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What is Tubeopedia?
Tubeopedia is an encyclopedia of electron tube data and related topics collaboratively written by its users (who might be called Tubeopediacs or Tubeopedians). It is a special type of website, called a wiki, that makes collaboration easy. By spreading the creation of content among many editors, content isn't dependent on a single site administrator, and site growth and existence isn't dependent on one person's time, energy and money. Your charming and delightful editor in chief expects this encyclopedia to grow and exist long after he's gone.
How can I help?
- Spread the word Link to Tubeopedia or Tubeopedia articles on your personal web site, blog posts, and message and bulletin board postings. This is a pretty big project, the more people who know about it and participate, the better it will be and the faster it will grow.
- Register and log in. This will let you create and edit articles, and give you a personal user page, where you can put material that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia, such as a list of what equipment you own (and what you think of it), pictures of your pet cat, etc. Note Your email address is not visible to other users, nor to the system operators, the only emails you get are to confirm registration. If you choose, you can get email, indirectly, via Tubeopedia, from other users, or you can choose to have other users communicate via your talk page.
- Create pages. Tubeopedia needs articles on individual tube types (such as 12AX7, EL34, 6L6GC, etc), tube genres (such as pentodes and triodes), tube equipment (such as radios, transmitters, and tube amplifiers, and vacuum tube voltmeters), models of equipment (like Dynaco Stereo 70, Fender Super Reverb, the TV-7 tube tester, etc), manufacturers (like Fender, Dynaco and Hallicrafters), important researchers and entrepreneurs (like Lee DeForest, David Hafler, and Leo Fender) and "How-to" pages for diagnosing and building tube equipment. Any place you see a red link, an article or an interwiki link probably needs to be provided. Red links are good places to start writing articles, just click on the red link, then click on "Create this page". Easy, huh?
If you haven't edited a wiki before, there's plenty of material available to help you learn. The editing is nearly identical to Wikipedia, see Introduction to Wikipedia. For a short refresher, see Tubeopedia:Cheatsheet.
You can add material that
- you wrote, photographed, or created (such as charts and diagrams) yourself, or
- is in the public domain (most older publications such as Rider's and most tube manuals are), or
- is licensed under the Gnu Free Documentation License (which includes Wikipedia) or Creative Commons, or
- is from governments, thus public property which cannot have a copyright.
Most copyrighted material (one example is material from Sams Photofacts) can not be used without express written consent of the copyright holder. There are some exceptions, such as logos, that can be used under Fair use provisions. For more information, see Wikipedia copyright issues
- Upload files Images, diagrams, schematics, charts, and data files. Even if there's no article to go along with the images, they'll be available for readers and added to articles when they're created.
- Expand articles. Add information, data tables, references, images, Interwiki links to Wikipedia articles ( for items that don't belong here, such as articles about cities) and PDF data files.
- Cleanup and organize. Fix spelling errors, broken links, fix errors and categorize articles.
- Add features. See Wikipedia for examples of portals, templates, and help pages that can be adapted to Tubeopedia.
- Send money. Sponsor Tubeopedia or become a subscribing supporter. This project is going to take up lots of disk space and bandwidth, which ain't free. Since this project is never going to qualify as a charitable organization, we are going to use a sponsorship system similar to Audio Asylum. See Tubeopedia:Support
A few notes about what belongs here and what doesn't
Unlike Wikipedia itself, uploading of Adobe PDF Files for large tube data files, printed articles, charts, and diagrams is allowed and encouraged. Links to PDF files can be put in articles. Otherwise article sizes will become excessively large with graphs and data page images. Open Office is a good, free software package that can be used to make PDF files. GSview can be used to split up large PDFs into smaller pieces.
Content should be encyclopedic, that is referenced and verifiable, and adhere to a neutral point of view.
Discuss differences of opinion about content on article talk pages and user pages of fellow editors. Assume good faith on the part of other editors.
Opinions and equipment reviews don't belong here (there's always Audio Asylum, where you can expound at length), although you can reference external reviews in articles.
Happy editing!
Did you know...?
Former jukebox manufacturer H. C. Evans & Company of Chicago once printed "The Secret Blue Book", which included details of crooked casino equipment supplied by the firm.
(the "Did you know" feature will be updated every week or so with various interesting tidbits from the Tubeopedia.)
