Talk:Civil engineering

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Archive 1 Jan 14, 2007

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Civil engineering article. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.
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[edit] Structural Wiki - Wiki Entirely Devoted to Civil/Structural Engineering

Hi, I am webmaster of BridgeArt.net, which is a civil/structural engineering portal with Structural Wiki. I recently launched a questionnaire whether there would be interest to set up wiki specifically for civil engineers. It would permit more types of content when compared to Wikipedia whose content is strictly encyclopedic: such as design examples, standard details, possibly latest research coordination, galery of inspection photos, etc. If you have some content that you would like to share, but is not appropriate for Wikipedia, you are welcome to join Structural Wiki!

I am already getting some interesting feedback, but I plan to deliver the questionnaire to many more people from different corners of the profession (students, construction people, designers, academia, researchers, research, ...) - it will be interesting to see opinion of each of these groups on wiki. -- Andrewok 05:11, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Given the rather thin coverage of civil engineering topics here, compared to the coverage of computer topics, politics, and various fan-cruft, I don't know that there's much interest in the civil engineering community in contributing to such a thing.

A few issues may deter engineers from contributing to Wikipedia, another wiki, or your wiki in general:

• The licensing requirement may be a deterrent; you should look into whether you really want everything to be GFDL instead of some other license, and whether that would make a difference.
• Engineers seem to be more prone to contributing to existing, established organizations, like ASCE or NSPE.
• The chaotic nature of Wikipedia, especially when anonymous contributions are allowed. Look at the Citizendium Statement of Principles for a possible alternative to the open free-for-all model which Wikipedia follows.
• Don't call it "Structural Wiki" if you want civil engineers who practice in specialties other than structural engineering to feel good about contributing. I'm a Geotechnical Engineer. Why should I contribute to a "Structural" wiki?

Argyriou (talk) 21:32, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Argyriou hit it right on the button with that last comment: I'm primarily transportation other than a few dabblings in other disciplines. Perhaps it is just a local thing, but there tends to be a bit of animosity between the transport and structural folks :P --Thisisbossi 23:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Argyriou, I definitely agree with you that the civil engineering community has lower interest in wiki than may be the case for some other topics. While ASCE and NSPE are established organizations, I imagine that wiki-sort of site could provide more streamlined access to the resources they offer. Plus there are many other professional organization (ACI, AISC, IAI, PCI, AASHTO, NHI, fip, ...) whose resources could be referenced from a single wiki site. Finally, the goal of Structural Wiki is to be small niche wiki, focused primarily on structural engineering, that's why I would like to stick with the name Structural Wiki. It would still contain some inter-discipline topics, such as determination of pile lateral capacity (geotechnical) or determination of roadway profiles (transportation), etc. that are closely related to structural engineering. I think that this niche orientation (similarly we could have geotechnical wiki and transportation wiki) would enable to maintain the wiki more manageable - you can check Wikitravel to see what I mean. -- Andrewok 01:30, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Largest CE Program

I reverted the edit by 66.133.214.16 as we now have two universities both claiming to have the largest program: Texas A&M and also Cal Poly Pomona. I reverted to Texas A&M for the following reasons:

• It was the original post for a disputed entry.
• While it has a smaller undergrad population, it has more faculty.
• Cal Poly Pomona offers only MS degrees as a graduate program. Texas offers additional degrees and is a HUGE destination for graduate students. I am quite sure Texas has Cal Poly Pomona beat on this, but Cal Poly Pomona fails to produce any evidence (that I could find) indicating the graduate student population.

The burden is therefore upon an individual to locate the graduate student population, at which point it may be up to debate as to which is truly largest; or perhaps we should include both. As an engineer and also a student, I'd definitely say Texas is at least the more prominent, by a large margin (I never even heard of Poly Pomona until now). --Thisisbossi 01:49, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Inclusion of both schools might be the safe course for now; these numbers are not static. A third-party source would also be most appropriate for a citation on any one school "claiming" the title. ZueJay (talk) 05:54, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Works for me until a reputable NPOV source can be found. --Thisisbossi 08:37, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Environmental Eng.

Environmental Engineering is an other branch of Engineering, not a sub-title of Civil Engineering therefore should be excluded in the list of CE sub-titles. SEY01 09:18, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

There are alternate sides to this, none of which is correct; or both of which are correct. My civil engineering background includes environmental engineering and is treated as another discipline. What exactly falls under the umbrella of "civil" can always be debated, particularly as most engineering professions were at one time considered "civil". --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 12:31, 6 March 2007

(UTC)

For instance, my background does not include. Env.Eng. is still a separate dept. in the Faculty of Eng. in my university, that's why I wanted to add that previous comment.

SEY01 12:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)