Wikipedia talk:Missing science topics

Initial comments

It is true a huge number of these are simply capitalization errors. I've added a ton of redirects for the chemistry articles that are nothing more than capitalization redirects. These are unlikely to be very useful. Is there really no better way to generate the list? Or is it possible to run a script and place the uncapitalized version next to the current one? The ones that are proper nouns and should be capitalized should be pretty easy to spot. I don't know any scripting tools or else I'd offer to do it myself. Thanks - 17:21, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Your wish is my command.... hopefully. Is that what you meant (on chemistry page)? now we can easily see what is just miscapitalisation. Bluemoose 18:31, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please, please do the same with the maths topics. Fixing these one at a time is driving me crazy. Rick Norwood 15:30, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My son wrote a little program to eliminate articles already done except for case. I've applied it to Maths7 below.

Most excellent. Yes, that is excatly what I was talking about. Should we still create the misspelling redirects? Also, ideally it does still require checking that our article is about the same thing, I guess. - Taxman ^Talk 19:48, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the same for physics. I had noticed the same thing there, and was in the middle of making a page to check caps, until I checked out this discussion. Salsb 20:28, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A wise man (possibly User:Danny) once told me "A redirect has little positive gain, but no negative loss" therefore our philosophy has been; yes, do make the redirects. p.s. i did this in excel using =LOWER(A1) not scripts, much easier. Bluemoose 20:09, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What I'm thinking on these though is that the positive gain is infitessimal, and the loss is the time spent making all of them, which is positive. For example, if someone types in "Infrared Spectroscopy", they automatically get infrared spectroscopy because the software sends them there even if there is no redirect. Try it. So that means there are many counterexamples to Danny's (well meaning) quote for this project, considering the capitallized links are arbitrarily created in a sense. Can't we just count any of the ones that have the proper article at the uncapitalized version as done, and just remove them? That seems like less work, therefore less downside, and with the same positive result. - Taxman ^Talk 20:24, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Taxman here. Salsb 20:28, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I do actually agree as well, maybe we should say "only make redirects if they are sensible". Bluemoose 20:32, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that the gain is infinitesmial. If someone makes a Link Like This but the article is at link like this, then we a) prevent the user from finding information or b) create the possiblity of duplicates or c) force the other article writer to scratch around looking for the correct capitalization to link to in his article or d) a combination of the three previous. Creating redirects is simple and needs to be done once and prevents these sorts of annoying little issues. Create redirects, using a bot if you like. Pcb21| Pete 12:16, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, ok, good points. But without a bot, these will really take a ton of time to make that many thousand redirects. As an example, bout 500 out of the first 2000 math topics are articles just by correcting the capitalization, so that was really helpful. I don't have the ability to do a bot, but one that automatically made the redirects where the link on the right is blue would be a great start. It would create some wrong redirects, where the link on the right is a redirect itself, but those can be fixed with a double redirects report. - Taxman ^Talk 16:15, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Is there any reason that doesn't apply to all of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles? All of those have arbitrarily capitalized articles, and would benefit from the LOWER processing you have done (in addition to what is alredy there, I would think. It's a lot easier to look for things that need to be capitalized as proper nouns than it is to create 2000 redirects solely for capitalization. - Taxman ^Talk 21:12, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Simple capitalisation redirects have been done for the 2004 project, via David Brook's low-hanging fruit mechanism which was a bit more careful than lowering everything. As I said above, redirects are advantageous so I recommend against this course of action. Pcb21| Pete 12:20, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What I've started doing on Wikipedia:Missing science topics/Physics is moving all of the simple change of capitalisation to the end of the list. We might consider using a robot to make these changes...

WP:PMEX

Hi, Please take a look at how the older project WP:PMEX is organized -- as I like that organization much better. The pages have links to the other encyclopedia, and also have a status indicator ... is the other article more complete, less complete? Has anyone even looked at it? When was it last looked at? Who looked at it? I think that the effort here could benefit from that level of formality. linas 15:36, 7 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Other scientific encyclopedias

Has there been any thought for getting information from other existing scientific encyclopedia such as Van Nostrand or McGraw-Hill, see also MH-Encyclopedia. The Van Nostrand is available on CD ~$50 used, but the McGraw-Hill set is much more expensive, ~$2,500 though a list could be created from the table of contents. I wouldn't know how to create the lists from either source.

McGraw-Hill also offers a consise version of the 20 volume set as well of scientific topics (Consise encyclopedia of: Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, etc), from which other lists can be made.

What is the process?

I've looked at these pages, and am confused as to what it is that this project is trying to do. Can someone please update the instructions for this? There are these lists with blue and red links? Are we supposed to do something with these? linas 22:38, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The goal is to create more comprehensive articles for every article in the list. If the link is red, try to create a great article from scratch. If it is blue, make sure it is as comprehensive or more than the other encyclopedia's article. If you can't do that completely, do the best you can, and at least try to create a great stub or redirect the topic to where we have more comprehensive material. All this is on the parent project page Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles. - Taxman ^Talk 16:01, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

The source for my confusion is that the current organization of this project is confusing. I meant literally, what are we supposed to do? Yes, I understand that generically, the idea is to create articles. But what is the actual mechanism? For example, take a look at WP:PMEX, which is a project to harmonize WP math articles with the Planet Math articles. In that case, the mechanism for doing so is clear: there are links to entries in both encylopedias, and there is a status area, which indicates the last time anyone reviewed the pages, and what the outcome was. Here, all I have is a sea of red and blue links, and they are *all* links into WP, and *none* are links to any other encylopedia. And no obvious way to post status. I click on a blue link.. so what? I click on a red link... So ... what is one actually supposed to be doing? (Besides creating articles, which is a given). linas 18:27, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I still don't see where your confusion is coming from. Yes the extra information at that project is great, but just because these lists don't have a bunch of extra information doesn't change how you do things. The only difference between what you would do here and at WP:PMEX is here you wouldn't have to update the meta information. So in summary, for this project, basically look at the list, click on a red or blue link whichever you choose. Then open another tab or window and pull up scienceworld.wolfram.com and search there under their name. Don't copy of course, but see what they have and how our article compares. If it has more information, try to add to ours from various reliable sources. If we don't have an article, do the same, and create ours from scratch. If you want to, add notes on the list on the missing chemistry articles page for ex to say whatever information you want to about the comparison between that article and ours. I really don't see where any other confusion could come from so maybe someone else needs to answer. I think you're making this a lot harder than it really is. But if you have specific issues, don't let my confusion stop you from asking them of course. - Taxman ^Talk 19:55, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

At the simplest level: "If the link is red, then create an article without copying from other sources" Bluap 22:17, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I dunno. Maybe that works for other topics, but I'd prefer that mathematics topics were a bit more carefully and precisely done; this ain't tv shows or pokemon characters. An incorrect math article is worse than no article at all. Just facing a sea of red links without any sort of organization or planning seems like...I dunno, a waste of time at best, and a recipe for disaster, at worst.

At any rate, a quick look-see makes it clear that most of the red-links could be made to vanish by redirects to the appropriate WP articles. I'd humbly suggest that the correct way of organizing the project would be to vet the red links for capitalization first. This should be done with a script, since manually typing in #REDIRECT's would be a stunning waste of labour. What's left over can then be reviewed for "obvious" redirects next. Only then, after the lists have been vetted and pruned and sorted, should attempts at new article creation begin. linas 01:32, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Adapting one of the spelling robots for this task would be a good way to start. linas 01:34, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Missing science topics/Maths4

I just edited the above-named list. Why is EVERY item in the list incorrectly titled? It will lead newbies to create articles that will have to be moved, or worse, to create duplicate articles that will have to be merged. It also causes names of already-existing articles to appear as red links. Michael Hardy 20:09, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

They're titled the way the other project does. The idea is to create a redirect from that name to where the correct article should be according to WP naming conventions. I thought that was dumb at first too, but the consensus is that redirects are cheap, and help people find good material and help keep from naming it wrong in the future. We don't have a ton of people working on this project, and those that do, tend to know the naming conventions. Oh yeah, so that means don't edit the lists, leave them as they are and create redirects. - Taxman ^Talk 22:23, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Michael Hardy. These lists should really be vetted by a robot, and properly capitalized first. While redirects may be cheap, the human labour of creating the redirects is not. WP math has 10K articles (10029 as of a few hours ago), and there are 10K articles in this list. And they're not even sorted by topic :( Sigh. Maybe I should stop complaining, and write a robot. An excuse to learn python. linas 00:57, 7 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you just want them un-capitalised then i can do it in about 5 seconds. Martin - The non-blue non-moose 08:32, 7 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Weisstein progress

The list of Weisstein articles has been removed because of copyright concerns, but in case anyone cares, as of 11/21/05, Wikipedia is missing approximately 49 chemistry, 167 astronomy and 1,120 physics articles that Weisstein Encyclopedia has. I've made a lot of redirects, and a few articles, that have made large reductions in the amount of apparently missing articles. Some of the redirects were for different capitalization or singular/plural, but some were for alternative names. Most were obvious and probably should have been made by the article's creator. A couple entries and redirects within Weisstein were nonsense and aren't counted. The physics article number is so high because it is much bigger than the chemistry and astronomy sections and I've only just started doing redirects and creating articles for it. In all three subjects, Weisstein has a bunch of articles that are just placeholders, which are counted in the missing article numbers for now. They consist of just an "under construction" notice. Also, some of the articles in the encyclopedias probably shouldn't have articles in Wikipedia. -- Kjkolb 16:12, 21 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Updated progress

Astronomy - 167
Chemistry - 31
Physics - 1,000

I stopped working on this a little while after the last update. The rest of the missing articles either don't belong in Wikipedia (a large percentage of the physics articles), would have required more work than I wanted to spend on that topic, or were beyond my ability to work on. -- Kjkolb 17:18, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ellipsis

One question. Why do some article names show up like this: Neumann Differential E.... Cool project, I plan to get involved more. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:02, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

They came from the Weisstein encyclopedia and in the table of contents, long terms get cut off at the end. -- Kjkolb 07:38, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I actually already fixed most of those ellipses, by using the information not only from the title of the article but the link as well (so, combining "Joint Distribution Fun..." with the link http://mathworld.wolfram.com/JointDistributionFunction.html gives "Joint Distribution Function". See here. This does not always work, but it is an improvement.

I can use a bot to remove the blue links, if that's considered necessary. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:38, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Missing science articles

I have a list of missing science articles, if anyone is interested. There are terms from just about every discipline, though a large portion are related to energy. I prefer to keep it on my userspace because I am fixing errors, removing inappropriate terms and adding new ones. Once I do most of the fixes, hopefully in a week or two, I may split the list up so that it will load faster. However, right now it's easier for me to work on it this way. If you duplicate the list, I strongly recommend that you check for updates to avoid wasted effort. -- Kjkolb 17:18, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since you are still doing internal improvements keep if off the main article space, but when the puppy is ready, I'd be glad to see it as part of WP:MEA. I would recommend putting it under the "Specialized hotlists" and splitting it into pages of about 500 or so. May I recommend this as a guide. Thanks for compiling the list. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 18:03, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Curbing Smarandache self-promotion

I have removed the following items:

Smarandache Ceil Function possibly Smarandache ceil function (wikisearch; web; books)
Smarandache Constants possibly Smarandache constants (wikisearch; web; books)
Smarandache Function possibly Smarandache function (wikisearch; web; books)
Smarandache Near-to-Primorial Function possibly Smarandache near-to-primorial function (wikisearch; web; books)
Smarandache Paradox possibly Smarandache paradox (wikisearch; web; books)
Smarandache Sequences possibly Smarandache sequences (wikisearch; web; books)
Smarandache-Kurepa Function possibly Smarandache-kurepa function or Smarandache-Kurepa function (wikisearch; web; books)
Smarandache-Wagstaff Function possibly Smarandache-wagstaff function or Smarandache-Wagstaff function (wikisearch; web; books)

Please see User:Smarandache fan for more information. ---CH 07:13, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Instructions ???

So what should we do if we just made a red link go blue? For example, I just turned Ornstein isomorphism theorem and Ornstein's theorem blue on the Maths20 page. Should I now remove these links? Will Oleg's bot do this automatically at some point? Instructions on this page are quite unclear as to what to do with these lists. (BTW, I made them blue by redirecting to an existing article, which explains things far better than the mathworld entry, but not as well as the Springer entry, written by Ornstein himself). linas 03:58, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My bot will every now and then remove the bluelinks. Instructions are unclear, meaning do whatever you wish. :) In a short while I will make the bot update the math lists periodically. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:39, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

blue links

It was mentioned above a year or so ago that blue links indicate articles still in need of improvement, or more precisely major improvement. I gather that this is no longer the case, and we should remove the links entirely after we have made the article of the redirect. That would make more sense--articles most in need of improvement are signified other ways. DGG 03:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My bot does remove regularly the blue links from the math articles. Now there are a few, but not many, see for example Wikipedia:Missing_science_topics/Maths3/ Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:38, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reliability of sources

I'm currently involved in a discussion about a redirect and the question has come up as to whether every topic from MathWorld needs to be included in W:MST. There was a claim that MathWorld is a "known source of neologisms", the implication being that many of the article names there which were carried over to W:MST should just be deleted instead of an article or redirect created for them. My feeling is, neologism or not, if there is a source for the topic which is recognized as reliable by a reasonable number of Wikipedians, then it at least merits a redirect. So my questions are these, what what the process used to decide which sources to use in the W:MST and was there a consensus that they were suitable? Also, is there a policy on simply deleting links from the list without creating a article or a link?--RDBury (talk) 16:26, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New template

Hi, I noticed you were all using {{Progress bar}}. I just wanted to tell you all I recently completed a much more customizable template, called {{Progress meter}}. I consider it to be better than the latter, as, as said, it is a bit more customizable, and, as I have yet to say, user friendly. For Progress bar, you must do the math yourself in order to figure out how far along you are on your track. For the one I finished making, all you have to do is specify the current value, and if the goal value is larger than 100, the goal value. Otherwise, if you do not specify the goal value, it defaults to 100.

Take for example the way you are using {{Progress bar}}. You have to manually find out what percentage the current value is of the goal value, and as such, you type out: {{Progress bar|48.13}}, which gets:

48.1% completed (estimate)

For the one that I have been working on, {{Progress meter}}, you can simply give it the current value, and the goal value(if it is larger than 100(exactly 100)). You would then type out:{{Progress meter|12784|26555}}

And you would get:

However, please note that the above is just an example, you can have it be any width, whether it be a % or distance in pixels, and you can have it be any height, in pixels(% has been tried, can't work). Take for instance, how the following code:{{Progress meter|12784|26555|width=100%|height=20}}

gets:

.. I hope you can find it useful.— Dæ dαlus^Contribs 03:29, 8 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am confused

This page is much more confusing than others I've seen. For example, the math & statistics section doesn't have any lists? Are we saying the entire subject of math is complete? -KaJunl (talk) 01:18, 28 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The requested math and stats articles are at Wikipedia:Requested articles/Mathematics. --Mark viking (talk) 03:37, 28 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]