User talk:Oldgeezer

Oldgeezer;

You wrote:  "Lots of articles, not just this one, that have to do with electrical concepts are full of half truths, sometimes non-truths." True and, rather than making a general statement like this without specifics, you should simply fix them and, if necessary, explain your correction on the talk page - that's how Wikipedia works.

You also wrote: "I think it is because they are written by enthusiasts, but not by actual specialists who have studied these topics and have contributed to the discipline." Don't you understand how Wikipedia works? Enthusiasts are the most enthusiastic editors at Wikipedia. Experts often contribute for a while and then stop after coming to the realization that their work has a short half-life here. EE articles are very difficult to maintain for the reason that there are many electronics enthusiasts that wish to contribute to the articles at a technical level. Also, there are many EEs (and EE students) that wish to contribute at their level. The result is often an odd mix of near scholar level material and folksy technical level material. The fact is, you cannot change this. If you try to re-write an EE article at a high level, you will get complaints on the talk page from those expecting the material at a technical level. Sections will be added, your work will be edited and before you know it, your carefully structured article is a mess like many of the EE articles are now. I speak from experience, Oldgeezer. Alfred Centauri 00:00, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * OK then. Very good points. No problem admitting to naivete regarding WP practice, and I am glad to yield to your experience. I do not object to technician- or hobby-oriented prose, I object to error and confusion. Of course you are right, The short half-life is, indeed as you suggest and I certainly agree with, a big barrier to jumping in and fixing it all.  Its odd: I have seen many articles in WP (in areas I have not worked in professionally) which seem well written and informative.  Then I came across these EE and physics articles and I am appalled by the bizarre and misinformed expositions. I thought, where were the experts in this, how did they let this happen?  So, Alfred C, since editing these articles is like riding on an oscillating series that will not converge, can convergence ever be achieved?

I've been recently thinking that the electronics articles should be divided into two sections - one for the technician level material and the other for the engineering level material. The engineering level material (assuming a consensus has been reached by the major editors at that time) should begin with a header explaining that the material in this section has been carefully edited by specialists in the field and that any changes to this section made without first being discussed on the talk page will be reverted. The technical level material will be more open and thus will need to be 'cleaned up' periodically to remove the incorrect or misleading edits. The proper place to discuss this or any other strategy is at. Alfred Centauri 22:33, 7 November 2006 (UTC)