Wikipedia:Featured article review/AC power plugs and sockets/archive2

AC power plugs and sockets

Article is no longer a featured article

Review commentary

Talk message left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Electronics. Sandy 23:06, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

This article is, in my opinion, a mess! The prose is very poor (e.g., "If a plug does not mate with the sockets available, do NOT modify either and only replace one if you are sure you know what you are doing"), there's inconsistent spelling (adapter/adaptor), ampersands in links and titles, obscure jargon and technical references (e.g., "The Danish standard is described in DS Afsnit 107-2-D1 (SRAF1962/DB 16/87 DN10A-R)"), and general awkwardness. There are no inline citations and only five references total. Many of the images have obsolete copyright tags. It also seems overly long, though that may be unavoidable for an article of this type. —smably 22:12, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Status? Five inconsequential edits since nominated, here's the diff: [1]. No one is working on it. Sandy 10:05, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• Comment I browsed it wondering whether this were just a minor matter of spelling and syntax, but discovered the article has no line citations at all. While it seems to be accurate and complete and encyclopedic, I like to see references. Durova 00:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are poor prose (1a), copyright tags (3), and length (4). Marskell 06:00, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

• Remove. Some work has been done on it since Sandy's comment above, but not nearly enough. Convince me that it should be saved. Tony 13:09, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
• Remove. Lacking inline citations. Bad lay-out. Huge "See also" section. As it is now, it shouldn't be saved.--Yannismarou 08:12, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. Two editors have been working on the article, but not on the FARC issues: I left them talk messages, hoping to enlist their help in the FAR. Sandy 13:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. I'm one of those editors, the big problem is that the only good references are the official national standards which (unfortunately) aren't generally freely availible and presumablly many of them aren't in english either. So unfortunately most information is either from other websites or from people who actually live in the countries where the plugs are used.
  • As a top level article what should really happen is that all the little sections should be summaries linked to high quality well referenced articles of thier own, but that requires someone with enough knowlage about the particular plug types use to write such an article.
  • I try to keep the article tidy (mainly summarising bloated sections and moving the detail to more specific articles, i'll take a look at see also now it could probablly do with some trimming) but i'm really not in a position to make much improvement on the references issue.
  • As for the copyright tags i stronly feel that if people wan't to go obsoleting tags they should clear up the mess they make themselves.
  • As for length yes it is a little on the long side (and people keep pushing more in which i try to keep under control but its a major job), otoh it is very usefull to have basic info on the worlds common plug types in a single conviniant article. Plugwash 11:12, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. I'm the other of those editors.
  • Actually, a lot of information on the more common standards is available on the Web, it's just time-consuming tracking it down. I'm working on it.
  • I'm also working on cleaning up the turgid prose, but there's a lot of it.
  • I tried splitting the article, putting the somewhat bloated safety notes section in its own article, but Plugwash put it back. We really need to get together on what we are doing.
  • Some of the plugs are popular enough to deserve their own article, the Europlug already has its own. It's probably time for the American Type B to get its own as well since it has a number of common variations.
  • We have a bit of a conflict between the North American and British POV. I'm Canadian, so I know the American plugs quite well, and I've seen a few of the European plugs. I find the British plugs kind of humorous (or humourous depending on your POV), but that doesn't go over well with the Brits. RockyMtnGuy 22:38, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
    • You left the safety notes section as a horrible stub section, i brought the most important bit of it back (and trimmed the version i brought back too) leaving a section convering the most important bits with a main article link which is imo the way it should be.
    • As for the american plugs, i think for the moment NEMA connectors is small enough to just put any detail that doesn't belong in domestic AC power plugs and sockets there. At some point we might wan't to break out say "NEMA 5 series" into its own article though.
    • BTW you say you find the size of our plugs humerous, well i've got two retorts to that. One is the flatness means that in use they aren't as bad space wise as they first appear (e.g. you can push a cupboard against one without it being too far from the wall), secondly its lovely to be able to plug in a 3KW fan heater or electric fire into any socket and to only have minor electrical work to do if you wan't to put in a washing machine or dishwasher. Plugwash 01:04, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. Well, I see the British are sensitive about their plugs. I wasn't commenting about their size, I just feel they are somewhat overengineered for what they do.
  • Here in North America we seldom feel the urge to plug in a 3000 W heater because of a concept we used called central heating. If we have a washing machine or a portable dishwasher, we just plug it in and it works. For heavy appliances we have to install 240 V sockets.
  • Most of the NEMA connectors are industrial, marine, or other than domestic; and there are a lot of them. For this article I'd just like to mention the ones used in houses.
  • I moved the safety notes text to its own article and was going to summarize it later. The section seems overly technical. Most people aren't interested in designing their own grounding systems, they just need to know that if they don't have a ground, it could kill them. For technical details there are couple of articles (one on earthing systems and the other on ground (electricity)) that we could link to.
  • Other than that, I'm just interested in improving it to make it more readable to the average person. RockyMtnGuy 03:24, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Yeah our plugs probablly are a bit overengineered (though no more so than most other european plug types), central heating does break down from time to time and its very handy to be able to use a 3KW fan heater in any room when it does.
    • regarding "NEMA connectors" you a right there are a lot of them and if/when we have information on a significant proportion of them that article will need to be split. However equally i belive there is no point in splitting a reasonable sized article into a series of horrible stubs. There seem to be a lot of people on wikipedia who have good long term ideas but then use those as an excuse to deconstruct good articles into a series of stubs (and then in many cases the long term ideas are never followed through with). I'm a firm beliver that our structure should represent the information we have now not the information we might have in the future.
    • Keep up the improvements, i won't generally revert wholesale but i will correct anything that is factually inaccurate and/or put some kind of summary back into a section that is left as a tiny stub.

Status: What's going on with this one? Rocky, are you able to work some more? Marskell 19:24, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• Leaning towards Remove if we don't hear from editors if further progress is intended. Sandy 01:07, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• I intend to do some more work on it. I'll do a bit more tonight. It's just that the the weather is warm and sunny and the larches are turning golden yellow high in the Canadian Rockies. When the weather turns snarky I'll get more work done. Until, of course, the snow gets deep enough to ski... RockyMtnGuy 02:05, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
  • It's already been on FARC a week past the usual timing: gorgeous Fall weather notwithstanding, please keep us posted on your progress, so we can keep this moving. Sandy 13:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep I had a go at improving some English but all in all, it is a good article. Whether I would want it on the home page of Wikipedia is another matter, but that is more to do with the subject than its quality. JMcC 17:00, 26 September 2006 (UTC) PS Even in British English, it is 'humorous'.
• To my own considerable astonishment, I'm going to vote keep on this one after reading it. I think it is a good article. The writing may not be the best, but heck, it's an article about plugs. And the fact that there is a mild edit-war on this of all topics is a salutary reminder of the power of a public encyclopedia! Eusebeus 12:25, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Its already had its time on the front page ;) (though i belive wikipedias standards were less harsh back then) I wouldn't call the situation an edit war there is some mild conflict between the articles main maintainers (currently me and rockymountainguy)and ofc there is the constant stream of well intentioned but poor newbie edits that any major article gets but there isn't any major edit war. Plugwash 15:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I was being facetious. What I really meant was that it is salutary to see that a far from obvious topic is the subject of both well-presented information and ongoing interested editing and maintenance.  :) Eusebeus 15:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

• Remove, few sources and the article doesn't appear to have improved much; some reworking at it could be a featured list candidate, the potential for good prose isn't there for this kind of article.--Peta 08:23, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

• Remove. Some sections still aren't well referenced (for example, History), there are numerous stubby sections and one-sentence paragraphs, the prose is not compelling and not particularly illuminating. Example of the prose: The idea of "taking fault currents safely to earth" popular in laymans understanding of earthing (and worryingly school science books) is a misconception, the earthing system serves two purposes, firstly it provides a system to automatically cut the power to an appliance with a fault to the case and secondly it tries to hold all touchable metalwork that has a low resistance connection to anything at the same voltage (since it is a voltage difference that causes current through the body and hence electric shock). Sandy 14:27, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

It's pretty bad, isn't it? I tried to improve the prose for that particular paragraph, and the above was what my edit was replaced with: a candidate for the World's Worst Writing Award. "It was a dark and primarily stormy, with ominous stratonumbocumulous clouds, night, and fault currents were being led confusedly (but not as confusedly as in popular school science books) to earth." Actually, the example you gave is hard to make worse. I am going to take another shot at making it better when nobody is looking, ("No, no! You haven't considered TT earthing in the global perspective...") RockyMtnGuy 14:56, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

• Remove per all above. It's simply not good enough.UberCryxic 18:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. It needs improving but there is no other place on the internet with as much useful (and indeed correct!) information on the subject. Ziltro 04:16, 23 October 2006 (UTC)