Talk:Charles Sanders Peirce/GA1

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: ·Maunus· ƛ · 18:30, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I'll, be conducting the review of this article over the next couple of weeks. I am mostly familiar with Pierce's work in semiotics and pragmatics. I am going to read up on the basic source material while I review so the review will be a little slower than some reviews, but I think that we should have some progress within two weeks. ·Maunus· ƛ · 18:30, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The article is being actively edited - so I am going to wait a little while to see if it becomes stable, then I will conduct a review.·Maunus· ƛ · 17:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * A month later, there's still modifications. I'd say either review now or fail until it's stable; ideally the former since it's just ref additions, but up to you. Wizardman  Operation Big Bear 18:02, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * You are probably right.·Maunus· ƛ · 19:17, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, it's not only ref additions. But, as I've said before, I do not care about whether a random editor gives this article GA status. The Tetrast (talk) 04:54, 16 December 2010 (UTC).
 * I am not going to go to the trouble of reviewing it if the main contributor is not interested in collaborating. I think this must have been a 'driveby-nomination' where the nominator failed to check with the article's contributors that they were interested in getting the article to GA. I am failing the article on criteria 5 (not stable) and possibly 3b(does seem to go into unnecessry detail - it has 81kb readable prose which is definitely in the heavy end of WP:SIZE), it also has MOS issues regarding table incorporation and bulleted lists. ·Maunus· ƛ · 14:47, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
 * "Instability" suggests reversion wars and the like. You have no idea how unstable this article used to be. Much of my recent editing is the direct result of your desire for improved references. I caught some inaccuracies, some mine, some the legacy of the article as it was when I first started editing it extensively (it used to have no footnotes at all, only a list of references). The Tetrast (talk) 16:54, 16 December 2010 (UTC). Edited The Tetrast (talk) 17:06, 16 December 2010 (UTC).
 * I thought you didn't care about the internal review process, so what is the matter? You can nominate it again if you change your mind and feel like collaborating with a reviewer. ·Maunus· ƛ · 19:22, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Maunus, your last comments may needlessly irritate Tetrast, who obviously does care about improving the article (by his current editing, etc.). Tetrast, would you please revise your comments so that Maunus doesn't feel that his volunteering is being dismissed from the start? (Maunus has acknowledged many strong points of the article below.) Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 19:52, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with Tetrast's judgment, in its last expression. There are no edit-warring, and the content is stable (but under regular polishing, because of Tetrast's drive for excellence and his leadership which inspires comments from many collaborators).
 * About the length, Peirce is typically regarded as the greatest American philosopher and one of the greatest logicians of all time (superior to Frege in Hintikka's judgment); Peirce is considered the greatest North-American mind of the 1800s (only John Willard Gibbs is known to me as a credible rival), and would there are sizable literatures devoted to his secondary interests in mathematics and experimental science and statistics (where he is often considered a rival of Laplace, Fisher, and Neyman, in theory and in practice).
 * Length (2): Tetrast has made extraordinary efforts to shorten the article, and has emphasized size constraints many times. Indeed, Tetrast has suggested that I and other editors start articles on special subjects (e.g. statistics and Peirce, for me).
 * A GA-status review should generate good suggestions for improvements. Tetrast and other editors have shown extraordinary civility and welcoming of newbies, shouting our barbaric yawp, like myself nearly two years ago; I would bet that a GA review would receive the same consideration from Tetrast and the other senior editors. It may be difficult for an outside GA reviewer to appreciate how much discussion occurs on other users' talk pages, even for relatively minor edits, because of Tetrast's welcoming personality and drive to improve the article.
 * Indeed, the preliminary GA (not yet ready) review seems to have spurred Tetrast on towards a heroic editing effort, resulting in shorter subsections. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 19:09, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I trust that Tetrast shall strike-through the unfortunate Homeric nod (or nods)--- "I do not care about whether a random editor gives this article GA status" --- particularly since Peirce emphasized the distinction between a random sample and a haphazard selection! ;) I agree with Tetrast that this article is well done. In my opinion, it is superior to a number of featured articles on Wikipedia, and I think that an outside-review editor would feel honored to review it. (It may be better for WP for outside-reviewers to focus on articles with more problems, imho.)
 * Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 18:19, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree completely that the article has potential for eventually making it to FA. I would also GA review of the article - but that would require a willingness to cooperate from the article's contibutors. I have not felt that willingess during the initial stages of this review and I think the nominator had failed to communicate with the main contributors. Any kind of review requires interest in collaboration between reviewers and contributers, the requirements are much greater of course for FA than for GA nominations - but unless there is this a collaborative spirit reviewing is futile.·Maunus· ƛ · 19:17, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
 * That sounds reassuring. Judge The Tetrast by his editing practice, which takes serious and even casual comments very seriously, not just by writing a friendly "thank you" note on the talk page, but by crafting an improved and even more scrupulously referenced and economically expressed paragraph. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 19:29, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the vote of confidence, Kiefer. Kiefer added the sourced info about Peirce's contributions to probability and statistics, in bolder, clearer strokes than I ever saw elsewhere; the average Peirce scholar is not a statistician like Kiefer. My general effort has been to try to make the article clarify all the usual initial confusions about Peirce (his view of logic, his truth theory, his pragmatism, etc.) that I've encountered over time - occasionally running things by the scholars at peirce-l and just trying to keep readers from getting off on the wrong foot. Peirce can be complex and surprising, so sometimes one needs to pursue a nuance. My biggest single step was reorganizing the sections on his mathematics and philosophy in accordance with his classifications (though I'm not sure yet just where synechism belongs), which brought order to the article reflecting the logical order which he built into his philosophy; a lot of good material already here, for which people like Jon Awbrey and the original editor Jaime Nubiola (at Nupedia) deserve credit, fell in chunks mostly into place, though it would be nice if there were more room to explore the continuities between his math (and mathematical logic) and his philosophy. I don't think that the article is particularly unstable. For my not caring about the GA review, there is a prologue on the CSP talk page's previous section, a case where I mainly criticized; for the time being, I'm at stet, and I'd rather forget.  I shortened a bio subsection just now because, once I finally got the references and quotes for its last paragraph (it was slightly inaccurate), I thought it was all too much anyway, and the GA review made me think, why not truncate? People take interest in Peirce's life mainly because of his work, not vice versa.  I don't mind adding more footnotes and references, and I like it when somebody increases the references' accuracy. I added footnotes, starting in September 2007 (there were none), around 80 footnotes for the material already here and turned 20 or so references into footnotes, tracking down references for the things (usually correct) which earlier editors (Jon Awbrey was the most frequent editor for some time - see WikiDashboard Charles Sanders Peirce) had written, and considered myself cutting-edge at the time, adding lots of links for verification and info, but then I focused on other things and let many loose ends go; also, reference standards have risen and I'm not so cutting-edge anymore, if I ever was; but now I'm back on the case. The Tetrast (talk) 20:51, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

Good faith editing and citations
In the previous section of this talk page, the lead editor (The Tetrast) and the  GA-editor Maunus bumped heads initially, but managed to achieve an accurate footnote that is consistent with WP guidelines on secondary sources. Well done, indeed, both of you!

In retrospect, some of the two editors' comments and tone may have been irritating rather than soothing; nonetheless, you both agreed on one footnote! Today, The Tetrast noted that WP citation-standards have been updated, and that the article's referencing needs some upgrading. I certainly recognize that my immature efforts on statistics need improvement, if they are to be acceptable. In the next two months, I shall improve the referencing in statistics in this article. I would suggest that other editors help the Tetrast to do the same.

Maunus, do you need to review everything in this long article yourself? I read on your user page that you are interested in languages and you wrote above that you were more familiar with semiotics. However, I must agree with Putnam etc. that Peirce's philosophy is extremely mathematical, and so it might be good to recruit a logician or mathematican or theoretical computer-scientist review the mathematical sections, especially given the length of the article. Also, WP policy doesn't require that every fact be footnoted, and I am a bit concerned that you previously chose to focus on Peirce's electronic logic, which is very well known and widely documented. I assure you that my statistics section assertions are less known and less documented!

Rather our scarce time should be devoted to the sections and assertions that are in serious doubt — like my statistics section! — rather than things that are so very well known. Later, we can address details, which are better known and not in doubt (to anybody looking even with a Google search). There's no doubt that the article's referencing needs revised, particularly for secondary sources: On the other hand, when things are well known, then it's a waste of time to reference a secondary source, imho.

Thanks for your consideration. Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 00:15, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The article is not currently a GA candidate. You need to renominate it if we want to start up the GA process again. Also it shouldn't be necessary to be an expert in a topic to review it for GA status (that is more important for FA) - the GA criteria don't really require a comprehensive treatment of the topic only a broad one. I can say right now that when the couple of MOS issues regarding tables and bulleted list are fixed then the article is at GA level. Maybe, if you are interested in getting the article to the best state possible, you should rather take a good look at the FA criteria and try to get the article and start working towards those. FA status requires the article to comply with every detail of the MOS - this is going to be the issue for this article. References would have to be standardized, notes should be separated from citations etc. I think the article has FA potential the question is if you are willing to make the effort. (FA reviewers can be very demanding and and often not very accomodating or polite).·Maunus· ƛ · 01:29, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I just de-table-ized the two tables in the article that might normally be done by other means - the Peirce Arrow table is now divs with CSS, and the three modes of inference are now in col-begin etc., all for 87 extra bytes, which is why I didn't do it before. Most of the bulleted lists do help the reader; still I debulletized some and numerized some others. All the numbered lists reflect Peirce's own numerations. I'll go a certain distance to "make happy" but I remain indifferent to GA status. As for FA status, it's farther off than indicated above, and I'm positively against trying for it. The Tetrast (talk) 04:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC).
 * The List problem isn't whether you use a table format or a column format it the problem is that lists, bulleted or numbered break up the flow of the article and makes it difficult to read. The section of works contain several lists and hardly any prose at all - I think it would be better to summarise his works in prose and shoot the lists in to a list e.g. List of Works by Charles Sanders Pierce. As it is now it really break up the flow. The same goes for the bulleted list in the mathematics section, the contents of which could just as well be presented in prose. The table in the section on categories works fine and couldn't really be well presented in any other format. I am unsure about the rests of the incorporated lists (almost every section have one) some of them do seem to be warranted as ways of presenting complex material and material that is numbered in the first place. ·Maunus· ƛ · 13:44, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I didn't think that there was any connection between the table and list issues. I looked for table issues, found two borderline cases, and changed them. There already is a Wikipedia article listing Peirce's writings, but it's much denser with detail, more extensive, and organized differently. The list of writings: One couldn't adequately discuss those Peirce writings in the list without adding too much to the article; I tried drafting up such a discussion a while back. It does need more annotations here and there where titles aren't explanatory enough. It is meant most of all to supply at a glance (1) the chronological dimension of Peirce's works and (2) a glancing acquaintance with the article titles; with other philosophers often you can name four or five books, books written as whole works, as the important works; with Peirce it doesn't work that way because he didn't write philosophy books. I've also thought of putting it into a sidebar but I'm not sure how much that really helps with the article's flow. All I can say about its current effect on the flow is that one can see at a glance that one does not need to read it in order to understand some point or argument being made at that stage in the article - one can just skip over it. Okay, I've just broken it into chunks which I moved down and deleted what I didn't move down. The Tetrast (talk) 20:10, 17 December 2010 (UTC).
 * The MOS clearly says that paragraphs should preferable contain flowing prose - not chronological lists - this does require articles to be read instead of scanned - but long lists can be split out to a List article and summarised in situ. See: Manual of Style (embedded lists). I think summarising his works in the article and point to the list as main article is the best solution for the reader.·Maunus· ƛ · 21:23, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I just said (see above) "Okay, I've just broken it into chunks which I moved down and deleted what I didn't move down." The remnants are right-floated in little boxes. This achieves some of the goals which I described above, which see. The Tetrast (talk) 21:28, 17 December 2010 (UTC).
 * Kiefer, do you really mean that your statistics material is "in serious doubt"? I think that you mean that a reasonable person could actually doubt it, not that people are seriously doubting it. The Tetrast (talk) 04:28, 17 December 2010 (UTC).
 * Maunus, thanks for clarifying the lack of GA-review status. I think that a couple of months will improve the citations so that they comply with the referential standards of WP GA articles. As I understand it, the MOS guidelines explicitly allow reasonable deviations; even though it doesn't use the memory-hungry citation templates, the economical & uniform citation-style (by The Tetrast) should be accepted and perhaps applauded, imho.
 * The Tetrast: Nobody has expressed doubt about any of the statements, as far as I know. I have avoided possibly OR topics in the article that we have discussed informally on talk pages. I remember only one question or call for explanation, on Peirce's criterion, for which it was easy to supply the sources. As The Tetrast noted, I was alluding to Peirce's discussion of doubt in the economy of science.
 * Doubt may occur with some of the statistics statements because of a lack of citations (other than vague references to Stigler, etc.) and the disinterest in history (apart from ritual invocations of the miraculous invention of statistics by Ronald A. Fisher) of most mathematical scientists. Peirce (like Laplace) is often slighted in accounts of the history of statistics, e.g. WP's article on Ronald A. Fisher, and in textbook clichés. I believe that many statisticians without a special interest in history would be puzzled by the statements, and doubt the veracity of one or more statements; readers of the mature Ian Hacking or of Stephen Stigler would know enough to agree with most of the statements. Specialists (amateur historians like Stigler, Hacking, Deborah Mayo, Roger Koenker) would not be surprised and could think of appropriate references, for most claims, I would bet. Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 08:25, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I made a few improvements to the statistics citations, months later than I'd wished to begin. Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 03:21, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The MOS allows for exceptions, when those exceptions are warranted because they make the presentation easier and better for the reader.·Maunus· ƛ · 13:44, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Excellent! Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 17:28, 17 December 2010 (UTC)