Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Special relativity/1

Special relativity edit

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Result: Delist. Although this article contains much useful information about special relativity, it profoundly fails to meet the GA criteria or indeed many of our norms for encyclopedic writing. There are multiple sections and sentences without references that need them. There are also several examples of editorial interpretation and emphasis. Further the article goes into unnecessary detail in several places. As substantial rewriting is needed, there's not much point in giving a more detailed review. I would simply point to General relativity and Introduction to general relativity as exemplars of encyclopedic articles on a topic like this. Geometry guy 21:52, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have done an individual reassessment on this article as part of the GA Sweeps project. I found the article to lack adequate sourcing to meet the GA Criteria. My review is here. In response a discussion on the nuances of sourcing scientific articles ensued. I do not feel qualified, in light of the arguments brought forth, to adequately determine whether this article meets the sourcing requirements of a scientific article. I am therefore requesting community review to determine an answer to this question. I do not hold tightly to my original assertions and if the community feels as though the article meets the sourcing requirements to maintain its GA status I will gladly keep it as such and be wiser for the experience. H1nkles (talk) 16:10, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I agree that it is undercited, including for non-mathematical non-obivous claims. The first claim i checked was also not cited in the "main"-linked article - i supect this is true for many cases, so claims of summary style making citations un-needed should be viewed with caution. The "too long" template seems appropriate (you have to read loads before even getting to it), as such a dense article gets difficult to concentrate on (it is currently 45 kb readable prose, but much more with the equations), and it is overall badly written (using first person pronoun: "we" must then....) and organised. The external links list is too long also.Yob Mod 19:13, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The relevant guideline is WP:SCG; please consult it. It would also be nice if these discussions mentioned the purpose of citation occasionally: to source assertions which are challenged or likely to be challenged - and not the others.
One thing that makes an article hard to read and concentrate on is an excess of footnotes; articles have been refused FA on that ground alone. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:19, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And i checked a claim that think would be challenged, which was not in a sub-article. There are also citation needed tags placed by other editors, which is an implicit challenge of verifibaility.Staements like "The principle of relativity, which states that there is no preferred inertial reference frame, dates back to Galileo", do not seem to be basic fundemental science to me, they are history of science claims that can be challenged for verification. But at the moment it should be delisted for poor writing anyway, which the scientific citation guideline does not excuse. There are numerous examples of single line paragrpaphs one after the other, and use of first person and imperative mood.Yob Mod 12:05, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See Galilean equivalence. Like most scientific attributions, it may be older than Galileo, at least in part, but that does not contradict what our article says - and Galileo certainly presented his argument as novel. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:27, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Which is why it needs citing. There is no reason to assume that someone with a broad understanding of math would know such details, particulalry if there are numerous interpretations. How would i even know to check the Galilean equivalence article from reading this article? The link is to Galileo, and discussion of inertia in his article are also uncited. But the writing is just a problematic for this article anyway, every time i look i find another example of textbook style teaching text.Yob Mod 10:04, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delist Mostly for poor writing and length, and secondarily for uncited claims not found in any subarticle. A complete rewrite is needed.Yob Mod 10:29, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. The prose is sub-par, the lead particularly so. It's one of the least clear summaries of Special Relativity I've read. Even Penrose's The Road to Reality is easier to digest :) Majoreditor (talk) 02:14, 22 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]