Talk:Experimenter Publishing

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Review comments[edit]

Swtpc6800 asked me to take a look at this article, so here are some notes. I'll expand this list as I go through the article.

  • Over the years several dates have been given for the first occurrence of this advertisement. Even Hugo Gernsback used the wrong date (January 13, 1906) in a 1938 issues of his magazine, Radio Craft. I'd suggest moving this text to the footnote; most readers won't be interested in the history of the incorrect date, but it's worth preserving in the footnote -- which is where a reader who thinks the date is incorrect will look.
  • (See a 1916 Electro Importing Catalog and a 1920 Electro Importing Catalog..) A couple of comments here. First, they both appear to be advertisements for catalogs (from Electrical Experimenter and Radio Amateur News respectively), rather than actual catalogs. Second, I'm not sure how relevant they are to the article. They might fit better into articles about those magazines themselves.
  • I'd suggest adding a sentence to the end of the "Origins" section mentioning Experimenter Publishing, so that the reader understands how the subject of the article relates to this section. Perhaps just carrying the story on to 1915 would do it; that is, move the first paragraph of the next section up to the "Origins" section.
  • This tangle of investments would become an issue in the 1929 bankruptcy. I think you can cut this; the reader doesn't know yet what the 1929 bankruptcy is. If you want to keep it I'd change it to something like "This tangle of investments later became an issue for Gernsback when he was forced into bankruptcy in 1929." Is the assertion that this approach to investing was part of the reason for the bankruptcy obvious from the facts? Or is it supported by a direct quote from a source? I'm not as familiar with the bankruptcy as you are, so it looks a bit like it might be a personal opinion.
  • It continued to publish fiction stories. The only prior mention of fiction is Gernsback's novel. I think you should describe the contents a little, earlier on, and make it clear that fiction was published regularly (or every issue, or whatever was the case).
  • You have several paragraphs missing sources; it's a good idea to include at least one source at the end of the paragraph. That's enough if essentially all of the information to be sourced comes from that one source. There's an unsourced paragraph in the first part of the "Magazines" section, and three more in the "Other publications" section, for example. Another thing you can do is create a source that refers to the individual issues of a magazine. Primary sources are frowned on in some circumstances, but they're fine for specific details such as title changes and dates of publication. (It's good to get secondary sources for those, too, but not always possible.)
  • Radio News and its direct successors, Electronics World and Popular Electronics, were published until 1985. This makes it sounds as if Electronics World and Popular Electronics were two independent magazines. It might be better phrased as something like "Radio News was published until 1985, though the title was changed to Electronics World in [year] and then to Popular Electronics in [year]." Or if this is more detail than we really need at this point, how about "Radio News, under various titles, was published until 1985."?
Done. Radio News spun off Popular Electronics and changed the title to Electronics World in the 1950s. They merged back into one magazine in 1972. That is too much detail; I just said the title was changed to Popular Electronics in 1972. I went with "under various titles". The Radio News article has the complete story. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 02:44, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • (See Practical Electrics Ad.). As for the earlier ads, I'm not sure that this is necessary. If it's worth keeping, I'd drop the "See" format, which interrupts the flow somewhat, in favour of simply inserting the image into the article at an appropriate point. Or it could go into an article on Practical Electrics.
  • The magazine names are confusing, because of the repetition of phrases like "Experimenter" and "Electrics"/"Electrical" in different magazines. Some merge into others; some change names. A small diagram showing the relationships might be helpful -- the table at the end does explain everything but it's at the end of the article, and I think a diagrammatic format might be more helpful still.
  • Reading further, I see you have these "See [image]" references in several places. I won't comment about each case, but I do think these need to be integrated better, or directly inserted as images, or removed to other articles.
  • You have "President", "Secretary" and "Treasurer"; I'd suggest lower-casing these.
  • The "Other publications" section, which tells us about Consrad, and brings back Electro Importing which hasn't been mentioned for several paragraphs, is quite confusing. This article is about Experimenter Publishing; how were these companies related? You mention Practical Electrics Company as a subsidiary of Experimenter Publishing, but it doesn't appear that these two are related in that way (i.e. in more than the fact that Gernsback ran them all). If they are related, the relationship should be clarified; if not, why are they covered in this article? As with the magazines, some kind of diagrammatic timeline of the companies might be a good idea.
  • Why does the article cover Sydney's Radio Encyclopedia? It appears it was unrelated to Hugo's companies. I wonder if the right approach might be to have a parent article called something like "Hugo Gernsback's companies" and give the overall explanation of everything there, and then create subarticles for everything, such as Experimenter, that deserves its own article. Gernsback's own article might suffice as the parent but it would have to have a great deal of expansion. Anyway, with some such approach, Sydney's Encyclopedia could be mentioned in the parent article, where it is clearly part of the overall narrative. Then it would not need to be mentioned here.
  • Hugo Gernsback also published magazines: in the light of the confusing set of companies, I think it should be made explicit which company Gernsback used to publish these magazines. The list at the end does make it clear that Your Body was an Experimenter Publishing magazine, but it's worth spelling out.
  • The last paragraph in "Other publications" has a similar problem: I can't tell which of these books were published by Experimenter, and which by Consrad. Does Consrad deserve its own article? Gernsback's habit of having multiple companies make articles about him hard to organize. One approach you could try would be to develop all the articles about the individual magazines, and then see what overall narrative material is needed in a parent article to tie those articles together.
  • I think you could cut the start of the WRNY section to "By 1925 there were over 500 broadcast stations in the United States. Many publishers were starting stations." or something about that length. The information about KDKA doesn't seem necessary.
  • Vladimir K. Zworykin and Philo Farnsworth were developing electronic scanning systems that were the precursors of modern television. These would not be available for another decade. This is probably a bit more detail than needed, given the article's topic. I think you can just cut this to a sentence saying that the precursors of modern television sets were still a decade in the future.
  • but the bankruptcy was always ignored: that's a stronger statement than the source supports. The source does ignore it, but can you support the "always"?
  • You have two sections called WRNY, which is not a great idea -- it means that links to the second section will actually jump to the first section.
  • Why is there so much detail on WRNY after Gernsback? It's no longer Experimenter Publishing at that point, right? Wouldn't it make more sense for this detail to be in the WRNY article?

-- Mike Christie (talk) 12:05, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Mike, I will remove all see image links a make a small picture gallery with 4 or maybe 8 ads. I am finishing an article on WRNY radio and their first television broadcast in August 12, 1928. I will have this done in a day or so. I will then return to Experimenter Publishing. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 03:55, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome; it's an interesting article. I think it has the material it needs; it's just a question of organization now, and a bit of prose polishing. I'll read it a couple of times more and may add more comments later. After you've taken another pass at it, I'd suggest taking it to peer review next. Mike Christie (talk) 11:18, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Getting electrified[edit]

I don't see a mention of where the mags were published/headquartered. Can I presume NYC, same as WRNY? (BTW, it's interesting & well written, just a few minor gaps in coverage. :) ) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 21:36, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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