Always improving

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 6:58 pm

Time to start a thread that describes how years-old articles on Wikipedia often fail to improve, or even get worse, over time.

As I was uploading a photo I took in a Savannah, Georgia restaurant (Vic's on the River), I moseyed on over to Wikipedia to see what they had by way of Savannah restaurant articles. Here's a curious article authored by Jimbo Wales:

* How Jimbo left it in May 2004

* How it appears today in January 2014

Wikipedia... always improving!

Unread post by **Peter Damian** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 9:29 pm

Greyfriars, London (T-H-L), written by me in December 2010. Seems hardly to have changed. Note that it isn’t finished – I was blocked before I had the chance. You can see the completed article on my own website. Sadly, although I wrote both articles, the Wikipedia one dominates the search result.

Likewise Sum of Logic (T-H-L), written by me in May 2011. Never finished owing to another block. A more extensive article is on my website.

Of that article, Beeblebrox (T-C-L) wrote:

I see gullible users playing right into his hands by suggesting that he, and he alone, is the only person who could fix this article and we must construct some byzantine structure to allow him to edit it or the project is doomed. I can't believe you folks can't see that you are being suckered. This is exactly what he wants, to be held up as the expert white knight who doesn't need to observe community norms because he is too valuable to be restricted by them. 17:21, 14 August 2012

Right on, Beeb. Actually I have never said I was the only person who could fix that article, and I never held myself up as the expert white knight who doesn't need to observe community norms etc. But of course I couldn’t reply to that because Beeblebrox blocked me. Although, as it happens, no one has yet fixed that article.

I could give you many more such examples. Always improving!!

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 10:56 pm

Thanks to WorldWizzy, I found The Flowers of Romance (band) (T-H-L) has barely changed since 2007......

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 1:34 pm

According to Wikipedia:

...on August 5, 2010, the Bell Atlantic Tower was sold to Brandywine Realty Trust. The company has since rebranded the tower as Three Logan Square, to better identify its location near two other Brandywine-owned buildings, One and Two Logan Square.

That comes from the Wikipedia article Bell Atlantic Tower (T-H-L). (Three Logan Square is a redirect to the old name that hasn't been used since at least November 2010.) I suppose the reason the article name hasn't been formally changed to "Three Logan Square" is because DGG (T-C-L) would revert it as "advertising".

(Compare, when the Sears Tower in Chicago was renamed Willis Tower, Wikipedia followed suit within a couple of weeks.)

Triptych · Unread post by **Triptych** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 2:55 pm

Peter Damian wrote: Of that article, Beeblebrox (T-C-L) wrote:
I see gullible users playing right into his hands by suggesting that he, and he alone, is the only person who could fix this article and we must construct some byzantine structure to allow him to edit it or the project is doomed. I can't believe you folks can't see that you are being suckered. This is exactly what he wants, to be held up as the expert white knight who doesn't need to observe community norms because he is too valuable to be restricted by them. 17:21, 14 August 2012
Right on, Beeb. Actually I have never said I was the only person who could fix that article, and I never held myself up as the expert white knight who doesn't need to observe community norms etc. But of course I couldn’t reply to that because Beeblebrox blocked me. Although, as it happens, no one has yet fixed that article.

I could give you many more such examples. Always improving!!

Beeblebrox. The boner from Homer. These administrative personalities that are so dismissive of content creators are galling. Those articles you created on Sum of Logic and Greyfriars look sophisticated and worthwhile to me, Peter. What the heck has Beebs created? He writes juvenile essays about how he should be allowed to tell people to "fuck off."

I tried to check his stats to see what articles Beebs has actually created but I can't remember how to do that right now, and I don't want to hunt for it right now.

I also recall someone being dismissive of Russavia who uploaded a lot of photographs of airplanes. He or she said "go ahead and block Russavia, someone else will be by in five or ten minutes to upload plane pictures." But this is simply not true. Those who create content are a valuable and limited commodity, and Wikipedia cannot just brusquely dismiss them and expect that someone else will be there to fill the gap.

Unread post by **Peter Damian** » Sun Jan 26, 2014 1:44 pm

Here's what an article on the Catalan philosopher and Scotist amanuensis Antonius Andreas might look like. (Andreas is no relation to JN who posts here, by the way). It could be a lot longer, of course. By contrast, here is the Wikipedia article Antonius Andreas (T-H-L). Notice also the history. Like many such historical biographies, it was written by Charles Matthews, in March 2008. Barely changed since then, apart from minor formatting changes, such as a bot “adding persondata using AWB”, Gregbard adding Category:Scotism using HotCat, another bot adding a link to the Italian Wikipedia, etc etc. There has been no change to the actual content of the article, i.e. other information about Antonius, since Matthews worked on it nearly six years ago.

Always fucking improving.

Captain Occam · Unread post by **Captain Occam** » Sun Jan 26, 2014 5:56 pm

This has happened a lot on articles about topics related to race, as a result of most of the editors who maintained these articles being topic banned or abandoning the project. Two articles where this happened especially badly were Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence (T-H-L) and Race and crime in the United States (T-H-L). I described what happened to the first article in my post here, and the second article in my post here.

On some articles it requires a level of knowledge about the topic to understand how the newer version is worse, but not in these cases. On these articles, the decline in quality involved blanking large portions of the article with no explanation, and adding whole sections made up entirely of original research. In both cases, all these changes stayed in the articles.

Along these lines, the main Race (human classification) (T-H-L) used to be a featured article, but was demoted in 2006.

I also could give some examples of articles that remained permanently unfinished after the editor writing them was blocked or banned, but to me it seems more significant when the article's quality actually has decreased over time.

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Sun Feb 02, 2014 8:12 pm

Book by category (T-H-L)

This micro-stub with no actual useful information only differs from its first revision, in 2006, by the addition of some light formatting, three stub templates, and a warning about being uncited. Which was put on it in 2008.

The Chinese version looks far more useful. Maybe somebody who speaks Chinese will one day translate it into English.

mac · Unread post by **mac** » Thu Feb 13, 2014 12:16 pm

St. Pölten Hauptbahnhof (T-H-L)

May 24, 2010:

This article is currently being translated from the German language version. Further paragraphs will be published soon.

Not much has changed, aside from an infobox selection.

Even the image is eight years old, despite the availability of more recent images on Commons:

The station during the 2005 renovations

Unread post by **Peter Damian** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 7:25 am

I have been looking at the article Free will (T-H-L) which has received the attention of someone called Brews ohare (T-C-L). I think the current sprawling and inconsistent version is far worse than the version of December 2004. Looking at the talk page gives you a headache.

Wonderer · Unread post by **Wonderer** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 9:30 am

I think Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room is quite a representative example of what happens with a lot of these shorter articles about topics off the beaten path. They get categories, infoboxes, cleanup tags, but really no substantive changes to the core content.

Maybe you consider these to be at least minor improvements, but sometimes, if you scrutinize these minor improvements, you might find that the Wikipediots somehow managed to fall far short of the mark even with these simple minor improvements.

Case in point: Johann Friedrich Klöffler (T-H-L) I thought I was picking a random forgotten contemporary of Mozart, like Pokorný or Wagenseil, but as it turns out, Klöffler might be unique among these in getting the pointless and subtly wrong infobox treatment.

Johann Friedrich Kloffler
Born 20 April 1725
Died 21 February 1790
Occupation German composer

For some reason, the German composer doesn't rate his umlaut in the infobox. The born and died fields needlessly duplicate the birth and death dates already given in the lead. As for occupation, channel Jay Leno to ask how it is exactly that a German composer could choose to be a French footballer.

Anroth · Unread post by **Anroth** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 10:14 am

Peter Damian wrote:I have been looking at the article Free will (T-H-L) which has received the attention of someone called Brews ohare (T-C-L). I think the current sprawling and inconsistent version is far worse than the version of December 2004. Looking at the talk page gives you a headache.

Step away from Brews ohare. Dont make eye-contact. If necessary, pretend to be dead.

Unread post by **Peter Damian** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 12:22 pm

Anroth wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:I have been looking at the article Free will (T-H-L) which has received the attention of someone called Brews ohare (T-C-L). I think the current sprawling and inconsistent version is far worse than the version of December 2004. Looking at the talk page gives you a headache.
Step away from Brews ohare. Dont make eye-contact. If necessary, pretend to be dead.

Too late.

iii · Unread post by **iii** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 2:08 pm

Peter Damian wrote:
Anroth wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:I have been looking at the article Free will (T-H-L) which has received the attention of someone called Brews ohare (T-C-L). I think the current sprawling and inconsistent version is far worse than the version of December 2004. Looking at the talk page gives you a headache.
Step away from Brews ohare. Dont make eye-contact. If necessary, pretend to be dead.
Too late.

Brews was banished from physics articles for his peculiar insistence that the speed of light was not constant. He now seems to have been passed off to the philosophy articles.

This kind of story seems to be very common at Wikipedia. "Topic bans" only encourage a certain type of problematic user to migrate.

Unread post by **Peter Damian** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 4:47 pm

iii wrote:Brews was banished from physics articles for his peculiar insistence that the speed of light was not constant.

That seems wrong to me. (But I wouldn't know).

Unread post by **Peter Damian** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 4:49 pm

Wow I just went out to the shops for the afternoon and he leaves about 20 messages on the talk page.

Jim · Unread post by **Jim** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 4:52 pm

Peter Damian wrote:
iii wrote:Brews was banished from physics articles for his peculiar insistence that the speed of light was not constant.
That seems wrong to me. (But I wouldn't know).

It's not constant. Gravity can slow it down a bit. And we don't fully understand why. Brews is a nutter, though.

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 5:01 pm

Hex wrote:Book by category (T-H-L)

This micro-stub with no actual useful information only differs from its first revision, in 2006, by the addition of some light formatting, three stub templates, and a warning about being uncited. Which was put on it in 2008.

The Chinese version looks far more useful. Maybe somebody who speaks Chinese will one day translate it into English.

A year later, this has actually happened. Cool.

TungstenCarbide · Unread post by **TungstenCarbide** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 5:45 pm

Peter Damian wrote:Wow I just went out to the shops for the afternoon and he leaves about 20 messages on the talk page.

PhD in electrical engineering, worked at Bell Labs, talks a lot on subjects out of his area of expertise ... Just like Barry Kort.

Unread post by **Peter Damian** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 5:47 pm

Jim wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:
iii wrote:Brews was banished from physics articles for his peculiar insistence that the speed of light was not constant.
That seems wrong to me. (But I wouldn't know).
It's not constant. Gravity can slow it down a bit. And we don't fully understand why. Brews is a nutter, though.

He is quite a clever nutter, and interesting. Far more of a time waster than writing 'poopyhead'.

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 6:22 pm

Peter Damian wrote:He is quite a clever nutter, and interesting. Far more of a time waster than writing 'poopyhead'.

Remember the "speed of light battle"? He made it a thousand times worse, by fighting with Tombe. Whenever the issue of actual experts editing WP comes up, the "anti" crowd sometimes points to Brews as a negative example. And he keeps indulging them. (He is still banned from editing physics articles, so now he's going to mess around with other areas. How nice.)

For what little it means, be glad you don't have Tombe hanging around that article.....

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 6:30 pm

Jim wrote:It's not constant. Gravity can slow it down a bit. And we don't fully understand why.

Not so! Light leaving a strong gravitational field is redshifted (because the photons lose energy) but it is not slowed. This has been proved by observations of eclipsing binary stars.

Unread post by **Peter Damian** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 6:37 pm

Poetlister wrote:
Jim wrote:It's not constant. Gravity can slow it down a bit. And we don't fully understand why.
Not so! Light leaving a strong gravitational field is redshifted (because the photons lose energy) but it is not slowed. This has been proved by observations of eclipsing binary stars.

That's what I thought, but perhaps Josh can comment.

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 6:51 pm

Anroth wrote: Step away from Brews ohare. Dont make eye-contact. If necessary, pretend to be dead.

Brews ohare is completely nuts. In March 2012 he wrote some pseudo-policy documents about how he thinks Wikipedia should work, and inserted links to them into numerous high-level documentation pages. They sat there for nine months until I noticed and removed all of them. He was never censured for it in any way. (For details, see User:Scott/List (T-H-L), which I compiled at the time in case of needing it in an arbitration. The notes saying "current" are obsolete; I removed all the links shortly afterwards.)

At the same time he had also been trying to win an argument about his own weird style of quoting text, and did the same thing again: see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Quoted citations (T-H-L).

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 6:54 pm

Hex wrote:[(For details, see User:Scott/List (T-H-L),

Gee, that's great. Don't tell us, tell that miserable joke of an Arbcom.

iii · Unread post by **iii** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 7:28 pm

Peter Damian wrote:
Poetlister wrote:
Jim wrote:It's not constant. Gravity can slow it down a bit. And we don't fully understand why.
Not so! Light leaving a strong gravitational field is redshifted (because the photons lose energy) but it is not slowed. This has been proved by observations of eclipsing binary stars.
That's what I thought, but perhaps Josh can comment.

The constant value for the speed of light in a vacuum is a consequence of special relativity. There has never been an experiment that I know of which has shown this to be false and many that have confirmed it. Here's an article about the last time we had a serious contender for this not being the case.

Unread post by **Peter Damian** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 7:50 pm

iii wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:
Poetlister wrote:
Jim wrote:It's not constant. Gravity can slow it down a bit. And we don't fully understand why.
Not so! Light leaving a strong gravitational field is redshifted (because the photons lose energy) but it is not slowed. This has been proved by observations of eclipsing binary stars.
That's what I thought, but perhaps Josh can comment.
The constant value for the speed of light in a vacuum is a consequence of special relativity. There has never been an experiment that I know of which has shown this to be false and many that have confirmed it. Here's an article about the last time we had a serious contender for this not being the case.

(Thanks). What puzzles me is that Brews is a professor, so he must have impressed someone. He writes clearly in some sense, but in another sense very oddly in that whatever reasonable argument you make he turns into something different and unexpected. Nothing wrong with that I suppose but it makes for very difficult interactions.

I'm beginning to wonder what possessed me to come back. Here's another example from a different user.

To the notion of the love of knowing, falls to the mind one certain individual, Socrates, who exemplifies more than anyone in history (for some) the pursuit through questioning and logical argument, acquisition of knowledge, over all and everything, to gain knowledge at his discretion, by examining and by thinking. [2] Whose examination of life spilled out into the lives of others in his society, and became a inquiry into lives of those others in addition to his own life, which he subsequently lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =659084461

I have trained people to write after a fashion but after a long time you recognise the obviously hopeless cases. But what’s really weird is the way the really true Wikipedians are prepared to deal with it.

You may both be right, but the Wiki way is to assume good faith. I think that W is learning as s/he goes along - as did I way back when. W, and everyone else, should be careful about what they add. Myrvin (talk) 13:21, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I don’t know if it’s saintliness or stupidity.

And the same user writes this:

User:Whalestate:I do not think you can see what a mess you are making of the Socrates articles; this one and Socratic problem at least. I assume this is because your first language is not English and you are new to the English Wikipedia. Other editors are going to have to spend a lot of time cleaning up after you - as I have done. I suggest that you find yourself a Wikipedia mentor. Please look at these Wikipedia:Adopt-a-user Wikipedia:Mentorship, and get someone to help you in your endeavours. Myrvin (talk) 08:52, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Socrates

Unread post by **tarantino** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 9:00 pm

iii wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:
Poetlister wrote:
Jim wrote:It's not constant. Gravity can slow it down a bit. And we don't fully understand why.
Not so! Light leaving a strong gravitational field is redshifted (because the photons lose energy) but it is not slowed. This has been proved by observations of eclipsing binary stars.
That's what I thought, but perhaps Josh can comment.
The constant value for the speed of light in a vacuum is a consequence of special relativity. There has never been an experiment that I know of which has shown this to be false and many that have confirmed it. Here's an article about the last time we had a serious contender for this not being the case.

This got a lot of press in January this year:

Structured photons

Now it seems that physicists have come up with a new way of changing the speed of light in a vacuum. Over two years, Miles Padgett and colleagues at the University of Glasgow, together with Daniele Faccio of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, designed an experiment that can determine whether light with a certain "spatial structure" travels substantially slower than regular light in a vacuum. The researchers created a source that emitted pairs of photons simultaneously. One of the photons went straight to a highly precise photon counter, while the other went via two liquid-crystal masks, which imparted their profile onto the passing particle of light.

Across a propagation distance of 1 m, the team found that the spatially structured photon lagged behind its partner by between 10 and 20 wavelengths. That equated to a drop in speed of about 0.001%, says team member Jacquiline Romero.

iii · Unread post by **iii** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 10:08 pm

Peter Damian wrote:(Thanks). What puzzles me is that Brews is a professor, so he must have impressed someone. He writes clearly in some sense, but in another sense very oddly in that whatever reasonable argument you make he turns into something different and unexpected. Nothing wrong with that I suppose but it makes for very difficult interactions.

Nothing puzzling about that to me. There is a sort of academic who may be very good in their particular niche, but goes off the rails when it comes to their opinions about everything else in the world. A little knowledge together with a big ego can be a dangerous thing.

But what’s really weird is the way the really true Wikipedians are prepared to deal with it..... I don’t know if it’s saintliness or stupidity.

I think it's simply dogma, and it is a dogma that doesn't survive once you get to the priestly castes.

iii · Unread post by **iii** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 10:09 pm

tarantino wrote:
Structured photons

Speed of light in a material is definitely different (and always slower) than speed of light in a vacuum.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 11:45 pm

iii wrote:
tarantino wrote:
Structured photons
Speed of light in a material is definitely different (and always slower) than speed of light in a vacuum.

Reasonably accessible explanation

Jim · Unread post by **Jim** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 11:48 pm

Poetlister wrote:
Jim wrote:It's not constant. Gravity can slow it down a bit. And we don't fully understand why.
Not so! Light leaving a strong gravitational field is redshifted (because the photons lose energy) but it is not slowed. This has been proved by observations of eclipsing binary stars.

Photons can't escape from black holes. Does this count as being "slowed" by gravity? If they could escape, could they only do so at "full speed"?

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 11:50 pm

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 12:22 am

iii wrote:Nothing puzzling about that to me. There is a sort of academic who may be very good in their particular niche, but goes off the rails when it comes to their opinions about everything else in the world. A little knowledge together with a big ego can be a dangerous thing.

And you oughta know.....

Carcharoth · Unread post by **Carcharoth** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 6:50 am

On the subject of users who come across as, ah, shall we say 'different' to others?

Via the talk page for Frink Medal (T-H-L) I came across this user page today:

Julzes (T-C-L) oldid

Wikipedia, always improving its users?

PS. Greg, how about a thread for articles that are improving? Or did Randy start that thread?

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 10:11 am

Jim wrote:Photons can't escape from black holes. Does this count as being "slowed" by gravity? If they could escape, could they only do so at "full speed"?

It's not that they're slowed. It's that all their energy is sapped so they cease to exist.

And yes, mods, this discussion should be split off.

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 12:01 pm

Carcharoth wrote:I came across this user page today:

Julzes (T-C-L) oldid

Wikipedia, always improving its users?

PS. Greg...

Are you saying that Julzes is a student at the university just up the road from me?

Jim · Unread post by **Jim** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 1:03 pm

Poetlister wrote:
Jim wrote:Photons can't escape from black holes. Does this count as being "slowed" by gravity? If they could escape, could they only do so at "full speed"?
It's not that they're slowed. It's that all their energy is sapped so they cease to exist.

Yeah, I did a lot of reading about that today, and you're correct. They don't slow down in a non-vacuum either, so far as I could ascertain, because they can't ever slow down - they just keep getting absorbed by that pesky matter, and re-emitted, which takes time. Now, if only I could understand how entanglement survives that process, I'd be relatively happy. There are no vacuums.

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:38 pm

Here's something rarely seen on Wikipedia -- a fully-formed article appears, and nobody makes even a single minor edit to it, for over two years!

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 12:58 am

thekohser wrote:Here's something rarely seen on Wikipedia -- a fully-formed article appears, and nobody makes even a single minor edit to it, for over two years!

That is odd. An article with that title was also created nearly 7 years earlier on 5 April 2006 by a user called Davins111 (T-H-L). The entire content was 'Residing CEO, and Chairman of ''Circuit City.''', and it was speedy deleted half an hour later.

sparkzilla · Unread post by **sparkzilla** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 5:46 am

Suitable for a business directory, but not an encyclopedia

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 10:40 am

sparkzilla wrote:Suitable for a business directory, but not an encyclopedia

I wholly disagree. McCollough was a key originator of the political and industrial pressuring of the FCC that led to the creation of a billion-dollar technological dead-end known as OpenCable Application Platform (T-H-L) and CableCARD (T-H-L). That Wikipedia doesn't inform the reader of this fact is simply a shortcoming of Wikipedia editors not having real-world business experience. It's not a sign that McCollough shouldn't have an encyclopedia article on a project that considers each Simpsons episode as encyclopedic.

Kelly Martin · Unread post by **Kelly Martin** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 12:52 pm

sparkzilla wrote:Suitable for a business directory, but not an encyclopedia

Have you ever read a traditional encyclopedia? They're full of short entries like this for people who are worthy of a brief mention but not worthy of the full, indepth biographical treatment given to major historical figures, the idea being that you can use the encyclopedia to find out who they are (and also hopefully tell that you've gotten the right one), and from the short entry learn enough to enable you to research them further if you are so inclined. This is precisely what an encyclopedia entry looks like.

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 12:39 pm

From the lede of Telecommunications in Saudi Arabia (T-H-L)

Saudi Telecom Company (STC) is the first company in Saudi Arabia, and then allowed Communications Commission to compete with other companies in Saudi Arabia and then it becomes a number of telecom companies in Saudi Arabia four companies: (1). STC Mobile: It STC includes landlines and mobile, and includes a mobile (phone), (Sawa) and (us). (2) Integrated Telecom Company (ITC) second operator after STC, established in 2005 and offers internet, broadband, connectivity and satellite services for businesses, consumers and wholesale (3). Mobily: the UAE's telecommunications company, which is the mobile and internet Fabraupetk (Fiber Optic) New Ground. (4). ZIN Zain: a Kuwaiti company, which is the only mobile (5). GO ATHEEB: a Saudi modern, with an Internet connection line is similar to Ground.

NOTE:All telecommunications companies are here in Saudi Arabia, high prices compared to the Gulf or global. The individual citizen or resident assigned contact Ground equivalent to 0.6 SR Mobile while lower prices all the individual companies cost the equivalent of 0.35 SR per minute. For example, compared to the global cost of the individual in India for Mobile and not to the Ground (0.5) equivalent to Rs (0.02) SR.

Don't worry, there have been tags on the article, asking for improvements to be made since January 2008 and March 2011. Those tags are viewed by nearly 100 readers a day, so I'm sure it will be fixed up nicely really soon.

:always:

Jim · Unread post by **Jim** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:12 pm

thekohser wrote:Don't worry, there have been tags on the article, asking for improvements to be made since January 2008 and March 2011. Those tags are viewed by nearly 100 readers a day, so I'm sure it will be fixed up nicely really soon.

In 2008 it was 6,112 bytes. It is now 7,425 bytes. That's a 21.48% improvement according to the scientific metrics long established on this site. Sheesh. I'll illuminate the Tim signal.

Flying Jazz · Unread post by **Flying Jazz** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 11:47 pm

When it comes to science articles, Wikipedia is always improving because more is always better.

The Second law of thermodynamics article is a good example. Readers from the general public appreciate the recent addition of material like section 2.10:

Statement for a system that has a known expression of its internal energy as a function of its extensive state variables

The second law has been shown to be equivalent to the internal energy U being a weakly convex function, when written as a function of extensive properties (mass, volume, entropy, ...). [44][45] [clarification needed]

That's because it gives the general reader common cause with fully trained scientists and engineers who find the text to be equally intelligible.

It's also true, as noted at (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jaso ... kipedia.3F) that

Scientists and academics from all over the world consult Wikipedia everyday and it helps them solve problems and make connections they otherwise might not make.

Yay!!!

Unread post by **Zoloft** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 11:51 pm

to new member Flying Jazz!

SB_Johnny · Unread post by **SB_Johnny** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 12:31 am

Flying Jazz wrote:The Second law of thermodynamics article is a good example.

I like this guy already.

The Joy · Unread post by **The Joy** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 12:38 am

SB_Johnny wrote:
Flying Jazz wrote:The Second law of thermodynamics article is a good example.

I like this guy already.

Indeed.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 6:32 pm

That whole article needs an overhaul by a competent writer. Even the writing style is awful; who says "such is not the case"? And the sentence after that should be nominated for a worst sentence award: "To get all the content of the second law, Carathéodory's principle needs to be supplemented by Planck's principle, that isochoric work always increases the internal energy of a closed system that was initially in its own internal thermodynamic equilibrium."