Talk:Otto Julius Zobel/GA1

GA Review

• A " Miscellaneous" section is not appropriate; it's practically like a "Trivia" section, WP:TRIVIA.
• En dash required for "1887 - 1970" per WP:DASH
• The quote in "Background to AT&T research" has "Electric wave filters" on three different lines; please put it all on one line.

Gary King (talk) 01:18, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

All the above done. Don't really agree that "Miscellaneous" is tantamount to "Trivia" but I have changed it to "Heat conduction" which hopefully is now acceptable. This work of Zobel is apart from, and quite distinct from, his lifelong work for ATT but is far from a trivia item. To my mind "Miscellaneous" is a fair heading, but it is easy enough to call it something else. SpinningSpark 22:46, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

• I disagreed with Miscellaneous because it welcomes irrelevant information.
• "Otto Julius Zobel (1887–1970) was " should have the exact birth and death dates, and optionally the birth location.
• Many paragraphs in "Background to AT&T research" don't have references
• Same with "Wave filters"

Gary King (talk) 23:11, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

• "Background ..." The two references at the end of the section are general references for the whole section, and are the main sources. They were originally on a line of their own in order to indicate this, but another editor has run them into the final paragraph.
• "Wave filters". At first glance, all statements are either referenced or uncontroversial to those "skilled in the art". I will take a closer look when I have more time but it would also help if you could be specific on the facts you think require referencing.

SpinningSpark 00:30, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi, well generally it helps if every paragraph has a reference just so there is no dispute as to where it all came from. Otherwise, provide a note in a footnote explaining why something does not require a reference. Gary King (talk) 01:11, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

• I have now added references to "Wave filters", one of which is Zobel's major publication on filter theory which, so far, this article had contrived to avoid mentioning!. I hope this is now sufficient.
• Exact birth and death dates added to lede (the exact day of death is not known, only the month).

SpinningSpark 12:58, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

• "Background to AT&T research" is almost devoid of references
• the dates in "(20th Oct, 1887 – Jan, 1970) " need to be spelled out to "October 20, 1887 – January 1970" (and linked like so)
• There needs to be consistency throughout the article. Isn't "ATT Co" supposed to be "AT&T Company"?

Gary King (talk) 16:37, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

• "Background to AT&T research". As I explained earlier, the two references at the end of the section are the sources for the material for the whole section. Not quite sure how to indicate this, but actually, I did ask for advice at the helpdesk on this point while constructing the article. Their response was that it would be ok to place the references at the end of the final paragraph and their meaning would be clear to anyone looking up the refs. I chose to emphasise this by placing the refs on their own line but another editor has since run them into the para. Would it help to put the refs back on their own line? Anyway, devoid of refs is a bit strong.

• "ATT Co". Yes, I will remove that. The article started out consistently using this abbreviation and it was the abbreviation used by many of my sources. Again, subsequent edits have made changes and the confusion has not been helped by an edit war going on over at the AT&T Company article over whether the present day AT&T Inc is the same or a different entity (there are currently two articles).

SpinningSpark 22:27, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry; I see now, about the Background section. However, I recommend putting the same reference at the end of each paragraph in the section, then, using WP:REFNAME. Gary King (talk) 23:47, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I have now broken up the refs for the background section and provided ref page numbers relating to each paragraph (where possible). I have also separated out the main references into a ref section and renamed everything else "Notes" as is common in many other articles. I like this format better, it is more helpful to readers and is easier to control the main refs (no danger of accidental deletion in an edit). Hopefully, that now meets your requirements. SpinningSpark 17:53, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

It looks better now, but can you add a reference to the end of every paragraph? This is so that I know that all of the information in the paragraph is referenced; for instance, I don't know where the reference for this is: "occurred for Bell Labs in the 1950s, by which time he was residing back in New Jersey at Morristown, where he died in January 1970." Gary King (talk) 18:05, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Is this the sum total of the problems with this article? To be frank, I am rapidly losing interest in this process. I am not finding it very interesting to hunt down references for every innocuous non-controversial statement in order to provide "decoration" for the article - and I only edit Wikipedia because I find it interesting. I will persevere with it a bit longer, but I would like some sort of indication of how much more work will be involved. SpinningSpark 19:01, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Take a look at Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. which has essentially everything referenced. The article must meet WP:CITE, so information regarding his life definitely needs to be referenced. Gary King (talk) 19:07, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the example, but I still need to know whether sorting out the refs will have broken the back of this task or if there will still be heaps more to do. I only have limited time to edit Wikipedia and need some idea of the work needed before I commit any further to this. Sorry, this is the first article I have tried to get through GA and I really do not have the experience to be able to judge for myself. SpinningSpark 20:22, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

← Beyond the referencing, I still see problems with prose and manual of style (WP:MOS) issues, including:

• "of J R Carson, to" → "of J. R. Carson, to", or even better, full name
• "Quite oddly, Zobel's" – oddly, according to who?
• "-competitive are;[45]" – should be a colon
• "In some ways, this was the culmination of the theoretical work, the noise performance of the equipment is optimal when the filter is perfectly matched to the signal one is attempting to transmit." – in what ways? also, there should be a conjunction in "work, the" otherwise the two sentences don't flow together
• something like "This became important in the development of radar" needs a reference – important according to who?
• There are also a lot of small paragraphs, like in "Equalisers", which with a bit of words used for flow can help to merge the paragraphs

Gary King (talk) 20:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Record of responses to review points

• ...can you add a reference to the end of every paragraph?
  • Earl Life
    • Done
  • Background to AT&T
    • Already done
  • Innovations
    • Already ok
  • Wave filter
    • done
  • Transmission line simulation
  • Equalisers
    • Done
  • Impedance matching
    • Done
  • Loudspeaker equalisation
    • Already ok
  • Noise
    • Already ok
  • Background
    • Done
  • Can noise be cancelled?
    • Done
  • Use of his work in fuzzy logic research
    • Done
  • Heat conduction
    • Done
• "of J R Carson, to" → "of J. R. Carson, to", or even better, full name
  • done
• "Quite oddly, Zobel's" – oddly, according to who?
  • Decline to change. Using 1920s telecommunication analogue filter designs in modern genetic programming research is patently odd, if not downright weird, to any telecom, or for that matter IT, engineer.
• "-competitive are;[45]" – should be a colon
  • done
• "In some ways, this was the culmination of the theoretical work, the noise performance of the equipment is optimal when the filter is perfectly matched to the signal one is attempting to transmit." – in what ways? also, there should be a conjunction in "work, the" otherwise the two sentences don't flow together
  • The culmination of the work of using filters in noise reduction IS the perfect matching of the filter to the signal. That is why there is no conjunction, the sentence is an equals statement. Or is the problem that "some ways" sounds a bit weasel wordy? I will try and address this but the answer is in the way described in the matched filter article - a much too mathematical subject for a biography article.
    • Then use a colon instead of a comma. Gary King (talk) 20:39, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
• something like "This became important in the development of radar" needs a reference – important according to who?
  • done
• There are also a lot of small paragraphs, like in "Equalisers", which with a bit of words used for flow can help to merge the paragraphs
  • Specific example dealt with - searchig for others
  • Impedance matching dealt with
  • last para of "Fuzzy Logic" is short but I would rather not run in to the previous para as this is an entirely different set of experiments.
  • "Heat conduction" has one short para but cannot sensibly be rolled into anything else as it is quite apart from the rest of Zobel's work. I have no more information with which to expand it either.

I think that has now addressed all of the comments thus far. SpinningSpark 12:39, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

• "still much referenced today" – could be worded better. "still referenced today" should probably suffice as it's pretty impressive that the papers would still be referenced after half a century

• done SpinningSpark 20:49, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

• "Zobel and Carson also did much to clarify the nature of noise in electric circuits," – since this is a new paragraph, perhaps treat it as such, such as "Zobel and Carson helped to clarify the nature of noise in electric circuits,"

• done SpinningSpark 20:49, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

• "to much mainstream opinion" – "to mainstream opinion" – seems like "much" is being used a lot in the article; it's a pretty superfluous word as the same message can be communicated without it.

• done SpinningSpark 20:49, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

• "and to graduate with" – "and graduated with"

• done SpinningSpark 20:49, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

• "later in 1926, New York" – not much reason to put such a short statement in brackets

• done SpinningSpark 20:49, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

• "Later (from 1934) he was with Bell" – "In 1934, he began working at Bell"

• done SpinningSpark 20:49, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

• "George A. Campbell and Zobel were working on this problem " – "George A. Campbell and Zobel worked on this problem "

• done SpinningSpark 20:49, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

• I stopped there, though, so there might be more. Please check the article over.

• There's a lot of "he is perhaps most well known for ..." statements; these statements are according to who? A reference would need to verify that this is the case.

Gary King (talk) 20:39, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi Gary, I need to leave, so cannot address this right now. I will not be able to get online again until at least Friday. SpinningSpark 06:00, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

That's fine with me. Gary King (talk) 16:58, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Passing Gary King (talk) 02:04, 8 August 2008 (UTC)