Creating a "Circuits and Components Basic Insights" list- good idea?

[Om_Audio]

Hi there,

In the process of learning about and building pedals I have run into an issue many times and that is:

There are a lot of things about components and circuits that people know but beginners do not AND this info is often times not easily explained or easy to find.

If you do find it it is rarely expressed like:

"resistors can always be installed in either direction"
"always test a resistor before installing- never blindly trust the label and color bands can often be hard to id"
"a pot with 3 legs will always have one of the outer legs to x and the center leg will always be to ground"
"you can reverse how a pot works by which outer leg you choose to use"
"if something needs to be grounded ANY ground point will work, not just the one specified in the build doc"
etc. (heh, these could be wrong too)

These are not really great examples but what I am trying to get at is all the knowledge and bits of info that people with experience know but beginners do not.

Most folks are not going to go to an electronics class or read books on the subject and even then it is like user manuals- some provide those wonderful insights throughout (Korg for example) while others provide only a basic description of functions and methods with NO insights or common sense info alongside.

GOAL:
To create a source of information for people to reference that contains this sort of basic but useful information.

Suggested Methods:
A public Google doc that people can add to themselves OR users can add info to a thread and I can maintain a doc that people can view/download. Maybe organized by items:
Circuts/PCB- "boards"
Resistors
Capacitors or "caps"
Potentiometers- "pots"- "variable resistor"
etc.

I know there are places for "A Beginners Guide to Pedal Building" like at GuitarPCB and such but I want to capture the fundamental things and condense them into one place. I want to try and gather and condense all those bits of info that experienced users have had to learn and research and discover for themselves and put it in one place.
This is not a substitute for learning on your own but it can be really frustrating to try and find out how to wire a pot but never find the fundamental concepts of a pot explained or useful insights and constants about how a part or thing works or behaves, only "you wire it like this, the end"

Hope this makes sense-
Does this sound like a good idea to anyone? What do you think? I'd love your thoughts and feedback.

C

EDIT:
heh, having to search on your own really does have its advantages however- just found an interesting if basic NASA page when looking to see what "axial" components were:
http://workmanship.nasa.gov/lib/insp/2%20books/links/sections/609%20Axial%20Components.html

http://workmanship.nasa.gov/lib/insp/2%20books/frameset.html

[madbean]

No need to re-invent the wheel. DIYSB has a really useful Wiki for this kind of thing.

http://www.diystompboxes.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page