Wikipedia:Peer review/Distributed element filter/archive1

Distributed element filter

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I am requesting a peer review of this article prior to submitting it for FAC. I am particularly looking for it to be reviewed for good writing style. Comments on all aspects of the article are welcome, however, including technical content. SpinningSpark 20:55, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, SpinningSpark 20:55, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment try to make it simpler, I know more about electronics than the average user, and after reading the article, I'm not able to answer the question "What is a distributed element filter", which is the point of an encyclopædia. This might be difficult to do, but give it a shot. Sandman888 (talk) 16:41, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: WHile this clearly has had an enormous amount of work done on it, I agree with the above comment - it is so technical that it is difficult to follow. I think the article needs to do a better job of providing context to the reader and there are some other issues that would be problematic at FAC as it now is. Here are some suggestions for improvement.

I am fairly good with scientific and technical topics, but I have to confess that I read this and still did not have a clear idea of what was going on with the basics of the topic. Much of this can be avoided by making sure the article provides context to the reader. Here are some questions I had after reading the article that need to be answered in it.
I am not sure what exactly these filters are filtering out - I assume it is some sort of noise in a signal, but this is not really made clear. Are these radio transmitters (I don't think so) or receivers (where the noise is removed from the signal going out or coming in?). So a background section would help, that explains what it is that is being filtered and what kind of circuits these are used in.
I looked at the image file for the lead image File:LNB dissassembled.JPG in the hope that it might tell me what kind of device(s) these filters are used in, but it was also cryptic. The background might also explain what kind of devices these are used in (not just the circuits, but the big picture). Does the average person own devices with these in them?
I am not saying that the article has to be dumbed down, but realize that even the most interested and scientifically literate reader who has not heard of these filters needs some basics to fully understand what is going on in the article. Adding a Background section would help, and perhaps adding some sort of Overview might help too (a not overly technical summary). The lead needs to be made more accessible in any case, which lead us to ...
The lead needs to follow WP:LEAD better. The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article - as such, nothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way
I do not think that the note on the drawings being in stripline format really belongs in the lead - it could be in an Overview perhaps. Stripline could be in the lead as a topic.
Per WP:CITE references generally come AFTER punctuation, and are usually at the end of a sentence or phrase.
Per WP:MOS#Images, images should not sandwich text.
One of the FAC criteria is comprehensiveness - the History section ends in 1972. Have there been no developments in the nealry 40 years since then?
Would it make sense to move the history section earlier in the article? Again it seems to be easier to follow the rest if some of the history is explained first.
The dab finder finds two dabs that need to be fixed.

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:04, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On my monitor, the bottom of Fig. 2 and all of Fig. 4 sandiwch with all of Fig. 3 and the top of Fig. 5. Not a huge deal.
One example where I would move the ref to the end of a sentence or phrase is Richards' transformation[41] allows a lumped element design to be taken "as is" and transformed directly into a distributed element design using a very simple transform equation.[42]

Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:42, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm..., maybe [41] could go on an earlier sentence. The idea was to indicate that [41] was the reference to Richards' original paper whereas [42] is the ref for the whole para describing how his work is used in filter theory. SpinningSpark 08:19, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Could you add a note to the ref that it is the original paper? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:19, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not really any need, the fact that Richards is the author makes that obvious. The new position at the end of a previous sentence has fixed the issue in any case. SpinningSpark 07:52, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On the sandwiching issue, I have looked at this this with two different browsers and a wide variety of text sizes and windows. I cannot get a sandwiching as severe as you describe. In particular, figure 2 only sandwiches anything at all at extreme text size (small) and maximized window, and then only a couple of lines. I could not find a setting where the sandwiching caused a skinny column of text with just a few words per line which is what the anti-sandwiching rule is trying to avoid. Firefox allows the text size to be reduced without limit (or at least to something you could not possibly read), so in Firefox any article with images on both left and right will eventually sandwich if the text is made small enough. If this rule were to be applied rigidly, it would effectively be saying left-aligned images are not allowed. However, a reduced text size means more words per line, so although the image overlap is increasing the "skinny column" effect does not happen. I am open to persuasion (or someone else can try to layout the article) but I think that what is there now is preferable to putting all the images right-aligned and have them push down out of the section to which they relate. SpinningSpark 07:52, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The comments on the history section have now been addressed. The section has also been moved up in the article as suggested, above the technical discussion. I am hoping other editors are happy with this. Personally, I am very interested in the history of technology and tend to write a lot on it. Sometimes though, technical editors do not agree, finding the history dull and irrelevant, they just want to hear about current practice. I have been heavily criticised on other articles for overdoing history, the worst example being on analogue filter where one editor even went so far as to suggest deletion; the situation was defused by changing the article name, not ideal but it resolved the conflict. On this article I did not write a history section at all untill it was suggested by others so hopefully this will be received well. SpinningSpark 00:44, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I like the history section and its placement. I would spell out VHF at first use per the MOS, somehow define Q (wikilink at least?), and make 'Mason and Sykes work" possessive "Mason and Sykes' work". The History section makes the sandwich problem better - it is worst on my laptop with IE 7. Let me know if the History section runs into trouble at FAC. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:21, 2 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All done. I have spelled out VHF as suggested where it first occurs in the overview. There are other band names in the text body which you didn't comment on, but really, spelling them all out would only add unhelpful clutter. The abbreviations amount to the actual band names in normal usage, there are a lot of engineers out there who would stumble trying to tell you what they all stood for. I have wikilinked Q as suggested (it has an article) but what it already says in the article is pretty much its definition - at least in the field of filtering. I take it the peer review is now over, if you agree would you please formally close so the FAC can proceed. SpinningSpark 21:37, 2 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]