Talk:Tekwiki Guidelines
(Floopy) Just noticed this page, not sure how to format this "discussion", so sorry in advance. A few things I want to ask and a few tidbits I want to point out.
1: I make a lot of English mistakes, so thanks to all who have been smoothing out the rough edges in what I type.
2: I made a new category on the main page for Personality Modules under the logic analyzer section. I hope that's okay. I put new ones in as I find confirmation of their existence.
3: Is there a way of telling where some of the information is coming from? Quoting or referencing the material? I get a lot of my information from catalogues. Would it be worth the bother?
4: The pictures I take don't look that great (and some of you have probably noticed). Do any of you have some advice on getting rid of shadows, making it look better in general?
Thanks, I've never edited a wiki before so there is a bit of a learning curve.
From Kurt: People will fix English mistakes and typos. That will happen naturally. It's great that you're assembling this information about the personality modules. I agree with creating pages for products that exist, even if we don't know much about them. As we find more information, we will have a place to put it. It is nice, but not necessary, to mention where the information came from. If the context is insightful, e.g., the product was part of a bigger system, or part of a logical product line, then it seems worthwhile. But we don't need attribution of every fact. If people doubt a factual claim on any Tekwiki page, they should feel comfortable asking in the Talk: page whether that fact is really true. Sometimes one gets just one chance to snap a photo of an instrument. For example, it is in a rack in a lab and the lighting is bad. That's the "something is better than nothing" case. Most of the time, photos outside on a cloudy day are good. There are multiple reasons for this. First, on a cloudy day, the light is diffused, so no shadows. Second, even on a cloudy day, the light level is usually higher than indoor levels, do the camera can use a low ISO, and fast shutter speed, and medium aperture. Third, the spectrum of the illumination on a cloudy day is smooth and fairly uniform. Avoid mixing light sources, e.g., incandescent with natural light, or direct sun with diffuse light. It's usually better to have uniform spectrum illuminating the entire subject. Also, if possible, use a neutral (e.g., gray) background. There are two reasons for this. First, some light will usually reflect from the background onto the subject. If you photograph a plug-in on a red car, and then crop the photo, it look weird because of the red light coming from below. The second reason for using a neutral background is that the auto white balance in the camera tends to perform better with more neutral pixels. If there are a lot of red pixels, the camera might try to "correct" that, which will ruin the colors of everything including the subject of the photograph. The best photographs I have gotten have been with multiple studio flashes indoors, using a DSLR on a tripod. It was a two-hour setup. But I have gotten photos 95% as good in five seconds outside on a cloudy day using my cellphone.
(Floopy)
Is it appropriate to make "repair", or "restoration" pages? I would never link them on the main pages. I would make sure to make it a guide and not some follow-me-along-in-this-restoration. I updated a while ago the logic analyzer section on the main page and there is a lot of missing pages. This might stay that way for a while, for some reason finding info of the DAS9200, DAS9100 and any of the 1230 disassembly probes is very difficult. I sometimes have to contact people to get pictures or clarification.
From Kurt: Repair pages are good. I agree with making them separate pages, linked to from the main page for the instrument. Everyone likes photos, even if they don't own the instrument and/or aren't in the process of restoring it. Also, there's a possibility that others will come along later and extend the repair/restoration page with more info, more caveats, etc. It seems good. We have a category:
Some of those are general; some pertain to a particular instrument.
- I'd also welcome repair notes very much. What about a convention of describing repairs in separate pages named (articlename)/Repairs, e.g. 7CT1N/Repairs?
- --Peter (talk) 02:06, 4 May 2019 (PDT)
Should I format repair pages like what Peter did here: 585/Repairs? Or should I make references in the repair page to other repair pages like here: 1240/Repairs?
- Please feel free to write and format as you see fit. In cases where the page applies only to one instrument, the text should in my opinion be inline in the relevant repairs page. The keypad article on the other hand is a good example to keep separate and link to multiple instruments' repairs pages.
- Thanks for the great contributions!
- --Peter (talk) 10:35, 5 May 2019 (PDT)
Table Width Example
Regarding Tekwiki_Guidelines#Tables
Did the Main Page change since it was cited as good example for sizing tables?
Should we (you! :-) ) simply add an example table?