Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Civil engineering/Archive 1

WikiProject Civil Engineering
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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

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Archive 5

Guidelines for deep foundations

There are a number of disjointed articles covering deep foundations. I am personally confused about the nomenclature we should be using to describe the different types of foundations. Perhaps we should combine this topic into one article built mostly from the content at piles, but titled deep foundations. It seems that most deep foundations are quite similar and that it is only naming conventions that vary considerably between engineers. Basar 22:16, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The naming is a problem. I personally call things which are driven into the ground "piles", and things which are cast in place "piers". But the auger-cast pier folks call them "auger-cast piles", and CalTrans calls piers "Cast In Drilled Hole Piles" (CIDH piles). I'd be happy to see Pile moved to Deep foundations, and lose the current Deep foundations article altogether. (There's a right way to do this, and I'm not completely sure what it is. We can ask an admin.) Argyriou (talk) 00:22, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

What do you think about pier (architecture), pipe piles, and timber piles? Basar 03:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that different pile materials really need their own article. Pier (architecture) might be useful, though plenty of people think that those 12x12 concrete blocks which are embedded 2 inches into the ground underneath columns are "piers". And the article currently there says nothing about foundations. Argyriou (talk) 17:21, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I have completed the merger. I didn't include Pier (architecture) for now because, as you said, it didn't mention foundations. I did add the appropriate alternative link message to the article. Basar 00:37, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Articles to create

I was thinking mechanically stabilized earth could be a useful article. It could be a subtopic in retaining wall, but I think it is more than a subtopic and used in things other than retaining walls. Basar 21:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Sheet piling

I noticed sheet piling and sheet pile redirect to deep foundation. It seems retaining wall would be more appropriate, or perhaps it could have its own article. Basar 00:30, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Subcategories

Should we include 'Dams' as a subcategory? It currently has its own category page. Benefit: we wouldn't have to list every single (earthen) one we stumble across. --Zuejay 21:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like a fine idea to me. Basar 23:39, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Cool. Not sure how to do it, yet. Working on it. --Zuejay 02:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I did it. I added Category:Geotechnical engineering to Category:Dams. I think that is what you were proposing. Basar 03:16, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep. That's totally it! I didn't know how to do it. That's awesome. --Zuejay 03:19, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Foundations

Right now, it looks like three articles will be covering our coverage of foundations: foundation, deep foundation, and shallow foundation. Does anyone think it should be something different? Basar 02:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

So, that actually seems kinda normal the way it is. Too bad Foundation is under the architecture designation - I don't much care for that. Anyway, it makes sense the way it is, in that shallow and deep foundations are subsets of Foundation. It looks like both the Foundation and Shallow foundation articles could use some work, though. --Zuejay 02:38, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Ya, they could all use some work. I was also thinking about changing the architecture designation. Foundation (structure) seems the most descriptive and neutral to me. Basar 02:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I think (engineering) would be a little more universal. Structurals and architects need geotechs to do the job of determining suitability of foundation types, etc. Some could even argue that (construction) would be more appropriate...Let's see, our options are:

Foundation (architecture)

Foundation (engineering)

Foundation (structure)

Foundation (geotechnical)

Foundation (construction)

Hmm...well, I personally like geotechnical, but to be fair I really think engineering might be the most appropriate. Does anyone know if there is a significant difference btwn (architecture) foundations and (engineering) foundations? Or is it just in the way we talk about them? --Zuejay 03:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Another option would be to over take foundation itself. The other foundation pages aren't very notable, and I think it could be appropriate to go directly to our article and have a disambiguous message at the top. Basar 03:12, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Foundations designed by engineers are more reliable than those designed by architects?

I'm not sure about that one . . . Basar 06:32, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be fair to move Foundation to Foundation (disambiguation), and move Foundation (architecture) to Foundation. If you folks agree, I'll do it tomorrow (Monday). Argyriou (talk) 03:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Ya, that's what I was suggesting. Basar 06:32, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I've made some changes to Deep foundations and Shallow foundations; some of which need significant expansion. Feel free to hack away at them. Argyriou (talk) 03:43, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Argyriou, that's probably the best approach. Didn't realize there was a disambig for Foundation. It looks like no individual profession needs to claim it as their own. I say, 'Go for it.' --Zuejay 05:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm having second thoughts about that - the top ten ghits for "foundation" are all charities. I may do it anyway, though. Argyriou (talk) 18:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

When redirecting

Found a nifty trick for redirecting. If we use 'redirect Deep foundation#Pier and beam foundation, it will take the user directly to that section of the article. This might cut down on people saying something like "But I typed in pile!" Hehehehe... --Zuejay 02:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Ya, I know about that, but I'm not a big fan of it. I just don't like it when my computer jumps down to a certain place for me, but I'm fine with you formatting them that way if you want. Basar 02:59, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of that. I just think it might cut down on replication of articles we've moved, merged, etc., and folks being confused about why they ended up on a particular pages. I don't know...something to think about before I do it again, anyway. --Zuejay 03:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Reorg geotech?

In terms of re-organising the geotech pages, may I suggest using the Burland Triangle (From his Nash lecture: "The Teaching of Soil Mechanics, a personal view", 1987. Proc. 9th Conf. Soil Mech & Found Eng) as a rough guide. It essentially separates Geo-Engineering into three main areas, linked to each other. These are:

1. Ground Profile: Genesis, SI, Ground Description (Minerology; Classification; Ground water; geological processes).
2. Soil Behaviour: Laboratory & Field Testing, Measurement & Observation (Particulate behaviour; effective stress; stress paths; compressibility; Ko, preconsolidation; permeability, consolidation, creep; Drained strength, dilatant & contractant behaviour; excess pwp; undrained strength; critical state framework)
3. Applied Mechanics: Idealisation, conceptual, physical, analytical modelling (Stress, strain, elasticity, plasticity, limit equilibrium, limit analysis, finite element analysis, soil constitutive models)

At the nexus of the three points it has: Practice: (Empiricism "based on well winnowed experience"; Insitu testing; Atterbergs; bearing capacity; earth pressure; geotechnical processes;(other design aspects) etc).

"soil mechanics", whilst retaining links to "Ground Profile" & "Practice" topics, it essentially is better described as covering Soil Behaviour and Applied Mechanics groups. In this sense, I think items relating to "Ground Profile" and "Practice" should be moved to link directly from Geotechnical Engineering (eg. Ground Investigation, Bearing Capacity -comes under Foundation Design, Slope Stability -comes under Slope processes), whilst aspects relating to Soil Behaviour and Applied Mechanics should stay within Soil Mechanics. This is fairly logical, and Geotechnical Engineering already has the more practical (less theoretical) aspects.

I think once the framework is there, we can work on developing each subgroup, gradually becomming more detailed as we (and others) see fit. GeoEng 20:52, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Moved from original post at Talk:Soil mechanics. ZueJay (talk) 20:59, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Boreholes is a mess

Hello all, I'm a complete newbie and have found that many of the articles of the technical terms I use on a daily basis are a worthless mess. The boreholes article is just one example. It starts out innocently enough then becomes a long article on rural water wells written by a seeming layman. I tried editing it but ran out of energy and wonder if there can't be consensus to just delete most of the "boreholes as water wells" sections wholesale. This is a vital term and it doesn't deserve the abuse it receives in the current description.

While I'm on the general topic, most drilling articles are very heavy on the oil stuff. One of them Casing (oil) would be great if it could be renamed casing (well) so that it could be applied to more than just oil well casing. It would be not so much good to have articles like casing (xxx) for every different type of well casings. I don't know how to make or even request a change like that. Best, Drillerguy 19:13, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Howdy, I did the move for you. If you think editing borehole in that manner would benefit the article, then be bold and go for it. I'm not very familiar with this stuff, so I can't help you much. Hope you're still around and sorry about the long wait for an answer, I'm not sure why that happened. Basar 00:27, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Soil Article

Anyone else with the time or interest to expand this beyond the realm of the agriculturalists and soil scientist types? There is no description at all of the engineering of soils, nor of any other topic out of their domain. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drillerguy (talk • contribs)

I noticed that about the article, and it should be expanded, but I've never really had the motivation to do it for some reason. At least soil mechanics is linked. Basar 00:30, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Related Wikiprojects

Have seen this Wikipedia:WikiProject Soil around lately. Should we add a bit ('nother header) to the Geotech wikiproj page to link to them? There should be some overlap between the two. ZueJay (talk) 21:40, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Sure, I was thinking of something like that. I think Wikipedia:WikiProject Geology may also be appropriate. Basar 21:43, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Good. You've been poking around more at these articles than I have, so you do know more of the related wikiprojects. I'm kinda surpised there's not a civil engineering wikiproject.Zue Jay (talk) 23:37, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Ya, someone should make one. Maybe there aren't enough editors from other concentrations though, structural engineering and transportation engineering are pretty short. Basar 23:54, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

We'd be obligated to join too. That's why I was wondering if it would behoove all of us to make a Civil Wikiproject, then have "Departments" for the branches? I'm not sure I'm that enthusiatic right now! ZueJay (talk) 00:44, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Ya, that would be cool, like the biography project, but I'm not that enthusiastic either right now. Maybe sometime one of us will feel like it. Cheers. Basar 01:02, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and did it; I hope you all like it. -- Basar 05:18, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

HA! I just realized YOU DID IT! Brave soul, you. ;) ZueJay (talk) 00:38, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

geophysical engineering

someone has prodded geophysical engineering. 132.205.44.5 22:04, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Created a userbox

Created a member userbox - Please feel free to play with it; I'm not 100% satisfied with the image. Took the basic code from Wikipedia:WikiProject Organizations. ZueJay (talk) 19:39, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Cool! The banner picture I used isn't too hot either, but I don't know what else to use, although it does incorporate lots of prototypical civil engineering aspects. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 05:58, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I changed the picture following the one that User:Dream out loud found. I think it's great since I believe most any civil engineer could identify with something going on in the picture; however, the aspect ratio is rather wide. I'm not very good with images, so I'm not sure how to re-draw it easily, or put it into SVG. It still seems to be an improvement though. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 03:16, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Template for deletion

We need to be aware of when templates that probably fall within the scope of WikiProj CE are being discussed. Here's one: Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 August 4#Template:Japan dam. ZueJay (talk) 15:12, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Assessment

Created an assessment parameter for the project tags - Wikipedia:WikiProject Civil engineering/Assessment. Whadda ya think? ZueJay (talk) 17:21, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Ya, it's about time we got that article assessment feature. It looks nice! -- Basar (talk · contribs) 02:58, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Dam is under Wikipedia:Spotlight

Dam appears to be under the Wikipedia:Spotlight. Not sure what it means, but it looks to receive a high amount of editing right now. ZueJay (talk) 19:16, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone mind?

Does anyone mind if I do a bit of an overhaul of the WP:CE page? I will blatantly borrow format-type items from WP:MILHIST and probably also WP:LGBTSTUD. ZueJay (talk) 22:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

That would be fine with me. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 23:59, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, there's an expansion of your start, Basar. Borrowed a bit from WP:WPARCH and WP:USPL as well. What'cha think? ZueJay (talk) 02:06, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I think it looks nice, good work. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 02:31, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Soil settlement

We have a lot of articles related to this, and I am wondering if anyone has any thoughts on how we should organize them. Here is a list of what I have found:

-- Basar (talk · contribs) 06:14, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Based on a quick review, Groundwater-related subsidence can probably be merged into subsidence. I almost want to say, that until certain topics can/are made into full articles, they should be merged. Namely, Secondary compression and Unconsolidated might be merged into Consolidation (soil). Soil compaction should be linked to Compaction but not merged - the way they're written, they are distinct topics. Note that Consolidation (geology) redirects to Consolidation (soil). Other than some mergers, I'm not sure how else we would "organize" these? ZueJay (talk) 00:12, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

By organize I just mean merge and so forth. It seems like subsidence is the main article here. So with the help of your comments I'm thinking this:

Subsidence and Groundwater-related subsidence, a list of causes, half involving consolidation
- Consolidation (soil) and Secondary compression, physical processes
- Soil compaction, another physical process, I'm not really sure what the compaction article is supposed to be about
Lithification, a completely separate geologic process

I don't really see what settlement (construction) is really supposed to talk about, apart from these other articles. I'm fine with "merging" unconsolidated, but it doesn't seem to have any content that would actually be merged. When I put articles on the same line I mean to propose merging, with the possibility of expansion if needed later of course. However, groundwater related subsidence seems to have a fair amount of content now, and I think it might be OK on its own. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 01:12, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... Well, Compaction seems to be really generic as it includes waste compaction and soil compaction, perhaps it should also include car compaction (i.e. crusher).

Conolidation and compaction seem to be distinctly different from subsidence. Subsidence, according to the article, is caused by, typically, natural internal earth processes; whereas consolidation occurs due to loading and subsequent dissipation of pore pressures; just as settlement is distinct from subsidence and consolidation in that it is a reduction of (air) voids caused by loading. A bit ...simplified... but I think it conveys the idea that consolidation and soil compaction are not really sub-articles of subsidence, but are related (i.e. See also).

Does that help, or am I totally on the wrong page? ZueJay (talk) 02:18, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Ya, since compaction is so generic, I was thinking it could just be a disambig page since it just briefly discusses other articles. I didn't get the impression that subsidence was just natural processes since it does have natural gas extraction, gw reduction, and mining. Many of the types of subsidence seem to have consolidation as the underlying process like gw reduction which increases effective stress and therefore consolidates. I wasn't aware that settlement was just the reduction of air voids, I thought it was just the deflection in general caused for whatever reason. Ya, I don't think compaction and consolidation are sub-articles of subsidence either. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 02:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Thought a bit about how I loosely defined some things here: Soil compaction is more properly defined as reduction in volume due to expulsion of air from soil (i.e. reduction of air voids); where settlement is more properly a change in volume of soil due to change in stress. G'night. ZueJay (talk) 03:16, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

True, they are very separate. G'night, sorry for keeping you up, if I was the one :) -- Basar (talk · contribs) 03:49, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I merged secondary compression and proposed merger on unconsolidated (in case is geologist are watching it and might want to object). I'm now not sure if we need to merge ground water related subsidence since it seems to be relatively large and there is so much already on the subsidence article; it also seems there is enough to talk about there to warrant a full article. The two other articles are settlement and compaction. I'm still not sure if settlement is different than subsidence, and I'm also unsure that compaction is a concept we can write an article on apart from soil compaction, lithification, data compaction, cold compaction, and landfill compaction vehicle. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 04:14, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I am happy how this is turning out. I don't know about you, but the only article left I am still weary about is settlement (construction), and now that I read it more closely, it is not talking about soil at all but about settlement within a structure. I suppose then it would be perfectly fine to have its own article, right? I also think another title might be best then. I had always heard this referred to as shrinkage or something. At the very least, I think (structural) would be a more appropriate tag than (construction) since it isn't just something that happens during construction. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 19:25, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Nice job on Compaction. I think you're right with settlement, construction does not seem like the proper subcat here. Based on reading the article as it stands now, structural is an appropriate subcat. ZueJay (talk) 19:44, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

CE sub-cats

As you said in your edit summary, the CE cat may need some improvement. I'll go thru the sub-cats and make some quick suggestions.
[+] Buildings and structures (put into structural engineering?)
[+] Civil engineering contractors OK
[+] Civil engineers OK
[+] Concrete (into SE?)
[+] Construction OK?
[+] Construction and civil engineering companies (partially redundant with ce contractors?)
[+] Construction trades workers (into construction)
[+] Engineering vehicles (axe)
[+] Environmental engineering OK
[+] Fortification (remove?)
[+] Geotechnical engineering OK
[+] Hydraulic engineering OK
[+] Parkways remove? put into transpo?
[+] Pavement engineering into transpo?
[+] Physical infrastructure maybe ce should be in this cat instead of the other way around?
[+] Road transport into TE
[+] Sewerage into EE?
[+] Streets and roads into TE
[+] Structural analysis into SE
[+] Structural engineering OK
[+] Transport infrastructure into TE?
[+] Transportation engineering OK
[+] Water wells into HE
[+] Civil engineering stubs OK

To me, it makes sense to put most of these categories into their own sub-discipline. For me, it is easier to find stuff that way. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 01:33, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Agree with most of these. Also agree its easiest to find by specialty. Fortifications is under Buildings and structures so can be removed from CE as overcategorization. Pavement and Parkways into Transpo is good, if they're not already there. Physical infrastructure might already be tagged as Transpo and might be removed from CE; otherwise, this could be a reciprocal cat - we tag each other. Also note that Water Wells might be good into HE, as suggested, and Environ Eng as they are often used to monitor environmental conditions relating to groundwater - might also consider removing it from cat Buildings and structures by type.

Contractor, engineering, etc. companies probably needs more specific attention than I can give right this second (bed time), but will try to take a further look tomorrow. ZueJay (talk) 02:35, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I cleared it out. I ended up ditching parkways since it seems like a list of parkways and nothing to do with engineering. I'm not sure what to do about physical infrastructure now that I look at it. It's not in transpo; it seems to be just a list of infrastructure stuff; I'm not sure it has anything to do with engineering. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 03:07, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

On the "To Do" list. Seriously off to bed this time. ZueJay (talk) 03:17, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The current setup looks good to me: each major discipline, people, companies, examples (physical infrastructure), and stubs. My only comment is regarding the separation of contractors and companies: I'd say they're pretty similar in theme. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 11:11, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to the project! I thought that too initially, but when I looked at the contractors cat, I found that it is actually a category of people. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 16:37, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

It looks like these three cats should be finagled around to be under one cat. The title of that one cat is debatable: "Civil engineers, companies and contractors" with subcats for "Civil engineers" and "Civil engineering companies". "Civil engineering contractors" might be a subcat of "Civil engineers".

Also noticed that Category:Infrastructure and Category:Physical infrastructure should probably be merged. ZueJay (talk) 00:58, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Category:Physical infrastructure into category Category:Infrastructure. Please see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 August 11 to chime in. Thanks ZueJay (talk) 17:46, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Wikiproject Engineering

Hi. You may be interested to know that there is currently a proposal for Wikiproject Engineering to be created. The proposal can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Engineering. Thanks. Tbo ¹⁵⁷talk 21:27, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Parents and descendants

I just discovered Wikiproject Highways, which seems to have barely tagged anything relevant to the project. It seems redundant to have relevant articles tagged as both CE and Highways. Should Highways be adopted as a Descendent Wikiproject; or perhaps should Wikiproject Transport be considered as a descendant of CE? That latter is currently a parent of the former. Considering the previous topic of a proposed Wikiproject Engineering, that could then be a parent of CE. So it'd be: Engr --> CE --> Transp. --> Hwy (?) --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 00:00, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. The people at WikiProject Transport or Highways may object though since they are not strictly an engineering project and may feel that they are beyond our scope, but I think it is a good idea. It would indeed seem a little redundant to have all of our tags on an article's page when they are more tailored to meet the article's needs. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 00:18, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I think this brings up an important point about our scope. Is an article on a dam part of our project because it was designed by civil engineers, or should we just leave it to the dam project? I think I am in favor of leaving it to the dam project and concerning our project on engineering design aspects, methods, norms, ideas, etc. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 00:46, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Concur. Leave it to the dam project. ZueJay (talk) 00:49, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Navbox for soil mechanics

I've been thinking about how to improve the interconnectivity of our pages in the spirit of WP:BTW, and I think adding some navboxes to some of our article sets would be beneficial because it would make them feel like a solidified series of articles. I have made one for soil mechanics in my sandbox, but I am having a hard time organizing it. I am unfamiliar with some of the articles, and I am having a hard time grouping the articles together. Any insight would be appreciated. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 05:03, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I was actually just contemplating one for a "Geotechnical Engineering Series". As for organization - umm...hang onto that a bit - requires a bit o' thought. Perhaps Argyriou has some good thoughts on it. ZueJay (talk) 01:38, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, a good idea. I started one in the same sandbox. There are a lot of options as I see it: we could have everything in one giant template, we could split soil mechanics/geotechnical engineering, we could have a separate one for geotechnical tests, or we could make them even smaller and more specific. Right now, I think everything in one might be best although I was thinking very specific ones earlier. The reason one big one would be appealing is that we could have lateral earth pressure with the retaining wall articles, etc. They also look a little sparse the way I have them now. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 02:25, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I've done more of this work here: User:Basar/Sandbox 2 -- Basar (talk · contribs) 05:03, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Looks good! The geotechnical investigation section, though, looks more like geotechnical testing. Geotechnical investigation might best be served by linking to monitoring well and borehole while keeping CPT, SPT and geophysical exploration, then maybe a section for geotechnical laboratory testing. ZueJay (talk) 19:08, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Ya, I think that was a good change. Feel free to edit it if you want to. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 19:45, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Very nice; good work. ZueJay (talk) 00:26, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Structural engineering cat

I've been moving the organization around in here, and I think I've got something reasonable going on now, but feel free to change it around as I am not totally satisfied with it. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 05:34, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Temporary page for WikiProject Engineering created

Hi. I have created a temporary page for WikiProject Engineering at User:Tbo 157/WikiProject Engineering. Interested users should add their name to the list and are encouraged to help improve the page so that it is ready to be moved to the Wikipedia space when there are enough participants. Tbo ¹⁵⁷talk 16:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Update The project has now been created and moved to the project namespace. Tbo ¹⁵⁷talk 20:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Assessment(2)

Has there been a major initial assessment and project notice tagging phase for this project? I think there are many more civil-engineering related articles than the current 137 tagged and assessed civil engineering articles (as of 2007-09-10). I'm guessing that number might be somewhere in the thousands. Hydrogen Iodide 21:12, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

No we haven't. Depending on how inclusive we are when tagging pages, I think we would have between 500–1000 pages on the low end and several thousand if we were more inclusive. Can AWB do talk pages? I just started with AWB and don't remember a modify talk page feature. – Basar (talk · contribs) 22:01, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh by the way, welcome to the project! – Basar (talk · contribs) 22:02, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome! =). I think AWB can do talk pages (not entirely sure), but it is kind of tedious to manually tag civil engineering articles with AWB, even though AWB is made for repetitive edits. I think some projects like WP:LAKES used Betacommandbot to do all the tagging work. On the other hand, some projects like WP:VOLCANO did manual tagging with several editors. Hydrogen Iodide 22:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Well if a fully automated bot does it, all the better. Quality assessments still need to be done semi-manually though. – Basar (talk · contribs) 22:28, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Question about the assessment: How comprehensive do we want the tagging to be? Should we include all skyscraper/building, roads/highways, pipelines, power lines, water treatment plants, bridges, dams, piers/wharfs articles? Hydrogen Iodide 22:58, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Ya, that is how we could get tens of thousands of articles. I'm strongly in favor of not having every bridge ever build have our tag since we can just link to other projects that specifically do bridges, roads, etc. If we tag every type of bridge, dam, and what not, I bet we could get close to a thousand articles, and think that would be a pretty reasonable project scope. – Basar (talk · contribs) 23:22, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I think defining parent and descendant wikiprojects (see my above post) is more critical: let a dam project handle dams, bridges can handle roads, state roads projects can take on roads, etc. I'd see the CE wikiproject as little more than a parent for those, providing a link to a great Engineering Wikiproject. That done, there probably wouldn't be too many articles within this project, per se. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 23:32, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

(break) OK, I arranged the related projects on the main page to show some order. Feel free to change it around or add other projects. – Basar (talk · contribs) 23:55, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the project could quicly get out of hand, as it were, if we tried tagging every related article, even though we should still consider those articles within the project's purview. For now, I would recommend staying manual or semi-maual with tagging efforts, tagging articles with overreaching, generic or general CE content such as branches stemming from CE and very famous or very notable CE items and/or people who are strongly associated with the profession. There's gonna be a lot of judgment involved. ZueJay (talk) 00:08, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

What do you think if we just do some of our most important categories automatically? I've cleaned up a lot of them, so they should be pretty good. @Bossi, I'm not really sure if I did the parent/descendant thing right. Am I supposed to notify them or something? Also, the relations between other projects seems to be fairly confusing, so I am not really sure what to put down since we don't need to put down descendants of other projects of they descend from us. – Basar (talk · contribs) 03:51, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I guess it would be best to do the auto-tagging with a bot. I think the WP:VOLCANO project took like one to two months to tag all volcano related articles even though they have only about 2,000 articles. _{Hydrogen Iodide} _(HI!) 04:47, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I've just been poking around some of our categories, and even the good ones are in pretty bad shape. I think we can find some that are good enough to do by bot, and even if it tags some bad articles, we can always detag them. – Basar (talk · contribs) 03:52, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I've found out that AWB has a plugin made for it to tag talk pages: User:Kingbotk/Plugin. It is very fast, so I think we can just use this method; I haven't seen anything about fully automated bots doing this anyway. – Basar (talk · contribs) 07:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I've just found out that we have around 300 civil engineer articles out there; I was surprised there are so many. By the way, we got our first featured article now . . . – Basar (talk · contribs) 07:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Question: Is the importance rating disabled for this project? _{Hydrogen Iodide} _(HI!) 20:44, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

We just don't have one currently; think we should? – Basar (talk · contribs) 20:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this project should have importance assessments just like many other WikiProjects. However, I think some projects like WP:HK disabled the importance rating because an editor got upset about the importance assessment or something like that (I forgot what it was exactly). _{Hydrogen Iodide} _(HI!) 03:36, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be sort of nice too. From my experience, a number of projects seem to be going with just assessments for whatever reason, but it still seems like most incorporate both features. I doubt any of us will get hung up over a low importance rating, at least I won't. – Basar (talk · contribs) 04:49, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Convenience. When I first set up the assessment on the WikiProj scope box, I left off importance in favor of focusing on quality assessment. I have no objection to including importance, I just didn't think it was necessary to include, at the time. ZueJay (talk) 15:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone added the code for importance assessments to the WikiProject banner yet? _{Hydrogen Iodide} _(HI!) 18:10, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

No. – Basar (talk · contribs) 19:09, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Hehehe...Zue Jay (talk) 00:55, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Done – Basar (talk · contribs) 03:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

An infobox for this WikiProject

I think it would be beneficial to have an infobox outlining this project. Comments? Hydrogen Iodide 22:43, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean? – Basar (talk ·contribs) 23:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I mean something like this:

Hydrogen Iodide 00:06, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Sure, why not. Wow, I haven't been to the bay bridge since they started putting in the new one. It looks really nice. I'll put the infobox up since I doubt anyone will object, and I'll correct the links. I also didn't know they were separating the lanes like that. – Basar (talk · contribs) 03:28, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The template doesn't support our userbox right now since it is in Wikipedia space, but I'll expand the template a bit later. – Basar (talk · contribs) 03:47, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Structural eng cat

I am trying to organize the structural engineering cat, and I am having a difficult time. I am wondering if we should split it up into steel/concrete/timber instead of splitting it up by structural system/structural connector. I think that is the more traditional way, at least in school. – Basar (talk · contribs) 03:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Phw... I don't know. I think steel/timber/concrete will generate more trouble than systems/connectors/analysis/etc. I was just looking at Category:Engineering and its totally bonkers. The structural cat doesn't look terrible based on a cursory glance (probably due to your cleaning). ZueJay (talk) 03:32, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I've been thinking about it more, and I think creating steel and timber categories would be good because 1) that is how it is broken up outside of Wikipedia 2) I have found a lot of articles that do not categorize well with the categories structural system and structural connector like the article I-beam. I also misrepresented the situation in my OP because the current system is half and half because the category concrete is created and that is how all the concrete articles are stored, and I also just had created structural connectors cat so it hasn't been a long standing method of sorting. Structural analysis would of course stay. This would leave the cats as structural analysis, concrete, timber, steel, continuum mechanics, structural engineers, and construction. It would also have buildings and structures and engineering failures, but I'm weary of those although I don't know how to change them yet. – Basar (talk · contribs) 04:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Scope

Since this has come up a few times, I have taken the liberty to write a proposal for our project scope:

This project generally considers any article on civil engineering topics—including the topics of its various sub-disciplines—to be within its scope. This, however, does not include specific engineering projects like particular bridges or buildings (we would be happy to provide consultation on these articles). Our project does include articles about the methods of analysis, theories, and engineering systems of civil engineers as well as articles about the people and organizations of civil engineering.

– Basar (talk · contribs) 04:31, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

That sounds pretty good. The current text under the "Scope" section is too vague and that could lead to problems as mentioned in the Assessment(2) section. _{Hydrogen Iodide} _(HI!) 19:17, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Invitation template

It appears this project does not have an invitation template to invite new members (correct me if I'm wrong). I think having a template will help increase the number of participants in this project. It should look something like...

You have been invited to join the WikiProject Civil Engineering, a collaborative effort focused on improving Wikipedia's coverage of civil engineering. If you'd like to join, just add your name to the member list. Thanks for reading! ~~~~

_{Hydrogen Iodide} _(HI!) 19:12, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Ya, I've been wanting one of those. I usually just add a sentence on to the end of a welcome template. – Basar (talk · contribs) 17:27, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

It seems like this template could use an image. _{Hydrogen Iodide} _(HI!) 00:10, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The bridge picture seems alright, but is there a better picture for the template? _{Hydrogen Iodide} _(HI!) 02:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Lol, if there was a better picture I knew of, I would have put it on there. Feel free to find something else though, there is always room for improvement. – Basar (talk · contribs) 02:59, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

How about the Burj Dubai, or the Shanghai World Financial Center? _{Hydrogen Iodide} _(HI!) 05:04, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, one thing I don't like about skyscrapers is that they are pretty structural centric whereas a bridge incorporates most major areas of civil engineering. I also couldn't find a picture of those two that was particularly exceptional. – Basar (talk · contribs) 23:04, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

How about the Golden Gate Bridge? Or the Tsing Ma Bridge? _{Hydrogen Iodide} _(HI!) 03:40, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Sure. – Basar (talk · contribs) 03:01, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Here:

You have been invited to join the WikiProject Civil Engineering, a collaborative effort focused on improving Wikipedia's coverage of civil engineering. If you'd like to join, just add your name to the member list. Thanks for reading! ~~~~

_{Hydrogen Iodide} _(HI!) 07:48, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Soil article

There is a discussion at Talk:Soil which is desiring additional participants if any of you are interested. – Basar (talk · contribs) 22:55, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The soil article needs peer and expert input from a civil engineering perspective. Unfortunately Basar, who had been working on this, {{retired}} as of a few days ago. Hopefully other CE-types will wander over to take his place. I would like to return to GA-status and that is not going to happen without a balance of perspectives. -- Paleorthid (talk) 00:37, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Borehole

This article is now a stub with only a brief description, if anyone here would like to help flesh it out that would be great. Drillerguy 17:14, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: Cribstone bridge

Cribstone bridge (via WP:PROD)

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:38, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Importance Rating

I have just noticed several articles have had an importance rating added. Until now I thought we didn't rate articles for importance, has this changed? I'm not against an importance rating system, just wondering what happened. Dumelow (talk) 19:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hydrological geoengineering

Please comment on the talk page regarding above article's deletion process.SriMesh | talk 05:37, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup needed at Earthquake engineering

Earthquake engineering needs some urgent cleanup on a number of fronts. There are a number of plagiarized passsages, taken from both public domain and non-public sources. The article's major author also very heavily quotes, cites, and promotes his own work.

A number of related articles also need to be pulled together, as content is duplicated several times across a group of articles. Please see Talk:Earthquake engineering#Article problems for a summary, and Talk:Earthquake engineering/problems for a highlighted copy of the article where I've identified the most problematic sections.

Finally, our existing articles on the structural engineering experts George W. Housner and John Blume had to be gutted, as they were also largely plagiarized material.

The aid of experts and good samaritans is welcomed, encouraged, and appreciated. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:19, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Cool bridge - no article

This unique bridge doesn't have an article. I was hoping someone with more Civil engineering background would volunteer to create it. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/11345214

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vandrielmechatronica.nl%2Fbruggen%2Fslauerhoffbrug_01.html&sl=nl&tl=en&hl=EN&ie=UTF-8

-Ravedave (talk) 20:59, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

That is a very cool bridge. Have you been able to find any free images of it? It would make a very nice dyk article. I will try to sort an article out for it but it may take me a few days (I am a bit busy at the moment), cheers - Dumelow (talk) 22:47, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Traffic monitoring equipment

I started a couple of stubs for articles that deserve a bit more attention that what they have now. I've done one on traffic counters and one for the TIRTL, a specific traffic counter. I've been able to keep up with the latter, but the former has been sitting dead for a little while. Do either of these articles fall under this project's scope? JaKaL! (talk) 17:22, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Engineering traditions in Canada

Engineering traditions in Canada has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.196.229 (talk) 07:07, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Water fluoridation nominated for FA

Water fluoridation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has been nominated as a featured article. If you have the time and the inclination to review it, please weigh in at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Water fluoridation. In particular, a review of the article's Mechanism section would be appreciated, as that contains some details about the engineering involved. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 21:08, 13 February 2009 (UTC)