Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Penrose tiling/1

Penrose tiling

 * • [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Good_article_reassessment/Penrose_tiling/1&action=watch Watch article reassessment page] • Most recent review
 * Result: Keep listed. User:Aircorn (the filer of the GAR) has indicated on their talk page that they won't be available. It appears that enough people showed up in the discussion to give independent opinions in support to allow this to meet the bar. I came here in response to a listing of the discussion at WP:AN/RFC. EdJohnston (talk) 16:43, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Recently the prose criteria was expanded to include understandable to an appropriately broad audience (see Wikipedia talk:Good article criteria for discussion). Penrose tiling seems like a good case study to test the practicability of this on old Good Articles as it has had a tag specific to this on it since August 2019 and some discussion on the talk page regarding the technical aspects of the article. I have read it and did find much of it difficult to follow. I think it could probably be written much clearer (for example I don't know what the difference between a non-periodic tiling and a Penrose tiling is). The lead at least should be clearer. We have things like Thus, the tiling can be obtained through "inflation" (or "deflation") and every finite patch from the tiling occurs infinitely many times. and It is a quasicrystal: implemented as a physical structure a Penrose tiling will produce Bragg diffraction and its diffractogram reveals both the fivefold symmetry and the underlying long range order. The lead at least should provide a relatively easy entry into the topic. Personally, I don't mind having overly technical details in the body as long as there is enough basic information before we get to that level. I am opening this as a community GAR as to my knowledge it is the first GAR since the criteria was updated and could benefit from a deeper discussion. I have come across other articles with similar issues and would like to get a feel for what the community feels is the level of technical language that is acceptable here before I start any individual GARs. AIRcorn (talk) 06:27, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note Left a message on the users talk page who added the template and initiated the discussion, and discovered they have been recently indefed. AIRcorn (talk) 06:34, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment. To me this reads like any piece of writing on mathematics for a popular audience, and not at all like the way mathematicians write professionally to each other. The nominator's concern such as "I don't know what the difference between a non-periodic tiling and a Penrose tiling is" is mystifying, both because it doesn't actually make sense (Penrose tilings are examples of non-periodic tilings, not different things from them) and because the exact phrasing "an example of non-periodic tiling" appears in the very first line of the article. If what you're looking for is a single sentence to put in the lead that by itself will let you tell what a Penrose tiling is, to someone who doesn't understand any mathematics, then you're not going to get one. See Euclid's reply to Ptolemy: there is no royal road to geometry. If what you're looking for is where in the article to go to find out what they actually are, the answer is (surprise!) the section titled "Penrose tilings", the first one after the background section. I'm sure there are improvements in understandability to be made to the article, and I have attempted to make a few, but to me the framing of this nomination is a very bad start towards that. In particular, the nominator does not seem to have paid any attention to the qualifier "appropriately broad" in the new rule, includes no evidence of considering who the audience might be and how educated they should be expected to be, and instead seems to think all mathematics articles should be "relatively easy" to all readers, a completely different criterion.
 * Mathematics articles are periodically targeted by naive editors who think that only elementary-school mathematics is an appropriate for an encyclopedia and that anything beyond that is too technical; when that happens, we can look to see whether any of the difficulty in readability is actually unnecessary, but let's not overreact. I went on at considerably greater length about exactly this issue in the discussion leading to the above-mentioned change to the GA rules, and was reassured that it would not be a problem, so I am dismayed to see that those reassurances were false and that it has indeed become a problem. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:51, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I didn't tag the article. My interest is purely clean up. We can't have an article orange tagged as something that the criteria implicitly states fails. Either the article is technically fine and we remove the tag and carry on as normal or it does have issues and needs to be fixed or delisted. I don't want to turn this into a back and forth between me and you, so I will just ask you to trust me that I don't care what the outcome is. Look through the archives here and you will see that I close 90% of these GARs, so it is important to me to know where the line is. Please try to approach it from that perspective than one of me being on a crusade to delist all mathematical articles. AIRcorn (talk) 09:19, 19 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment this is certainly creating a lively discussion. For my feeling, we need to get back to the essential point which is that some editors have stated on the talkpage that the intro is too technical, which probably means that it is. The user who posted the template message is banned but has also made some cogent points on the talkpage. I feel that the template could be removed without fuss if the introduction was made a bit clearer. From my perspective as a lay reader, "shifted copy" is hard to parse, I really don't know what "shifted" means there. And it seems curious that in "aperiodic set of prototiles" "aperiodic set" links to Aperiodic set of prototiles and "prototiles" to prototile. Most of the intro does make sense, although again for me "persists over long distances" seems odd, since I'm taking distance in the literal sense. That's my feedback but I don't feel qualified to edit the intro. Cheers, Mujinga (talk) 18:15, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * To me this comment reads like "oh dear, this looks like mathematics, and it took me longer than five minutes to understand the whole thing" level anti-intellectualism rather than an honest reading of the article. In many cases, in mathematics, it takes a little background (here, not very much) to understand material, but if we tried to expand out everything to first principles we'd be here all day, and it wouldn't actually be more accessible. (The classical example of this is Principia Mathematica taking hundreds of pages to prove that 1+1=2.) But in any case: "shifted", here, is intended as a less-technical way of writing "translated". Do you have a suggestion for an even-less-technical way of saying the same thing, in an appropriately concise way for a lead? And yes, distance is intended in the literal sense. Why wouldn't it be? What is odd about it? —David Eppstein (talk) 19:12, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * If you want to throw your mathematical dick around elsewhere then go ahead, I don't see why you need to be so condescending here. Everyone is trying to improve the page, but I guess you can't see the wood for the trees any longer. "Translated" is much better than shifted and it even links to another page for the curious! For distance, "persists over long distances compared to the tile sizes" just reads weirdly to me, I'd suggest changing it to something like "infinitely persists" or "persists" or even just take out the whole phrase.
 * One editor in the past year said on the talk page that the introduction is too technical, in a discussion that attracted only one other participant, who disagreed. I don't think much anything about the technicality of the article can be inferred from that. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 20:07, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I guess you interpreted the comment of Ael 2 differently to me then. Mujinga (talk) 12:49, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Now I'm confused. Ael 2 hasn't edited anything since 2016. I said "one editor in the past year" because most of the discussions on the Talk page are quite stale (going back to 2005, with only one section added in 2018 and one in 2019), and it's not apparent that the old discussions are at all applicable to the article as it stands now. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 15:46, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment I don't have serious issues with the lede, which is what most of the discussion seems to be about. It's possible that throwing words like "tiling" and "aperiodic" in early on will make a reader's brain switch off, but saying that about a reader who has looked up a mathematics topic seems rather condescending to me &mdash; and if we're willing to be that condescending, well, there's a pretty picture for them to look at right there, too. Nor are the non-techy explanations of these terms buried deep within the page; in fact, they're in the very first section. I can see ways that I might tweak the opening paragraph, but I'm not convinced that any of them would be a clear and dramatic improvement. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 20:01, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Addendum Having now made a first pass through the article, I haven't found any serious problems, just some minor cruft accumulation and some peculiarities of writing style that were easily fixed. Reassessing the GA status is probably a good thing to do, since that status was granted in 2009, but I have found no grounds to demote it. (Arguably, having a big banner about how technical the page might be is at least as intimidating as any of the words in the introduction.) Currently, the article is adequately comprehensive and contains no reputation-killing flaws. It would be accessible at the very least to people who read Martin Gardner and Eugenia Cheng books or watch videos by Vi Hart, Mathologer, PBS Infinite Series, etc. Could parts of it, particularly the introduction, be made more widely accessible? Perhaps. (One proposal: A Penrose tiling is a scheme for covering a flat plane with an arrangement of shapes that leaves no gaps and never repeats. In more precise terms, Penrose tilings are examples of non-periodic tilings generated by aperiodic sets of prototiles.) But that's a matter of making a good thing better. There exists a level of expertise such that this article is clear and helpful for readers at that level. Moreover, that level is reasonably consistent with the broadest population likely to need this article: it's not an article about a topic of pop-math interest that is only accessible to professional mathematicians. (Like, say, E8 lattice is, IMO.) XOR&#39;easter (talk) 03:27, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Re your proposal: I think at the least something like the current "an example of" needs to be earlier, in the "Penrose tiling is" sentence, unless what follows actually specifies the Penrose tiling and not something more general, to prevent exactly the confusion exhibited in the review nomination: if a Penrose tiling is (definition of aperiodic tiling), and the linked article on aperiodic tilings also says that an aperiodic tiling is (same definition), why do we have two different articles that tell us they're about the same thing? They're obviously not the same thing, but that needs to be made clear even to people who read only the first sentence. I'm skeptical that it's possible to specify the Penrose tiling in an accessible lead sentence, rather than merely stating that it's an example of something else, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong in that. (Also re your E8 example: yes, that one actually does deserve the technical tag, because it's clear that it can be made better with even a little effort.) —David Eppstein (talk) 06:11, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, yes, I see your point. It does need some phrase like "an example of". Or, putting the bold part in plural, Penrose tilings are one type of.... Something like that. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 15:38, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Brainstorming something like this for the first paragraph: A Penrose tiling is an example of a scheme for covering a flat plane with an arrangement of shapes that leaves no gaps and never repeats. In more precise terms, Penrose tilings are examples of non-periodic tilings generated by aperiodic sets of prototiles. These tilings, a special case of the more general concept of non-periodic tilings, are named after mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose, who investigated them in the 1970s. I'm not convinced the current opening needs revision, but I don't think it hurts to contemplate how we might go about it. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 21:38, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * My immediate reaction is: what do the words "a scheme for" and "an arrangement of" add to this? Those can be technical words (scheme more in algebraic geometry but arrangement is standard in low-dimensional geometry; see arrangement of lines); is the usage here intended to reflect their technical usage? But, stepping back, it would probably be helpful to get opinions from non-mathematicians on which wordings appear clearer to them. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:31, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmmm. Perhaps one might say a way to cover instead of a scheme for covering and a pattern of shapes instead of an arrangement of shapes ... the curse of writing about a subject where every ordinary word has a technical meaning, from category to pencil. But this whole exercise of crafting a "pop" sentence to precede the moderately technical one seems vaguely pointless without further input. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:41, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Update I think the recent changes to the intro have taken it in a good direction, and the "too technical" tag is even less appropriate now than before. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:58, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment My point of view on this is that the additional criteria links directly to WP:MTAU, a kind of best practices for making technical articles more accessible. The most important parts of that guideline are effectively, "write one level down" and "put accessible material at the beginning". I think the article satisfies the write one level down advice, especially with David's improvements. Aperiodic tilings and quasicrystal are subtle bits of mathematics and geometry; it is one reason that this stuff was not discovered and figured out until the 70's onward. The article already does a good job of putting accessible material first. We might consider putting the real-life applications earlier in the article, but that would also go against the tradition of putting impact in other areas toward the end of the article. I am involved in the editing, but my POV is that the article passes the additional GA criteria. -- 20:20, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment. Is this review supposed to be as directionless as it appears to me? Normal first-time GA reviews have a reviewer who leads the process, assesses compliance with the GA rules, finds specific points in the article that need to be improved, and discusses with editors whether those issues have been properly addressed. Instead, in this review, the nominator opened it by telling us that the article needs a review because a sockpuppet tagged it, and then...nothing. Is the specific issue that needs to be addressed the removal of the tag? Who is expected to do that part, the editors, the sockpuppet, or the reviewer? Could we have headed off this whole effort just by removing the tag earlier, with the sockpuppet blocked and unable to edit-war to restore it? What conditions need to be met for the review to be over? —David Eppstein (talk) 17:55, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Hello? Is anyone there? In the absence of any guidance whatsover from you or any response to how this GA review is supposedly being run, I have boldly removed the tag myself. Did you have anything concrete that you wanted done with the article other than the removal of the tag? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:46, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It is a community reassessment. Hopefully someone uninvolved will read through it and decide whether to keep or delist the article based on the comments left here. You can always request closure through the normal means. See point 7 on the community reassessment panel at Good article reassessment. The tag was incidental. Obviously it needs to be removed before the article can be deemed good, but the underlying issues either needed to be fixed or deemed acceptable as is. That is what this discussion will determine. AIRcorn (talk) 21:05, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment from I'm Aya Syameimaru!: This article would be easier to understand if the Simple English Wikipedia had an article about this subject. You can make the Simple English version a GA and it would assist a rewrite of this article. I'm Aya Syameimaru! I 文々. 新聞 I  21:19, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delist from I'm Aya Syameimaru!: This article has been commented about but never improved upon. «“ I'm Aya Syameimaru! ”I„ 文々. 新聞 “I„ ”» 22:27, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
 * , and I worked on it fairly intensely after this GA review was opened, in order to remove problems that had been introduced after its promotion to GA, make the introduction more approachable, etc. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 22:41, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes. A more accurate statement would be: this article has been significantly improved upon despite a near-total lack of anyone pointing out specific issues in need of improvement. Also, the presence or absence of other articles on other Wikipedias is completely irrelevant to the GA process. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:04, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Support from I'm Aya Syameimaru!: Okay, I changed my mind. This article has commented about, and also has been improved upon (even though no one pointed specific issues for improvement). A Simple English Wikipedia article never needs to assist a GA rewrite. «“ I'm Aya Syameimaru! ”I„ 文々. 新聞 “I„ ”» 23:22, 3 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep listed I have re-read the article after taking a break from it for a few weeks, and I think it is in good shape. The problems that had accumulated since its listing as a GA have been solved. Further improvements are doubtless possible, but that's just saying that GA's aren't yet FA's. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 18:07, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep listed As I noted above, with improvements, I think this article satisfies the new GA criterion. as embodied by WP:MTAU. There are no other significant problems raised, so the article should retain its GA status. -- 18:40, 4 April 2020 (UTC)