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Transistors and WP:WQA

Hello, Wtshymanski. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Wikiquette alerts regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Enough's enough. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:08, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Not to use IEC

Please do not accuse editors of vandalism when they edit with consensus. The consensus on WP:MOSNUM is to not use IEC. Please continue to debate on the MOSNUM talk. Please do not just revert. . --220.255.2.99 (talk) 17:20, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

It's vandalism when one misquotes the MOS and persist in edits that damage the article. Behavior such as this can result in a rangeblock for a whole bunch of IP addresses. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I have not misquoted MOSNUM. My edits have consensus and improve the article, your edits do not have consensus and are just reverts on my improvement edit. I have asked MOSNUM to clarify. Will you accept the consensus of MOSNUM? 220.255.2.40 (talk) 18:31, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

The IPs are part of the ISP HTTP proxy and I cannot help that the IP keeps on changing because it is dynamic.220.255.2.44 (talk) 18:32, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you have misquoted. No, your edits don't have consensus and damage the article, you can't ask a web page anything, and if ytou read MOS:NUMBERS you find that this exact situation is called for. Don't worry about the IP hopping, the admins here can blck a whole range of IP addresses as easily as a single one. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:51, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Three revert rule

Please read this about the three revert rule. 220.255.2.33 (talk) 04:37, 9 April 2011 (UTC)