Talk:Glossary of engineering: A–L

Thanks

@Wtshymanski: I want to thank Wtshymanski for his extraordinary work on this glossary of engineering. Wtshymanski's brilliant and extensive contributions, along with admirable help from DocFergus, to the Glossary of electrical and electronics engineering made it one of the best glossaries on Wikipedia. I hope other editors will be inspired to expand the Wikipedia glossaries across all topics. Glossaries are one of the most important features of this encyclopedia. They make complex subjects easier to understand. Sometimes the articles on Wikipedia become too technical for high school and college students. The glossaries counter that. They also allow students to review an entire subject without having to click on each term. This glossary of engineering is a great resource for engineering students who need a broad overview of all the subfields. So again, I want to thank Wtshymanski for all the hard work. Engineering students around the world are grateful. --LearnMore (talk) 13:42, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Er. Not guilty. I have done nothing here - yet! DocFergus (talk) 14:24, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

@DocFergus: Please note that I was referring to the other glossary, not this one. However, I am sure engineering students would be thrilled if you could help out on this one. --LearnMore (talk) 14:45, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

It's mostly just mechanical work...save your praise. Mindless tedium, rather like solving sudokus. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:53, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

@Wtshymanski: Don't belittle other people's contributions. While I grant it is not in the same league as populating the glossary, it is neither mindless tedium nor just repetitive 'cut and paste'. Since my efforts are so unappreciated, you can sort out the remaining glossaries yourself. DocFergus (talk) 13:30, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

I was commenting on my own edits. I've no idea how much work anyone else puts into these things, and didn't you justsay you haven't done a lot to this list yet? --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:24, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

@Wtshymanski: My complete misunderstanding. And I apologise unreservedly if I caused any offence. DocFergus (talk) 10:27, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm a bit tied up for the next couple of days, but I shall try to edit the current entries and populate a few more sometime next week. DocFergus (talk) 11:10, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

@DocFergus: Thank you very very much.--LearnMore (talk) 12:49, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

This is a great glossary

This is a great glossary. Very helpful. Please add more definitions.

More thanks

Thanks to all those who have contributed to this glossary. And thanks to all those who will contribute to it in the future. LearnMore (talk) 20:47, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Should't this be a Wikibook instead?

The title says it. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 03:36, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Splitting this article

This article is currently at 504,000+ bytes, and it is the largest article on the wiki. I suggest splitting this article, or splitting sections of it into different articles. After looking at the section sizes, the M section appears to be largest, with 71,000+ bytes, which would total to ~433,000 bytes. Since that is still too long, we should also split the second largest section into a separate article. The second largest section is S, with 47,000+ bytes, so splitting that off would give us ~386,000 byes. However, there is also the option of doing a split in half. I looked through the section sizes yesterday and did the math, and the most direct split in half would be to split it into A–L and M–Z, each one giving ~246,000 bytes. However, since we have 26 different sections for each letter, there are multiple different ways that this article could be split. I think the most preferable option would be to split based on each section. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 15:08, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. I propose splitting by letter, except combining H-K, O with either N or P, Q with either P or R, U with T or V, and X through Z, and also splitting M into two. Ji11720 (talk) 15:34, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Ok. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 20:05, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

And I assume you mean by individual letter. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 20:08, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I did the math, and here are the results (I also combined W with X–Z):

• A: 34,056 bytes
• B: 30,502 bytes
• C: 47,301 bytes
• D: 19,225 bytes
• E: 37,681 bytes
• F: 25,912 bytes
• G: 21,008 bytes
• H–L: 38,872 bytes
• M: 71,778 bytes
• N–P: 48,326 bytes
• Q–R: 18,650 bytes
• S: 47,507 bytes
• T: 28,318 bytes
• U–Z: 27,489 bytes

All in all, this mostly seems like a good split. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 20:30, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. I suppose we should get on with it. Ji11720 (talk) 22:28, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

We should probably combine U–V with W–Z and combine P with N–O now that I think about it. I will edit the original list. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 23:44, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't see any need for sections to be divided, but I fully support the article being divided into two or more articles. I would prefer a split like H-K and L-Z rather than splitting out individual sections into new articles. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:48, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Doing L–Z would give ~206,000 bytes, which would be way more than H–K, which has only 19,964 bytes. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 16:58, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

If you split it, make absolutely sure you maintain the page's history including revisions, page creator, etc. Have an administrator or very experienced editor do it.

I also just edited the list to combine L with H–K. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 16:58, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I encourage any editor to split articles. The page's history is retained automatically if splits are done appropriately. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:10, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Just made Draft:Glossary of engineering: M, could someone take a look? Ji11720 (talk) 14:02, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

It looks good. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 21:14, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Alright, I'll finish splitting it. Ji11720 (talk) 23:20, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Done! Ji11720 (talk) 23:33, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I was considering splitting the glossary into halves: (A-M) and (N-Z) zsteve21 (talk) 21:15, 22 September 2021 (BST)

Requested move 9 October 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: page moved by User:Onetwothreeip. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:00, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

---

Glossary of engineering → Glossary of engineering: A–L – Since this list now only covers words from A to L, it would make the most sense to rename it as such. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 14:07, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support per WP:NOPRIMARY, and create a disambiguation page at the base page name with this and Glossary of engineering: M–Z} as entries. They are of equal long-term significance, and any disparity in page views could be explained by letter frequency § Relative frequencies of the first letters of a word in the English language. 85.67.32.244 (talk) 21:54, 9 October 2021 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 04:08, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
• Comment. I wonder if it's worth separating the common top and tail into templates {{Glossary of engineering top}} and {{Glossary of engineering bottom}}, which can then be transcluded? They should take a parameter for the "see also" to the other list. 85.67.32.244 (talk) 22:02, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support: one of the recommended styles at WP:NCSPLITLIST. This could probably be withdrawn and completed as an uncontroversial move. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 02:24, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment. Please make sure that any move is done correctly so that legacy of article is maintained including history, page creator, etc. While nobody owns a page, it is important to give all those who volunteered to work on the article the credit they deserve. The same is true for splits. By the way, could someone please check to see if the recent split did that? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.77.192.168 (talk) 16:17, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

This didn't require a discussion, it's the obvious outcome of the split. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:28, 15 October 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.

Reverting the split

This split makes this article a worse article by causing people to need to jump around in order to view the content clearly. Is anyone else interested in reversing the split? Ergzay (talk) 15:13, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

That is not necessarily true. One could simply link to the specific article. Besides, reverting the split would make the page too long again. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 18:02, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

"Too long" again? How long is too long? EEng 00:00, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

No answer, as usual. Huh. EEng 17:54, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

@Blubabluba9990 Except most every page does not do that. And now wikipedia is full of broken links that no longer link to the specific sections. See here. Now you need to go create churn on all of those pages to re-point them to the correct section. Additionally many intra-article links are also broken because the split was done poorly. Finally, those intra-article links are supposed to immediately jump to the other glossary entry, now they require a page load, and if you then follow another link, it may require yet another page load. This makes the browsing expereince _worse_ not better.

As to making the article too long, I think that's irrelevant if it makes the page harder to read/use. It's not even that long in the first place. Ergzay (talk) 03:16, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

The two articles are still quite large themselves, so a merge isn't tenable. If a reader wanted to read all the content of the two articles which amounts to over 400,000 bytes, they would still only need to "jump around" between two articles. This is fewer articles a reader would need to navigate if they wanted to read or access over 400,000 bytes of information in most other cases. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:19, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@Onetwothreeip No, normal people do not think about accessing "bytes of information". Computers do that, not humans. How many bytes it takes up is completely irrelevant to a human. A human has a handy tool built into their browser called ctrl+f (or cmd+f) which no longer is possible when the article is split. Additionally the point of a glossary is to also find other entries that are related. Say I want to find any topic related to "electrons", it shows up in multiple entries on both pages. Now I need to search both pages, not just one. Ergzay (talk) 03:21, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Byte sizes are an indication of article and content size, especially at those scales. If a reader is searching for "electrons", they use the search bar which on desktop browsers is in the top right of every page. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:44, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Searching "electrons" in the search bar finds that word throughout Wikipedia. What you've done it make it impossible to make that search in this glossary, except by jumping between two pages and doing it twice. The other points raised by Ergzay are precisely the ones I made at WT:Article size#Clarification needed for "article splitting activists", and it appears you still don't grasp basic stuff like broken links. This is beginning to look like a WP:CIR problem, given that you insist on working in an area whose basic issues and concepts your seem unable to comprehend. EEng 00:00, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

• I'm going to repeat here a question I've asked over and over at WT:Article size#Clarification needed for "article splitting activists", and to which I've received not cognizable answer: What was the benefit to the reader of this split? EEng 00:01, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

  These two articles are still larger than the vast majority of Wikipedia articles, so searchability is actually much better here in that narrow example than most other articles. Wikipedia readers seeking information about electrons would best find it using the search bar. If they want to find it within articles, they can do so in as many articles as they want. Broken links are a different matter. The benefit is to make the content easier to load, read and access per WP:SIZE as they are still very large articles, but not as absurdly large as if they were put together. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:42, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

  • These two articles are still larger than the vast majority of Wikipedia articles, so searchability is actually much better here in that narrow example than most other articles. – The size of the article has nothing to do with its searchability; all pages are equally searchable using ctrl-F. What you've done is split the page into two, so that to search the material you now have to visit two pages and do two searches. Thus this page is less searchable than any other page that hasn't been mindlessly split, as this one has. (This is WP:CIR Exhibit 1 for a possible topic ban from article splits.)
  • Wikipedia readers seeking information about electrons would best find it using the search bar. – Are you truly this dense? We're not talking about a reader looking for general information on electrons. We're talking about a reader who wants to find the word "electron" in this glossary. This has been explained to you repeatedly (here and at WP:Article size), and is CIR Exhibit 2.
  • If they want to find it within articles, they can do so in as many articles as they want. – Yeah, and wherever you've split articles needlessly you've doubled their work in doing that. (CIR Exhibit 3.)
  • Broken links are a different matter – That's all you have to say about the links you've broken? You have repeatedly shown that you have no idea what to do about them. And I'll note that in an ANI thread on this very topic, in which you came very close to being topic-banned, your please was The simple reason why I didn't resolve those errors myself is that I didn't know how to. If I knew how to, I most certainly would have done so, and I did not anticipate the errors occurring. [1] Well, here we are two years later and no much has changed. (CIR Exhibit 4.)
  • The benefit is to make the content easier to load, read and access – For the nth time, a glossary isn't "read", and readers don't "load and access" pages, computers do. You take it as axiomatic that any split of a large page makes it "easier to load, read, and access", and you repeat this mantra over and over ad nauseum while rationalizing away (or studiedly refusing to understand) the negative effects of splits, and the hamhanded way you do them. (CIR exhibit 5.)

  EEng 05:15, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

  Since my name was called here somewhere in an edit summary, here's my opinion on the whole mess: (1) The glossary is too long. (2) The split is an unhelpful change that makes a bad situation worse, by leaving it in pieces that are both still too long and also significantly less usable. (3) The real problem is someone's bright idea nine years ago that it's possible to fit a topic that could fill a whole book-length dictionary into a single Wikipedia article. (4) The real fix is to break this up into functional subunits like electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, etc., but that would take a lot of work and a lot of subject-matter expertise rather than a Solomonic baby-splitting. (5) Unless or until we find an editor willing to put that much effort into it, we should try to put the baby back together so that at least we have a baby rather than two half-babies. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:24, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

  EEng, you seem to be under the impression I split this article. I did not. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:29, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

  No, but you urged the split and are defending it in a way that clearly demonstrates your lack of competence in this area. EEng 17:53, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

  I think it shouldn't be too hard to find a few major topics to separate the entries into, which would be better than an alphabetical split. The two halves together are absolutely too much for one page. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:27, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

  • shouldn't be too hard to find a few major topics to separate the entries into$\wedge$No, it would be quite difficult since almost no what set of subtopics you devise, many entries will seemingly belong in more than one. It might be possible to peel off some fraction of entries that are clearly specialized to one field, but overall there will still be a very, very large mass that defy categorization.
  • The two halves together are absolutely too much for one page – There it is again, the mantra of "it's too big!" repeated over and over as if that makes it true.

  EEng 17:53, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

@ErgzayThank you for bringing this up for discussion. I never thought the article needed to be split. I wanted the community to discuss it and I always assume good faith. In my opinion, the definitions of the major concepts of engineering need to be all in one place and in alphabetical order. It is better for the reader. LearnMore (talk) 15:33, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

To address EEng's second point and LearnMore's reply, the article is actually easier to read due to being shorter. There is also no reason why finding anything would be difficult, considering that people would search for specifically A–L or M–Z to find what word they are looking for. There are tons of Wikipedia pages divided alphabetically, or divided in general, and they have not caused any problems or complaints. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 19:17, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

I am an engineering student. I had no problem with the glossary before the split. Further, I like the robust material. It is not watered down. That is good for midterms and final exams. Also, the page views for the glossary were almost twice as high before the split. 107.77.192.113 (talk) 21:50, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

I just took an informal poll in our discussion group. We liked it better before the split. I asked about 48 people. All engineering majors. It just seemed better to navigate before. Doesn't Wikipedia have some sort of arbitration system? 107.77.192.113 (talk) 22:13, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the contribution. I'm not aware of the process to mount such a merge of articles. Maybe @EEng has advice on how to begin the voting process? Ergzay (talk) 09:06, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

To be honest, I think we should concentrate first on getting the splitting guideline changed. Until then all efforts to stop this kind of nonsense are going to be met with the same relentlessly blithe bludgeoning. EEng 13:44, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Per WP:NOTLAW, guidelines should follow actual practice rather than being prescriptive. Anyway, the process for merging the two pages back together is described at WP:MERGE. I would support this because my impression is that the glossary is bloated with too many terms that are not really engineering such as adenosine triphosphate and so it needs a good prune. And most of the entries seem to have articles and so are perhaps redundant. The glossary should be slimmed down to engineering jargon and words that don't have an article. An appropriate example is ingenuity – a dab page because some think there's nothing to say about it. Another option would be to split by discipline instead – civil engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, etc. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:00, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that since engineering is an interdisciplinary field the license exam requires knowledge of biology, chemistry, etc. That is why some of those terms should be included. Also, there are already glossaries on Wikipedia for engineering specialties. This one is, and should be, about the broad fundamental terms that also touch briefly on biology, chemistry, physics, etc. 107.77.194.5 (talk) 18:19, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Improving the layout/structure of the glossary

A few suggestions have been made in response to the split:

1. Slim down the glossary to engineering jargon and words that don't have an article
2. Categorise by discipline instead – civil engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, etc.

For the first suggestion, while it may condense to only the most important engineering terms to the reader, the inclusive scope may be limited due to the fact that it excludes other less important terms. For the second suggestion, a new article should be made for each category.

While some people may think this is a lot of work, it doesn't have to be done in one edit or in 24 hours and can be done gradually. The field of engineering is substantial and has lots of terms which strongly implies that all of it cannot be confined into one single article that doesn't have any space for anything else. zsteve21 (talk) 21:29, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Are you aware of how much overlap there is between engineering disciplines in the way of terminology, and how many of them one might have to consult to find the term you want? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 13:00, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

A Radical Proposal

Here's a radical thought: why don't we restore the article to what it was before the split and work from there.

The article was split surreptitiously by someone whose primary goal in Wikipedia is to split articles, using the following rationale:

"Article officially and boldly split, as there were no objections to my split proposal after a week (automatic consensus). If intending to revert, please discuss first on talk page."

The only people that seem to support the split are those who always do this, seemingly in concert.

All the users and contributors (i.e., the engineers) think is works better as one article. There is no question that it does. It could be slimmed down, but right now the arguments are all over the place.

Put it back the way it was before it was "boldly split", a practice that should be outlawed. Take it from there.VarmtheHawk (talk) 22:42, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm behind that. EEng 23:28, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

There is another way to split which works quite well for Glossary of underwater diving terminology (split several ways) and Glossary of nautical terms (split in two). It requires a couple of special templates, but makes further splitting simple when necessary. I leave the decision to those who actually edit the article, but will help set up the templates if that is what they want. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 12:40, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

I will agree that splitting makes an in-page search for something not in the page a complete pain, but on the other hand having the page crash while rendering because of its size and number of templates is also inconvenient. Glossaries tend to grow over time. One day they crash. It is theoretically possible WMF will fix the problem, but I am not holding my breath. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 12:52, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

How do people use this glossary

After reading some of the comments above, I have a question. How do people use this glossary? I would go to a glossary to look up the meaning of a term, I start by knowing what term I want to look up, so I would use the ToC to find the initial letter, scroll down to the entry and read it. I might click on a link to another term used in the definition that is unfamiliar, note some optional alternatives, link to a main page or see also to expand the available information, possibly check a reference. I might also disappear down a rabbit hole or use the control-F search to find the term more quickly since I know it will be on that page because alphabetical ordering works that way. Is this greatly different from what others do? I would like to know because by knowing I might be able to write better glossary entries. That might improve the encyclopedia. If I do not know what the term is that I need or want, I would not try to use a glossary and would just try various likely looking search strings in the Wikipedia search engine window, or try google in the hope of getting lucky. Enlighten me on how others use the glossary, that may help work out a rational strategy for size and structure. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 14:17, 26 July 2022 (UTC)