Talk:Outline of engineering

Text from March 2002
What about testing? Non-destructive testing is especially interesting. And how about predictive testing (bad terminology, sorry)...for example, car makers' dynamometer tests to predict in weeks how years affect an engine. firepink

Cleanup issues Feb 2007
I think the first, hugely-long, list (List of basic engineering topics) needs serious attention. Many of the items are duplicates. Others might best be grouped into sub-lists, for example, all the pages having to do with surveying and geodesy. This raises another serious topic: merging of related pages that are found in this list. How is this list defined? What exactly is a "basic" engineering field, so that it will be listed here and not just on the list of "all" engineering topics? It needs to be spelled out in the main article namespace so that all editors will know what they should and should not add to the list. Cbdorsett 07:38, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi Dbdorsett, this list is definately too long. However, many fields of engineering are multidisciplinary and overlap. Biochemical may overlap with civil in environmental remediation, or overlap with chemical engineering. Electrical engineering and petroleum engineering cross paths in well-logging.  You get the picture. I think there is some overlap in the entries themselves.  However, these could probably be subdivided reasonable well into the same kinds of groups you would see in college degree plans. The down side is someone is almost certainly going to be unhappy when their field is tucked next to such and such discipline. Just off the top of my head, I might put them into general categories of chemical/biotech, civil/environmental, computer/electrical, industrial/process, mechanical/materials, military science, and oceanographic/petroleum. Liberal Classic 08:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * This is a great improvement. I understand that many fields of engineering overlap, so some duplication can't be avoided. However, having similar topics grouped together as you have done will simplify the task of identifying those that truly are duplicates. Thanks for your good work. Cbdorsett 06:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

New field?
I think you forget the "Information Technology Engineering field"... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.96.208.130 (talk) 13:31, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Major rename proposal of certain "lists" to "outlines"
See Village pump (proposals).

The Transhumanist 01:31, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for this page and all the pages of the set this page belongs to
See the proposal at the Village pump

The Transhumanist 09:15, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines for outlines
Guidelines for the development of outlines are being drafted at Outlines.

Your input and feedback is welcomed and encouraged.

The Transhumanist 00:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

The "History of" section needs links!
Please add some relevant links to the history section.

Links can be found in the "History of" article for this subject, in the "History of" category for this subject, or in the corresponding navigation templates. Or you could search for topics on Google - most topics turn blue when added to Wikipedia as internal links.

The Transhumanist 00:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions for resturcturing this outline
I agree with the comment above about consolidating the huge list of engineering fields into 7-10 logically coherent sections. One other way that they could be structured would be through a sort of "family tree" starting with the oldest engineering fields and working toward the most recently developed fields. This would also aid viewers in understanding what general branches of engineering are involved in the more focused fields. This might be slightly complex but I think it would also lend some structure to the "history of engineering" page.

Chemical enineering
Under the sub-heading "Fields of engineering" should there not be an entry for chemical engineering? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 15:05, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.201.10.198 (talk) 17:04, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed lets add it. Sw mmr1928  talk  06:30, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Specific Technical Procedure
Apart from the history, concepts, and definitions, what about specific procedure and methodology? I'm an electrical designer, and would love to find a place to consolidate and archive the knowledge I have acquired about HOW to apply electrical engineering to the real world. I can't find a section of Wikipedia that fits this "design guide" concept. Does one exist? If not, then why not? It seems to me that Wikipedia has long since grown beyond that of a mere encyclopedia, and if the idea is to archive the collective knowledge of humanity, then what about applied knowledge, which is a large portion of what our collective knowledge consists of.

I've never posted on Wikipedia before--I've never had reason to, since everything I've found on the site has been written by people who knew more about it than me, or was written as well as I could have done it. But I know enough about electrical design that I feel I could truly contribute, even to a worldwide audience, if only there was a place to do it. How about this dam username? (talk) 00:45, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Quick explanation of Wikipedia outlines
"Outline" is short for "hierarchical outline". There are two types of outlines: sentence outlines (like those you made in school to plan a paper), and topic outlines (like the topical synopses that professors hand out at the beginning of a college course). Outlines on Wikipedia are primarily topic outlines that serve 2 main purposes: they provide taxonomical classification of subjects showing what topics belong to a subject and how they are related to each other (via their placement in the tree structure), and as subject-based tables of contents linked to topics in the encyclopedia. The hierarchy is maintained through the use of heading levels and indented bullets. See Outlines for a more in-depth explanation. The Transhumanist 00:05, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Addition of Computer Science to the branches section?
Stanford concluded that computer science is a branch of engineering Link — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.102.180.134 (talk) 05:33, 4 January 2018 (UTC)