User talk:Spinningspark/Archive 9

This is an archive of past discussions with User:Spinningspark. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 5

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Online Ambassadorship: Want has?

Hey mate! As you may already know, Wiki(m/p)edia is doing an outreach program in which students at universities are working on articles about public policy (though the scope of the topics may expand, if I'm not mistaken). To help the students get their sh!t together, Wiki(m/p)edia has gathered together a team of fine editors (herein referred to as ambassadors) to act as mentors and content reviewers. Next semester's program is going to have a lot more students doing a lot more stuff, so we need a lot more ambassadors to help them not fail. I see that you're already {{busy}}, but if this sounds like a groovy time, check out Wikipedia:Online Ambassadors. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 04:18, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Your recent edit on Telegrapher's Equations

Good morning.

I have no complaints but I wonder how it is you notice such things. Do you have a set of pages that you monitor? There are so many conventions regarding wikipedia articles, that I would never learn them except that someone like you fixes them and then I try not to repeat the error. I am grateful.

I am also curious about from where where those redlinks came. I did create the table, but I didn't know about redlinks when I did, so I am quite sure that I did not use them on purpose. My best guess is that I did a cut and paste and modify of someone else's table that had redlinks. Or do they arise out of some automatic process? Constant314 (talk) 13:57, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

T-pad and Image Impedance

You apparently had something to do with the "image impedance" in the Impedance and loss section on T-pad.

The terminology section says:

-------------------------------------------------------------------

The voltage transfer function, A, is,

A={\frac {V_{\mathrm {in} }}{V_{\mathrm {out} }}}

While the inverse of this is the loss, L, of the attenuator,

L={\frac {V_{\mathrm {out} }}{V_{\mathrm {in} }}}

The value of attenuation is normally marked on the attenuator as its loss, L_dB, in decibels (dB). The relationship with L is;

L_{\mathrm {dB} }=20\log L\,\!

Popular values of attenuator are 3dB, 6dB, 10dB, 20dB and 40dB.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

I believe that is backward. As wrttien, A >1, L < 1 and L_dB < 0 which is at least inconsistant with the statement that popular values in dB's are positive. I believe that L_dB should be positive and Loss should be greater than 1.

Anyway, I can fix that, but I cannot tell whether that impacts the Impedance and loss section or not. Annd I cannot tell if : $R_{1}=Z_{0}\tanh \left({\frac {\gamma _{\mathrm {T} }}{2}}\right)$ would need to be changed as a result of inverting the definition of Loss. There is a chance that the whole Impedance and loss section assumed the normal definition of Loss and did not notice that the inverse was defined in the terminology section. Constant314 (talk) 14:31, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

You are right, that is a just as typo, as you have obviously already noted in Π-pad. Doesn't affect anything else as far as I can see. SpinningSpark 14:43, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Try to keep what other has offered you instead of the truth ?

That always cost lives, money worth I know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gggbgggb (talk • contribs) 11:50, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Rationale for Hanoi link

See Talk:Tower_of_Hanoi#Rationale_for_my_External_Link. Regards and Happy New Year, BrandMan211 (talk) 17:46, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Reversion of my edits on Electrical Engineering.

I note that you have chosen to revert my recent edits on Electrical Engineering mainly because you consider them to be "Anglo-centric".

By profession, I am a Chartered Electrical Engineer and Member of the IET. Although I have now retired from full-time work, I still contribute to the profession by being a member of the professional review panel for engineers applying for CEng through the IET.

I make no apologies for my Anglo-centric contributions which I made one evening from the comfort of my armchair via my laptop. In fact, I felt that the article was incomplete by not paying due regard to the UK point of view.

I am aware, having been a member of the IEEE, that this organisation does not have the same entry requirements as the IEE once did although, having amalgamated with various Institutions covering Incorporated Engineer levels (which is the level comparable with IEEE membership), the IET and IEEE are now closer in their entry requirements. However, for the CEng qualification in the UK, it is true that a Masters Degree level in Engineering is a requirement rather than the BEng and I had hoped that my edits would make this clear.

I note that you are an Administrator on the English Wikipedia and therefore must be party to ways to cope with random edits which Wikipedia seems to invite. By choosing to revert my edits, you are, in effect, declaring them to be of no value. I am not sure whether or not you are a professionally registered engineer through the Engineering Council yourself but the code of conduct for members of the profession is to respect each other's contributions. Surely you must agree that discarding a contribution made in good faith does not comply with this professional code of conduct.

DMChatterton (talk) 17:34, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

public domain

please read about public domain material. thanks. --J. D. Redding 23:32, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

jingoism - son, fiction cannot be verified. Info about fiction is valid.

Go ahead with your evil plans, I will publicly show your evil ways so that intelligent people can benefit.

jingoism - son, fiction cannot be verified. Verifiable Info about fiction is valid. You have insulted a fellow human being, you boor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frizb (talk • contribs) 18:42, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are talking about. Please provide a diff SpinningSpark 20:20, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

You seem less than intelligent, and a little bitter.

So let me get this straight, you decided that my recent contributions were a form a spam, not reference material. Last time I checked, I have a PhD in mechanical engineering, specializing in heat transfer, and ump-teen patents on the very subjects that I left references on, including references to FREE heat transfer calculators that I personally wrote (including proprietary equations).

These various thermal calculators are used and appreciated by hundreds of users per day.

So if the Patent offices from United States, European Union, Japan, Canada, and Korea, consider my published work UNIQUE AND NOT OBVIOUS TO THOSE SKILLED IN THE ART, I would think that the likes of you, would consider the same.

So in summation, I suspect that I am at least one, if not THE most qualified person to make any comment or reference to any heat transfer Wiki page.

isofilm (talk) 21:14, 03 January 2010 (UTC)

Capacitance

Thanks for informing me about the problem. I think the template's format has been changed as well as it's properties. Before, it would show the text in doubt with a slightly colored background. I have made necessary modification so that it points now to the part that's in need of citation. Thanks again. --LaoChen (talk)20:03, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Mirror filter

Hello, I saw here that you said you created a custom search widget for Firefox that filters out Wikipedia mirrors. Is this available anywhere? I think it would help out at WP:URBLP. Feezo (Talk) 04:10, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Frankly, I can't really remember how I set it up and it is probably not the best that could be done. But if you drop me an e-mail I will send you back the file it uses to exclude sites. It works quite well for engineering searches which is what I am mostly doing but for your purposes you will probably need to add a lot more. I found the best approach is to do a few test searches first to find the sites you want to exclude. SpinningSpark 16:33, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Relevance note template

Hi, I see that one of your lists of interests is templates. Would you be available to modify or help me to modify the Template:Relevance note? Thanks, RB 66.217.118.96 (talk) 23:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Where did I say I was interested in templates? I'm not really an expert but will try to help if you explain what you want to do. SpinningSpark 23:10, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

To your question, here.

Here is the concept, I want to use Template:Relevance note on Talk pages. The objective is to add this template to [Category:Talk namespace templates].

I think it best to modify the existing template, but an experienced user might have reasons to create a new template. In favor of modifying the current template, [Category:Wikipedia articles with off-topic sections] already has 21 talk pages out of 283 total pages.

(1) Since I don't see any purpose to having a category of talk pages with off-topic content, it wouldn't bother me to just use logic so that talk pages don't show up on this category. (2) The second alternative is to create a new [Category:Wikipedia talk pages with off-topic content].

Either of these options represents technical issues that are above my pay-grade. Thanks, RB 66.217.118.79 (talk) 04:16, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

It is not really conventional at Wikipedia to place maintenance templates on talk page comments, and could be considered to be against the etiquette of not messing with others comments. The inline templates are not really designed for this. All the occurences of in the category that I looked at are accidental, due to parts of the article being posted to the talk page for discussion. The proper thing to do is either to politely explain to the user concerned on their talk page that there is a guideline (WP:Talk#topic) against this, or else place {{Off topic warning}} on the talk page.

Anyway, the technical answer to your question is that the relevance template is already coded not to add categories to talk pages. The talk pages which are in the category are a result of other templates which don't have this facility. SpinningSpark 01:43, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok, instead of a template that suggests there is an etiquette issue, how about a more general-purpose conversation branch. The point would still be to split the confounding conversation away from the on-going topic. The first phase of this would be like relevance note and maybe trivial to implement.

Template:TopicBranch
{{fix
|link=
|title=Material in the vicinity of this tag is being discussed in a new section
|text=TopicBranch
|post-text=<span class="metadata"> &ndash; [[{{TALKPAGENAME}}#{{{1|NewTopic}}}|to]]</span>
|date={{{date|}}}
|cat=}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Talk namespace templates|{{PAGENAME}}]]
</noinclude>

RB 66.217.117.204 (talk) 03:40, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I understand what you are trying to do now. I have created the template page at Template:TopicBranch. Please provide some usage documentation for it. SpinningSpark 19:42, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

XXX and OOO reversed

[header inserted by RB 66.217.118.79 (talk) 02:53, 20 January 2011 (UTC)]
Update Regards, --Flominator (talk) 13:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Re: <sigh> this from an editor making dozens of edits to the article without one single reference

Hi.

First, thank you for fixing the anchor link that got screwed up when I (carelessly) switched the series and parallel paragraphs (I felt it was better to have the slightly simpler explanation of series resistance first). I'll try to be more careful.

Second, thanks for adding the citation I requested, and indeed I only flagged that because I can't see (still can't see) exactly how a Y to Delta transform can be used in the cube of resistors problem. But it wasn't preposterous so I didn't just delete it, and I trust that you know what you're talking about (and that the reference supports it). Sorry for putting you through the trouble -- sincerely. Saying "matrix methods" didn't seem obvious to me either, but I gather what you are saying is that you can solve a system of equations using matrices and matrix inversion which is equivalent to the way I would go about it by writing down N node equations in N unknowns and solving them.

Finally, by pointng out that I didn't add any references to my own edits, I trust you are just expressing the irony that I forced YOU to come up with a reference. I don't think you're saying (are you?) that my edits required further citations given that most of the material I added is widely known and could be easily referenced in electronics textbooks, for instance. Are we cool? :-) Interferometrist (talk) 20:20, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's right, I'm not particularly demanding that you provide references, but you should be aware that it is Wikipedia policy that all "material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable, published source". If you ever try getting an article through a quality review such as GA you will find that in practice this means that all factual material must be referenced, however trivial. It is particularly galling that your edits have caused an amount of controversy on the article talk page but you have chosen not to support your position with references. Such disagreements are only ever truly solved here by writing from the sources, rather than from what you think is right (and maybe others don't).

On the question of the cube problem, the description is a slight simplification, you will actually need the generalised form of the star-delta transform for more than three nodes in order to solve it. But the article is only trying to say that not all networks can be solved with series and parallel combining (as it used to claim at one time) not to give the actual solution for that particular example which would be going way off the article topic. SpinningSpark 00:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. And yes, I understand the policy that there must be references backing up any material that is contributed, and as you surely understand I was just saving time by not finding references for things which I was quite sure could be easily referenced (and which I would have done if I had been forced to). But no, I didn't know about "quality control" and achieving good article status, which would require more referencing, you say.

But you're wrong: my edits didn't cause controversy on the resistor:talk page -- you must have just glanced at it. It was the opposite: almost all of the talk there was MY OWN and I didn't get responses to speak of -- it made me feel like I was wasting my time by writing there! I went over backwards to post my intentions to make the changes before even editing the article. What I did then was spent considerable time rewording the lede and got reverted twice, once without any explanation on the talk page (just a complaint in the edit summary) and the other without much content. Nevertheless I took that little feedback into account and rewrote it again (and DID make it more concise and better organized) but had no way of knowing how my edits were received except that they weren't reverted. If anything, my experience (and earlier experiences) is that you only get people's attention when boldly making an edit, not asking about it on the talk page. And I appreciate that people who have worked on an article in the past feel slighted when their text is thrown out, but it was never my intention to just go around them and I've tried to comply with Wikipedia protocol as I understand it.

"But the article is only trying to say that not all networks can be solved with series and parallel combining" -- then why not leave it at that rather than mentioning the application of a method that may have qualified for an academic paper but is rather obscure (and, as you admit, more involved than just applying the Y-Delta transform)? Why don't you go edit out that last sentence (and the references that I forced you to supply -- sorry!) and just repeat the first sentence of the paragraph: that general circuit analysis can solve any such problem even if there isn't an easy formula.

And again, I'm sorry about making you find a reference, but rather I've tagged things that I'm unfamiliar with in a subject where I am fairly expert and WOULD have expected to understand it. I wonder if there is an easy way to find out when and by whom a sentence was first added, since in some cases I'd find that the person probably DID know what they were talking about (referenced or not) but in others it was just a non-expert adding something they read in a popular or even fringe-science article which was wrong, questionable, or simply didn't belong in Wikipedia. I'm still learning, so please go easy on me :-)

Interferometrist (talk) 12:15, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok, here's how the article got to where it is;

It is not acceptable to leave it saying that all circuits can be solved by repeated application of series and parallel: this is factually incorrect.
It is not acceptable to simply delete the offending sentence since someone who doesn't know any better is sure to put it back.
Having made the statement that not all circuits can be solved this way a counter-example becomes necessary. This will not be believed by those not familiar with network analysis since they will often be unable to think of an example themselves. The cube example has the advantage of being simple and easily visualised. Just about anything else would require producing a diagram to make it clear.
Having given an example an obvious question from many readers will be to ask how then is it solved. Links to other Wikipedia articles are the simplest way to do this. The two methods stated are general methods capable of solving any problem
Star-delta is mentioned as this is going to be familiar to many who have studied networks and makes this more understandable. The generalisation of star-delta to the star-star polygon transformation (or node elimination as Wikipedia calls it) is perhaps not so familiar but perhaps could be linked.

You are incorrect to assert that such problems are "rather obscure". The problem arises in bridge circuits (except for special cases such as balance and antimetry) which I am sure you will agree are as common in circuits as muck in a pigpen. There are many other simple examples. You have again made a claim without looking in a reference, let alone quoting one: I am pretty certain you will not find an RS stating this problem is obscure. Farago, for instance (one of the references I quoted in the article and which is an elementary text) discusses the bridge circuit, amongst others, in this context.

I don't intend to do any further work on this, I thought it was fine in the first place, but feel free to improve it yourself. There is nothing wrong with being bold, but be prepared to be reverted WP:BRD. You often will not get a lot of response on talk pages until you actually start to edit the article, so don't take silence as necessarily consensus. I can see from the talk page that you have found one of our less collegial electronics editors early on. If you want to edit on Wikipedia you have to be prepared to deal with all sorts of people, that's just the way this place works. SpinningSpark 16:00, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

On how to find who originally inserted text, one can usually find this in the article history within half a dozen or so attempts by halving the distance to the next search on each hop. There is also a tool, Wikiblame, which will do the search for you. SpinningSpark 16:15, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Alright, thank you for the detailed explanation of the history and motivation of this little aspect of the article (you really didn't need to!). I didn't mean to say that problems of this sort are obscure, I was referring to the systematic methods for solving it you have mentioned (at least they were obscure to me!). I realize that one might want to analyze the impedance of a bridge circuit for instance, but I would have just analyzed it directly. But I can appreciate from glancing at the paper by Wu that such a systematic approach can deal with problems with a large number of nodes in a regular pattern etc.

Yes, I'll try to deal with other Wikipedians as they come, and try not to stoop to the same level of discourse! And thanks for WikiBlame, it works real nice (slow, but faster than me doing it). Cheers, Interferometrist (talk) 18:28, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Editor assistance list

A problem has been identified at Wikipedia:Editor assistance/list. You may like to read Wikipedia talk:Editor assistance/list#Problem with inactive accounts on the list. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:28, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

reversion to morse code page change

hi, i added some punctuation to the morse code page (namely, a semi-colon before and a comma after "nevertheless"), and i would like to know why you marked that as vandalism.

thank you!

75.156.102.12 (talk) 20:28, 9 February 2011 (UTC) garson

I've reverted it back, my mistake. I had only seen the inserted double space; this is a very common test edit, fairly harmless, but annoying as it takes some effort to work out what the editor has done so I usually give the culprit a warning. Test edits are considered disruptive on Wikipedia. I strongly recommend that you always use edit summaries so that it is clear to other editors what you have done and why. This could have been as simple as "+; +." in this case but it is better to also add your reason for the edit such as "grammar" or "syntax" or "flow" or somesuch. Good edit summaries make your work far less likely to be mistaken for vandalism. SpinningSpark 21:08, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

ahh... got it... thanks for the note! i'll be sure to add an edit summary in the future... :)

Ghostly reader (talk) 23:05, 9 February 2011 (UTC) garson

KeepLocal image template

Hi SS, I'm writing to everyone who commented (for or against) on the last deletion debate regarding the Keeplocal image template. This has been proposed for deletion again, and your input would be welcome. See Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2011_February_20#Template:KeepLocal. Many thanks, SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 22:51, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

pls reply

my name is ndimneze chukwudi, i have read ur area of interest and i wish to know u more. my email address is <redacted>. i will be grateful if u accept me. thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.205.168.141 (talk • contribs)

I have removed your e-mail address, it is not a good idea to post it here: you are likely to get spammed. You can communicate with me on this page if you wish. What do you want to know? I suggest the first thing is for you to open an account here. SpinningSpark 18:55, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Butterworth filter

Anyway, -s^2/wc^2 is harder to see than s/jwc which is what it is in fact. "Most" people use G_0(1 + (s/jwc)^2n)^-1. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sss41 (talk • contribs) 23:55, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Please discuss this on the article talk page where other editors are watching. SpinningSpark 00:59, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Golding Bird

I just reviewed this article for DYK. Good one. I started, and then thought maybe I should check with you, "harvardizing" the references in it. I got introduced to this technique a while ago, and have gradually got in the habit of using it for most articles. Any opinion? Feel free to revert my edit if you dislike the style. (If you look at Wouri estuary that shows the appearance when all citations are Harvard format). Aymatth2 (talk) 20:54, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

The advantages of this scheme are immediately obvious, but I am quite likely to revert this. I have never been a great fan of citation templates: they work well a lot of the time but on the occasions that something unusual is needed one has to do battle with them to get what you want. Plain markup is easier to write in the first place and is much more flexible. The issue here is that there is a great deal more expansion that can be done on this article and I don't want to be forced into someone elses citation scheme while I am doing it. Sorry. SpinningSpark 21:04, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

No problem. I personally like citation templates because they suggest to new editors what information they should provide, and look after the formatting. The {{sfn}} style is maybe a bit awkward when writing an article because the citation detail is at the foot of the article rather than instream to the text, but I like the visual effect particularly when citing from different pages in one book. This is purely a matter of personal taste. Revert! Aymatth2 (talk) 21:14, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Golding Bird

On 1 March 2011, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Golding Bird, which you created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that physician Golding Bird invented the electric moxa in order to save patients from having to be burnt with glowing charcoal? You are welcome to check how many hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Materialscientist (talk) 18:06, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

IRC invitation

Because I have noticed you commenting at the current RfC regarding Pending Changes, I wanted to invite you to the IRC channel for pending changes. If you are not customarily logged into the IRC, use this link. This under used resource can allow real time discussion at this particularly timely venture of the trial known as Pending Changes. Even if nothing can come from debating points there, at least this invitation is delivered with the best of intentions and good faith expectations. Kind regards. My76 Strat 08:52, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Quick question about revision

Hello Spinningspark; I wanted to politely inquire about an earlier revision you added to the page for Heat sinks. I appreciate your efforts to cut down on spam, as well as your respect of Wikipedia EL, but in this particular case I'd have to disagree with the deletion. With all due respect, I'm not fond of having edits reverted without discussion first, as it seems to insinuate I was working in bad faith. I do agree that the original poster was probably just using it to promote his/her site (as it doesn't fit as a reference, being just a tool), but I do personally think it is extremely useful as an external link (again, not as a reference). I have always interpreted Wikipedia:EL to mean sources should be useful in a directly pertinent way to the users reading the topic, which, I believe for obvious reasons, the removed link is.

I looked, and have been unable to find another free website that seems to offer a similar service. Perhaps if a better calculator can be found, that should be uploaded instead? I would greatly appreciate knowing your thoughts, or if there are other channels I should be going through.

Cheers, Sloggerbum (talk) 17:36, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi Sloggerbum, no implication of bad faith is intended. I thought I explained myself clearly on the article talk page. Personally, I see no purpose at all to a link to a calculator where the calculations can be done, well, on a calculator, just as simply from the expressions in the Wikipedia article. Besides which the site did not seem to give the expressions its calculators were base on (I looked - but not too thoroughly) which means that one can never be too sure what the results actually mean. It is not the intention of the poster (either original one or you) that is at issue here, but the intention of the site, which as I said, is often merely as a device to obtain incoming links. That much is clear from;

If you found these calculators helpful, please reference our HOME page, in your favorite relevant sites, such as:

Wikipedia
Heat Sink Forums
Tom's Hardware Cooling Forums
Overclocker Cooling Forums

Thank you, NCI Management

You are not really going to convince me on the need for calculators. If you want to take it further you need to reply at the article talk page as a first step and see if there is a consensus of editors there. Really though, this is a pretty trivial matter and hardly worth the aggravation of a big debate. SpinningSpark 18:11, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi Spinningspark,

I appreciate your time and thoughts, they all made sense. I agree that a big debate would be rather pointless (I'm not fond of Wikipedia drama either, seems to steal time from actual constructive work).

I'll delete the "calculator" from the pages that just go over thermal concepts, as you're right, the calculations can be done with a normal calculator. I may look more closely at the link itself, and if it seems to have something exceptionally unusual and useful in one of it's calculators, I may be tempted to re-upload them just on some computer components heat pages. BUT if I make a change, I'll be careful to first post my intentions in the associated forum, and not make a fuss if others feel it doesn't belong.

And a kudos to your anti-spam efforts, as otherwise we'd probably have pages with never-ending columns of unrelated external links.

Best, Sloggerbum (talk) 18:45, 3 March 2011 (UTC) (weak spot for cool science gadgets...)

New Note

Hi again Spinningspark; sorry for bothering you again; I was about to open the forum discussion to make my case that the link should stay. But honestly, I'd feel pretty stupid making that much of a fuss over one link, and my brain is tired of trying thinking like a lawyer.

I checked again, and I think this website novelconceptsinc is too awesome to leave out. I admittedly missed your comment about external calculators on the forum earlier (my apologies), but I do agree that a lot of companies (probably this one too) use the calculators to bring traffic to their site.

HOWEVER, I still don't think we'll find a topic-specific "math-aid" for free (or more accessible) anywhere else. I understand you're probably extremely good at math, so yes, doing the calculations yourself from these pages would be possible, but a lot of people (myself included) are up a creek. I can see why a normal calculator wouldn't need to be included (people have their own normal calculators) but this makes playing with the calculations possible for us less-than-talented-at-math people, or people who are just starting to learn, or just in the process of seeing how the equations work.

Would you be willing to make an exception in this case? Regards, Sloggerbum (talk) 20:00, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

What makes you think that one is particularly awesome? SpinningSpark 20:29, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

no ugly advertising, easy to understand graphics illustrating the variables, variety of calculators, large font, and kind of pretty colors...ok, the pink font is ugly as hell, but the other traits stand outSloggerbum (talk) 20:33, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

A pretty page design is not really a good argument for an external link. The calculation is excrutiatingly simple, involving only multiplication and division, plus there is no indication that such a simplistic approach will not be terribly accurate for a realistic design, it is more like a schoolroom experiment. As I said, you are unlikely to convince me of the value of online calculators, you need to widen the discussion to get anywhere. SpinningSpark 20:42, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

It was a joke. Anyways, I understand your point of view. I'll take it up in the forum. Best, Sloggerbum (talk) 20:49, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

electrical engineering.

You have been semi-protecting a article electrical engineering from June last year . It has been over 9 months now . So I suggest that you remove the protection on the article.Suri 100

The article has been repeatedly protected from high levels of vansalism. The current protection will expire in June. It is a featured article, which means it is considered one of the best articles that Wikipedia has produced, and to achieve that status every word and comma has been reviewed and tweaked by numerous editors. Such articles are unlikely to require major additions or rework: if they do they probably should never have got to FA in the first place. No article is perfect of course, and I am always willing to unprotect to allow a new/unregistered editor to work on it. Is there anyone who actually wants to edit? SpinningSpark 08:28, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Bhopal disaster

I have read your message. I am sorry that I have not mentioned the reason in edit summary when I removed large tracts of text under this article.Meanwhile I have already requested to you to unprotect the articleelectrical engineering since you have semi-protected this article . Please respond .Thanks for sending the message to me. (Suri 100 08:25, 8 March 2011 (UTC)), — Preceding unsigned comment added by Suri 100 (talk • contribs)

See above, and please learn to sign your posts properly. SpinningSpark 08:32, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Your response in semi protection of article electrical engineering

Thanks for your response.Sorry for that. Suri 100 11:20, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks I have changed my preference settings. Suri 100 (talk) 01:46, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Nikola Tesla

I reverted it because it was one of a series of messages he's been leaving ([1] [2]). The messages have nothing to do with improving the articles; they're adverts for his micronation and for his cause. ninety:one (reply on my talk) 13:16, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok I've self-reverted. Probably would not have done it in the first place if your edit summary had concentrated on explaining the reason rather than bitching at the other editor. SpinningSpark 17:48, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

John G. Linvill

Hi Spinningspark - You were interested in Dr. Linvill's work, so I though you might want to know that he died last week. I posted a link to an obituary in his article. Regards, Robsavoie (talk) 05:18, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'm not sure that I have ever had any intersection with that article. SpinningSpark 14:29, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Heat sink Calculator I found very helpful

Hi Spinningspark

First off, let me tell you I have been very lucky to read your posts over the last few months and thank you for everything you do. I'm a student at the University of California, Los Angeles and I actually think that you would be pleasantly surprised with how technically advanced this heat sink calculator is. It took over 6 years of empirical research and 9 months of equation fit analysis to create the equations, check out the PDF white paper about the calculator that's located on their heat sink calculator page. The reason why I mention this is because for the last few months I would refer to the Wiki heat sink page and open a few resources while tutoring but now they are gone. Thanks in advance

Heat Sink Calculator Page: http://www.novelconceptsinc.com/calculators-forced-convection-heat-sink-thermal-resistance.cgi PDF about the Calculator: http://www.novelconceptsinc.com/calculators-forced-convection-heat-sink-thermal-resistance.pdf AlexBottini (talk) 02:30, 18 March 2011 (UTC) — comment added by AlexBottini (talk • contribs) 23:11, 17 March 2011 (UTC)AlexBottini (talk) 02:28, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Never heard back from you

Hi Spinningspark

I never heard back from you after my original post and asked a friend why that might be the case and he said that I needed to create a profile for my name which I did. Did you have a chance to read my original talk? In light of the technical PDF, are you willing to re-add the calculator as a reference to the heat sink page?AlexBottini (talk) 23:11, 22 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlexBottini (talk • contribs) 21:02, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I am not a great fan of either external links or calculators so you are not likely to convince me personally. If you feel strongly about this I suggest you open a discussion on the article talk page - decisions are made on Wikipedia by consensus, not by appeals to authority. The Wikipedia guideline you need to meet is WP:EL which on my reading is against you. I am on a very slow dial-up connection at the moment, but I promise I will read your pdf document when I am back home in a few days time. SpinningSpark 18:30, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Hello, I trust that you are back home safe and sound now. Did you have a chance to read the PDF that details the depth of the calculator's technical nature? Thanks! AlexBottini (talk) 17:47, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but it didn't really tell me a great deal other than what you have already stated above. SpinningSpark 18:10, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Mass deletion of electronic components

I agree with your statements about the Mass deletion of electronic components. All this nibbling at early transistors is an unwelcome mess. Next they will be after 6SN7 triodes. Beyond saying Keep over and over, please let me know what else I might do. (BSEE, 1961, Lafayette College)--DThomsen8 (talk) 14:54, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

You could support my proposal for mass closure of these debates at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Mass deletion of electronic components SpinningSpark 15:04, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I have had a sad experience with a mass deletion before, so I am cautious about that approach in the present case. See my comments there.--DThomsen8 (talk) 17:54, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Gerber edit

Hello Spinningspark,

Indeed, I removed the wrong entries. )-: Thanks for helping out.

wkr

Karloman2 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karloman2 (talk • contribs) 18:18, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Iamstd2 (talk) 14:39, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Golding Bird

I noticed you doing a lot of work on this article. Would it benifit from the addition ot {{infobox person}}? Mjroots (talk) 10:54, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

No SpinningSpark 11:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Milhist FA, A-Class and Peer Reviews Jan-Mar 2011

		Military history reviewers' award
		By order of the Military history WikiProject coordinators, for your help with the WikiProject's Peer and A-Class reviews for the period Jan-Mar 2011, I hereby award you this Military history WikiProject Reviewers' award. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:59, 3 April 2011 (UTC) Keep track of upcoming reviews. Just copy and paste `{{WPMILHIST Review alerts}}` to your user space

Thank you, awards are always appreciated, but I don't think my contribution could have been very significant, I hardly remember taking part. SpinningSpark 14:45, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

image to commons

Dear Spinningspark, I'd like to use your drawing File:GR law b=1.svg in Hungarian Wikipedia. Is there a special reason you requested it not to be transferred over Commons? Thanks, SyP (talk) 10:19, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

There is no problem with having it on Commons. Just don't delete the local copy. Would you like a version annotated in Hungarian? SpinningSpark 18:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I just did that. Thanks. SyP (talk) 19:31, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Questions

Hi,

I got your name from the editor assistance page. Long story, but my questions are straight and simple. If you have the time and inclination, your opinion would be appreciated. Please feel free to decline if you wish.

If I warn another editor they are being uncivil on their talk page, and a third editor comments to support me, is it proper for the editor I have warned to delete the supporting statement and add other comments in their place?

If I complain about an editor's lack of civility on the article talk page where the incident occurred, then later post a comment and link to a formal proceeding where that same editor was sanctioned for uncivil behavior, on that same talk page, is it acceptable for the other editor to delete my post?

I am not looking for support, just answers to these two questions. I've been trying to work my way through dispute resolution processes lately, and I am a bit inept. Thanks for your time.

-Aquib (talk) 00:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

May I interject an answer since I happened to see this? It's generally OK for an editor to remove comments from their talk page. You should take it as an aknowledgement that your comments were read. I'm unclear on what you mean by "and add other comments in their place"; certainly not OK if "in their place" means in front of your signature, but probably OK ohterwise. On the article talk page, it's less OK for others to remove your comments, unless they were in the form of a personal attack. Hard to say more without looking at specifics. I'm not an admin; maybe ss will have better answers. Dicklyon (talk) 03:20, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks and regards -Aquib (talk) 03:47, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Dicklyon is correct, deleting warnings from user talk is ok. I would add that an article talk page is an inappropiate venue for discussing user behaviour. Deleting material from talk pages is not usually acceptable unless their is a breach of policy, but in this case I would be inclined to let it stand. It depends what the "replacement" is; if the user is continuing the dispute and deleted to make his/her case look better then that is definitely not acceptable. Post a link to the page and I will take a look. SpinningSpark 06:10, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

[3] William M. Connolley (talk) 08:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your offer to provide an opinion, Spinningspark. I hope you don't mind if the other editor looks over my shoulder as we discuss (strictly these two questions) : )

this is where my warning discussion on WMC's talk page stood after Cla68 supported my assertion of uncivil behavior and I thanked that editor for their comment.

this is the same warning discussion several hours later after WMC has deleted Cla68's support and my thanks. As you can see, the discussion has been altered to give the appearance I have received no support for my claim. My warning has not been deleted, but rather altered.

The talk page post added by WMC (directly above), was a subsequent response by me. I can see now it does not pertain to the talk page and I do not object to its being removed. I do, however, feel that the changes made to my warning discussion on WMC's talk page were objectionable on several grounds. I wish to insist we all follow the rules in regards to the dispute we are engaged in.

Any and all thoughts welcome.

Regards, -Aquib (talk) 13:20, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Cla is not welcome on my talk page; see WP:ARBCC if you're wondering why. Cla is well aware of this William M. Connolley (talk) 13:21, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and Aam? You're not welcome to conduct a content-free conversation with Cla on my page [4] (I'm assuming SS doesn't mind me talking to you here, since you started this discussion here) William M. Connolley (talk) 13:23, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

First of all, and without taking sides on whether it was justified in this case, the guideline on stubbing allows for stubbing of articles with unacceptable content. I get two things from reviewing the article and discussion. Firstly, it is agreed by all, including William M Connelly, that this subject deserves an article on Wikipedia. Secondly, that the contributions from Jagged85 are to be treated with the greatest suspicion. WMC, in stubbing the article, appears to have been too lazy, or had too little time, to sort Jagged85's edits from other contributors. I understand from his comments that he has no objection to the reinsertion of referenced material that has either not come from Jagged85 or that does come from Jagged85 but has been verified to be supported by the source. So people, instead of arguing about who warned who and for what on my page, why don't you get down to the much more productive task of reinserting, one by one, the good passages from the original article. To WMC, it would show good faith if you undertook some of this work yourself instead of sitting back and leaving it all to others, after all, collaboration is what Wikipedia is about. SpinningSpark 15:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

If you're going to throw lazy around you really ought to be un-lazy enough to spell my name right. Secondly, if we could actually agree that stub-and-rebuild is the correct approach, instead of arguing about it, then yes we could indeed get on with rebuilding. Aam is wasting lots of peoples time (including Arbcomm's, I hope you noticed that) in multiple venues trying to get the answer he wants. If he wasn't wasting my, and other peoples, time in this way then yes we could indeed get on with rebuilding.

Aam is *still* making basic policy errors re the stubbing (see [5], which repeats his already corrected error [6]) William M. Connolley (talk) 15:40, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I thank you for your time and apologize for bringing such an unpleasant mess to your doorstep. -Aquib (talk) 18:00, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

transformer drying reference needed

hello spinningspark, i recently added a paragraph to the transformer drying section regarding transformers under 5KVA. i received a note that i need to list a reference. i assume that inserting a link to a supplier which explains all the different resins and drying time is not allowable. please confirm.

ajay s. <e-mail redacted> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajsharma01 (talk • contribs) 16:00, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

It's not totally unacceptable but sources independant of any manufacturer would be preferred (books for instance). The more the page looks like it is trying to sell something, the more likely it is to be removed, but I would have to see it to give an opinion. In principle, I would say that as the section insulation drying is totally unreferenced then almost any reference is better than nothing. SpinningSpark 16:44, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Bad block on Yobot

There was no edit war. Please read the Wikipedia:Edit warring. Do you see 3 edits in the page? Moreover, you are involved editor. You shouldn't block. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:24, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Bots don't get three reverts, there is no point, if they revert once they will continue doing it forever until stopped. In fact, no-one is entitled to 3 reverts. Please tell me you have fixed this problem or I will report it to ANI. SpinningSpark 23:30, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Please report to ANI. Thanks. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:31, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Done [7] SpinningSpark 23:48, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Problem with page fixed. It was caused by unbalanced brackets in an other place. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:41, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Dear Honorable Prime Minister of Pakistan!

Here at I begin a discovery plan which who is against made in Pakistan. Who nation is doing not bringing innovation; did not becoming in advance country; my discovery plan is that: First: we find country or country group who is against Pakistanis innovation. Second: We should be bound them. Third: We can accept all worldwide challengers. Fourth: And we bring innovation against them. So we meet the worldwide challengers. Our nation is fully accept and could they meet the challengers. Our national spirit and soul as well as advanced nation. Hereof should be visiting to our country. The country visiting for should a vehicle; The Prime Minister of Pakistan should bestow a vehicle for my discovery plan. So my discovery plan is as well as completion.

From:

Najam Ul Hassan Hamdani —Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.68.97.36 (talk) 07:19, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps you could provide a link to where I was elected to this position. SpinningSpark 11:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Chinterpreter

like your comment, making me laugh :-). Care to take a look at link here. same people, same action -- delete. thanks for your time. Chuser (talk) 01:44, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Please provide a diff to the edit you think is problematic. I don't see it in the history of the page you linked. Nor do I see it in the contributions of the IP above - there were only two other instances of the insertion above and they stopped two days ago. There does not seem to be any cause for administrative action at this time. SpinningSpark 08:22, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I suspect you're being recruited for the deletion review, same as Edison. Chuser appears to be aware that we disagreed in a previous AfD. Msnicki (talk) 10:29, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

If people in wiki can be recruited by me, I am very honored. But I must be the poorest recruiter since TEDickey was "recruited" by me. :) I like your previous comments: "The object of wiki is about improvement, not delete stuff because wki:IDONTLIKEIT". I am not sure what you are asking for the history. Is this link you are looking for? Chuser (talk) 17:15, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems you should have started a new heading, I have now done that for you. Your post got confused with the previous thread, especially as the first thing you said was to comment on the previous thread. SpinningSpark 18:09, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. The talk for this page was closed about one month ago. Gary brought up his complain here. Just checked the talk record, TEDickey was recruited by Msnicki earlier, not by me. I should not take somebody else's credit. Chuser (talk) 19:38, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Tedickey and I independently discovered the article the same day and discussed it here. Tedickey has more experience than I do and I often ask his advice. Msnicki (talk) 19:51, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Which Zoo

I have lived near Whipsnade Zoo, Chessington Zoo, and in Eaton Wick, Slough and Banbury (which is no better than a zoo). Also, I had found out I had spelt my on-line name wrong since January. Wipsenade (talk) 17:08, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

:-)Wipsenade (talk) 17:08, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Uploading copies of diagrams for German translation of Distributed element filter

Hi Spinningspark, I am translating the article Distributed element filter for the German edition of Wikipedia (my translation so far). Therefor I will upload a copy of each of your diagrams illustrating the article. The licence indicates, that it is okay for commons, but the box under the licence makes me asking you first. Is it okay for you, to upload copies of this svg-diagrams to commons? I will take the commons-share-alike 3.0 licence with ‘Courtesy Spinningspark at Wikipedia’ as attribution. Kind of regards --Godai2 (talk) 11:44, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm fine with that, I just want to prevent deletion from Wikipedia, so please do not put a deletion template on them after you have copied. If you need any modifications or additions for your article (German annotation for instance) I would be only too happy to help. SpinningSpark 12:35, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your offer! There is a small modification for File:Stripline filter lumped equivalents.svg thinkable: corner parameters in German literatur are usally greek letters, lines (i.e. length or width) are usually latin letters. In this diagram 'θ' markes a length. A German speaking editor would mark it with an 'l' for 'length'. But the diagram works without modifications. So far no action is necessary.

The translation of your article will take some time because I am a busy man ;-) I hope to finish it this year. Thanks in advance for your help! --Godai2 (talk) 15:28, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Asking the same question over and over at BRFA

Asking a blanket questions such as "If an editor informs you that they think your bot has made a mistake, what action will you take?" to all active BRFAs, especially for bots with experienced operators, serves very little purpose. If you got a concern with particular operator's responsiveness, that's fine and that should be raised, but these copy-pasted questions are just a questions for sake of asking a question. These clutter up BRFAs, and take valuable time from both bot operators and BAG members, so if you could refrain from that in the future, it would be appreciated. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:15, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Really. Stop. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:21, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

(ec) It is rather ironic that I am getting a complaint for making bot-like edits to a page where the bot operators hang out. I am sorry if I am asking this question of experienced operators who would not dream of not properly responding to a problem; I am not familiar enough with this group of editors to be able to identify which they are. However, there are clearly many bot operators who do not seem to accept responsibility. I am getting a little weary of the number of times I have raised problems with bot operators and the initial response has been "it only makes this error a very small number of times, editors will have to live with it/ it was approved by BAG so go take it there/ its not worth my effort dealing with this/it does more good than harm/its a feature of AWB and there's nothing I can do about it". It is my intention to oppose any approval that does not satisfactorily reply to this and if they do answer and later renege there is straightforward grounds for BAG to take action. All bots will sooner or later run into problems, it is surely far less effort to answer this once at BAG than the multiple times that will occur in the future. However, I will stop doing it for now to give you a chance to marshal an argument in policy why I should not continue, or why this might be disruptive to BAG. SpinningSpark 18:39, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Take for example [8]. Was there a problem in the past with VeblenBot, its operator (CBM) or any of its previous tasks (BRFA 1/BRFA 2/BRFA 3/BRFA 4/BRFA 5/BRFA 6)? If so, mention it with the relevant details. If not, then the question does not add anything meaningful to BRFA 7. CBM has been around for a very long time, and is a very experienced bot operator. If we're dealing with a new bot from a new operator, it's usually one of the first questions asked by the BAG members, especially if the user looks noob-ish or had problems with edit warring, blocks, etc... When it's an old bot, with an established operator, we're past "making sure" they are familiar with basic bot policies because they've been through things several times now. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:03, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I'll take that on good faith. Where is the page at BAG for raising issues about bot operators? SpinningSpark 19:15, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hi! The reason for your question really came up because BAG channel on IRC gets a recent bot-related changes feed. I suppose you can ask all new operators to explicitly acknowledge this part of the policy. But then again, as far as I know, you can just block the user for disruptive editing because, to quote WP:BOTPOL, "The contributions of a bot account remain the responsibility of its operator [..] In particular, the bot operator is responsible for the repair of any damage caused by a bot which operates incorrectly." Thus any operator who does not (seem to accept) responsibility for bad edits is violating the policy and the user/bot can be warned, then blocked following further disruptions. So, as far as I see it and as far as the policy is concerned, you can take the necessary actions when the bot operators dismiss you. I don't think there is yet a need to ask this particular bit to every bot operator. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 19:17, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Usually, if the bot operator is not willing to fix their bot's mistakes, you take it to WP:AN/I and you get it blocked per the passage H3llkn0wz just quoted from WP:BOTPOL. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:20, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I did block a bot recently, and the drama that caused at ANI was not something I wish to repeat. The idea was to "head off at the pass" that kind of future trouble. Where is the page at BAG for raising issues about bot operators? SpinningSpark 19:24, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

WP:BOTN? Probably the closest. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 19:27, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Would WT:BRFA be better or worse than WP:BOTN for raising issues about bot operators? This question arose while I was answering the subject question at my BRFA. — Jeff G. ツ 03:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I would think WP:BOTN is more appropriate, mainly due to visit frequency BOTN vs BRFA. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 06:40, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Untitled post

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Consensus

Sir, those merge banners have been on the page for seven months. Consensus is a nice thing to plea for when someone is determined to leave something unchanged... as you can always thwart consensus. You're over-reaching in your assessment of the other editors' positions. Most seem interested in fixing the article. I personally would much prefer that you present a plan for what you think should be in the article than lecturing me about wikipedia niceties. Yes, consensus is generally preferred. Meanwhile, seven months later...--Atlantictire (talk) 16:19, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Skinny triangle

It just popped up from memory - snipers, and just soldiers, are trained to quickly measure skinny triangles with items they have with them. In the Soviet Army such item was a matchbox which gave 4 standard sizes: width of a match and three sizes of the box. Materialscientist (talk) 06:38, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Fingers are better. Not so easy to lose. SpinningSpark 06:53, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Sure, hand was used too, but there were good reasons for using the matchbox (don't recall them all): sniper targets are small; thus the box/matches were more accurate, easier to use in winter, and could be tabulated in training books (palm width is variable). Materialscientist (talk) 07:02, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Heatsink

Hi there,

Thanks for moving the laptop heatsink images to an appropriate page (I didnt know computer cooling existed as a page). I was wondering if you had any idea as to what to tag such pc component images captured by a digital camera.

Thanks highwycombe (talk)