Talk:Circuit topology (electrical)/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Czarkoff (talk · contribs) 09:37, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Status
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Discussion
Please leave your comments here. I didn't yet check some aspects of prose, and some other criteria, so more issues are expected to be found. That said, the article is evidently the result of great work and I'm pretty sure it will eventually get the GA status. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 09:59, 14 March 2012 (UTC)


 * It was always intended to number the diagrams of the first part, as is obvious from the number range used in the second part. Not doing so was just an oversight, now corrected.
 * I am not sure how to address your comments on flow. The two parts of the article are not unconnected - the connection is explained clearly in the lede.  The thinking behind this is that far more readers are likely to be familiar with circuit diagrams than they are with graph theory.  To most electronic engineers topology means a particular class of circuits.  The first part of the article, therefore, is a survey of most of the basic topologies represented in circuit diagram form.  Graph theory, on the other hand, is more than just a means of graphically representing a class of circuits; it is a mathematical language which can be used to analyse networks.  While the second part is far more interesting imo, I recognise that not all readers will want to delve this deeply into the subject and have consequently kept it separate.
 * I have added a brief explanantion of the use of greek letters early in the article.  Spinning Spark  11:35, 14 March 2012 (UTC)


 * It seems I failed to explain my point: "unconnected" here means only the text flow, from the perspective of topic they both clearly belong here. The idea is that the text should read consequently without full stop effect between the sections. When I reach the "Graph theory" section, I get the impression that I start reading another article. I think this requires just some minor changes to the first couple of sentences in "Graph theory". — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 15:52, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Not all articles can be written as a consecutive sequence. A historical article lends itself to this, as does a mathematical proof, but it really does not fit the material of this article and any atttempt to make it comply will probably result in some very clunky phrasing.  The lede already explains where graph theory fits into topology, as does the opening paragraph of the "Graph theory" section.  I am not sure what more you want.  I would also respectfully point out that "flow" is not one of the GA criteria, this is more like something I would expect at the FA level.  Spinning  Spark  16:16, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I see your point. I won't fail the nomination on this issue anyway, though I'll think over the way it could be addressed.

1a2 complaint is not about the Greek letters, but about the diagrams. Eg. it is not evident that П-section is identical topology to the Δ topology as there is no prior explanation of the meaning of diagram's elements. As I get it, these sections are identical because the blocks are connected similarly, but I see no text I can conclude this from. I think the article should link to another article explaining the diagrams and meaning of their elements (filled dots, empty dots, block and lines) or at least briefly explain them inline. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 09:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I have added some further explanation in the lede and a short introductory section on circuit diagrams.  Spinning Spark  13:01, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

1a3 compliant: the article should probably feature the plain text description of illustrated sections. That would probably solve the 1a2 issue BTW. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 09:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I am going to decline to provide text descriptions of all the diagrams. This is really not practical, it would make the article virtually unreadable, and there would bound to be numerous ambiguities that are easily resolved by diagrams but near impossible to resolve in plain text.  It is perfectly possible to provide an unambiguous description of a network without using diagrams; the usual approach is through a set of system equations.  Matrix notation and logic symbols are also possible.  However, the early part of the article is meant to present the range of simple, basic topologies to the general reader without getting into difficult mathematics or concepts.  That is reserved for the graph theory section, and even there is kept to a minimum.  Spinning  Spark  13:01, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * After some thinking I believe I should recall this point as descriptions of diagrams are useless without diagrams anyway. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:35, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

1a4 reworded  Spinning Spark  16:11, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

1a5. This kind of reference is allowable. WP:SELFREF has References that exist in a way that assumes the reader is using an encyclopedia, without reference to the specific encyclopedia (Wikipedia) or the manner of access (online), are acceptable. The argument that the target article might get changed or deleted is a non-argument - this applies equally to any wikilink, not just self-references. The target article is not going to be deleted, and if it were changed or renamed it is the responsibility of the renaming editor to check "what links here" and make the necessary corrections (it will also be picked up by a bot in the event of human failure). This is equivalent to "see also", a commonly used way of introducing such links used throughout WP, but not quite workable in this case. There is no need in this article to go into details of the connection, it is a distraction, saying that there is a connection is enough and those interested can find the details in the linked article.  Spinning Spark  16:32, 15 March 2012 (UTC) to 16:40, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * OK. Still I'm not sure that this reference is needed at all. You could as well put See also hatnote to this section an just state that these are derived from bridge topology. For now this paragraph boils down to "there is more stuff discussed elsewhere", which IMHO just don't need that much space. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 17:19, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * What is the problem with providing a link to other information the reader might find useful ad explaining what they will find there? "See also" by itself gives no explanation, "see also" with an explanation will take up more screen space since it adds whitespace.

1a6 The other terms have already been defined earlier in the article.  Spinning Spark  16:40, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeed, though I would do it again here as I'm not really sure that it is evident that in this section the meanings are retained. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 17:19, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * There is no reason the reader should believe they have changed. In general we define/explain/link things on first occurence and do not usually repeat. Spinning  Spark  19:35, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

6b2 I have added a suitable wikilink to the image caption. It is not really necessary for an understanding of this article to go into the details here. As far as topology is concerned "balanced" and "unbalanced" are little more than name labels used to distinguish two sets of topologies.  Spinning Spark  17:04, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

BTW, it seems that the sections 2-9 should be subsections of 1. Or am I missing something? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 17:19, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't see any especial benefit to doing that. What would you call section 1?  Is there anything to write under it other than the sub-sections?  If not, it would be superfluous.  Spinning  Spark  19:35, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello all, just here because there was a call for Wikipedians who are knowledgeable on the subject. I read over it and could see no blatent factual errors. Will have a thoughtful read later today to see of there is anything I missed in there at allParadoxical 0^2 (talk) 02:55, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that! — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 09:50, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reviewing and all yuour comments.  Spinning Spark  11:35, 20 March 2012 (UTC)