Creating an "Insights" category
Looking at the "papers" category, I found that several papers do not fit the very purpose of this category (that's the reason I've not upvoted them). Nevertheless, they are relatively well written, well thought out, and probably interesting for new comers in electronics. I think for example most of the papers of Circuit fantasist deserve more upvotes, but this does not happen because they are not really relevant to the "paper" category, according to the expectations there (in my opinion).
What is lacking is an "Insights" category, whose characteristics could be discussed here. This category could include interesting views of well known topics, experiments that demonstrate (in an original manner) some known facts, good student tricks, pedagogy insights etc.
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What you describe is already allowed in Papers. See electrical.codidact.com/help/papers.
The papers by Circuit Fantasist are well on topic. Presenting a concept in an accessible way is OK. I haven't upvoted most of those papers either, but that's because I think his teaching style, and particularly his diagrams, are cluttered and confusing. However, the concept of picking something like resistance and explaining it in depth is perfectly acceptable.
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We have such low volume as it is, that I wouldn't want to see another category added at this time. It would only emphasize how little traffic there is.
Let's not make the same mistake that Photography made. They have lots of mostly-empty categories.
Some day when there is enough content, I could see spinning off a Tutorials category, and moving some of the existing Papers to it. We're not ready for that yet with a total of only 14 Papers.
@Olin. I already read the help/papers doc you pointed out. And that's why I think a part of the papers are very far from the description there (except the "to educate" clause, at the most). As far as I understand, this category is intended to
- "presenting useful information to the world",
- be "much like research papers published in scientific journals",
- be an "Idea for a new method of doing something you have tried and found to work"
- be "A neat trick or circuit you developed that was useful"
- be an "Extension to existing theory"
- "A survey of scattered information" etc
- (two more clauses that will be discussed below)
In what sense the papers "What are voltages inside resistors", "what are voltages in circuits", or "Where do currents flow in circuits?" fit these clauses?
It's true, there are two other clauses:
- A case study.
- Report of original research or an investigation you personally performed.
BUT: both clauses immediately specify that
- The problems you encountered and solved should be ones that reasonably competent electrical engineers might also encounter AND
- the result should not be obvious to a reasonably competent EE.
And that suffices to invalidate the aforementioned papers, unless you extrapolate the meaning of these clauses at the extreme.
It should of course be possible to extend the scope of the paper category, updating it, but I think this category is nice as it is and is actually well thought. It would be a pity to extend it more than that.
That's what I think a category "insights" is required.
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