User talk:PostaDiDonna

Eratosthenes
Greetings!

I noticed that, back in 2020, you changed the pages about Eratosthenes and many (all?) pages related to his work in determining the size of our planet. In so doing, you have also removed most, if not all, external references, replacing them with a reference to the book The Forgotten Revolution by Lucio Russo.

While it is a very good and informative book, I hardly see how it makes it worth removing other references, and sometimes whole sentences or paragraphs that did not say the same thing as the book. Removed references include, among others, the book The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Universe by Ian Ridpath; the book Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley by Albert van Helden; the web page Astronomy 101 Specials: Eratosthenes and the Size of the Earth by Ned Ladd of Bucknell University; or an article by Raymond Mercier in The History of Cartography.

I consider the removal of these references a loss for the Wikipedia community—not everyone will, like I did, delve deep into the history of the pages to find other references than Russo’s book.

Can you please explain your rationale for replacing all those worthy references by a single reference (which is somewhat contrary to Wikipedia’s code of conduct; see Template:One source where it is clearly stated that “A single source is usually less than ideal, because a single source may be inaccurate or biased.” I am not saying that Russo’s book is inaccurate or biased; merely that having a single source is frowned upon.)

Meanwhile, I will try my best to modify the pages Earth's circumference and Eratosthenes to mention the above sources once again, giving them a more neutral point of view.

Thank you for understanding.

CielProfond (talk) 03:28, 9 April 2023 (UTC)