User:CoronalMassAffection/Plasma as an ionized gas

While many popular science and science journalism writers choose to describe plasma as merely an ionized gas, discussion here on the English Wikipedia has favored not describing it this way.

On Wikipedia
The first discussion on plasma as an ionized gas on the English Wikipedia began in. The discussion, spanning from December 2008 to April 2010, focused on using this simplification in the lead and ended with no clear consensus. Shorter discussions followed addressing this simplification, but there was still no clear consensus.

In 2017, discussion resumed within, and new lead sections were proposed. The discussions did not result in any consensus, and an RfC was made. After bitter arguing and still no consensus, a second RfC was made. Three lead sections were proposed, and a rough consensus as to which lead to use was formed. It included the leading sentence "Plasma [...] is a state of matter in which an ionised gaseous substance becomes highly electrically conductive to the point that long-range electric and magnetic fields dominate the behavior of the matter."

The use of "ionised gaseous substance" would remain until it was removed in March 2021 with the editor mentioning that "gaseous" is misleading in their edit summary.