Talk:Sampler

What belongs on this page
Instead of having a reversion way lets's talk about our difference of opinion and see if we can come up with a comprimise. As I see it, a dab page is to help you find the real articles, not to hold material of their own. It's a signpost, not an anthology. You don't use them for dictionary definitions, because those don't even belong on Wikipedia. You don't use them to duplicate material in articles, because that makes Wikipedia hard to maintain and the dab pages hard to navigate.. And you don't use them to hold material that isn't in any article: you move the material to a regular article; if no existing article article is appropriate, then you create a new one. Isaac R 00:56, 30 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Mercury is the example from WP:D. This page has more than a list of articles as it has a short description to help people understand what each one is.  "Sampler quilt" means absolutely nothing to me but "In a sampler quilt, each quilt block is constructed using a different pattern. The article Pressed flower craft shows a sampler made using real flowers and petals." tells me exactly what it is.  Simplying linking to quilt requires me to go to the page and find out what a sampler quilt is, but alas! there's nothing on quilt that describes what a sampler quilt is.


 * Additionally, for the information theory sampler. It is *not* a dictionary defition.  The content of that "sampler" is contained in sample (signal).  The short description is sufficient to point someone to sample (signal), where more information is at.


 * Further more, from WP:D:


 * To let the reader choose between different pages that might reside under the same title. ... Ask yourself: When a reader enters this term and pushes "Go", would they expect to view any of the articles listed on the disambiguation page?


 * Do I expect to see something about the inf. theory sampler on sampler? You betcha!  This one also falls under the jargon exception of not using dictionary definitions.


 * Deleting the inf. theory sampler is unacceptable because people would expect to find it on sampler. Boiling this dab page to nothing but a list is unacceptable as the model dab page show (and WP:D stipulates it is perfectly acceptable to have short descriptions and I would call the 1-2 sentences "short").  As it currently stands, you were deleting valuable information from wikipedia and that's not acceptable, ergo my revert. Cburnett 11:44, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Breaking it down
I'm kind of at a loss here. There's a lot of little issues and at least one important misunderstanding. Rather than try to untangle them all, I'm just going to go through the changes I made one by one, and explain why I made each one, and try to respond to your comments as I go. This is the dicdef I was referring to. I think it belongs on Wiktionary, and nowhere else. Maybe you could make a case for it as a stub (I'm skeptical), but even then you'd want it in a separate article, not embedded in a dab page. Although this links sampler (musical instrument), it's also a micro-article. I think that's bad: it's hard-to-maintain duplicate material. And the extra explanation does not help the reader find their way to the article -- it actually makes it harder. So I pared it down to That tells the reader just enough for them to know whether that's the article they want. And isn't that what a dab page is for?
 * In general, a sampler is any broadly representative cross-section of some collection; for instance, food  products are sometimes packaged in samplers containing a variety of  chocolates  or  beers.
 * In music, a sampler  is an electronic  musical instrument  that uses stored  audio  recordings called  samples .
 * A sound sampler, commonly used in music.

Here's the one that probably bothers you the most. I'm guessing this change motivated your revert: you felt that I gutted a particularly useful dab that happened to be your own contribution. So I better express myself carefully.
 * In information theory, a sampler is a device that  samples  a  continuous signal  and will result in a  discrete signal  if all dimensions are sampled.

First off, the misunderstanding: I didn't edit this entry because it was a dicdef. As you point out, a dicdef is perfectly fine if you have to define some jargon in order to make the dab entry clear.

The question is, does the dicdef make anything clearer? In my opinion, it makes it harder for the reader to figure out whether this is the link s/he wants. You've got to parse a pretty complicated sentence that provides a lot more context than you need. And, as with the previous sampler (musical instrument) entry, it's redundant material that needs to be in the article itself. So I pared it down to A signal sampler, used to digitize  continuous signals. Maybe a little too spare? I can see that maybe I should have retained your mention of signal theory. But I balk at a full-fledged dicdef. Maybe they're useful on some dab pages, but they're not mandatory, not even for jargon.

I haven't covered all my changes, but that's probably enough to help you understand what I was trying to do. Let's hear your response. Isaac R 03:28, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'll just run down the list then:
 * I see no harm in a general dicdef that encompases all the dab links. I'd actually like to see this reduced down to the lead-in for this dab page.
 * Sampler (musical instrument) is a micro-article??????????? It's a 7K article!

Finally, the inf theory sampler: Cburnett 15:54, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)
 * This was not the reason I reverted, the real reason is that you were being way too much of deletionist.
 * I disagree that it's too much.
 * Your pared down version is technically incorrect, which says to me that "my" definition is warranted s
 * The link ( signal sampler ) does not link to where you think it would and that's generally frowned upon. It should be: signal sampler.
 * If it requires rewording so the laymen understands it better, fine, but that's the wrong way.


 * This is going nowhere. Frankly, you're not being very constructive. You start out by summarily reversing all my edits. Even though I was really offened by that action (it says, in effect, "you're full of it, you don't know what you're doing"), I kept my resentment to myself, because I wanted to work with you to come up with an editing strategy we could both live with. But you don't want to work with me, you just want to tell me that my work is unacceptable.


 * Your comments both to me and other editors assume that you're the only one who really understands how dab pages are supposed to work. That's not going to fly.


 * Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make another stab at editing Sampler and do my best to address your concerns. If you have issues with my work, you can make constructive suggestions -- by which I mean suggestions that go beyond "that's the wrong way". If you don't think I'm being responsive, you can ask for an arbitration. If you continue to reverse my edits, I'll be the one asking for arbitration. Isaac R 19:41, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Nowhere, eh? The current page is much better than your first attempt though you still have an incorrect definition for the inf theory/DSP sampler.  Digitization is sampling and quantizing.  As the def said, sampling converts a continuous signal to a discrete signal.


 * I guess I don't see reason to apologize to you. When you "pare" down a dab page to under 2 dozen words, change a correct definition to an incorrect one, utilize bad linking, and rely on quilt to define "sampler quilt" even though it doesn't.......and you want me to say your work is acceptable?  The old dab page is as I said it was in my summary: this is a *much* better disambig page.  I never said that I think I'm the only one who understands dab pages, but I certainly know that your first edit is not the way it should be for the reasons I just stated.


 * You are also *way* to quick to whip out arbitration. If necessary, the first step is mediation.  FYI. Cburnett 04:02, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)