Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Project Home | Project Guide | Project Journal | Project Forum | Science Wikiportal | Science WikiProjects | Project Archives

To-do list for Wikipedia:WikiProject Science: edit  · history  · watch  · refresh

The Science WikiProject is now one year old! Please help to:

  1. Work on formatting and updating content of the portal
  2. Write in the journal
  3. Archive older discussions
  4. Brainstorm the new guidelines
  5. Write them here
  6. Update Project main page
This talk page is automatically archived by Werdnabot. Any sections older than 60 days are automatically archived to Wikipedia:WikiProject Science/Archive 1. Sections without timestamps are not archived.

Contents

[edit] Accuracy

In corresponding with the fellow who scanned Image:Boyle'sSelfFlowingFlask.png which replaced the Monty Hall image in the front-page article Paradox, he complained of inaccuracies in articles and a lack of quality control. (He is a professor and has used correcting errors in particular articles as class projects, so he's a part of the QC system.) He cited twelve errors in the short article on centrifugal force, though I would guess they were fixed by his class or someone else since his count. I would posit that we could use a strong emphasis on accuracy in scientific articles. -- ke4roh 03:09, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Eye on Collaboration of the Week

I thought everyone here would like to know that eye is up for nomination on Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week. This article meets our criteria for a WikiProject Science article and really needs some work. I think it would be a fun collaboration since physicist, biologists, and others could all contribute something. If you're interested, go vote. Sayeth 23:14, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Task and info boxes

I think that there should be a template for tasks similar to the philosophy task box: Template:PhilosophyTasks. Also, I like their categorization scheme. It's good that you're focusing on high traffic articles, but the project's organization currently seems to ignore articles that need to be started from scratch and stubs that need to be expanded. A detailed review of a long article is a big project, I would guess that there are many people who wish to contribute, but are daunted by the task of reviewing a comprehensive article on a major topic. If the project were more accessible, this page and discussions might stay a little livelier. --AAMiller 30 June 2005 16:40 (UTC)

It seems like Template:PhilosophyTasks is for major philosophy pages, which is fine, but I agree that there is a need for a way to improve even minor science-related pages. --Memenen 1 July 2005 13:28 (UTC)

There's a good deal of overlap between science and philosophy anyway. I think this List_of_topics_(scientific_method) is a good organizational tool. We might consider adopting it as a dynamic navigation tool. There's also the List of science topics which is great. I put the {{WikiProjectNotice|Science}} tag on the talk pages of those lists to link them here. The WikiProjectNotice renders identically with {{WPStructure|Science}} for some reason. Anyway its a good way to link discussions about articles to WikiProject_Science, and they're getting pretty stingy with the Template namespace. Quinobi 8 July 2005 16:46 (UTC)

{{WPStructure|Science}}:

This article is part of WikiProject Science, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles related to Science. For guidelines see the project page and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ.

{{WikiProjectNotice|Science}}:

This article is part of WikiProject Science, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles related to Science. For guidelines see the project page and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ.

[edit] General versus Scientific Readership

The following was prompted by this Village pump topic:

The pupa article is fairly typical of many biology-related pages. There are two main directions that such pages tend to move in. The first is a basic description of the topic for students who need help with their homework. Such articles tend to be uninteresting to scientists who actually know something about the topic. The second direction is towards including the types of information that are of interest to scientists. When a few people with scientific training start to take an interest in a wikpedia article, you start to see references and links to on-going research. Biology articles that have not attracted the attention of scientists tend to contain over-simplified generalizations that are technically wrong and ignore the interesting details of the topic. A vague sense of outrage or disgust may be the reaction of many scientists when they see a wikipedia article like pupa for the first time.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Science says, "a good scientific article should be understandable by the "general public", as well as interesting to the scientifically inclined."

I think pages like pupa should have a label like this: Template:Science:Needs Help

[edit] What-links-here census method

I've added a methodology for determining if an article has >500 what-links-here entries or not to the main page (Wikipedia:WikiProject Science). Courtland July 1, 2005 09:22 (UTC)

[edit] Academic Journal information

I recently created {{Infobox Journal}} and have applied it to a couple of articles. Would there be objection to my adding a section to this page for "Scientific publications" and include both comments on the formatting of academic journal entries in Wikipedia as well as a couple of notes on other publication types? Courtland July 1, 2005 09:25 (UTC)

I saw your info box at Science (journal); great idea, run with it. --Memenen 1 July 2005 12:49 (UTC)
Looks great. Maybe include publishing country though? Isn't there a prestige rating system for scientific journals based on references from other papers? If anyone has a link to the list, it might be a good idea to work from the top down. --AAMiller 5 July 2005 06:14 (UTC)
This project needs more room! I'm opening our own project guidelines and project journal sections as suggested by the latest version of Template:WikiProject and the Community project. Quinobi 8 July 2005 17:42 (UTC)
Thanks for the positive feedback :)
  • publishing country: yes, this could be added. Maybe as a parenthetical after publisher so that an entry would look like "Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press (United States)"? Or do you think that a separate field would be better? (see American Naturalist as an example of the parenthetical approach Courtland 03:10, July 13, 2005 (UTC))
  • there is a "prestige rating system"; it's called the Impact Factor and is based on an algorithm run and maintained by ISI. I say something about this in the Talk page for the template. I added today more information on this as I collected information for Genome Research and added it as a plot at the bottom of the Infobox. The figure was uploaded to Wikipedia rather than Commons due to the dubious copyright situation around the sources from which I gathered the information; the exact numbers from each of the sources are included in the Image page. If this looks good as a semi-standard addition to the Infobox, then I would suggest standardizing the plot on the same scale across all journals; I thought on this possibility when doing the plot for Genome Research.
Courtland 02:47, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

I've added the field "ISSN" and a subfield "country" to the template, with additions to the usage notes. I've also added some brackets to the template to assist in suggesting where links (internal and external) might be put. I've also added a section to the bottom of the Talk page that relates major changes, the date, and the person conducting the change ... I'm thinking that this type of log should be included for all templates as it is sometimes truly a problem to tease out how a template has changed over time. Courtland 02:35, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Growing WikiProject_Science

Project Home | Project Guide | Project Journal | Project Forum | Science Wikiportal | Science WikiProjects | Project Archives

WikiPraxis: WikiProject Newsroom

Peer review WikiProject Science has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Fluid dynamics

Just wanted to draw attention to this inactive WikiProject. Can it be adopted or cannabilised? Steve block talk 19:52, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Oxygen regulation

The Oxygen regulation page is a quasi-redirect to erotic asphyxiation. Is their any biology-related topic that might also be called oxygen regulation. To me, oxygen regulation doesn't sound like an erotic act, but maybe some system where an organism controls the amount of oxygen that enters it - I don't know, maybe too much oxygen can harm or kill some organisms. Would there be another page out there to be linked to the oxygen regulation page? Or shall I just properly redirect it to erotic asphyxiation? This was found in Special:Ancientpages. --Montchav 13:40, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I've changed the disambiguation page to a redirect. But a Google search shows that "oxygen regulation" is predominantly a biological term. If you or someone else wants to write an article on that, I recommend that the oxygen regulation page be about the biological function, and there be a disambiguation hatnote on the top of the page that says that for the sexual practice sometimes referred to by this name, see erotic asphyxiation. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 23:58, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NIH vandalises NIDA article

Take a look at how the NIH registered IP address has been editing the National Institute of Drug Abuse article[1] The majority of their claims have remained unchanged[2]. I saw your discussion on NIDA and substance abuse research [3]. How can I call attention to this exactly? Should I just start editing away while checking the discussion board. I want to help this article but I don't want to step on the wrong toes.

Thanks Eyejuice 22:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bad Science articles

A review and organisation of bad science articles is needed. Decisions need to be made as to which terms are encyclopedic, and what means the same, and what means differently, how to categorise the articles, and how they are proprly related:

Incomplete list of articles:

...

I tried to do some organising a few months ago. But got a bit confused. I think it would be better if an organised group of editors took a stab at this.--ZayZayEM 02:47, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Style?

Is there a style guide for science articles? It seems that many of the articles (especially in more physical topics) are written in a terse textbook or research paper style which is completely impenetrable to the general reader. For example, the first sentence of density matrix is: "A density matrix is a self-adjoint (or Hermitian) positive-semidefinite matrix, (possibly infinite dimensional), of trace one, that describes the statistical state of a quantum system" which is utterly obscure. Analogies and laymen's terms are thin to absent. Sockatume 04:14, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

True no-nonsense definitions are also required. Particularly (IMHO) in the lead of an article. It should be short and explain exactly what the article is about.By all means expand the body using citable analogies and laymen's terms. If you make up an analogy yourself, it's pretty much Original research. --ZayZayEM 01:51, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Of course. I suppose that's part of the difficulty, most of our sources are highly technical. Sockatume 16:03, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How to get others involved?

Greetings I've started an article on Leona Woods but I'm wondering where might be the most appropriate places to add this article about her to bring it to the attention of other editors? Thanks. (→Netscott) 14:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Science help

I need some science related help with an article, but I'm not sure who the right people are to ask, or the correct project to submit the article to for review, so I've come here in search of help.
The article I'm currently reviewing is Red hair. In the article there is talk about the science behind where red hair comes from: biochemistry, genetics, and evolution. Unfortunately, it seems a bit jumbled to me - perhaps I am reading it incorrectly. I find myself confused about which components of red hair stem from biochem and genetics. If someone could take a peak, or point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks! ZueJaytalk 22:52, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


This deletion discussion covers a whole list of other sub-pages which are not allowed in article space. The likely conclusion is to userfy them all to User:Eequor. Does anyone know what this is all about? --Bduke 02:39, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Scientific peer review

It is nearly 11 months since we established this review process as a minimal process after we failed to reach consensus about a number of matters. During that time it has been largely left alone with nobody really keeping a close watch on it. A couple days ago I cleaned everything up. I archived old reviews, corrected the tags on talk pages and made minimal changes to the process based on what I had learnt. I also reviewed how it had operated. There were some reasonable reviews and some that attracted no interest what so ever, but I guess that is the case even with Wikipedia:Peer review. Some entries may have missed some attention since they were not properly formatted, or had no tag on the article's talk page and hence did not appear in the category. See Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review for my review and report on the clean up.

Of course, in hindsight, I wonder whether we, and particularly I, could have done better a year ago. In hindsight, does anyone have ideas how we progress this review process. To be worthwhile, it must attract reviews that perhaps would not go elsewhere such as Wikipedia:Peer review and it must attract expert reviewers to add to what might be achieved by the general Wikipedia:Peer review. If it can not do either, perhaps we should close it down and just encourage articles to go to Wikipedia:Peer review. Articles for review are listed on the science WikiProjects such as this one, but they are transcluded in so changes do not appear on watchlists. I have also added recent reviews to Wikipedia:Peer review in the same way that WikiProject reviews such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Peer review are added. In this way both review pages refer to the same page for the review discussion and hopefully more editors will be attracted. The key point is attracting expert reviewers who might look at Wikipedia:Scientific peer review but not look at Wikipedia:Peer review.

If you have any ideas on this, please add your views at Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review. --Bduke 02:53, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] categories for deleteion

Category:Claude Shannon, Category:Norbert Wiener are up for deletion at WP:CFD 132.205.44.134 00:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Dinosaurs

Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs is currently in danger of extinction. Although the project is active and the project members have written ten Featured Articles, there are very few active members on the project (there are 72 people listed on the participants page, but the number of active members can be counted on one hand).

Although the team members have put together articles for every dinosaur on the List of dinosaurs, many articles are still in need of expansion, and because dinosaur articles are a frequent target of schoolkid vandalism, if only one or two active members were to become inactive, article quality would quickly deteriorate.

Because the Dinosaurs project is a descendant project of WikiProject Science, I am writing here in the hopes of attracting some new, active members to the group, so that the project can continue to build Wikipedia's encyclopedic coverage of dinosaurs. If you are at all interested in Dinosauria, archosaurs, or prehistory, please consider joining. Firsfron of Ronchester 06:11, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conversion templates

Hello! This is to announce that several templates for automatic convertion between metric and imperial units and for displaying consistently formatted output have been created: {{km to mi}}, {{mi to km}}, {{m to ft}}, {{ft to m}}, {{km2 to mi2}}, {{mi2 to km2}}, {{m2 to ft2}}, and {{ft2 to m2}}. Hopefully, they will be useful to the participants of this WikiProject. The templates are all documented, provide parameters to fine-tune the output, and can be substituted if necessary.

Any suggestions, requests for improvement/features, or bug reports are welcome.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:09, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Schmidt Sting Pain Index

Can some of you knowledgable and discerning scientist Wikipedians take a look at this please? This article has currently been getting some coverage in popular "gee whiz funny link of the day... how goofy!" type blogs ( I hate it when this happens and the article in question is dubious... I think it gives a bad impression of wikipedia), but it seems to be mainly based on the idea that this one insect scientist guy wrote some goofy comments for an insect sting pain index one day. Ok, I agree that insect scientists are allowed to have senses of humour (WITHIN LIMITS, for the sake of us all), but I am concerned that 1) this scale is not really widespread and may be just one scale promoted by one guy without much acceptance in the insect expert community. 2) the pdf article linked which this wikipedia entry seems to be based on does not seem to say that Schmidt actually wrote those goofy comments. Its a bit ambiguous, but its seems to say that "the media" (without specifying what media) came up with the goofy comments to append to Schmidt's original dry scale(I think this may be another case where people exaggerate or misinterpret what an article is saying). I dont have any access to science journal databases, and am certainly no science or insect expert. But these concerns and quick scans of google books and google scholar led me to bring this issue to wiser heads. Thanks very much for checking this out. 88.109.1.60 16:41, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New User

Hi everyone. My name is Rowan (Rowan 03:47, 25 March 2007 (UTC)Rowan Savage) and I would like to help move forward the quality of the science articles on Wikipedia. I specialise a bit each of: cellular and molecular biology/ biochemistry/ immunology. I am taking my finals this summer (2007).

Cheers. Rowan.

[edit] Please help with adding to this article

I recently made some major cleanup and reconstruction on the formerly inaccurate and POV social construction article. Please help me add scientific and cultural research to this article. Gender role needs similar help, by the way.--Urthogie 19:57, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../w/i/k/Wikipedia_talk%7EWikiProject_Science_e590.html"