Category talk:Science

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Science Portal

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[edit] To the new reader:

If you are new to Wikipedia, and you have just selected the category:science for reading, you may have been surprised to have seen two lists:

  1. Subcategories of category:science, such as category:astronomy, and
  2. Article lists, such as the Wikipedia article on astronomy.
  • When you are interested in an individual science, look in the second list (#2 above) for more information on that science.
  • The first list contains categories, but not topic articles. If you already understand what the topic astronomy is all about, but you want to learn more, then you can use category:astronomy to find more articles, either more specialized, or more general. A category is a list which serves to classify topics; for example, the category:astronomy is meant to hold the individual topics, such as the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.

To find a more general category, look at the bottom of that page. Both the article pages and the category pages can have Categories:links at the bottom of the page. But to find a sub-category of a category, look at list #1 above.

If you are still confused, just stick with individual articles until you need to learn about the categories. You can think of the categories as lists which were machine generated, to be studied later.Bartimaeus 11:09, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

In all of this, it helps to keep a specific question in mind, such as how can we understand the evolution of stars?, for which a specific article, such as the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is useful, because the category system is meant to help you find topics.

Ancheta Wis 11:10, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Navigating

A quick way to see the subcategories and articles: Try hitting the <End> key on the number pad of the keyboard to quickly scroll to the bottom of the category page. Then hit the up arrow on the keyboard to see more articles and subcategories.

[edit] Science collaboration of the week

If you wish to collaborate on improving a science article, you can nominate it at Wikipedia:Science collaboration of the week

[edit] New discussion: other methods of categorization

Salute, as you can see: I have been upgrading ten social and two applied sciences to this level, because I'm a top down kind of guy. This chance will make it more efficient to reach the different angles of science from the top, from the main page. - Mdd 21:00, 5 oct 2004

From user talk:Mdd:
I've noticed several of your edits adding things to Category:Science, most of these are problematic, since social sciences belong in Category:Social science. They should not be in both parent and child categories. Thanks for helping out with the categories in general, but just be a bit careful when adding categories to large numbers of articles, as it is easy to overlook these things. —siroχo 23:40, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

Dear Siroxo, I have a simple question: Is it forbitten in Wikipedia to put a subcategorie both in a parent and child categories...?? If it is... your arguments stand as an absolute order... If it is not... you have overseen my argument that I've try to increase the efficiency. There is a lot more to it, but I would like an answer to this first... Mdd 8:21, Oct 6, 2004

Hi, Mdd, thanks for asking about it. As it stands, Wikipedia:Categorization reads "An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory". It also says "When a given category gets too crowded, consider making several subcategories. Group similar articles together in a meaningful way that will hopefully be easy for readers to navigate later." Which is what has happened with Category:science. You can always post on the talk page to propose a change to a policy, (ie policies are not absolute), however I tend to agree with this scheme, because otherwise almost all articles would seem to fit under a category in addition of one of its subcategories. There may be other methods of categorization that Wikipedians have yet to discover, but for now I think science should be set up this way to make it easier to browse. —siroχo 09:44, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Dear Siroxo, I agree with the principles of categorisation of articles from Wikipedia:Categorization. This source has more to say about categories requirements and usage :"categories (along with other features, like cross-references) should help users find the information they are looking for as quickly as possible, even if they don't know that it exists or what it's called". This is an argument for my attempts. But this is not the point I want to state...... The situation is that I started changing out of new ideas about the classification of society and science. I've introduced some parts in the top of the Dutch Wikipedia with succes so far. Now I tried it here, and you shoot it down... without even give it some time. My question is now: If I want to make some of these changes... must I first explain my ideas...?? Mdd 20:17, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

I guess it depends on the magnitude of the changes, collapsing subcategories into their parent categories or duplicating them within it will probably be changed back most of the time, since it takes away from the ability to categorize efficiently. In general, when making some major changes to the way the encyclopedia is set up, its often good to discuss the changes first, because they have more far-reaching effects than normal article-edits. —siroχo 05:08, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

Maybe I have to make some things clear first: It was not my intention to dublicate the ten social and two applied sciences... I want to upgrade these. I want to bring these into the categorie science to get one level of, what I call, basic scientific disciplines. As concession I left ten of these items in the subcategory social science. If I would have deleted these ten out of there, then we would have had another discussion...!?

My point is, that I would like to see a gathering of basic scientific disciplines in the categorie science. This set can create a layer to reach most angles of science. This point is part of a larger picture for the categorization in Wikipedia, which I'm willing to explain... but I don't know if this is the time and place to do so...?? What do you think about the idea of one level of basic scientific disciplines...?? Mdd 12:37, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Mdd here, the hierarchy system should be flatter, and navigation is helped if you can reach things with fewer clicks. So just because Archaeology is in Social Science does not mean it should not also be in Science, and there is no reason Social Science should not be in Science as well. It is a navigation tool, not the organization of the encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not paper.
I think there's a danger in cluttering category space too much. You can't have too many things at your fingertips, or else none are. In this case, yes, I think it would be nice to have a dedicated subcategory for "Basic fields of science", perhaps mentioned in the intro text. There are lots of articles about science in general, so the clutter danger here is high. -- Beland 04:29, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Beside Wikipedia is not paper I have found lot of interesting reading about this in Wikipedia:Categorisation FAQ, Wikipedia:Categorization , Wikipedia talk:Categorization and from Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 1 to Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 4. I Think that's also the propper place to continue this discussion Mdd 22:05, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Old discussion from Votes for deletion

Discussion concluded and article kept on June 18, 2004

  • Seems redundant with Category:Academic disciplines and possible source of confusion. Perhaps these should be merged? --Eequor 04:18, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • keep. the science and academic disciplines sets overlap, but are not equal. Badanedwa 15:39, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • I vote against deletion. I added scientific subcategories to this category, and made it a subcategory of Academic_disciplines. This is a good place for links to general discussion of science, such as the history of science, the philosophy of science, the scientific method, etc. -- Beland 04:31, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. What Badanedwa said. --ssd 16:32, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep; category hierarchies don't seem fully finalized, so potential major categories like this one should be kept. Also, should have been on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion instead of here. -Sean Curtin 03:04, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Spiders

[edit] the page is a mess

Hello,

from a usability-point-of-view the Science category page is a horrible mess. Imagine that on the wikipedia front page you see the

Browse: Culture | Geography | History | Life | Mathematics | Science | Society | Technology

list and choose "Science". What would you expect to see? I would expect this page to give an easy way to click my way through to an overview over scientific areas.

When I enter the page it is suddenly no longer clear to me what purpose the page serves: there are two lists, one containing entries like "Antropology", "Earth sciences", and "Physics", the second one containing entries like "Antropology" (again), "Natural Science", "Odology", and "Talk:atom". If I want to learn about "Computer Science" or "Mathematics", which list would I look in? It is not intuitively clear (and the entries are in fact absent).

My suggestion: could anybody who understands the purpose of the page add an explanation to the top like "This page lists ... (I would want to write "all broad scientific areas" here, but this seems to be wrong). Under such and these conditions take your pick from the first alphabetical list, and under these different conditions you should look in the second list." A page linked to from the front page should be non-confusing and an explanation as the one suggested above would help with this.

What do you think? Jochen 18:56, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The individual contributors to this category can format only their individual topics; this page is generated by the category software. If you want an essay-style approach to all knowledge, you can start from the main page at "Article overviews."
What you are looking for is in fact the way that it used to work, but which was superseded by the category system.

[edit] This page is, indeed, a mess

Many of the articles and subcategories need to be assigned to major subcategories. -- Beland 23:12, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please help build the WikiProject for this category at: WikiProject Science.

...and how am I suppose to fix this page? It cannot be editted (no "edit this page" tab.)--Conwiktion 20:24, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I've removed the protection, it's editable now. Bryan 06:59, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Commons

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Commons has images on this category. HenkvD 13:01, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hi from the Geography category

Hi I'm working on the portal at Category:Geography. We and a few other categories have decided to turn the category page into the portal as well so that the user is greeted with a more intersting first page. You may wish to look at that page and see if there's anything you want to incorporate. We should probably all aim to have similar designs for consistency. Cheers, --komencanto 13:38, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Categorisation and Subcategories

I moved a bunch of pages into subcategories in order to clear the mess (some of which dml has been moving back). We've been having a discussion about this on my Talk page, which I decided would be more easily continued here. I'd just stated that my two basic assumptions were:

  • That we want to follow the Most Specific Category principle
  • That the blurb at the top of the Science category was correct (ie. we're dividing between Natural and Social sciences)

In response to dml, I now say:

In your most recent response, you didn't address either of my points. The general consensus on this page seems to be that stuff belongs in more specific categories. On the other hand, people have suggested that there should be a category called "Basic fields of science", which contains things like Chemistry and Physics. To my mind, this would be a reasonable solution, because the most-specific-category principle (which is the thing which to my mind keeps physics out of the Science category) would not apply to a "Basic fields of science" category". But I agree with Beland, that there can easily be too much clutter on this page. If we allow Science::Natural Sciences::Physical Sciences::Chemistry, for example, we should also be having Science::Social Sciences::Anthropology::Linguistic Anthropology and Science::Social Sciences::Economics::Microeconomics. As you can see, the category would get huge rather quickly.
So anyway, if my two points above are correct, then categories like Physics don't belong here. I think you essentially disagree with the inclusion of Social Sciences under the Science category. Welcome to the club; so do I. But that doesn't seem to be the consensus here, which is why you should either a) switch your wiki-allegiance from Science to Natural Science, or b) change the consensus here so that the link at the top of the page says something like "You may be looking for Social sciences, but this category is only for Natural Sciences". I'm not sure how you would change the consensus, but discussing this also with siroxo and beland would probably be a start. Bonus points if you can get them to use the words "Human Systems" instead of "Social Science" :).
On the other hand, if you can't change the consensus, we have to move these categories out of the Science category

TimNelson 14:20, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe one of your points is correct. We want to follow the principle of helping users find things, among those rules is following the principle of least surprise. There is always a more specific category, we could have a category: sciences that deal with things smaller than 1 meter, and a subcategory of that, sciences that deal with things smaller than 0.1 meter, and so on, and the category physics would be at the last of this regression. Clearly that is unhelpful.
Since I had a big role in setting up the front page category scheme, I agree social sciences should be found through the Category:Society link there, but there is no reason Category:Social science cannot be cross-referenced here (it causes little harm and much help). As long as I can find Physics (Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Geology) in no more than two clicks (one for Category:science, the second for physics (...) ), I am more or less happy. If you can find a better category for the article Room temperature, or Rules for the Direction of the Mind, great. It looks as though the subcategories are in pretty good shape, but many of the articles in the science category would no follow the principle of least surprise. dml 11:44, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
Ok, here's what I understand you to be saying:
1. While the Most Specific Category principle is good, in this case it conflicts with the principle of Least Surprise (and you wish to resolve it in favour of the principle of least surprise).
2. Social sciences don't belong on the Science page (but you think a cross-reference is worthwhile).
In the case of point 1, I still lean towards MSC, but see below. In the case of point 2, I think you're right, but in that case we need to change the consensus.
Here's my plan to resolve the differences between our views:
1. Change the consensus to essentially merge Natural Sciences into the Science category. Have the Social Sciences be a link at the top (but I'd suggest not a subcategory; but I don't mind too much on that).
2. After that, while I suggest that Physics and Chemistry still belong in the Physical Sciences category, *instead* of the Science one, I also think that they have been correctly placed in the portal at the top. I think removing the categories but leaving the portal links would allow both your principle of Least Surprise and my Most Specific Category principle.
What do you think? TimNelson 11:20, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
I think we should lean in the direction of having more categories (i.e. cross-links) rather than less. I also think the difference between Science, Physical Science, and Natural Science is in most people's minds a distinction without a difference, and since Science is clearly the main word, the other two categories should redirect to it. Thus Physics, Chemistry, etc. should be in the Category:Science (as they presently are), rather than some sub-category. Social science is a type of science (in terms of certain methodologies, aims, etc., at least as practiced by better social scientists) although the subjects (people) are a lot harder to analyze than mere atoms. So it can be a subcategory along with Physics etc.; though it has less science-ness than Physics or Chemstry. dml 12:16, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Consistancy

Over the past few days efforts have been made to 1- merge the portal pages of the 8 main-page subjects with their category pages, and 2- make them consistant with each others. Before making significant layout changes please discuss it so the 8 pages remain consistant. Elfguy 19:17, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What's going on???

The page has this on top: "fk u asshole" It's been there for ages. I don't get it. Why isn't that obvious vandalism reverted?

Actually it's only been there since this morning. I have reverted the text to what it should be. -- Francs2000 | Talk 15:18, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Sorry. Something's going on with this Wikipedia. Everything's messed up. I can swear I checked the history and it definitely showed up a dozen or so before the last edit! And on some other articles as well... er... it goes "buggy". Anybody noticed problems? --logixoul 16:20, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] science question!!!

does hot water freeze faster than cold water does? i have heard various arguments for each side. please let me know!

Why don't you make an experiment? Karol 07:54, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Please ask such questions on the Wikipedia:Reference Desk. --R.Koot 13:32, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] US or GB English

Is one or the other official for the Science category? If not, then can I suggest we select one? I would suggest GB English; since it is the more accepted spelling in science but I'm not that bothered either way, I'd just like to see some consistency.Bartimaeus 11:09, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National varieties of English. Thanks, Ian Cairns 11:24, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

That is all well and good but I still think we need the entire science category to follow a single system. It looks more organised. But that is just my opinion, you're all free to disagree with me. Bartimaeus 11:55, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that International English should be used. --Meno25 02:27, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Science subcategories - Request for input

The following is a user talk page discussion concerning Category:Science subcategories between User:Aecis and User:Hard Nut. We would like to have some input from users who know this category a bit better. Aecis Mr. Mojo risin' 12:24, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments regarding my efforts to rearrange "Science", "Israeli Science" and other "Science" related Articles and indices. In fact I have been wondering why some of my Index pages did suddenly seem to contain Articles in them, that I did not intend to appear there. Also, some sub-index pages seem to have not sorted properly in their parent-index pages. Perhaps you can drop me a few clues as to why that happened. However, Please note that when exploring Israeli Scientist bios, I was amazed at what seemed to be total disarray and random entry patterns, indices and sortings. When attempting to assist with the "American" science entries, with which I am also of substantial familiarity, things appeared to be a lot more in order. Then when exploring other "science" related indices I have begun to see what appeared to be a systematic chaos, contrary to common (and well-established) information organization practices. In particular, the "by name" in parallel to, perhaps the by-discipline, and so on- systematically leading to a centralized article entry for elaboration, this categorizing format is consistent with any single encyclopedia that I humbly had the opportunity to examine in my lifetime. May I please ask for your assistance in conveying my message to more colleages, so that we discuss this situation and help devise a rapid constructive solution?

Best,

Hard Nut

Also, some sub-index pages seem to not sort properly in their parent-index page. Perhaps you can drop me a few clues as to why that happened.
Which pages are you talking about? Do you mean to say that some categories do not end up where you intended to put them in the parent category?
Please note that when exploring Israeli Scientist bios, I was amazed at what seemed to be total disarray and random entry patterns, indices and sortings.
That indeed shouldn't be happening. Can you remember some of the articles and entries? I'll see what I can do to create some structure from the disarray.
In particular, the "by name" in parallel to, perhaps the by-discipline, and so on- systematically leading to a centralized article entry for elaboration - categorizing format is consistent with any single encyclopedia that I humbly had the opportunity to examine in my lifetime
The way wikipedia organizes the scientist categories would be as follows
Category:Israeli scientists
Category:Israeli geologists
Category:Israeli climatologists
Category:Israeli seismologists, etc.
In other words, in a category, the scientists are always sorted by name, so there is no need to add "by name" to the category title. When it comes to Israelis in certain scientific disciplines, they are put in categories for that discipline. Those discipline categories become subcategories of the scientist category. A good example of this is Category:American scientists. Daughters of that category are American anthropologists, American archaeologists, American astronomers, American biologists, American chemists, American computer scientists, American geographers, American geologists, American ichthyologists, American linguists, American meteorologists, American mineralogists, American paleontologists, American physicists and American science writers. So there is no need to add "by discipline" to the title, because the titles of the subcategories already show the disciplines. If my explanation raises more questions than it answers, please tell me.
I think it would be best if you would also leave your message at Category talk:Science or in one of the Village Pumps. I think you are better able to convey your opinion than I am, and the people over there are probably better able to help you than I am. Aecis Mr. Mojo risin' 20:51, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Something seems strange to me. It appears that we are in much more of an agreement than I had thoght. Perhaps, If Some of the changes that I was working on were not being deleted as I was making them, but rather- things would have been left for a while for me to put some order into, then it would have turned out that we were both happay with the results. For example:
Please note that I have created a sub-Category American Scientists, sorted under A in Science subcategory. On the other hand, I have created a similar sub-category Israeli Scientists, which has been promptly deleted from the page, abruptly puuting an end to a planned series of consistent modifications as I was working to complete them.
You have pointed out the well arrangement of the American science layout, which is exactly what I have also pointed out. So where do we differ? Why delete changes as I am working on them?
The problem that I have, for which I was asking for clues is this:
When Creating somesub-category pages, in that hierarchical process I was workin on, I have found, as expected, that the resulting sub-category page had only the entry I had intended for it to have, say, Scientists by Discipline sorted alphabetically ( I am only familiar with the method - [[category:Scientists by Discipline|D], using pipeline D to put it under D (all, just an example )), as well as that bottom strip of categories.
On the other hand, other sub-category pages had the same Scientists by Discipline (sorted under D), as well as An Article, titled Categories:Scientists by Discipline, sorted in a bizarre way. This has driven me nuts (See also Hard Nut :-) ) since I was not able to understand what was going on.
Finally, please allow me to say that the fact that Category Entries sort out alphabetically automatically, is not in any way in contradiction to adding a Scientists by Name parent category, but rather it falls nicely and neatly right into place, and should be considered intuitive and well-organized, rather than Redundant.
Finally, please allow me to note that elaborating on sub-index pages, and having the "by Name" sub-index, allowing you to make it a sub index of more than one "Parent Index", Does not inflate the volume of material, since the actual "End" article-entry is kept unique (i.e. single). Rather- elaborate sub-indexing give you plenty of flexibility in making it possible to find your desired article in multiple "jungle" paths. This also includes the flexibility of leaving sub-indexes- empty, waiting to be populated at a later time, when another editor sees the need for such a population from his perspective.
I have follwed your advice, and am copying Category Talk:Science on this. Please forgive me for being new to "talks".
Best,
Hard Nut 04:15, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category Top 10

Why did you make this category part of the Top 10 category but with an inicial space:

[[Category:Top 10| Science]]

It doesn't look so good to me, mainly because it isn't sorted in the S block but instead, in a no initial block. jοτομικρόν | Talk 13:04, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RE: Science Entry Topic

I've been hobbling my way through some Quantum theory pages, and I thought I may've come up with a novel idea that could be spread throughout this category.

How about a Topic/Section within each page that expresses in simple English the most basic explanation of the idea? Something that removes all references to theory, etc., (when possible) and simply states what is proposed by the idea. A la "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." as far as Force is concerned.

Perhaps this would be a crime against knowledge, but it would allow one to grasp the concept before backtracking through proofs.

Simply an idea.

--Jblotto 07:33, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed by author

Found what I mentioned by another name.