Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Taskforces/BPH

Tagging request for biographies
If you have any more categories that should be tagged, just post them here and I'll add them.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 20:05, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I went through your list and it looks good to me. I was hoping we could troll through the WikiProject Biography articles for physics tags, but there structure looks too complicated. TStein (talk) 20:50, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I though of placing a parameter in the bio banner, but it's doesn't intertwine well with the physics projects. We're have seperate alerts, importance would be screwed up, and all other projects would want their parameter as well. This way of doing things is not optimal, but it's the best we have so far.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I spent some time trying to chase down all of the publications and history categories that apply to physics. I can't guarantee that I have all of them or even a majority. Some of the articles are spread out over many different categories.

Here are the publication categories I found:


 * Category:Physics books
 * Category:Physics literature
 * Category:Physics journals
 * Category:Institute of Physics journals
 * Category:Optics journals
 * Category:Physics review journals
 * Category:Semiconductor journals
 * Category:Physics journal stubs

There might be some physics tags in

Category:Geology books

as well.

Here are the history categories I found:


 * Category:History of thermodynamics
 * Category:Physics societies
 * Category:Physics timelines

I am not quite sure it is wise to include

Category:History of physics

since it includes a lot of articles that are about the physics and not the history of physics. It would probably be more work untagging articles, in my PoV at least, then it would be to manually tag the ones that are correct.

On the other hand the History of Science WikiProject is a lot more discriminating. If we can sort through all of our articles looking for WikiProject History of Science tags. TStein (talk) 05:20, 2 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Alright, I've made the request. I didn't include the physics societies (none in there seems to be about something "historical", even though nearly all had considerable influence), and I opted to include the history of physics (about 75% seems good enough, and tagging them will allow us to do some much need category cleanup). Per your suggestion, I've requested the intersections of HistSci and Phys to be tagged as well. Potential a lot of false negatives, but it's more important to get all likely candidates tagged than to make sure we are not tagging something that doesn't belong here. I'll start with reviewing the history ones (since you aren't keen on the idea of tagging the history of physics category), so would I suggest that you go through the other taskforces (if you feel like doing assessments) so we don't overlap.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 18:07, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Does your WikiProject care about talk pages of redirects?
Does your project care about what happens to the talk pages of articles that have been replaced with redirects? If so, please provide your input at User:Mikaey/Request for Input/ListasBot 3. Thanks, Matt (talk) 01:50, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Journal compilation up and running.
See WikiProject_Academic_Journals/Journals_cited_by_Wikipedia.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 01:39, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Most popular missing entries
Some quick compilation I made. Many of them should be redirects and not actually articles, others are typos and can be ignored.


 * Living Rev. Relativity
 * General Relativity and Gravitation
 * Einstein Online
 * Los Alamos Science
 * Astrophysical Journal Supplement
 * Lect. Notes Phys.
 * Class. Quant. Grav.
 * Astrophys. J. Suppl.
 * Commun. Math. Phys.
 * ArXive preprint
 * Physikalische Zeitschrift
 * Journal of the Geological Society
 * Phys. Rev. B
 * Eur Phys J
 * Journal of Glaciology
 * EurophysicsNews
 * Earth-Science Reviews
 * Annals of Glaciology
 * Astrophys. J.
 * Physics and Chemistry of Glasses
 * J. Math. Phys.
 * Planetary and Space Science
 * The Genesis of General Relativity
 * Ann. Phys. (Leipzig)
 * Einstein Studies
 * Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada
 * Journal of the American Ceramic Society
 * Space Sci. Rev.
 * Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids
 * Astrophysical Journal, Part 2 - Letters to the Editor
 * Interactions: Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy

Rfc at Talk:Celestial spheres
A request for comment on a large amount of disputed content in the article Celestial spheres, a B-grade article of low-importance within the scope of WikiProject Physics, is under way here. Anyone who can usefully contribute to the discussion, please do so. &mdash;David Wilson (talk · cont) 15:28, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement
This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

RfC on WP Physics coordinators
Please take a look and feel free to comment (or not). Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 23:40, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Awards for later discredited research
Hi, Tom Van Flandern was awarded second place from the Gravity Research Foundation in 1972. My understanding is that the paper has since been discredited. To be fair, I think the author may have acknowledged the errors made before he died. I don't understand it fully, but the gravitation constant hasnt changed, and our article doesnt mention this as a controversy. It doesnt seem to have received much attention, as is so often the case.

F. Richard Stephenson mentioned the awarded paper in his 22 February 1979 New Scientist article "A modern look at ancient eclipses". See p.562 of

The paper has two cites in Google Scholar. Both are before my electronic access, and im not on campus atm.

This must happen occasionally for any funding body that is seeking ground breaking research. Is it seen as a negative on the awarding body to occasionally award a paper which is latter discredited?

Has it happened more than reasonable for Gravity Research Foundation?

And, how should this be presented in the biography? In his life, until it was discredited at least, I assume it was a major award that will have impacted him and those around him. How he handled the discrediting is an important biographical detail, but will probably be hard to source reliably unless he continued to push the theory long after it was discredited, which doesnt appear to be the case. John Vandenberg (chat) 14:45, 7 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't know: I'm afraid you might have found someone on the fringes. On googlebooks you can see a 1993 book by him in googlebooks. The intro reads like a conspiracy theory. On page xix he mentions the result you mentioned, and the fact that errors turned up in the research was relegated to a footnote, lamenting that he could not continue the research, and concluding that the existence of variations is "still unknown". Also, one of the reviews declares emphatically that there is some bad error in a part they read. Rschwieb (talk) 19:55, 7 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Looks like he was also pushing "gravity is faster than light" until 2000 at least. I'm not a physicist, but until someone educates me otherwise, my heuristic is that no form of energy can be transmitted faster than the speed of light. Rschwieb (talk) 20:03, 7 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the response. He was definitely on the fringe, and I think he acknowledged that, but continued down that path to the end.  The hard part of this bio is identifying which parts of his work were pseudo-science at the time, and separating them from his contribution to science, even if that contribution was latter found to be wrong.  I believe the many wrong theories throughout time should be 'respected' if they were credible at the time; these contributions wont ever be heralded, but they do form part of the scientific process, and bios shouldn't heap shame on scientists for their attempts to break new ground excepting if they made unacceptable errors in the process.  So I am curious how bad the errors were, and why didnt Gravity Research Foundation see these errors.  If you could send me a copy of the review, that would be great.  John Vandenberg (chat) 08:10, 8 September 2012 (UTC)


 * You make a lot of good points :) I'm not really sure a google review is worth much, but I'll see if I can find more credible ones... Rschwieb (talk) 23:16, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Women in science
Sarah Stierch (talk) and Keilana&#124;Parlez ici have started a new WikiProject, WikiProject Women scientists. If you have any questions, feel free to ask one of us on our talk page. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:43, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Willard Gibbs
Hi. Back in November I nominated the bio. of Josiah Willard Gibbs for featured article. I put in an enormous amount of work into the bio., both before and during the nomination, but it was not promoted. It had considerable support, but some of the FA regulars seemed to think that further copyediting was required, and in the end the discussion just became inactive. I would like to encourage those of you who might be interesting to please look into the article and either make improvements yourselves or suggest improvements in the talk page. - Eb.hoop (talk) 21:35, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

ORCID identifiers
ORCID, the Open Research Contributor ID is an identifier for contributors to academic journals, and other such publications, including Wikipedia. It's the equivalent for such people of an ISBN for a book. I would encourage all editors, but especially those who also contribute to scientific papers, to register for an ORCID. If you know any scientists who are the subject of a Wikipedia article, please ask them to do so, too. ORCIDs can be added to articles, or user pages, using the Authority control template. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:46, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Notification: Featured Article Review for Stephen Hawking
There are some serious deficiencies which several users have identified in the Stephen Hawking article which was promoted to FA status earlier this year after an FAC that wasn't rigorous. Please feel free to comment and contribute to the debate at Featured article review/Stephen Hawking/archive1 on whether this article should be delisted and what work needs to be done.--ColonelHenry (talk) 17:06, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

RfC: Should Nikola Tesla's birthplace be changed?
An RfC Should Tesla's birthplace be changed? has been created. Comments are welcome.- MrX 15:38, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson
This article was rated a 'C' class, but I really think it needs a lot more work to get to GA status. Can I be bold and start adding sources and text? And can anyone else chip in? Bearian (talk) 19:18, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Bring more Nobel laureate biography articles up to good article status?
Hi, everyone,

I discovered this specialized task force while browsing around Wikipedia articles about physicists who have won the Nobel Prize. I see some of those biography articles are in very fine shape, with even a few featured articles, and other articles go back and forth in editing for years without improving beyond B class. After improving the top-500 article English language from B class to good article in collaboration with some other editors, I'd like to improve some biography articles about Nobel laureates (I'm thinking of beginning with physics Nobel Prize winners who have already died) to at least good article status. I'm a humanities and social sciences scholar, so I'd like to invite people who know physics (a subject I've always been fond of since childhood) well to join in. Feel free to give me advice about which Nobel laureates to begin with. I have some in mind, as I already watchlist those articles, but I am open to your suggestions. And suggestions of good biographical sources about the Nobel Prize winners in physics, which I have begun gathering already, would be most welcome. See you on the wiki. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:27, 3 May 2015 (UTC)


 * The article William Shockley, which has long been a remarkably poorly sourced article for a scientist with such a well documented life, has regained editor interest this week. I think it is well within the scope of this project for all of you to join in on editing that article, so I thought I should let you know. See you at the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:08, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Nikola Tesla
An RFC: Should all discussions and proposals about Nikola Tesla's nationality, ethnicity and country of birth (broadly construed) be limited to the sub-page: Talk:Nikola Tesla/Nationality and ethnicity? has been posted here. Interested editors are invited to comment.- MrX 20:47, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Template:Isaac Newton
I seem to have bitten off a bit more than I can chew in creating Isaac Newton. Are there any experts on the relevant subjects that could help to sensibly organize the template.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 17:59, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I have cobbled together what I can for this template. It would help to have eyes on it. It would likely benefit from rearranging by an expert.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 19:17, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Suggestions for improving Joseph Weber
I would like to improve the article on Joseph Weber. Suggestions of specific ways to improve the article are welcome.EAWH (talk) 19:26, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Joseph Weber's assistant, Darrell Gretz, has just published his very technical memoirs at https://www.aps.org/units/fhp/newsletters/spring2018/weber.cfm. Could someone with a physics background integrate some of that material into Joseph Weber? EAWH (talk) 16:51, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Francis Hauksbee
I have added an existing article Francis Hauksbee to this project. He was an important figure in the development of empirical investigations in electrostatics in the early 18th C. Sdc870 (talk) 23:51, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Peer review request: Ruby Payne-Scott
Hello! I've added a bunch of content and references to Ruby Payne-Scott, and have also created a peer review request. This is my first time trying my hand at rewriting an article and I'd very much appreciate experienced editors to review. Thanks! ␄ –Iknowyourider (t c) 03:49, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool
Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Removal of WikiProject mention in Pedro Paulet
There is a mention of this WikiProject on the Talk:Pedro Paulet page, and—based on reliably sourced references—I just don't see the connection between Paulet and physics (or science in general), so I'm removing the ref from the Paulet page. I was on the fence regarding whether or not to say something here, so I thought I'd err on the side of caution. Cheers! &mdash; UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 15:26, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

RfC of interest
This RfC may be of interest to members of this group. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:04, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Notification
Galileo Galilei has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:51, 25 November 2021 (UTC)