×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

The Blind leading the blind... what should one do?

The Blind leading the blind... what should one do?

The Blind leading the blind... what should one do?

(OP)
Google alerts often bring me some amusement but some concern also.
Usually several identical articles will pop up posted on a variety of unlikely websites, and are often gobbledegook.

OK, Wiki proved by far the better commercial model than Encarta though one suspects that Encarta had a more sound approach when purveying information and who knows what has happened to DMOZ but there are a number of imitation "knowledge" sites out there which appear to have even less editorial and quality control. Pretty well anything seems to get posted and pass muster.

One thing is clear, these are not peer reviewed articles and are often flawed.

Here is an example Google alerts brought me for flow meters.
http://voiceoverinternetprotocol-voip.com/technology/flow-meters-and-flow-management/
Author: Tina L Jones
http://www.articles-central.info/Art/200596/159/Flow-Meters-And-Flow-Management.html
Author: Fabian Tan (this is the sort of nom de guerre pornstars like).
Fabina Tan has been busy, he also posted here:
http://www.woodburycinema.com/flow-meters-as-well-as-flow-control.html
Variations appear such as:
http://buildernews.galanter.net/2010/02/14/flow-meters-as-well-as-flow-management/

Never mind the broken English, which in some of the variations does appear to be addressed, one suspects these people grab a text book, or more likely an article on another web site, and rehash it as their own without properly understanding what they have found. They perpetuate errors and misconceptions. What they reveal is a lack of understanding of the subject matter. A bit like some low attendance record student essay which has found its way onto the internet.

How widespread is this?

The questions to ask are
"why do they bother?" (just for interest)
"What benefit does this sort of junk posting bring?"
"What harm can they do?"

I've found other examples on websites authored by "industry professionals" that have concerned me.

One, for example, was a young marine engineer posting about fuel oil viscosity.
The article was wrong in several small areas and about 12 years out of date on the technology.
What it didn't do was provide the sort of clear description that would help anyone, the contrary, it would likely confuse or at best not actually benefit anyone.
In this case I don't see the harm it would have done, others might.

As it happens, the author of the article cited his reference as a publication from 1991.
One is lead to suppose that this young qualified engineer actually has no first hand experience of engineering aboard a vessel and has simply created his article from what he read in this text book, 19 years out of date.
That was his sole reference.
In 19 years a great deal has changed in the marine industry with engines, ships, fuels instrumentation, and so on. Yet here is someone posting supposedly authoritative articles.

The final, and most important question is what should one do when encountering such published articles?
If they are simply seemingly innocuous student essay type howlers, if they appear on supposed Wiki Look alike sites, on general blogs or in professional industry forums?

This is where it gets troubling. This is a qualified industry professional on an industry website, "informing others".  

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

RE: The Blind leading the blind... what should one do?

Even the best textbooks have errata.
Upon finding one in a new textbook, you would probably notify the publisher.
Thus endeth your responsibility.


 

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

RE: The Blind leading the blind... what should one do?

This is the internet.  Assume all blogs to be bogus.  On this site people can ask for and receive opinions.  However, no engineer should base their paid design on free opinions thrown out by someone on a web site.  Some people want or need to publish something in an article.  Such articles typically lack footnotes with references.  Wiki is better at references than most sites.

RE: The Blind leading the blind... what should one do?

They are doing this for SEO stuff for their company and website.  Either the broken English is caused by an outsourced cheap place doing the SEO, or the owner of his company has bad grammar.

I am currently doing this for my blog right now.  But only writing non technical articles that I think would be interesting to at least one other person than me.

The spamming of the internet is mainly happening because of the SEO techniques to get higher in the GOOG.  I find this very annoying as you probably see all the garbage comments on any blogs you read.

I would email the articles website and tell them that what you are readying is bad information.  I think to get posted you just submit and someone will read and verify it's a somewhat real article.

As an example I will post what I copy and pasted from my companies' blog to another site.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Building-the-Cart-Before-Designing-the-Horse&id=3687864

Civil Development Group, LLC
Los Angeles Civil Engineering specializing in Hillside Grading
http://civildevelopmentgroup.com
http://civildevelopmentgroup.com/blog

RE: The Blind leading the blind... what should one do?

jmw,

   I have a website because I feel like having one, and I am willing to pay the five bucks a month to keep it up.  If that is not a guarantee of quality, I don't know what is.

   The rule here is that you cannot treat websites as an authoritive source of anything.  You have to validate them.

  1. Check out several sources to see if they agree, and to see if, possibly, they agree word for word.
  2. Work your way down the URL and find out what the website is about.  For example, http://www.woodburycinema.com would not be my top source for information on flowmeters.  I spent an afternoon looking up the Thugs, the Indian murder cult.  One site, with a detailed summary of Captain William Sleeman's book on them, turned out to be a white power site.
  3. Is there a peer review source?  EngTips and Wikipedia have peer review mechanisms.  Probably, Woodbury Cinemas does not.
   Here is the About page from Wooodbury Cinema.

Quote (About Woodbury Cinema):

This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress

               JHG

RE: The Blind leading the blind... what should one do?

Calibrate your bullsh*t detector.  Assess the credibility of people by the quality of their answers to numerous questions.  Check multiple sources and look for agreement.  Determine how much your result depends on blind trust in any number, measurement or observation you didn't make, or calculation you do not fully understand, and "what if" the result.

Oh yeah, and contribute to the communication of the truth as you see it, with an open mind to learning something new in the process.  Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.  

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources