DSP Wiki

Hi All,

I started a DSP Wiki site, dspwiki.com, a little while ago. Recently,
I got an email from somebody saying that I should mention it here. So,
that's what I'm doing. Right now, it's made up mostly of notes that I
took in a DSP and Synthesis class a few years ago, along with some
code I had sitting around from some projects I've worked on. Any
contributions by those of you with DSP knowledge would be most
appreciated.

Thanks,
Tom

On Aug 5, 3:48 pm, googlegro...@gersic.com wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I started a DSP Wiki site, dspwiki.com, a little while ago. Recently,
> I got an email from somebody saying that I should mention it here. So,
> that's what I'm doing. Right now, it's made up mostly of notes that I
> took in a DSP and Synthesis class a few years ago, along with some
> code I had sitting around from some projects I've worked on. Any
> contributions by those of you with DSP knowledge would be most
> appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Tom

I applaud your effort, Tom, but why not add onto existing
efforts, such as wikipedia.com itself, or something like
cnx.rice.edu?

Julius

On Aug 5, 6:17 pm, julius <juli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 5, 3:48 pm, googlegro...@gersic.com wrote:
>
> > Hi All,
>
> > I started a DSP Wiki site, dspwiki.com, a little while ago. Recently,
> > I got an email from somebody saying that I should mention it here. So,
> > that's what I'm doing. Right now, it's made up mostly of notes that I
> > took in a DSP and Synthesis class a few years ago, along with some
> > code I had sitting around from some projects I've worked on. Any
> > contributions by those of you with DSP knowledge would be most
> > appreciated.
>
> > Thanks,
> > Tom
>
> I applaud your effort, Tom, but why not add onto existing
> efforts, such as wikipedia.com itself, or something like
> cnx.rice.edu?

there's a higher admission bar at cnx.  Wikipedia is becoming a very
strange battleground (where, not so coincidently, i have been slain,
never to return) and is so big, that i wonder if some of this would
get lost in WP.

dunno.  i was the one to suggest to Tom to mention this here.

r b-j

robert bristow-johnson <rbj@audioimagination.com> writes:

> On Aug 5, 6:17 pm, julius <juli...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Aug 5, 3:48 pm, googlegro...@gersic.com wrote:
>>
>> > Hi All,
>>
>> > I started a DSP Wiki site, dspwiki.com, a little while ago. Recently,
>> > I got an email from somebody saying that I should mention it here. So,
>> > that's what I'm doing. Right now, it's made up mostly of notes that I
>> > took in a DSP and Synthesis class a few years ago, along with some
>> > code I had sitting around from some projects I've worked on. Any
>> > contributions by those of you with DSP knowledge would be most
>> > appreciated.
>>
>> > Thanks,
>> > Tom
>>
>> I applaud your effort, Tom, but why not add onto existing
>> efforts, such as wikipedia.com itself, or something like
>> cnx.rice.edu?
>
> there's a higher admission bar at cnx.  Wikipedia is becoming a very
> strange battleground (where, not so coincidently, i have been slain,
> never to return) and is so big, that i wonder if some of this would
> get lost in WP.
>
> dunno.  i was the one to suggest to Tom to mention this here.
>
> r b-j

Once again the opportunity to plug the merits of a comp.dsp web site
arises. 

With such a site, a *controlled* wiki could be administrated and serve
as a central place for all things DSP (well, all things comp.dsp, at least).

No one person or organization would have too large of a voice. A method
of governance would be devised to decide who decides (board of governors)
things like who's allowed to post to the wiki, make changes to the faq, 
etc.

Proceeds from advertisements would be used to fund comp.dsp conferences 
or other projects of interest to the comp.dsp community. 
-- 
%  Randy Yates                  % "Maybe one day I'll feel her cold embrace,
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC            %                    and kiss her interface, 
%%% 919-577-9882                %            til then, I'll leave her alone."
%%%% <yates@ieee.org>           %        'Yours Truly, 2095', *Time*, ELO   
http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr

> I applaud your effort, Tom, but why not add onto existing
> efforts, such as wikipedia.com itself, or something like
> cnx.rice.edu?


In my experience, adding new articles to Wikipedia is often more
effort than it's worth, because new articles tend to get deleted, and
you end up having to argue over why the topic is noteworthy, and
wouldn't best be merged with some other topic...I've also been
planning on uploading more code snippets to my wiki, and I don't think
Wikipedia generally allows pages to be quite that technical...At least
I haven't seen any Wikipedia pages with source code...

On 6 Aug, 02:23, robert bristow-johnson <r...@audioimagination.com>
wrote:
> On Aug 5, 6:17 pm, julius <juli...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I applaud your effort, Tom, but why not add onto existing
> > efforts, such as wikipedia.com itself, or something like
> > cnx.rice.edu?
>
> there's a higher admission bar at cnx.  Wikipedia is becoming a very
> strange battleground

That's how the academic world works -- well, at least
that's how it is supposed to work. If you have to fight
hard to get something admitted, the chance of whatever
being correct is much higher.

I would hate to see a web site on DSP which ends up
being dominated by somebody like Mr. Bean. That would
do much more damage than it would help.

Rune

Rune Allnor wrote:
> On 6 Aug, 02:23, robert bristow-johnson <r...@audioimagination.com>
> wrote:
>> On Aug 5, 6:17 pm, julius <juli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>> I applaud your effort, Tom, but why not add onto existing
>>> efforts, such as wikipedia.com itself, or something like
>>> cnx.rice.edu?
>> there's a higher admission bar at cnx.  Wikipedia is becoming a very
>> strange battleground
> 
> That's how the academic world works -- well, at least
> that's how it is supposed to work. If you have to fight
> hard to get something admitted, the chance of whatever
> being correct is much higher.

I don't think he was referring to height of the accuracy bar. I think he 
was referring to the height of the "advanced topics" bar.

> I would hate to see a web site on DSP which ends up
> being dominated by somebody like Mr. Bean. That would
> do much more damage than it would help.

You do realise, of course, that the real Mr Bean has a 1st class honours 
degree, from Oxford, in Electronic Engineering. :-)

Steve

> That's how the academic world works

Well, that's how academic *journals* work. That's not how academic
textbook publishing works, though. Textbooks, which seem to me to bear
more resemblance to Wikipedia than a journal, are generally written by
an author or set of authors, and then reviewed by a series of Subject
Matter Experts, who can give input, but have absolutely no control
over what appears in the final publication. As for an academic
journal, the reviewers are generally chosen for their experience in a
particular field. I'm not sure I would consider the free-for-all
review process at Wikipedia to be on par with that of an academic
journal. The Citizendium side-project is closer to the way academic
journals work...

On 6 Aug, 13:51, googlegro...@gersic.com wrote:
> > That's how the academic world works
>
> Well, that's how academic *journals* work. That's not how academic
> textbook publishing works, though. Textbooks, which seem to me to bear
> more resemblance to Wikipedia than a journal, are generally written by
> an author or set of authors, and then reviewed by a series of Subject
> Matter Experts, who can give input, but have absolutely no control
> over what appears in the final publication.

The publisher usually have an economical interest in that
textbooks in general are percieved as non-controversial,
and provide substatiating arguments and evidence supporting
their claims when they are not.

If you write a book that says that, say, Lebesque was
a madman and Dirac a lunatic, the serious publishers
would not let such statements pass in textbooks on maths
unless you have very convincing evidence and arguments.

For some reason, some people involved with DSP have huge
issues with both the Lebesgue integral and Dirac's delta
function. That's a serious problem what DSP is concerned,
because these issues are at the heart of the sampling
of continuous-time signals.

If you open up a Wikipedia-like forum, your forum runs
the risk of becoming dominated by people with these
sorts of problems, simply because those guys are not taken
seriously -- and not allowed to publish -- elsewhere.
It sems to me that you do not have the skills or
impetus to kick them out of your forum -- very few
people have. If such people find your forum, your
forum is broken, and you and others may be worse off
with respect to learning DSP than you would have been
without the forum.

> As for an academic
> journal, the reviewers are generally chosen for their experience in a
> particular field.

No, they are not. They *volunteer* to be reviewers.
They are accepted/rejected based on how they are
percieved by the editors for a particular field.
While this is by no means fool-proof, it greatly
reduces the risk of allowing crackpots to publish.
Unfortunately, the damage becomes so much worse
when the crackpots slip through and are allowed to
publish anyway.

> I'm not sure I would consider the free-for-all
> review process at Wikipedia to be on par with that of an academic
> journal.

Well, opening up for anyone to comment also opens up
for the crackpots. Opening up for anyone to contribute
also opens up for the crackpots.

> The Citizendium side-project is closer to the way academic
> journals work...

If it is hard to get stuff published, one might
assume (albeit with no guarantees) that the material
is more reliable than in the open fora.

Remember, science and engineering has nothing to
do with what view has the majority of followers
or whose supporters are the loudest. The academic
method is slow and conservative for the very reason
that it *has* to be hard to be allowed to make
contributions. New views are not accepted because
of who presents them or who shouts the loudest,
but because they are convincing in their own right.

Rune

> > As for an academic
> > journal, the reviewers are generally chosen for their experience in a
> > particular field.
>
> No, they are not. They *volunteer* to be reviewers.
> They are accepted/rejected based on how they are
> percieved by the editors for a particular field.


I never said they weren't volunteers. However, from the list of
volunteers, reviewers are chosen based on their experience (or, I
suppose if you really want to be pedantic, their "perceived
experience") in a given field. Unless I'm missing something, we're
really just arguing semantics here.


> While this is by no means fool-proof, it greatly
> reduces the risk of allowing crackpots to publish.


Agreed. My only point was that Wikipedia should not be equated to an
academic journal.


> Remember, science and engineering has nothing to
> do with what view has the majority of followers
> or whose supporters are the loudest.


Not to keep tooting Citizendium's horn, but for the sake of argument,
I am a Citizendium editor (music), so I know a bit about how the
process works over there. Citizendium has a set of volunteer editors
in each field that all had to show some proof of academic achievement
in order to be selected to be editors. Specifically, one has to show
that they have the educational credentials to be employed in a tenure-
track position in their given field. That is why I tend to think that
it more closely resembles an academic journal than Wikipedia (for
better or worse).