Talk:Odakyu 8000 series

Traction equipment bloat

Under what circumstances does traction equipment matter so much that the infobox seemingly gets packed to the brim with it? It doesn't help if it's also largely unsourced. I doubt anyone beyond a select few will care that much about it down to the minutae. My main concern is that the loads of seemingly indiscriminate (but definitely rather intricate) traction equipment detail might make the article seem too technical… or bloated. XtraJovial (talk) 01:09, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi XtraJovial,

I'm happy that you want to discuss. I saw several times that you've been "targeting" my edits on some articles because my contribution to the infobox makes it look too long, or because it was "not relevant enough".

However, I disagree. I try to contribute 100% factual, well translated and precise information. I use the most compact wording I can manage without introducing approximation or over-simplification. I avoid contributing when I'm not sure about a topic.

Here is what motivates my edits:

Over the years, I came across more and more blatant misinformation (due to wrong translations) concerning the technical info in the English pages of Japanese train models. It mainly comes from overseas railway enthusiasts who have learnt from Youtube the existence of a multitude of different traction systems and the implication that they have: the different characteristic sounds they produce. This subject is already extremely popular among Japanese railway enthusiasts, and this popularity is increasing among the non-Japanese ones. As an enthusiast myself with an engineering background and who is learning Japanese, I wanted to take the opportunity to help them by correcting the information. So that, if something is stated, at least, it's factual.

The problem is, many of these early edits made by these people mixed up crucial terms because they don't really understand the subject (or Japanese) or because they use Google Translate. The fact is, some important scientific terms used in Japanese are abbreviated, so that any "simple" Google translation loses any factual meaning. GT isn't reliable enough, and bad translations are detrimental to the public's understanding. If I didn't add my contributions, everything would be confusing. Each word has a precise meaning, so each word is important. Dates (time) are also important.

Since each traction system is recognizable by their characteristic sound (whether incidental or not), it's worth of interest to appropriately distinguish them on a theoric level. This work is most of the time well executed by Japanese contributors themselves. My role is simply to translate their contributions so that any wrong interpretation is avoided in the English sphere of Wikipedia.

I disagree with you about the relevance. Trains are by nature technical objects, so I don't see why talking about the power electronic in them is irrelevant. Power electronics is a crucial part of railways. Basically it's what makes them move.

There are many complex subjects discussed in Wikipedia, however, I don't think it's reasonable to remove a contribution for the sole reason that its complexity is too high for the "general public". Example: I won't remove a paragraph in, let's say, a psychology or art wikipedia article just because I could not understand it.

What I agree with you, however, is that the result of some of my contributions, typically when there are more than two traction systems, or when there's a list of trainsets, make the infobox substantially long. I consider 2 solutions to this problem:

—letting it as is, considering the relevance is more important than the aesthetic of the page
—moving all the details in a dedicated section in the body of the page (in the form of text and/or tables for example)

In my opinion, the second option would be ideal. However, due to time constraints and the volume of info, I don't plan to do it myself in the near future.

I hope that you understand my perspective and that I could convince you. Laurent Jul (talk) 23:58, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, but I can't see how (or why) every slight alteration in traction equipment merits inclusion (because it doesn't). Wikipedia, and the many WikiProjects in which this article is inclded, all have style guides to promote consistent styling, especially for infoboxes. Forwarding this to the Trains WikiProject to hopefully generate a broader consensus. XtraJovial (talk) 15:15, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

• (Saw this listed at WP:TRAINS) This is an insane level of infobox bloat. Infoboxes are not meant to have walls of text in them. It's not merely about complexity or accuracy, but about significance. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, and that goes even more so for infoboxes. Listing copious detail on traction systems in the infobox while ignoring it in the body is bad practice to say the least. Here's a quote from a policy page that gets at the heart of the issue: "To provide encyclopedic value, data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources. As explained in § Encyclopedic content above, merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia."
  This is from WP:INDISCRIMINATE and shows exactly the issue with filling the infobox with minor details without explaining their significance at all. Just because foamers think traction motors are important and significant doesn't automatically mean they are. We need reliable sources documenting this, otherwise it falls afoul of both INDISCRIMINATE and WP:UNDUE. There's more detail on the traction systems than the entirety of the history section! Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:35, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
• (Saw this through related changes) If we include such high level of detail, i'd say it should be in the article body instead of in the infobox. Wether the additions to this particular article are too technical, i'll leave for the other editors to decide. In any case, the information is sourced; thanks Laurent Jul for that. Nyamo Kurosawa (talk) 16:25, 17 April 2022 (UTC)