NavList:

Brad Morris, you wrote:
"I feel confident that someone will be along shortly to mangle what you have written."

You sound like a time traveler who has arrived from the year 2009. There has been great progress in Wikipedia's culture, and it has been a reliable source of information, albeit encyclopedic, for many years. Vandalism is now a minor problem. Many articles which were formerly amateurish or dominated by "kooks" are now first-rate. You really should have a look at Wikipedia articles on technical and scientific topics that are sufficiently mainstream to be well-managed. For example, have a look at the Wikipedia article on Jupiter. It's an excellent example of Wikipedia's high standards. Orphan articles on minor topics, like this sight reduction article, are another matter since very few people work on them. You can see this by looking at the "History" and "Talk" pages behind any article. On the History page, you can see how much editing is happening and how many people are involved. On the Talk page you can find out if any issues have been debated or discussed. If the Talk page is empty, that's a very bad sign. These also provide insights into the development of Wikipedia itself. Often you'll discover absurd debates from ten years ago buried in the early discussions on the Talk page with not even a hint of that remaining in the main article 

You added:
"My technical comment remains true.  The article does not reference HO203/HO204, among the very first of tabular methods.  It is a complete solution, like HO249..."

No, that does not belong in the article. A Wikipedia article is supposed to be an encyclopedia article --not a compendium of every miniscule factoid that you can write down. The tables you mention here are a tiny footnote in the history of navigation. They're not important. It would be foolish to add those tables to a general encyclopedia article on sight reduction. Further, it does not matter that you have discovered them and found them intriguing personally. What's required for a Wikipedia article is a recognized source that discusses the significance of those tables. If they're important, then who says so? Your opinion of them is irrelevant --by the standards of Wikipedia editing.

Frank Reed