Talk:Telecommunications

Requested move 13 August 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Ultimately there is consensus that "telecommunications" is the basic form of the word, often used in singular, so it will be moved. (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 02:40, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

---

Telecommunication → Telecommunications – Telecommunication refers to the action of communicating over a distance, while the wider term covering the technology and industry, which is the scope of this article, almost always appears as telecommunications. Now it's a bit unclear whether this is actually considered a plural form—Merriam-Webster gives the definition as "technology that deals with telecommunication —usually used in plural"[1], while Lexico (previously Oxford Dictionaries) says, "(telecommunications) [treated as singular] The branch of technology concerned with telecommunication."[2] But that shouldn't matter, since both show that Telecommunications should be the preferred title. Paul_012 (talk) 17:20, 13 August 2021 (UTC) — Relisting. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:59, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

• Weak Support. In English there is no noun that cannot be verbed. It is British Telecommunications for example, or Post Office Telecommunications. In both cases I think "telecommunications" is a noun. The question is as rightly put, is "Telecommunications" so different from the broad concept of "Telecommunication". Itself a bastard word half-Latin half-Greek like Television and many similar. I think WP:RS pleAse... i can imagine about fifty-fifty. Lexico is the Oxford English Dictionary (underneath, and that lists "telecommunication" as a mass noun). Would tou suggest {{r from singular}} if we swapped it? Abstract nouns are often plural in other languages, but not in English. 85.67.32.244 (talk) 18:33, 13 August 2021 (UTC::

Webster's also lists under headword in singular "telecommunication". Its second definition does say "usually used in plural". Now thwre's the rub: is "telecommunications" plural? I would say not. Is e.g. "ministries of information" plural? Have can, will have a diet of worms. 85.67.32.244 (talk) 19:24, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, ministries of information is plural (information ministries) in the same way as courts martial is plural. It's a postpositive adjective. That doesn't make telecommunications plural. It is the name of a field of study, hence singular. "Telecommunications are the transmission of information..." sounds ungrammatical to my ear. ngrams tends to agree with me. SpinningSpark 13:54, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Telecommunication(s) seems to be heading down the path of statistic/statistics. But this article currently deals with both of the aspects, so won't the singular suffice? —  AjaxSmack  16:42, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm communicating remotely. Have I communicated or shall I telecommunicate? Or merely communicate? Should I telecommunicate or telecommute? Is this message telecommunicated? Should I be telecommunicating or merely commuting, which after all goes from one distant place to another. (But "commute" is another back formation. As is this edit.) 85.67.32.244 (talk) 19:36, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Telecoms industry? Telecom industry? but British Telecom. France Telecom. In most European languages it is singular, Deutsche Telekom, but that is little help to what we call it in English. In Hungarian it is singular uncountable essentially mass nouns don't take plural form and if you count them you use the singular. tiz telefon for example, not "telefonok" plural even though there are ten (tiz) of em. It's a very fine distinction... I'm settling towards the -s, but it's very fine line (as indeed is my telephone's). 85.67.32.244 (talk) 01:59, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose: This is very often referred to in singular form (e.g., International Telecommunication Union and various sentences in the article itself that would become ungrammatical with the plural) and Wikipedia generally prefers singular (WP:SINGULAR & WP:NCPLURAL). There is no problem here that needs fixing. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:57, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
  • This argument is specious. In your example, telecommunication is used as an attributive noun (like an adjective modifying another noun) and these are rarely plural in English even if the base noun is usually used in the plural (cf. Palestinian refugees, but Palestinian refugee camps). And there would be no prohibition on using the grammatically correct singular in the text of the article just because the title is plural. —  AjaxSmack  16:42, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

• Comment - Whatever it is, we have this same issue with Communication. ~Kvng (talk) 14:37, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Not really quite the same, ngrams gives opposite results for the two terms. SpinningSpark 13:14, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

    Spinningspark, do you think there would be a quick consensus either direction if someone suggested renaming Communication → Communications? ~Kvng (talk) 19:37, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support: Ngrams shows a significant preference for the plural term, as does Google Scholar (991,000 versus 537,000). The New York Times uses the plural term. Rublov (talk) 14:42, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Telecommunications has been notified of this discussion. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:59, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Note: Version 1.0 Editorial Team has been notified of this discussion. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:59, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. I weakly prefer the plural, but I don't see the point of renaming an article that has been around since the beginning of Wikipedia and suddenly turning a zillion incoming links into redirects (or even worse, having a bot/AWB pollute our watchlists for weeks trying to fix this non-problem). SpinningSpark 13:54, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
  • NB WP:READERSFIRST, not editors. —  AjaxSmack  16:42, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
    • ...and this helps readers how? SpinningSpark 19:48, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
      • I'm not arguing that it does; I have no position on this move. I merely arguing that the interests of readers in general should be placed above those of links, redirects and bots. —  AjaxSmack  13:34, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
        • I got it that you are for readers' needs to be put first, but if you are not arguing that a readers' need is served here then what was the point of starting an off-topic sub-thread? SpinningSpark 15:35, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support. It's not even a plural. What, now "telecommunication" is countable? Red Slash 18:53, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Do you think "Telecommunications is frequently debated in the halls of government" is grammatically correct? (That's a sincere question, by the way, not a rhetorical device.) —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:07, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

While I would recast such a construction, it doesn't sound all that strange in 2021. The almighty Google agrees. That's where I found the title of James Bond's 1997 article "Telecommunications is Dead, Long Live Networking", which would seem confusing as a plural. —  AjaxSmack  13:34, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support. Telecommunications is singular, in the same way as mathematics and athletics. Telecommunication has a subtly different meaning. This article is about telecommunications. Andrewa (talk) 08:56, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
• Weak support (mainly weak on the minor difference, but I'm leaning toward the plural, likely due to personal preference) – searches for "Telecommunication" with and without the plural (on Wikipedia, not sure if I can link searches) in the article title shows that we are split on this with our current titles. Funny enough, if I do such a search for "Telecommunication", it returns "Did you mean 'Telecommunications'?" (or at least it did, it doesn't now, maybe that's irrelevant). I wonder if we should also consider History of telecommunication and Outline of telecommunication as well as other uses (not fully-inclusive) such as the disambiguators at Gating (telecommunication), Terminal (telecommunication), and LTE (telecommunication)? (I'm feeling a bit sorry for whoever is brave enough to close this now) ASUKITE 03:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hatnote

@Picard's Facepalm: if by "there is no risk of that" you mean that telecommunications is unlikely to be confused with [[Telecommunication (song)}]], you are of course correct. But that is not the purpose of the hatnote and why {{confuse}} was not used. The purpose is to aid the reader to locate the article they were looking for when they typed its name in the search bar. We don't make readers jump through hoops by making them guess the disambiguator or where to find a link to the article they were looking for. All the reader needs to know is the name of the topic and hatnotes will take care of the rest. This hatnote should be restored per WP:SIMILAR/WP:AMBIGTERM. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:12, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree, it's a valid disambiguation per WP:DAB. Personally, I'd like to see it on a dab page rather than here, but that is not a solution in this case because of WP:ONEOTHER. But even with a dab page in existence, a hatnote would still be needed here to point to it. SpinningSpark 18:27, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I've returned the hatnote. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:53, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Barker code

I've removed this recent addition from the article;

In the early 1950's digital transmissions were of great interest eg for space telemetry, radar, encryption and for computer technology. Like analog communication, data transmissions also suffered from noise causing the data to get out of sync. Various attempts were made to resolve the issue using digital codes. In 1953 RH Barker published a paper demonstrating how to synchronise the data in transmissions. It is known world wide as Barker code. The process is “Group Synchronisation of Binary Digital Systems” When used in data transmissions the receiver can read the data error free. The application at the time was of great interest and is now used in many digital applications mentioned in this article.

References

Barker codes have very little to do with noise immunity, although agreed noise might cause loss of sync in framed data. The main purpose of Barker codes is to achieve synchronisation in the first place and avoid false synchronisation with a sequence of data bits. Neither of these is a noise issue. For noise immunity per se minimum distance codes like Hamming codes are much more relevant. There are other ways to achieve synchronisation other than framing such as Manchester code, and in asynchronous communication synchronisation is not an issue at all. In short, even if this para was corrected, I think it is getting too far down into the weeds for an overview article. SpinningSpark 14:52, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• Comment- Agreed that there are more efficient ways to achieve synchronisation since Barker code was discovered. An great deal of work has been done over the decades to find and use alternatives, however in many digital applications it is still used. Barker code forms part of the evolution of telecommunications in digital format and as such ought to be mentioned in this article. It is difficult to see under the present headings where it should be inserted. Perhaps adding something to the paragraphs on 'Wireless communications' or 'Digital media' might be more appropriate in which case my references to noise can be omitted. Please reconsider and let me know if you still don't agree. Windswept (talk) 17:28, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

  This definitely doesn't belong in the analog v. digital section. Barker code does not represent an advantage of digital over analog. If it is really an important "part of the evolution of telecommunications" then it belongs in the history section. But frankly, I think there are many more important advances in digital telecoms than this that are not currently in the article. For instance, the automated asynchronous sending of digital data began in the telegraph era, for which the Baudot code was the key advance, along with automated punched tape readers. Our article currently has digital telecommunications starting in the semiconductor era. Certainly that gave a great boost to it, but not only did it not start in the semiconductor era, it predates the thermionic valve era; it actually starts in the relay era. So if you have a source saying that Barker code was an important advance for telecommunications I'll support it going in the history section. Otherwise I'm not convinced. SpinningSpark 18:58, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

"Beacons and pigeons" sub-section

We're defining telecommunications as being electromagnetic communication. I don't think pigeons can be described as electromagnetic by any stretch of the imagination. It can't even be counted as tele- if we mean by that remote communication without physical transfer of the medium. Beacons might be counted being as they use visible light but it's a bit of a stretch. If we want to talk about early forms of communication, we should first of all make it clear that these are not telecommunications as defined, and secondly we should include the much more common communication service of mounted messengers. The section is misnamed in any case as it talks about far more than fires and pigeons. SpinningSpark 13:23, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

Telecommunications

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Huge amounts of uncited material fail GA criterion 2b) ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:17, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

GA from 2006. there looks to be significant unsourced material in the article that has to be addressed. Onegreatjoke (talk) 22:34, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.