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{{WikiProject Electronics |class=Start |importance=High}}
== Vandalism / edit wars ==
This article keeps being either ignorantly edited, vandalized, or brought to edit wars by an ignorant user.
The reason this topic is complex is because the terms "passive" and "active" are often used pretty colloquially ("I don't know what it is, but I know it when I see it"). People bump into some random definition on some random web page or book, but when you get down to it, all those definitions are different and often in conflict with each other. The electronic engineering community converged on proper, rigorous, formal definitions but (1) these definitions are (necessarily) somewhat complex, (2) many people (especially amateur circuit hackers) don't know them, and (3) a range of colloquial uses is common (especially in books by amateurs for amateurs, but also often in electronics catalogs. Spinningspark: if you really want a range of conflicting references, pick up a vendor catalog; you'll find marketing departments use these terms every which way possible). The point is you can find **some** sources defining 'active' and 'passive' any which way. Occasionally, random users come up on this page and edit it, based on what they learned in some random place. There's one particular aggressive, ignorant Wikipedia user who insists on making changes which are usually simply incorrect (and it's striking -- literally every sentence can have an error -- I'll walk through the current edit below).
While that's no reason to perpetuate ignorance, there are people with far more energy to get into these things than myself. I'm not sure what the right course of action is, or whether Wikipedia has procedures for managing this.
The current version starts:
'''''"In electronic engineering, devices that exhibit gain or a rectifying function (such as diodes) are considered active."'''''
This is false. All of the definitions come from the electronic engineering community. The difference is that this is an informal usage, while the above versions are formal definitions.
The next chunk completely confuses the term solid-state. This is evidenced in the edit history: '''''"That's just nonsense. Capacitors and resistors are generally solid state."''''' Solid-state has a mixture of definitions, but in the context of circuit design, generally this term refers to semiconductor devices. See the wikipedia entry for solid state which starts: ''"Solid-state electronics means semiconductor electronics; electronic equipment using semiconductor devices such as transistors, diodes and integrated circuits (ICs)."'' In this context, an electrolytic capacitor, discrete resistor, or similar would **not** be considered solid-state. There is a gray zone for resistors and capacitors on an IC (which are semiconductor-based, but don't make use of the properties of the substrate as a semiconductor), but the overall IC, as a silicon device, is still considered solid-state. Of course, at a systems level, the definition changes (for example, if you're plugging an SSD into a computer, that means "no moving parts," and it may contain non-semiconductor devices).
Next, we see this gem:
'''''"Only capacitors, inductors, and resistors are considered passive.[3][4]"''''' -- It's worth pointing out what the sources for this (incorrect) definition are:
1) "The New Penguin Dictionary of Electronics," I couldn't find on-line for the 2nd edition. The third edition is a text from 1998 whose author also wrote dictionaries of astronomy, computer science, physics, computing, etc. That stands against standard academic texts on the topic. This book hasn't even been bothered to be digitized by Google Books or Amazon Look Inside, so it's impossible to tell what it even says.
2) A one-liner in "Crash Course in Electronics Technology." Really. Looks this up in Google Books. By Google's search, this book mentions 'active' a total of seven times in the whole book. The definition of 'passive' contradicts itself: it states that they do not modify signals (an RC filter doesn't modify a signal?), and later defines all filters as passive (a Sallen-Key is passive?). I don't really fault this book, since this isn't a focus of the book, but I do fault the editor for citing what's clearly a non-reference.
This stands against standard texts used at first-tier universities for teaching electronic engineers. What's frustrating is the article already has canonical citations from people who are generally considered the world's experts in this field (faculty at MIT, Berkeley, etc.).
Continuing, we get this incorrect statement:
'''''"In terms of abstract theory, diodes can be considered non-linear resistors, but non-linearity in a resistor would not normally be directional, which is the property that leads to diodes being classified as active."'''''
Yes, plenty of perfectly passive nonlinearities are directional and can rectify. See an electrolytic capacitor, for example, or even a slightly corroded connector (which acts a bit like a Schottky diode). If you define those as active, you run into all sorts of contradictions.
Finally, we get into this:
'''''"United States Patent and Trademark Office is amongst the organisations classing diodes as active devices."'''''
That's a USPTO classification, not a definition. It's used for routing patents to the right examiner. It's not even a classification of "active device;" the class is: "ACTIVE SOLID-STATE DEVICES." The key words here are "solid-state." Which is a term our editor doesn't seem to understand either.
I'm sure that in response to this comment, we'll get another edit by this user, perhaps with surface changes to the above, and get another incorrect page. I'm not really sure where to go from here. As it is, we had a section of an article edited where now quite literally every sentence contains a technical error, and quite often multiple. On some level, Wikipedia shouldn't have incorrect pages. The right course of action would be to revert to the last correct version, and then have editors who understand the subject matter work to simplify this page. On some other level, it's clear someone has way more time on their hand than anyone else here, and at this point, I'm willing to just let them take over, and let Wikipedia perpetuate ignorance and have one incorrect page.
== Merge ==
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