Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Introduction to special relativity


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Special relativity. There is no consensus for any specific outcome (delete, redirect, merge or keep), but there is consensus for the view that we should not have a separate article about this. So I'm closing this as a redirect as the least destructive "not keep" option, allowing any content deemed worthwhile by editorial consensus to be merged from the history to elsewhere.  Sandstein  21:31, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Introduction to special relativity

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This article is attempting the impossible: To provide a non-technical introduction to Special Relativity accessible to the general reader that still maintains rigor. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 04:05, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

This article was started in March, 2005 with noble intentions. It was to be a mostly non-mathematical, introductory text written on a level comparable to a science article that one might find in the science section of the New York Times, that an educated "general reader" without a current background in math or technology should be able to understand.

Unfortunately, the nature of the subject makes such a idealized elementary treatment virtually impossible, and bitter complaints about the article can be found even in the earliest archived Talk pages. Here are some recent criticisms:
 * "I think this article is close-to-useless "as an accessible, non-technical introduction to the subject." It mentions concepts such as affine spaces and fibre bundles that even most undergraduate students have no idea of, and say incredibly little of how special relativity came to be." -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 22:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * "...in the case of special relativity, there happens to be a demand for jump-in-introductions. So we find many in the literature. Unfortunaly, most are just rubbish and merely present the author's misconceptions and misunderstandings about the subject. The more correct you want the treatment of an advanced subject to be, the less accessible it will be for the lay person. That is why, in my opinion, this article should not be here. It will never serve its purpose." DVdm (talk) 09:32, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * "There is too much jargon in this article for it to be considered introductory. Where is RobotRollCall when you need her? http://www.reddit.com/user/robotrollcall" 93.172.56.90 (talk) 05:50, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * "The article currently veers between elementary examples (eg passengers on a train) and mathematical proofs. While these two styles are suited to text books, though for widely separated age/competency classes, they are insufficient in style and gradation to satisfy the needs of an encyclopedic article." LookingGlass (talk) 21:07, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
 * "Since there is already an article on Special Relativity, which includes an introduction, why do we also need a separate article on "Introduction to Special Relativity"? This article is almost entirely unsourced.  It seems to be just a place where people can come to present their own personal ideas about special relativity.  I don't think there's anything in this article that isn't already in the article on special relativity (other than some things that don't belong in Wikipedia at all). Shouldn't this article be proposed for deletion?" Urgent01 (talk) 23:51, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * "It's an essay, which has some virtues and some of its material should be incorporated into the main article. But the essay is completely unencyclopedic." CecilWard (talk) 12:39, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * "I removed the link to the intro article from the main article because right now the main article is far more accessible to the general reader. The intro is too technical and too incoherent. It's more like a garbled intro to advanced physics students, which makes this article pointless." 109.186.38.41 (talk) 07:11, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * "It's been about 1 1/2 years since I last looked at this article, and it hasn't improved any. It is far too technical for poets and middle schoolers, and it offers nothing that is not covered better in the main article on special relativity." Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 23:11, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

The time has come for us to admit that the goal of this article is an impossible one. The main article on Special Relativity already includes an introduction which is every bit as accessible as this article, as well as being more concise. In Talk:Introduction_to_special_relativity, I performed a detailed paragraph-by-paragraph comparison of Introduction to special relativity with Special relativity to see what would be salvageable in a merge.

My conclusion was that the only sections of Introduction to special relativity that were not duplicated in Special relativity were unacceptable for merging, since they were written in a non-encyclopedic, textbook style in violation of WP:NOTTEXTBOOK.

I am thus
 * 1) Nominating Introduction to special relativity for deletion
 * 2) Recommending that Introduction to special relativity  be submitted to Wikibooks in the Science section as a "Freshly started book" with the title Introduction to Spacetime Physics
 * Wikibooks already has a Featured Book titled "Special Relativity"
 * The "Special Relativity" Wikibook is divided into two sections, an introductory text and a more advanced text.
 * I am not all that impressed with the "Special Relativity" Wikibook, and think it could use some competition.
 * Although Introduction to special relativity is currently hopelessly muddled because it is trying to be simultaneously a textbook and an encyclopedia article, I believe that when freed from the constraints of being an encyclopedia article, it could shape up in a few years as worthwhile alternative to the introductory text part of the "Special Relativity" Wikibook.

Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 04:10, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Question Are "introduction to" articles a recognized/accepted kind of things on ENWP? We have Introduction to general relativity, Introduction to virus and others for some of the science topics. If yes I'm gonna quote "AfD is not for cleanup" and !vote keep.  野狼院ひさし  u/t/c 06:14, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * There is are major differences between Introduction to general relativity and Introduction to special relativity. Introduction to general relativity is a featured article, extremely well executed and doing an excellent job fulfilling its mission to provide a non-technical introduction to the subject. Only two equations appear in the entire text: E = mc and the Einstein equation, $$\mathbf{G}=\tfrac{8\pi G}{c^4}\mathbf{T}.$$ It is completely encyclopedic in its writing style, explaining the essence of the theory in non-mathematical fashion using simple explanations aided by well-chosen figures and insightful analogies that have long been standard in popular expositions of this subject, supported by 49 inline citations to high quality secondary and tertiary sources. On the other hand, only three sentences in the ten core essays at the heart of Introduction to special relativity (i.e. sections 1 through 10) are supported by inline citations, and the (rather unsuccessful) pedagogical tactics used to explain Minkowski spacetime are not ones that I recognize from any of my other reading. So far as I can tell, these ten core essays represent WP:ORIGINAL. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 03:56, 19 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete: Mission creep, really, and duplication. Wikiversity and other projects are better suited for educational endeavors. This attempts a pedagogical goal, but in the end it doubles the efforts of an existing article. The usual thing would be "merge and redirect," but the nominator has discussed the implausibility of that. Hithladaeus (talk) 13:57, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:45, 18 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment: Just to be clear, is the WP:DEL-REASON per #14: "Any other content not suitable for an encyclopedia"? Specifically WP:NOTTEXTBOOK? Praemonitus (talk) 17:19, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, not a textbook, but I also thought one of the prime reasons for deletion was duplication of existing articles. If you have John E. Smith and John Ernest Smith, then one's gotta go, assuming they cover the same biographical subject. Well, if special relativity covers the "introduction" and sister projects cover the pedagogical element, then either this article or special relativity would be a duplicate in content. Perhaps it's convoluted reasoning, but it's what has been argued by the talk page, per above. More tellingly, it's a flaw in the concept of the page and not just its execution. Hithladaeus (talk) 17:47, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Reluctant delete from Wikipedia for that reason. Praemonitus (talk) 19:40, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Had Introduction to special relativity been executed well, I would never have put forth my nomination. There are, after all, a number of articles on Wikipedia that have a significant textbook aspect, particularly in high school mathematics: Quadratic equation, Loss of significance, System of linear equations come to mind. But the mission of this article was never clear, and it suffered deeply because of this confusion. An example of what this article could have been is visible in our sister project, the Simple English Wikipedia, where the Simple English Wikipedia version of Special Relativity does not shirk from using the necessary math. The Simple English article explains the meaning of events, observers, and transformations, presents the Lorentz Transformations, then presents a few main results. Introduction to special relativity really should have been named something like Introduction to spacetime physics, in which case the appropriate level of mathematics would have been evident.
 * I understand your reluctance. Removing this article will remove Wikipedia's only real attempt at approaching special relativity from a modern pedagogical viewpoint. We have to look to Wikibooks for that, and as I've stated before, I'm not totally happy at the Wikibooks introductory presentation, either. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 22:55, 24 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep No policy-based reason given for deletion. --Mark viking (talk) 17:36, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete (strong policy-based reasons for ): An article with this title should be about introductions to special relativity, and sourced as such. Introductions to special relativity are nowhere mentioned. So it is not an article about introductions to special relativity. It is a personal essay, and thus a schoolbook example of wp:OR and wp:SYNTH. And it is rather poorly written, as abundantly evidenced at Talk:Introduction_to_special_relativity. And of course, more policy-based reasons at WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. - DVdm (talk) 18:34, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * This is wikilawyery. By that logic, "list of foo" articles should not list foos, but instead should be about "lists of foo" as a topic. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:32, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Not the same logic, and no wikilawyery. List articles usually do not draw conclusions from various sources and don't clash with wp:SYNTH and WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. This article does. See the article and the merge analysis. - DVdm (talk) 07:40, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete. These intro articles were a bit of a fad in the sciences in 2005-6ish. They're difficult to write and most look like they haven't been maintained all that well. It may be that they've outlived their usefulness with better resources available on other projects aimed at the same audience. I wanted to vote keep on this one, but on reading the article I don't think this is salvageable, even if the topic might be. Time for WP:TNT. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:32, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * After reading your comments and WP:TNT, I have decided to strike out my suggestion #2 that the article could usefully be transwikied to the Wikibooks project. My original thought was that, once transferred to a project that welcomes tutorial submissions, I could do a bold rewrite of the article, completely reworking the explanations (which did have a few good points) and adding solved exercises. Thinking it over, I was overestimating my own capabilities and the time that I have available. So blow it up. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 12:00, 19 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep. This article is important as it provides an introduction to the topic suitable for a lay reader, which the article special relativity does not adequately do. Contrary to the nominator's assertions, special relativity is not that hard to understand, and the article does not do a bad job of explaining it. To delete this, and leave only the main article which delves immediately into technical terminology, would be a mistake. As Mark viking points out, there is also no policy-based reason for deletion, and WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP. The WP:TNT argument is really a stretch, as the article is perfectly readable right now. --Sammy1339 (talk) 22:58, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Introduction to special relativity is perfectly understandable to me and to you, because we are already familiar with the subject. However, if we put ourselves in the place of an intelligent reader unfamiliar with physics, we would find much that is mystifying. Consider the following paragraph:
 * Since by definition rotations must keep the distance same, passing to a different reference frame must keep the spacetime interval between two events unchanged. This requirement can be used to derive an explicit mathematical form for the transformation that must be applied to the laws of physics (compare with the application of Galilean transformations to classical laws) when shifting reference frames. These transformations are called the Lorentz transformations. Just like the Galilean transformations are the mathematical statement of the principle of Galilean relativity in classical mechanics, the Lorentz transformations are the mathematical form of Einstein's principle of relativity. Laws of physics must stay the same under Lorentz transformations. Maxwell's equations and Dirac's equation satisfy this property, and hence they are relativistically correct laws (but classically incorrect, since they don't transform correctly under Galilean transformations).
 * The article only manages to avoid math by throwing a lot of undefined terms at the reader. What does a rotation in Minkowski space mean? What really is a "transformation"? What are the differences between Galilean and Lorentz transformations? What are Maxwell's equations and Dirac's equation about? What does it mean that they don't transform correctly under Galilean transformations? This article provides the naive reader a bunch of vocabulary words without providing understanding of their meanings. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 00:05, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I could answer a lot of these objections (e.g. "Minkowski space" is defined and thoroughly expounded on in the article, as are the differences between Galilean and Lorentz transformations, etc.) but really, there is no policy-based objection here. At worst, even if these objections were valid, they would be reasons for clarifying some of the text. The idea that special relativity is just too hard for ordinary people to understand and we should give up is unreasonably fatalistic. --Sammy1339 (talk) 00:17, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I never claimed that special relativity is too hard for ordinary people to understand. It is easy to explain what special relativity is all about, as evidenced by the excellent lede paragraphs of special relativity. What is impossible is to explain the how and the why of special relativity without math. The unsourced, WP:OR, WP:NOTTEXTBOOK essays making up the core of this article inconsistently jump between elementary examples and algebraic proofs. The use of algebra makes this article unsuitable for poets and middle schoolers, while the avoidance of math in explaining, for example, the Galilean and Lorentz transformations makes the article unsuitable for a reader interested in any sort of genuine understanding. Ten years of editing have given us an article which can't figure out what target audience it is supposed to be aimed at. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 01:02, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * For a general audience it's appropriate to use high school algebra accompanied by ample discourse and explanation. This is what the article tries to do. I know it is possible for this to succeed, because I learned special relativity while I was taking algebra in high school, before I knew basically anything about physics. Your criticisms have to do with your perception of the quality of the article, and are not a reason for deleting. --Sammy1339 (talk) 03:24, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

My conversation with Praemonitus brought up an interesting possibility. If the consensus goes towards delete, would there be any objection to converting the article to a redirect to the Simple English Wikipedia version of Special Relativity? Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 01:56, 25 June 2015 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Strong keep - if this is not encyclopedic, then I don't know what we are doing here. The Wikipedia Foundation might as well just close down.  This is exactly the sort of thing that Jimbo Wales was talking about when he co-founded this website. It's not so bad as to require WP:TNT. No good reason to delete is proffered. Bearian (talk) 14:23, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Special relativity, but don't delete the article history. ~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 21:22, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, slakr  \ talk / 22:58, 29 June 2015 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * An article on Wikipedia should be an introduction in no small amount (by definition of an encyclopedia article), and the lead of an article an introduction to the article-proper. The deletion-leaning persons above convince me that this article cannot be saved. However, I think a redirect to special relativity should have no negative consequence, given the age of the article. --Izno (talk) 16:12, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I changed my mind to redirect after re-reading the discussion. I get it now. Bearian (talk) 15:34, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Biblio  worm  21:20, 7 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep. As noted by multiple people, this article is still too technical to be legitimately called an "introduction". However, this means that the article needs work, not deletion. These separate "Introduction to..." articles are not forbidden on Wikipedia (just type "Introduction to" in the Wikipedia search box). In fact, one is an FA. Also, as mentioned by some others who have commented here, the nom has not produced any policy-based reasons to delete the article, and I am not satisfied by the reasons put forth by DVdm. The main reason mentioned (i.e., WP:NOTTEXTBOOK) does not seem to be valid, since the point of these "Introduction to" articles is to inform via simplification. As far as I'm aware, WP:OR is not a stand-alone reason for deletion. -- Biblio worm  21:20, 7 July 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.