Talk:Spacetime/Archive 25

What constitutes "encyclopedic content"?

@Zefr and Roxy the dog: I wish you two guys had responded to my original Talk page post above rather than ignoring it and then arbitrarily reverting after I had tried to follow the wp:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle.

Zefr: You justify your second revert stating that Wikipedia needs to provide summarized content from WP:SCIRS reviews. Of my six most cited sources:

• Of the original 1945 edition of Lieber, Einstein wrote: "A clear and vivid exposition of the essential ideas and methods of the theory of relativity...warmly recommended especially to whose who cannot spend too much time on the subject." Water Isaacson wrote: "This is the clearest explanation of relativity available — and the most fun. It's great to have it available again."
• D'Inverno (1992) is the first edition of standard textbook. I am eagerly awaiting the second edition which will be out soon.
• Adler (2021) is a standard textbook
• Grøn (2011) is a standard textbook
• Lawden (2002) is a Dover reprint of a formerly standard text
• Kay (2011) is a Schaums Outline Series review.

I would like to know which of these above sources fails WP:SCIRS?

Roxy the dog: What is "encyclopedic"? Is it an article like Introduction to the mathematics of general relativity which follows the forms of an encyclopedia article, but which, as I noted in my previous Talk page post, cannot realistically be used as a resource by anybody studying general relativity who wants help understanding a concept? I looked at that article and I didn't see how I could possibly rewrite it into anything useful. Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 21:51, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

That's an interesting question, to which I reply, not totally jokingly, will anybody studying general relativty be consulting wikipedia? This also begs the same question regarding this article? Would what you wrote be at all helpful to 95% of people seeking to understand spacetime by looking here? Most of us are not keyboard players. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 22:32, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Why do people consult Wikipedia?

Wikipedia:Academic use says "...Wikipedia is increasingly used by people in the academic community, from first-year students to distinguished professors, as an easily accessible tertiary source for information about anything and everything and as a quick "ready reference", to get a sense of a concept or idea. [Discussion follows about Wikipedia not being a reliable source...]"

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2018/03/15/why-the-world-reads-wikipedia/ says "From these graphs, we see that on average around 35 percent of Wikipedia users across these languages come to Wikipedia for looking up a specific fact, 33 percent come for an overview or summary of a topic, and 32 percent come to Wikipedia to read about a topic in-depth."

In other words, people people consult Wikipedia for many reasons, and Wikipedia articles are written starting with a wide variety of assumptions about their potential readership. Good articles are written in a layered fashion so as to be accessible to the widest possible readership, starting with a general overview in the lede, then going deeper.

I wrote my section for the "32 percent [who] come to Wikipedia to read about a topic in-depth" but whose mathematics background is limited to, say, about a year of calculus. My proposed section is no good for people wanting to look up a specific fact, and it is no good for people wanting a simple overview of the topic. For that, the first five sections of the article suffice.

It seems to me that you and user:Zefr believe that only the first two audiences (people looking up a specific fact, and people wanting an overview of a topic) should be served by Wikipedia. Articles (and sections of articles) attempting in-depth coverage are, in your opinions, "non-encyclopedic". Is that a correct characterization, or am I distorting your viewpoints?

Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 05:13, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

"Encyclopedic content" can be interpreted from several topics under WP:NOT: it is 1) not a dictionary for math derivations about spacetime; 2) not a math essay, forum, manual, or repository of calculations to interpret spacetime; 3) not a math journal or textbook, which states the "purpose of Wikipedia is to summarize accepted knowledge, not to teach subject matter" about math background for spacetime; and 4) WP:NOTEVERYTHING: "Information should not be included in this encyclopedia solely because it is true or useful. A Wikipedia article should not be a complete exposition of all possible details." These examples are the background for my reverts and edit summaries. An encyclopedia is to inform generally – which the article provided before such extensive math solutions were offered – not instruct in calculus unfamiliar to general users. There has been no show of support for your section by other editors. Your work may be better placed in the The Wikijournal of Science math section. Zefr (talk) 16:35, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

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Additional citations

This is an extremely important page, and while it has citations, there are many uncited assertions throughout this article. These need sources. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 06:42, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

To encourage citations, I added a few {{citation needed}} tags to lines. @Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog removed two on Einstein's posutlates. The main reason given was "Einstein's two postulates are *extremely* well-known and a Wikisource link to Einstein's text appears immediately before." I don't argue they are not well known, otherwise I would have put a {{dubious}} tag. However, I still think they would be better with a citation. My understanding is that a {{Cite wikisource}} should still be used for the text following the link, based on Wikipedia:When to cite, where it states "opinions, data and statistics, and statements based on someone's scientific work should be cited and attributed to their authors in the text."

Will leave this for a bit to see if there are other opinions before I insert those citations. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 17:29, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

@GeogSage: Quoted from wp:Lead_section#Citations.

• "Because the lead will usually repeat information that is in the body, editors should balance the desire to avoid redundant citations in the lead with the desire to aid readers in locating sources for challengeable material. Leads are usually less specific than the body, and information in the lead section of non-controversial subjects is less likely to be challenged and less likely to require a source..."
• "The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus."

If I had my druthers, I would remove mention of the two postulates entirely from the lead, instead restoring the lead to, say, the version of 1 October 2017. The body of this article follows the Single postulate of Minkowski spacetime approach to relativity, and this emphasis on the two postulates in the lead strikes me as rather unbalanced. See Special_relativity#Alternative_approaches_to_special_relativity.

However, all that is another story altogether. Let's see what consensus offers. Cheers! :-) Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 04:53, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I would agree that such specifics could be moved to main body of the text and deleted entirely from the lead. If I was publishing this somewhere else, I would need to cite the postulates extremely clearly, which makes me think this case it would be appropriate.

Why don't you change it if you feel that would be best? Has there been a lot of discussion over this? Be bold in your edits! GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 05:27, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm... I'll have to think about it. No, there hasn't been any discussion over this, which is part of the problem. Anybody here have any opinion?

The problem with the lead as it stands is that, since the body of the article follows the single postulate of Minkowski spacetime approach to relativity (like that used in Taylor & Wheeler, Callahan, and various other modern textbooks), there is by intent practically no mention of the "two postulates" in the body of the article. So putting a lot of emphasis on the two postulates in the lead doesn't make sense. Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 17:06, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I waited a week, but there has been no comment on my proposal to revert the lead to an earlier version. I have hence performed the wp:bold step of making the reversion. Let's see what sorts of responses that this action results in. Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 15:08, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

The opening section does not summarize the rest of the article very well. There are a bunch of comments that do not belong. Roger (talk)

Agree. My intent had been to chop away at the lead very slowly, but I see that you've taken bold steps. :-) Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 02:19, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

References

Formatting Article structure: Lead section, Introduction, History

I'm going to preference this by saying I'm not in the physics department, so I can't contribute much to the meat of this article. I care about this topic as it is important and underlies my work as a geographer, and think I can help offer suggestions and formatting as an editor.

First, I really think the changes made by @Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog and @Schlafly are a step in the right direction. I want to point everyone to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section, which recommends "As a general rule of thumb, a lead section should contain no more than four well-composed paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate, although it is common for citations to appear in the body, and not the lead." The lead here is 5 chunks of text. I believe we can trim this tremendously without removing content through some reformatting.

First, I think some of the lead can be moved into the "Introduction" section. I think the Introduction section could be renamed, as the lead is technically an introduction (something I've just recently been made aware of). On the Geography, (while it does have a lead and an introduction), we have a "Core concepts" section. The page String theory has a section titled "Fundamentals" instead. Following this example, I renamed the introduction to "Fundamentals", and think we could create a "core concepts" section within it with many of the points currently in the lead.

Next, I think history should be moved into it's own section, as history is a bit beyond "introductory" level. I have made that change already. Building on that I think within history, just from looking at it, it can be broken up into subsections, roughly 1904 and before, Special relativity (1905 to 1915), and General relativity (After 1915). I think that the history section is seriously lacking though, as a quick reading would have me think that the history ended in 1916. As a non-physicist, I think that the experimental evidence since then is worth noting. I also think that some bit on String theory as a concept could be noted. I'm sure that a physicist could come up with several discoveries of note since 1916, and we can try to make that attempt. Expanding this is something I'm not well suited for, but it needs to be done.

Citations are of course still needed for a lot of the claims in this page, but I think these section changes are an improvement.

GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 19:28, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I just chopped a lot out of the lead section. Some of it was obscure, and not explained in the rest of the article. Some seems incomprehensible to someone just learning about spacetime. Go ahead and discuss it if you think some should be put back. Roger (talk) 22:01, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Not bad! Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 01:52, 3 July 2023 (UTC)