Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Otto Julius Zobel/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 04:03, 12 August 2009 [1].

---

Otto Julius Zobel

Nominator(s): SpinningSpark 16:42, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

• Featured article candidates/Otto Julius Zobel/archive1
• Featured article candidates/Otto Julius Zobel/archive2

I am nominating this for featured article because it passed GA review a year ago and has been substantially stable since. Many of the inventions of Zobel are well known to engineers of a certain age, and in some cases are still used. Yet despite his circuits appearing in numerous textbooks, engineers often do not realise that they are due to Zobel, he does not seem to have been one to shout his own praises as the likes of Marconi, Edison or Tesla would have done. He fully deserves a prominent article on Wikipedia and I would like to help make it a featured article. SpinningSpark 16:42, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

• I'll review this more in the morning, but the mood and tone of sections like Otto Julius Zobel#Transmission line simulation do not bode well. Another comment: #Heat conduction looks very isolated and pithy; I suggest merging the two sentences there contained into a different section. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 17:01, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
  • I've tried to address both those points, I hope I have understood what you are driving at. I've also altered the noise cancellation title for reasons I stated on the talk page (I didn't realise you were doing a review when I wrote there). One question, are you happy with the British English spelling style? Because if not, we will need to get another editor to copyedit it as I would not trust myself to convert it properly.
  • I am going to be offline for most of the coming working week, but I will address further comments at the weekend. Please keep it on hold until I have had a chance to have a look. SpinningSpark 18:52, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. The two images need alt text as per WP:ALT. The signature image does have alt text, but it needs to be revised to give the text of the signature rather than be a copy of the caption. Eubulides (talk) 19:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I dont really see the point of either, beyond decoration, I would prefer the second was replaced by a modern diagram, however the main issue is the licencing of these images is ambiguious Fasach Nua (talk) 06:12, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Alt text has been added. The point of showing the diagram is that this article is a biography, and work produced by the subject's own hand is relevant to such an article. Your comment would be valid in an article about the filter itself, but that is what m-derived filter is for, it is not appropriate to give all the technical details in the biography article. My understanding of the copyright issue is that US patents are in the public domain unless they specifically declare an identified portion of the patent to be copyright. There is no licence involved, they are declared to be public domain, I don't see where you think that is ambiguous. SpinningSpark 20:47, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comments -
• As there is only the one White reference, you don't need to use 2000 after it, as you don't do that with any of the other refs.
  • Done
• Current ref 31 (Bray, 2002) first drop the 2002 and you need a page number. You give it elsewhere.
  • Done
• Current ref 41 (Schwartz) is lacking a page number (which you give elsewhere)
  • Done
• Alphabetize your references.
  • Done
• Current ref 15 goes to a Wikipedia page. This is not reliable.
  • You misunderstand, the information came from the SSDI, not the Wikipedia article about the SSDI. It is wikilinked merely for the benefit of those who want to know what the SSDI is.
    • So if the information comes from the SSDI, it needs a better reference to find the source of the information than a Wikipedia article. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:02, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
• What is with the "pp. p#" construction on a few of your refs?
  • I am not responsible for those edits but it appears to be an artefact of the cite template <rant>,which in my humble opinion should all be deleted, salted, and the server disk sectors sandpapered because they never do quite what you want them to do even after hours of tinkering and obstruct newbies who are afraid to edit because they don't understand them,</rant> used. I will convert them to plain text cites if you want.
• Current ref 54 (Chakrabarti) lacks a page number
  • Done

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

All comments addressed. SpinningSpark 23:29, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Just to note that the two unstruck comments have been addressed in the article. I am assuming that Ealdgyth has simply overlooked this when the others were struck and that there is not still an outstanding issue here. SpinningSpark 15:24, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I read your replies as saying they were still awaiting work. Struck now. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:30, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comment I suggest adding persondata. Hekerui (talk) 22:32, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Done

• Dabs; please check the disambiguation links identified in the toolbox. Dabomb87 (talk) 20:27, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
  • I am not clear what it is you require to be checked, nor what it is that might be in error. SpinningSpark 20:57, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
    • Oh that toolbox, I was looking at the sidebar toolbox - done. SpinningSpark 07:24, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comments from Materialscientist. General impression is positive (that is support), but I would suggest where the article can be improved. I understand that some requests would be hard to cover (old and poorly covered topic).
  • Please add url links to references wherever appropriate. Google books or freely available copies at web sites could be an example. I might add some obvious links myself, but you probably know more.

    Much better now. Materialscientist (talk) 05:07, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

  • The article focuses on electronic filters. Please try to expand personal information. Another obvious expansion would be ref. 8, which is a book on Mathematical Theory of Heat Conduction co-authored by Zobel. The article says very little on his non-electronic work. Materialscientist (talk) 09:18, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

• As far as I can tell, Zobel's work on heat conduction ceased with the completion of his PhD thesis. It should be no surprise that the article focuses on filters, this was the main, possibly sole, component of his career - he was "Mr. Filter" through the 1920s and into the 1930s. The book was in a sub-head of its own but was combined in the "early life" section in response to an earlier FA comment that it was too sparse, it also incidentally gets the material in a more historical order. Nevertheless, I will try and extract a couple of snippets from the book that seem to be relevant to Zobel's subsequent work and/or just interesting.
• None of the sources available to me have any usable personal information so I am currently unable to expand in that direction.
• SpinningSpark 15:24, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

• I have provided links in references where I can. There are a few books which I have not because while they exist on Google books, they do not have preview so there seems to be little point in linking. There is also a problem with the Bell Journal references, I do not know of any online source for these. I got them as photocopies or e-mailed pdfs. I believe they are available through JSTOR but I do not know how to find the urls and you cannot read them without paying in any case. SpinningSpark 20:04, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.