Talk:QED

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It was proposed on 17 August 2006 that this article should be moved to QED (from QED (disambiguation)). The result of the debate was move.

[edit] Move rationale

Rationale: The "Foo (disambiguation)" technique is intended for cases where "Foo" has one overwhelmingly primary meaning, and two or more less common ones. That's not the case with QED; the meanings "quantum electrodynamics" and "quod erat demonstrandum" are of comparable importance. Therefore QED itself should be the disambig page, and there's no need for one called QED (disambiguation). --Trovatore 17:37, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Oppose. I believe that comparably few people would search for "QED" looking for information about quantum electrodynamics (a specialist subtopic of a specialist topic) as opposed to a term used in common parlance all over the English speaking world. --Dweller 17:50, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment: Well, this came up because someone who thought the opposite way changed the QED redirect to point to quantum electrodynamics. I'm a mathematician myself, but I can kind of see his point; quantum e.d. is a whole theory whereas quod erat demonstrandum is just a phrase, and a somewhat disused one at that (most people use some sort of graphical symbol instead, and have done so for some time). Really, to have the unmodified term point to one article rather than disambiguating, the disparity should be overwhelming, and I don't think it is overwhelming in this case (in fact I'm not even sure which way it points). --Trovatore 18:01, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
      • You're assuming everyone's a mathematician. Go down the pub and you'll hear people who've never heard of quantum electrodynamics using the term QED in everyday language. Nonetheless, your point is entirely reasonable. I Googled "QED" and ignored the (welter) of company names and the 2 Wikipedia returns. Before I got bored (there are lots of commercial names) I found four references to QED meaning the Latin phrase and none for quantum electrodynamics. I'm not sure that's a brilliant methodology though. You're a scientist - any ideas on a better way of settling this? <grins> --Dweller 18:19, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
        • Dictionary.com has both definitions (no others) with quod erat... first. Cambridge International Dictionary online version ([1]) has only quod erat and no quantum...--Dweller 18:23, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose, this is nonsense. The primary meaning of "QED" is "quod erat demonstrandum"; the vast majority of readers will be looking for that topic, and the vast majority of links will be intended to go to that article. Use some common sense, please.--SB | T 20:44, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment: I'm simply not convinced that you're right about either what the primary meaning is, or about the vast majority of users or (especially) links. --Trovatore 20:46, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Update: I've posted notices at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics (where people would be expected to be thinking of quod erat demonstrandum) and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics (where they'd be expected to be thinking of quantum electrodynamics). Let's see what people say. --Trovatore 20:48, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose, without strong evidence to show that the disambiged subjects are anywhere near as frequently used as "quod erat demonstrandum" I can't support making this change. I think even Feynman would have supported us on this one. ;) --Gmaxwell 20:49, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Some data: I took a look at "what links here" to QED. You can see the results at User:Trovatore/dabQED. It looks to me as though quite a few of them are about quantum electrodynamics—in spite of the fact that, for quite some time, that would have linked to the wrong page. Therefore presumably there are others that started out as QED, but where the link has been corrected. --Trovatore 21:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. I agree with Trovatore. In response to some of the arguments given (except the argument to just use "common sense", as I have none being a mathematician), I find the Google Test unconvincing (for example use "qed -mathworld -wikipedia" as a search term and find no hits for the latin for a while) and the dictionary test even less so. If you look in OED online, you find Q.E.D. and QED. The former is the latin phrase and the latter is described as quantum electrodynamics. I admit there may be a cultural divide here: I doubt many Americans use this in common language (unless my students and people I meet at the pub are especially ill-informed) but it may be that British do. --C S (Talk) 21:08, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Feynman was an American; go find his pub. :-> Septentrionalis 21:14, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Three letter acronyms should be dab pages unless there is one primary meaning which supersedes. Here there are two, and both of them have perfectly reasonable other names. Septentrionalis 21:14, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Support as per nom. Of course I always tell my students that it means "quite easily done". A surprising number of them think I'm serious. Michael Kinyon 22:16, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Googling for "QED theorem OR proof" and "QED quantum" returns about the same number of hits. --LambiamTalk 22:20, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. In addition to the reasons given above, what harm does it do? People looking for either topic will find it just as easily if the proposal passes. At worst, it is one extra click. At any rate, any claim to know what "most people" will be looking for when searching for QED is pure speculation. I can imagine non-experts in both physics and mathematics coming across the abbreviation and wanting to know what it stands for. VectorPosse 00:04, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Support as per Trovatore. -- Dominus 13:34, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
  • JA: The ballot is somewhat confusing, but it's clear per the ethics of terminology, that QED as quod erat demonstrandum has priority by several thousand years over all the New QEDs On The Block. What's more confusing is that it looks like the move has already been done. Why is that? So, I think this is Oppose, unless somebody can explain the situation to me otherwise. Jon Awbrey 05:30, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
    • There has been no move. QED has been a redirect since February, pointing different places at different times. Most recently I pointed it here, to QED (disambiguation). To actually move QED (disambiguation) to QED, as I have proposed, requires deleting the redirect first. --Trovatore 05:50, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Support move, per Trovatore and VectorPosse. It's not clear which meaning is the primary meaning. Furthermore, "Quod erat demonstrandum" is a rather strange subject for an encyclopaedic article, in contrast to "Quantum electrodynamics". -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 06:26, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Ha! By this principle — "the best surprise is no surprise" — we should endeavor to avoid providing the reader with any information at all. On 3rd thought, that would explain a lot. Jon Awbrey 22:20, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

JA: I love this stuff about least surprise, aka minimum commitment or maximum entropy principles, I really do. But one of the maximal surprises, indeed, veritably schocking wastes of time and tome in WP is this notion of some folks that WP is divinely charged to reinvent every wheel on the planet, which common sense and any sensible analogy to WP:NOR dictates that we are WP:NOT. There was a time when math folk were the most sensible of all Kronecker's critters about this kind of stuff, but alas! the WikiProselytism has begun to infect even them. Jon Awbrey 14:02, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Support. I would say that without significant evidence that one is more greatly used it should be moved. I don't buy that Quantum Electrodynamics is only for specialists -- it is a topic of many popular science books. I also think the latin phrase being older warrants its domination as suggested by Jon Awbrey. Waxigloo 17:11, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Done moving to QED. Oleg Alexandrov (talk)