Talk:Tell-tale (automotive)

message: Why has this been nominated as nonsense? "Idiot light" is a valid term that is regularly used in automobile and other terminology. StealthFox 20:18, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's certainly neither nonsense nor spam. I could see an AfD for it being only a dictdef, though. But not speedy. You can call me Al 20:20, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  AfD? 

message: I'm not sure this should be merged with "Check Engine" Light, as it is just one example of an idiot light. It would be useful to have a "see also" link to it though. StealthFox 00:25, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge 

message: I'm not sure what kind of a citation is needed for the "The "idiot" factor refers to the popular belief that the car maker decided that most drivers lack the technical expertise to properly understand gauges" line. Is it supposed to be a quote by a motor company? I doubt it's possible to find it. NetHunter (talk) 10:24, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Anyone who's lived in the world for a while has noticed that people are, generally, stupid.  More charitably, we all live complex and busy lives and may not notice that the pointer on the gauge that is usually "over there" is now "over THERE" indicating that we're about to be stranded during a blizzard somewhere outside of Tisdale, Saskatchewan. (People still run out of gas all the time because they don't *look* at gas gauges, which is why even gas gauges have idiot lights on them.) I don't think this needs a special citation, but then, Wikipedia doesn't work on common sense. --Wtshymanski (talk) 13:57, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation for popular belief 

message: I have brought the content from Malfunction indicator lamp to this article and augmented it; I propose we officially merge and redirect that article to this one. —Scheinwerfermann T·C10:08, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's not. We didn't in 2006. If anything the MIL article should be merged with OBD, if we have one. All MILs are idiot lights, but not all idiot lights are MILs.  There's enough to write about the MIL that it doesn't need to be added here. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:44, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, that seems reasonable -- we can have brief discussion of MILs here and point to the main article, whether or not that article gets merged with On-board diagnostics (which is very badly out of date; it appears to stop at OBD-II!). —Scheinwerfermann T·C23:58, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge content from MIL 

message: Lovely.  We've mushed together "idiot light" ( a light that comes on to tell you something has gone wrong, that you didn't notice from reading a gauge) and what I would call "pilot light" (oh, look, the radio is getting stereo FM!). Thus, in this very article, we've re-enacted the cognitive failure that made idiot lights necessary. Let's write lots and lots of words instead. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:27, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Well…no. We haven't set up any cognitive failure. Your own personal nomenclature of "pilot light" is a fairly common informal one, not in formal or official use. Fact is, "Tell-tale" is an umbrella term that covers various kinds of indicators. Trouble indicators ("idiot lights"), circuit-closed indicators, system-operating indicators, etc. We're working to build this article to describe that reality. Hope you'll join in the effort rather than grousing. —Scheinwerfermann T·C00:02, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Gosh, you should tell the IEEE that they're making stuff up again; they define both "pilot light" and (redundantly) "pilot lamp" in IEEE Std. 100. But let's continue to mush everything together and use lots of words to describe what may, or may not,e.g., be indicated by the applying of power to the illumination of a light bulb or/and LED and/or the lack of illumination of the aforementioned luminous artifact and/or artefact. "Idiot light" was at least nicely confined to the context of auto dashboards; "telltale" overgeneralizes. In spite of that overgeneralization, I've yet to see a "tell-tale" or "telltale" listed that isn't an idiot light, except for the list of pilot lights. And note again that the article is a trainspotters collection of "Hey, neat places I've seen lights!" without the slightest  notion of history, background or science behind it all.   Discuss the difference between Joe Pilot saying "Oh, look, the exhaust temperature is up 75 degrees, I'd better lean out the mixture" and Sally Homemaker driving the kids from soccer practice to music lessons who just wants to know if she should mention it at the next dealer service or pull over and call AAA. Why do we have idiot lights and not gauges? Not one Wikipedia editor knows. But that's ok.  I'm currently working on fixing a copyright violation that no one spotted in 9 years.  Hint - if it reads well on Wikipedia, check to see if was plagiarized. --Wtshymanski (talk) 00:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Modify your tone. When you are ready to have a grownup conversation without the sarcasm and snark, we can talk about apposite things like the IEEE's nomenclature being irrelevant to this automotive article, and we can draw up lists of tell-tales that aren't idiot lights. Until then, we'd be stuck discussing the difference between productive activities like working coöperatively to improve an article vs. unproductive activities like bitching and moaning on the talk page, and that's not a conversation I feel like putting energy into with you. —Scheinwerfermann T·C05:50, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Mush

message: This page has been boldly moved to "Idiot light", but I feel that it is still a fairly disputed change. Personally, I believe "idiot light" to be a fairly informal term, as others have stated above, and one that does not necessarily refer to all tell-tale indicators (the article itself states that the term arose as a disparaging comment by auto technicians on the replacement of gauges with lights; as a result, it would therefore not apply to, for instance, indicators that inform on the type of headlights currently active). This would mean that it is not the most suitable host for the article, although still worthy of being covered.
I'm not going to revert the move just yet, but I would like a further test of consensus on this (especially as previous discussions appear to have skewed against "Idiot light" as the main name for the page). — Sasuke Sarutobi ([[User talk:Sasuke 
Sarutobi|talk]]) 12:00, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move to "Idiot light" 

message: The most recent car I've purchased has a lot of "idiot light" functions displaced by an LCD display in the middle of the dashboard, which for example replaces a warning that you're about to hit the car in front of you with the text "Brake!" on a red background that you can read during the collision. Something scholarly on this would be very interesting to read. We have zilch on the human factors associated with idiot lights, which would be of much more encyclopediac value than a recitation of all the lights on the dashboard. --Wtshymanski (talk) 03:47, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: LCD screen as replacement for idiot lights