Talk:Teledeltos

Alternate uses

Teledeltos paper was also used for function lookups in the moon landing era. A sheet would be placed onto the bed of a analogue x-y plotter. Known constant value boundaries of functions would be drawn with conductive paint and energised. Two input variables would then drive the x and y of the plotter and a probe would measure the voltage at any point on the sheet/field and pass it on to the next part of an analogue computer. This allowed somewhat arbitrary two dimensional field strength lookups that were ideal for research purposes. The visual nature of the beast was probably also an aid to the research.

I have seen pictures of this technique in old trade magazines and I expect there must be some patents but was unable to find anything just now.

Idyllic press (talk) 08:55, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Reliability of source

Hi Constant314,

I'm not so sure the source is just a "blog" (whatever that really is). It appears to be something more. The site includes their "own content" which the article seems to be.

Also, reliability isn't a black and white thing based on categorizing like that. Such as: It's the New York Times therefore it's reliable, it's not NYT therefore it's not reliable. Reliability is determined by the judgement of knowledgeable-enough editors like us (with a few exceptions), right?. Categorization like "it's a blog" is a valid shortcut sometimes, but the ultimate decider is our judgement. The source appears to be the site's "own content", not some random member's posting. It's loaded up with indicators its own inline refs to its own primary and secondary sources. It looks a heck of a lot more reliable than many other refs I've seen.

The matter/source is also non-controversial, there's no reason any source would have to want to lie about that matter. Because it's non controversial, it's fair to first "presume innocence", and only suspect non-reliability if it gives us a good reason (which I don't see).

The assertions made by the (awkward) paraphrasing are also non-controversial and not-dubious (as in "the sky is blue"). And so, the standard for reliability is correspondingly lower. So, even if the source really was only marginally reliable, it could still be "reliable enough" -- because the height of the bar here doesn't need to be very high. (That said, the source is still pretty reliable IMHO. :-) ) 142.105.159.178 (talk) 06:09, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Generally, blogs are not reliable. An important criteria for a reliable secondary source is that there is an independent editorial staff. At least two sets of eyes examine the material. This is where blogs fall down; they have no independent editor.

There are exceptions. Let’s examine a couple. For instance, Bob Pease is used as a reference. He is a columnist, which is a sort of higher level blogger. The reason that his columns are acceptable is that he published in a trade journal with an independent editorial staff. Let’s hypothesize that Richard Feynman had a blog. Feynman has published books and papers that were subject to an editorial process and peer review in some cases. He is a university professor who has a record of producing reliable sources. If he wrote something in a blog, it would likely be acceptable. However, your source does not meet the cut.

And then as for the sky is blue argument, you wrote “demand diminishes with moves to finite element analysis.” I disagree. The use of resistance paper for computation was in decline long before the popularity of finite element analysis. You wrote “only educational needs remaining.” I find that to be dubious. Hobbyists and tinkerers are also buying the stuff. Constant314 (talk) 17:52, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

*I* wrote that stuff? You're confused. I'm defending the good-enoughness of the source, not the words themselves. Someone else wrote the words. The words need work, but that can be done later. 142.105.159.178 (talk) 18:03, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

I apologize. I had assumed that you were the originator and were now patriating as an IP user. That is my mistake. I could have also reverted the material for having dubious facts. It just offends people less to tell them that their source is unreliable rather than their facts. Yes, the words are sort of true but also sort of untrue. If they were just awkward, they could stay in the article while being improved. But being almost certainly wrong, means that those words should be corrected elsewhere, like here on the talk page. Constant314 (talk) 01:27, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

If Feynman wrote "The sky is blue." in his unedited blog, that blog would be reliable-enough to support "the sky is blue" in the text. (Actually, since "the sky is blue" is not at all dubious, no support would be required at all, but that's an example at the limit.) If Joe Blow wrote "The sky is blue." in his unedited blog, that blog would also be reliable-enough to support "the sky is blue" in the text. 142.105.159.178 (talk) 18:16, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

However, the material added cannot be characterized as a sky-is-blue type fact. Constant314 (talk) 01:30, 18 May 2022 (UTC)