Talk:Working fluid selection

Proposed merge with Working fluid
The two articles are on the same subject, so the new content should be merged to the original, which is correctly named per WP:SINGULAR. The Mighty Glen (talk) 16:00, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Support. No, there is no need for a singular and a plural article on the same subject. The plural article is much newer (3 weeks), and seems to have been created without noticing that the singular article exists. Dirac66 (talk) 16:13, 17 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose There is clearly overlap. However there's also a differnce. My main reason for opposing this is that I consider it likely to produce a worse and confused single article.
 * At present, "working fluid" is an article on the thermodynamic concept, the top-level of our articles. It covers the notion of a thermodynamic cycle, I'd also like to see it cover more about the notion of internal combustion / external combustion engines. "Working fluids" though is about the fluids themselves, and how their properties make them more or less useful for each purpose. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:30, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, we could have different sections on the same article. One or more sections on the thermodynamic concepts, and then one or more about properties and applications of the fluids.
 * Or we could keep two separate articles but with less similar titles. Perhaps Thermodynamic working fluid and Properties of working fluids. Dirac66 (talk) 02:22, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Dirac66 A third separate article could present a List of working fluids to cover fluids that have been utilised in science and engineering but a lot of this content is may be presented in List of gases (a title that I've added to Working_fluid).
 * GregKaye 06:08, 26 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Support Though care will be needed to preserve valuable content in both articles.
 * Pinging editors making many or substantial contributions to the articles:
 * GregKaye 06:08, 26 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Support scope overlap, given there's limited alternative proposed. This article appears more of a WP:NOTHOWTO so should be rewritten / merged into the singular, or alternatively made into a list (per naming renaming suggestions per Dirac66) but considering the small size of the singular article that can be done later. Widefox ; talk 16:49, 26 May 2019 (UTC)  Widefox ; talk 21:56, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose the merge, simply 'cause they are about two different topics. A working fluid as the concept used when I took Thermodynamics many decades ago, and another one about the various fluids that are used as working fluids.  I agree that the prose should be improved to clarify scope of each article.  Also, would have no problem with renames as Dirac66 proposed, but that would be another matter, and is not the current discussion.  This is about whether the two are combined to one article, and I think this would not be beneficial to the encyclopedia of all human knowledge that we purport to be. N2e (talk) 19:27, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I think that after a year, it is time to make a decision on this question. The problem as stated in the first post above is that Wikipedia policy WP:SINGULAR is against articles with plural names, except for certain cases which do not exist here. And it is confusing to the reader to have two articles which have identical names except that one is singular and one is plural. So we must choose between two solutions: merge the articles OR rename one (or both). I do not agree that merging and renaming are two separate discussions. They are the only two alternatives I can see, so a decision not to rename would require a decision to merge.
 * The above discussion of the merge proposal has 3 votes for Support and 2 votes for Oppose, so a simplistic reading would say that Merge wins by 3-2. However on rereading the discussion as well as both articles, I realize that those who say Oppose do have a valid argument, which is that the two articles are about somewhat different topics and a proper merge would require much work to present all aspects adequately. So I can change my vote and agree to keep two articles, PROVIDED that the singular-plural problem is resolved by changing one or both article names. Since the renaming has already been discussed in the context of the merge discussion, I will now choose a simple name change consistent with the discussion (even if it was not proposed explicitly): I will change "Working fluidS" to "Working fluid selection", which seems to describe the article with the plural title. Dirac66 (talk) 18:10, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * P.S. The new title is inspired by the beginning of the second paragraph: "This article summarises the main criteria of selecting working fluids ..." Dirac66 (talk) 18:53, 27 May 2019 (UTC)


 * The proposal to merge this article into [Working fluid] seems closed or at least dropped. (Dirac66 deleted the merge proposal from the pages.) Articles of the same singular + plural title generally should not coexist (regardless of whether the singular or plural is correct, which is sometimes difficult to decide or prove). The merge proposal was resolved by renaming this article from [Working fluids] to [Working fluid selection] (2019-05-27 Dirac66). Renaming this article removed the initial incentive to merge. If merge gets proposed again, it will have to stand on its own. Currently there is a topic article and a larger sub-topic article, a common structure. I don't think trying to merge now would improve things.
 * Ongoing editing might clarify things, or lead to other rearrangements. I recently split up the intro of [Working fluid] into the three different meanings that were stated or implied: fluid power (mechanical energy transfer (hydraulics, pneumatics)); passive heat transfer; and (most specific) heat engine and heat pump (with and without phase change). (I'm not sure that fluids for fluid power and fluid heat transfer are routinely and/or properly called "working fluid". Maybe the fluid power and fluid heating and cooling uses should be referred out.) (Also a potential plus-one: fluid used for metalworking is called "cutting fluid".) And the articles still need something.
 * Next thing to target: (1) Each of the 16 pages with links to [Working fluids] should be checked. Any few that actually refer to [Working fluid selection] should be changed to link directly (and the rest can be left as-is), because (2) Next, [Working fluids] should be changed to redirect to [Working fluid]. - A876 (talk) 21:16, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
 * User:Dirac66, A876 the new title is worse in terms of NOTHOWTO. If we want to keep it as a sub article comparing fluids then "Comparison", "List" or similar would suffice. The howto POVFORK is flawed, irrespective of merge/no merge. The title shouldn't be linked per MOS, the linked title can be avoided by a hatnote to main which I inserted but is now removed. Widefox ; talk 14:02, 2 June 2019 (UTC)