Category talk:Lists of unsolved problems

Merge
I've never done a category merge, but it seems like these categories have duplicate information, and their lists are disjoint. Please help! --RyanTMulligan 05:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Unsolved Problems with Unsolved Problems
This category is problematic. Stating that these problems are "unsolved" seems to be an act of original research in and of itself because it implies that none of the proffered solutions are correct. One person's unsolved problem is another person's closed case.

We might read the category title as merely as "unresolved issues," but that would be practically limitless, potentially including any concept with at least two reasonable, differing perspectives on it. How do you discriminate between an unsolved problem and a contentious debate?

How big of a "problem" does a topic have to be before it gets on the list? I imagine there are an astronomical number of relatively insignificant questions in the field of linguistics or neuroscience or whatever that are still unresolved and fulfill Wikipedia's notability requirements. Why are we excluding, say, the mating habits of giant squid and including "how do animals possess long-range navigation and migration abilities?"

What I'm getting at is there is no way of knowing where these lists should stop. Some of the items are worthwhile topics but I don't know what is gained by lumping them all together. It's about as useful as a list of "solved problems." These seem to be indiscriminate collections of information. The biology list, in particular, is an offender here. Jordansc 19:32, 18 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes. lol. --TheAlphaWolf 15:47, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Unsolved problems in biology nominated for deletion
Please join the discussion under Articles for deletion/Unsolved problems in biology (2nd nomination). Cacycle 02:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)