Wikipedia talk:External peer review/Nature December 2005

Cleanup requested

The millionth article press release links to this page rather prominently. Can someone clean up this page into something much smaller, more concise, and updated? Raul654 06:35, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Responses

• Dmitry Mendeleev has been tagged with {{accuracy}} by BrokenSegue - 20:48, 14 December 2005
  • All of them are now tagged. —Steven G. Johnson 02:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
    • And in your zest, you tagged at least one article (Cambrian explosion) that had already been rewritten. Dragons flight 02:48, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
      • I know that it had been rewritten, but we have no way whatsoever to know whether the rewritten version corrects the alleged problems. Unless we get a specific list of the criticisms from Nature, of course, we may have no choice but to remove the tags after giving the article our best look. In the short term, however, it is best to acknowledge that we take seriously reviews by such a reputable publisher. Moreover, realize that a lot of people are going to be visiting the articles that are listed in Nature right now, and it will reflect well on Wikipedia if we have some admission of the potential problems. —Steven G. Johnson 03:05, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
        • Bleh, I don't like having the "disputed" template on an article when A) you don't know what's disputed and B) you don't know if it has already been fixed. Instead I created {{NatureDispute}} and put that on Cambrian explosion, which I think serves your purpose in a friendlier way. Use it on other articles if you wish. Dragons flight 03:41, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
          • They are all retagged now with {{NatureDispute}}, which can itself be edited should anyone want to make a refinement. - Nunh-huh 04:57, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Should we ask Nature to send us a copy of the errors found? If they have such details, that is. violet/riga (t) 21:57, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I have emailed Nature and hope they respond by publishing the results. Unfortunately, I suspect they will only be available to paying subscribers to the magazine. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 21:59, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

That's not a problem. I am a paying subscriber (well, through my university employer), as I'm sure are many other Wikipedians, and would be happy to pass along any errors that they publish. However, I doubt this is the case. I'm more worried that the review was done through the usual refereeing process, which is traditionally protective of the anonymity of the referees—they may be reluctant to simply publish the referee reports, although they might give us a summary. Or they might be persuaded to give them to a Wikipedia representative under some conditions of privacy. —Steven G. Johnson 02:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, during the usual refereeing process, the referee reports are sent (anonymously) to the authors of the paper being examined, to allow them to improve their paper (it is got accepted) or to know why it was rejected (otherwise), so this should not be a problem. Schutz 08:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I understand that, but the reports are still considered confidential; the authors do not customarily publicize them. But apparently the Nature editors are dealing with this by "sanitizing" the reports where necessary; see their response above. —Steven G. Johnson 04:50, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Our four correct articles should be marked somehow. Could these be our first {{stable}} articles? ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 23:41, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

i didn't know there was such a thing as a stable WP article. i thought these articles were to be edited inperpetuity. i just heard about this a few minutes ago on NPR's All Things Considered. anyway, the question i have is simply, how do we know, without examination, that the reviewers were correct in every case? i took a look at the Field effect transistor article and, although i saw something i might question (dunno offhand how a constant current source becomes a voltage amplifier), but no completely glaring error in it. we should (somehow) get a detailed list of the criticism and deal with each one, one at at time. r b-j 22:02, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who hadn't heard of Template:stable before now. However, note this:

Wales also plans to introduce a 'stable' version of each entry. Once an article reaches a specific quality threshold it will be tagged as stable. Further edits will be made to a separate 'live' version that would replace the stable version when deemed to be a significant improvement. One method for determining that threshold, where users rate article quality, will be trialled early next year.

I think it's an excellent idea. <>< tbc 00:14, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

It's an excellent idea if the selection mechanism works. Take a look at Featured Articles and then Featured Article Candidates to see the current best of the best process in action... ;) --Tsavage 00:05, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

no errors != done (they could have poor grammar or could be incomplete) Broken S 23:44, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Makes it easier though :-) Ta bu shi da yu 02:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

They counted "critical omissions", so at least what we have is fairly complete. All that should be left is checking the structure... should we see what Wikipedia:Peer review thinks? ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 03:36, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, the articles that are accurate should be marked somehow once article validation is turned on, don't you think? Perhaps a "externally peer-reviewed" marker? And yes, send them to Peer review, these should be FAs soon. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 04:17, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I took a look at the 7 articles with only one or no errors to see if they fit Wikipedia: Good articles, & not all would belong:

• Australopithecus africanus -- had an odd phrase describing the Leaky Familiy as "infamous". I'm not aware that they have committed any crimes.
• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar -- little more than a stub article: lots of lists, no account of his life or work, & the section "Quotations" should be moved to Wikiquote.
• Pythagoras' theorem -- a former Featured article, now listed as a Good article. Should it be removed from the GA list until the one error is fixed?

As for the remainder -- Lipid, Bjørn Lomborg, Punctuated equilibrium & Quark -- I'm willing to add them if there are no objections. -- llywrch 20:06, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

IMHO, based on working on it on and off for a while, Lomborg is at present not a "good" article. If the writing quality doesn't get you, there is a lot of basic information, much of it quite readily available elsewhere, still missing. --Tsavage 00:05, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I like how the BBC are now headlining this "Wikipedia in face off with Encyclopedia Britannica" - somewhat misleading. violet/riga (t) 15:20, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

The headline now reads "Wikipedia survives research test", it's available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm Walkerma 15:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Perhaps some of us who can do good on these errors should volunteer to do a careful fact check on each of the ones marked. It would show our strengths if we could fix the errors within a week or so after they were announced. For the record, I'm happy to go over Hans Bethe, Dmitry Mendeleev, and Andreas Vesalius with a fine-toothed comb. --Fastfission 16:17, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Large reversion

I have just reverted a great number of edits, everything since Feb 2007. All of these edits are by socks of a banned user, some of them are Amorrow socks (revert anything by him on sight is our policy) and some of them socks of a user who probably is Amorrow as well. That may make the essay tag Jeandré du Toit added redundant, I leave that to regulars of the page to determine. ++Lar: t/c 18:16, 8 October 2007 (UTC)