Talk:RepRap Project

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[edit] Stub

I think this has the potential to grow into a larger article and may grow back to the branch. I strongly suggest that it become a stub.--TaranRampersad 16:25, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There's nothing blocking you from expanding it into a stub, but the info that is here at the moment is clearly a candidate for speedy deletion. Go ahead and change it if you have enough knowledge about the subject. Sarg 18:28, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
LOL, I guess I am the volunteer then. OK, let me see what I can do...--TaranRampersad 18:34, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
OK, we have something a heck of a lot better than we had. I'll keep tabs on the project and add to it as things come in. --TaranRampersad 03:03, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Good job! Sarg 10:38, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Since the RepRap project has started to progress on a weekly basis I've started looking after the entry. Plaasjaapie 00:56, 3 Jun 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sorting images

Text copied from my entry in village pump technical:

[edit] Edit links being bumped out of position by a series of right aligned images

I'm not sure why the edit links seem to get shifted out of position by a series of right-aligned images.

Originally the images were zig-zagged left and right throughout the article, but it was messy to look at, especially when printed out, so I aligned them all to the right, but now the section 'edit' links do not line up with the right sections. Please see RepRap Project.

Is this a bug, and how do I get around this? - CharlesC 17:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a VPT FAQ; see Wikipedia:How to fix bunched up edit links. --ais523 17:37, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

thanks.

So I put the images in question all together in a right-aligned div. - CharlesC 20:36, 20 September 2006 (UTC)


That might have been why the pics were zig-zagged in the first place.  :-/

plaasjaapie 15:29, 23 September 2006 (PDT)

[edit] Criticism/rebuttal sections

I've noticed that the sections on criticism and rebuttal of criticism is currently unreferenced, and that at least one member of the RepRap team is a major editor of this article (hi! :). While these sections don't look like they are overly biased, there's also the issue of original research that's worrying me a bit. We're not supposed to be publishing original analysis of the subjects of our articles, just summarizing analysis that others have done. Does anyone know offhand of any external sources for these arguments, for example on the RepRap home site? Links to non-RepRap sites with criticisms and rebuttals would also be great to include to show that these issues aren't entirely academic. Bryan 17:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Bryan: Hadn't heard of a Wikipedia policy such that... We're not supposed to be publishing original analysis of the subjects of our articles, just summarizing analysis that others have done.

If I remember correctly, the guy that threw in the critique was somebody from Poland. His critique fairly closely matched criticisms that had appeared in several articles about the project. Because of that I wrote a short rebuttal and polled others in the project to see if I'd done a proper job of it. I thought the critique was valuable and kept it. plaasjaapie 17:43, 24 September 2006 (PDT)

The main purpose of that policy is to dovetail in with our policy on verifiability (and also as an easy way to deal with crackpots pushing their own personal theories, though that doesn't apply here). If the article contains information that's original to Wikipedia and found nowhere else, how is a random editor who comes along going to be able to check whether it's "true" or not? Fortunately this doesn't look like a particularly troublesome case compared to some of the stuff I've seen in other articles on Wikipedia, it should be pretty easy to fix up. For example, when the article says "some critics argue that...", it would be good to have a link to those articles you mention where some critics did indeed argue that. Likewise with the rebuttals, if you've put that information up at the RepRap website or published it in any articles we should include references for those too. I'd go hunting myself, but I figured I'd ask on talk: first since you'd be more likely to be able to pull sources out of the ether as you're more intimately familiar with the situation. Bryan 01:14, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia's policy about "No Original Research" is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research. I am tagging the controvery section as original research; I can't find anything on the reprap wiki about this either. Krolco 22:29, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

You didn't find any on the RepRap site because the critique was generated here by one of the editors. I didn't take it out at the time because I didn't want to start an editing war with the editor who included it. Since then it has metastisised into the rather pointless bunch of hairsplitting that you see today.

As to tagging it for removal, I certainly have no emotional attachment to that section any more than I do for that bit about extruding chocolate, which imo, belongs in an article about the fab@home 3Dprinter instead. Fab@home have talked seriously about doing that sort of thing. RepRap people have never mentioned it save in jest, to my knowledge. Plaasjaapie 01:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the controversy section. As best as I can see the controversy hasn't existed anywhere except here in the reprap article. I suggest that if anybody wants to criticise the philosophical basis of the reprap project that either the media or a scholarly paper is where it should be done. Then we can report on it here. Plaasjaapie 03:50, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

While I agree that there wasn't any real controversy, the section did contain worthwhile content and should not have been completely removed. I've added back some of it to the intro, and some to a new "Limitations of self-replication" section. --Brouhaha 04:38, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the statement "Within a few minutes of being assembled, the first completed "child" machine made the first "grandchild" part" that was put in "Timeline" is at least highly controversial, taking into account that "it would still require an external supply of several currently non-replicable components such as sensors, stepper motors, cameras, or microcontrollers." The statements like this have mislead quite a few media sources already. Don't people go to wikipedia to see what it's really about??? I'm disappointed. There is _no_ working "child" machine, period. --144.92.110.139 (talk) 02:48, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Why is it controversial? It's a true statement. The problem is that we don't explain the limits of self-replication soon enough. I propose that the first sentence of the section "Limitations of self-replication" should be pushed up to the lead section of the article to make it clear that RepRap doesn't reproduce all of the parts - just the ones that cannot be bought easily off-the-shelf. Once that's been clearly explained, the timeline section is OK. SteveBaker (talk) 17:58, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proving hypothesis about universal constructors?

If any members of the RepRap team have really stated that it is an objective to prove the hypothesis that rapid prototyping and direct writing are sufficient to make a universal constructor, a specific citation of that should be provided. Otherwise it should be removed. --Brouhaha 04:41, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. No problem. Pretty much spelled out at length and in detail in the document cited. Plaasjaapie 07:18, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The reference has interesting background on universal constructors and their relation to rapid prototyping machines, but I don't see anyhwere in it that it is an objective of the RepRap project to prove the stated hypothesis. Thus I still think the claim of that being an objective should be removed. --Brouhaha 01:21, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Statements about hypothesis removed, for lack of documentation that it is an objective of the RepRap project to prove the hypothesis. --Brouhaha 03:01, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

from...

http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/RepRap

The RepRap project is working towards creating a universal constructor by using rapid prototyping, and then giving the results away free under the GNU General Public Licence to allow other investigators to work on the same idea. We are trying to prove the hypothesis: Rapid prototyping and direct writing technologies are sufficiently versatile to allow them to be used to make a von Neumann Universal Constructor.

You can't get a lot more specific than that. I'm putting it back in with the more focussed reference. Plaasjaapie 16:29, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Repstrapped

It's pretty easy to figure out what this means, but it would read a lot better if you defined it. Puddytang 21:22, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Heh. I came here to point out the same thing. --SLi (talk) 01:35, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. Actually I'm not entirely sure what it does mean. I imagine it comes from "RepRap" and "bootstrap" but it's still not immediately clear. --P3d0 (talk) 13:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Will"s and weasel words

You might want to refrain from using "will" to imply certain speculative consequences / outcomes of the project, no matter how important or impressive; lighten up on weasel words such as "is described", "it is speculated"; and in general tone down the heavy-handed high-note introduction that promises a global revolution (and seems to repeat itself in regard to self-replication). I edited it slightly, but the article still needs plenty of work in that regard.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great project by all means, but a heavy involvement of project members in the shape of this article is pretty evident, and it's really not that much of a great idea (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest) - when you do get involved, at least try to focus on the technical know-how, not on hand-waving ;-) --lcamtuf 12:07, 4 July 2007 (UTC)