Wikipedia:Peer review/Amplifier/archive1

Amplifier

I'd like to get this to GA status, but my ideas for improving it are starting to stagnate. I'd especially like comments from people both more and less knowledgeable about the topic than me, for accuracy and readability respectively. Generally, how much needs to be done to get it to GA, and where is a good place to start.

Thanks, —  crh ₂₃  (Talk) 19:31, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Comments by StarryGrandma

You are brave to tackle an article that has so much information added in to it in random fashion over the years. I've wanted to see Computing become a Good article but haven't known where to begin. Amplifiers is at least a much less expansive topic. However, as you will see below, there were once two articles and it got complicated.

• Lead

The lead should summarize the article, not be the only place where information is in the article. There should be an article section that explains what an amplifier is. Move the history material into a history section.

• Topic

The article needs to be a high-level view of electronic amplifiers in general. Amplifiers can amplify current, voltage, and power. Currently the article is mostly about power amplifiers (see lead sentence). The article was reorganized in 2008, and the power amplifier material was moved out of an article then named "Amplifier" into the "Electronic amplifier" article, with the plan that it would then be moved into a power amplifier article in summary style. But that didn't happen.

In January 2013 the then named "Amplifier" article was split up into various parts, and the remainder moved to Amplifier figures of merit. So the older history of "Amplifier" is under that name. The discussion Talk:Amplifier figures of merit#Amplifier topic organization (which happened when the article was still named Amplifier) shows what happened. Then "Electronic amplifier" was moved to "Amplifier".

I hope this history isn't too confusing. I think a good start would be to put the power amplifier material, especially the classes, into its own article. (This should be separate from the Audio power amplifier article which is something else.) Then look at Amplifier (disambiguation) for other material which should be summarized in the article.

• References

As with much older technical material the article's references aren't clear. For GA the material in an article needs references, but they don't have to all be inline. There isn't a reference list at the end to indicate the remaining references. Perhaps some of the external links are really references, but this isn't indicated.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments or need some more suggestions. This is a very interesting topic and I wish you well with it. StarryGrandma (talk) 03:12, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, that's given me a pretty good idea on how to start a serious reorganisation of the article. Is it correct to call a device that doesn't amplify power an amplifier? It seems that a device that amplifies only current or voltage would instead be a electric power converter, does this need clarification in the article? Splitting off certain sections may be a good idea, but to what degree? Electronic amplifiers are a pretty wide ranging topic, so it seems that their classification and categorisation would be a good subject for the article, but I'd say in its current state it is too detailed at many points. —  crh ₂₃  (Talk) 09:38, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

The article could definitely be improved with inline references. Particularly in technical matters, it would be excellent to have a source directly after each claim. This seems to be the biggest challenge in the article - matching a source for each claim. BrightRoundCircle (talk) 08:10, 6 July 2016 (UTC)