Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Golden ratio

Definition of project

I took the liberty of defining the project, but it is expected that other people contribute or even redefine it with their ideas and contributions. I'm not crazy about various things I named.--20-dude (talk) 06:08, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the need for the project. But I'm not participating, so I could be wrong. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:28, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

On what basis? What's your relation with the topic? Phidias, Leonardo da Vinci and Le Corbusier (to mention a few), men that are among the most pivotal designers in history, saw the need to use it at least in their most prominent work. I can't see how a project to tie all the articles dedicated to the object of their studies is not necesary. Also: the designers of the pyramid of giza, of stonehenge, of notre dame, venus the milo, etc.--20-dude (talk) 21:37, 11 March 2008 (UTC) Arthur has knowledge in the field of mathematics, so his position is relatively understandable. Mathematics and geometry is just one side of the coin, the other is its aplication in both the universe and the human production and both sides are linked through the researchers and designers.--20-dude (talk) 23:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The Golden Ratio has a great deal of amusement/interest value in the breadth of lay-approachable application; for example, if you count the number of CW and CCW spirals of sunflower seeds at a fixed radius N seeds from the center of the flower, you get consecutive fibonacci numbers (or sometimes, Lucas), so the ratio converges to phi :-) So I like the category. However, I'm an Inclusionist. But I think we all will be when articles, and even material within articles, are sortable (and filterable) programmatically (with e.g. Google-like metrics) so everyone can be a deletionist to their own level of taste. Ironically. Pete St.John (talk) 03:21, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

As a deletionist and a stickler for verifiability, I will provide some balance to the project. I agree with Arthur that it's not needed, but since it's here it should not be ignored. Dicklyon (talk) 23:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Templates

I would be happy to build templates for the project including stub template(s) and a Project Banner. I'll build a couple drafts in my sandbox and check back. Someone needs to declare a free image to be the logo however. Adam McCormick (talk) 01:34, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I think a big φ would be nice. Or maybe a Vitruvian man, a nautilus, the parthenon, I dunno. There are many options to choose from.--20-dude (talk) 02:18, 12 March 2008 (UTC). I'm really thankful for the templates, I really suck making them.--20-dude (talk) 02:23, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to think of a good backronym for $\varphi$OSS, like Phi and Open Source Series...nah. Pete St.John (talk) 03:34, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Phi Over Spiral Shells? Adam McCormick (talk)

:-) Pete St.John (talk) 04:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Options

• I like this one Adam McCormick (talk) 04:42, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Anything from this category

The above seem to me to be the best choices (that exist already) What should we go with? Adam McCormick (talk) 04:40, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

• I like the second, its simple easy to spot easy to relate to the topic etc. Then again I ignore what the criteria for choosing images fot a wikiproject is. If we'd want (maybe we want maybe we dont, I'm sorry if I'm being too ambiguos here) to go with something more elaborated, I'd like like a combination of something real with something geometrical. Maybe I could combine a real nautilus shell with the fibonacci spiral of the image #2.--20-dude (talk) 07:22, 12 March 2008 (UTC) But it is all up to you guys--20-dude (talk) 07:26, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

You mean image #3? I like the triangulation of the spiral; maybe side-by-side with a nautilus shell, and a caption like, "the shell is grown with chambers that fit increasing triangles in a golden ration" somesuch. I'm good with the sunflowers but slack on the seashells.Pete St.John (talk) 12:38, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment If there is going to be a project for articles related to the golden ratio — that is still an open question, as far as I am concerned — the most logical symbol would be some version of a lower case (not upper case) phi. $\varphi \,$ is the version most often seen in the professional literature and is the one most used on Wikipedia. The capital phi ($\Phi \,$) is not generally used for the golden ratio in scholarly writing. The various "golden" geometric figures or constructions, including those suggested above, would not scale down well for use as a project symbol. Finell (Talk) 13:48, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Agree - it'd be like writing A²= B² + C², I guess it'd be somewhat ok, but it's not that common in books. --20-dude (talk) 21:43, 12 March 2008 (UTC) I have always used it this way: Φ=1/φ=1.618.. and φ=0.618.. Many people talk about phy and mean 1.618, enven the AutoCAD's calculator has the constant φ as 1.618 but I have always thought they are wrong, but I don't know howcome.--20-dude (talk) 22:02, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

The golden ratio is the ratio of consecutive fibonacci numbers (in the limit); so phi has to be > 1, else fibonacci numbers would converge :-) It's the positive root of the characteristic polynomial x^2 = x + 1. Pete St.John (talk) 03:05, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it could be an abstact φ emuling the fibonacci spiral. I also have a soft spot for something da vinci-like--20-dude (talk) 22:06, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I like because it defines the golden ratio visually in a very clear way. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:03, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I definitely don't find that clear, maybe it's just me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alanbly (talk • contribs)

To Alanbly: Do you see that the three triangles in the picture are isosceles triangles and that the smallest one is similar to the largest? JRSpriggs (talk) 07:00, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I only perceive the inner two as isosceles, the big one looks escalene to me. However, thank you , before your post I didn't even noticed the inner two were isosceles and therefore the figure didn't make sense to me. On its downside, as per finell's previous unrelated comment, I think the use of numbers and constant is wrong. What the image puts as φ, because it is 1.618 and not 0.618, should be Φ. Or what the image puts as φ, should be one and what the image puts as 1 should be φ--20-dude (talk) 08:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Although I ignore if there is an aplying gudeline for this case, I think the image shuold be an evocative abstraction.--20-dude (talk) 08:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC) Does anyone has a Graphic Designer friend?--20-dude (talk) 08:42, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

JRSpriggs has the symbols and values correct according to the most widely used convention: $\varphi \$ (lower case phi) denotes the golden ratio, which is approximately 1.618...; $\Phi \$ (upper case Phi), or sometimes $\varphi \ '$, denotes the reciprocal of the golden ratio, which is sometimes referred to as the golden ratio conjugate, and is approximately 0.618... This notation is explained in the Golden ratio article. (Last night, some well-meaning but misguided anon painstakingly reversed all the symbols in the Golden ratio article, but I reverted them back.) So, if something is designed with golden ratio proportions on a larger scale than a simple rectangle or triangle, you can have a progression such as

$...:\Phi \ :1:\varphi \ :\varphi \ +1:...$

JRSpriggs's triangles exhibit such a progression. So do regular geometric figures and pattens with 5-fold symmetry (e.g., pentagons, pentagrams, dodecahedra, Penrose tilings). Some see such a progression at several scales by superimposing golden rectangles of varying sizes over the Parthenon. Others point out that "finding" these golden proportions in the Parthenon depends on precisely where one chooses to superimpose the rectangles, that the large-scale elements of the Parthenon are not precisely orthogonal and the lines are not all straight, and that the findings are subject to the vagaries of measurement. The same arguments accompany other disputed retrospective sightings of the golden ratio in man-made works. Personally, I think that the case for the Parthenon is fairly strong, but others are more skeptical.

Rather than attempting to "start from scratch" in your contributions to Wikipedia on the subject of the golden ratio, I urge you to study the Golden ratio article and its content forks (Golden ratio itself is the most heavily vetted of the family), and not to dismiss the extensive study and work that Wikipedians before you have done on this subject.

Addressing the underlying question, while JRSpriggs's triangles are a good exemplification of the golden ratio, I do not think that his figure would look like much when scaled down to the small thumbnail size of a logotype for a project template. Again, rather than "starting from scratch", please look at the sort of symbols that are used in other templates. Finell (Talk) 19:32, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, I see what you're getting at now but it's just too complicated for a logo. And I've always though logos need lots of color. Adam McCormick (talk) 23:56, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I missled you too much when using the phrase "starting from scratch". What I ment back then was not to throw away the previous lists of references, but to start organizig them from scratch. That means from the original texts of the primary authors to the researchers of the researchers of the researchers. I know recomending reading a comic sounds weird, but read Alan Moore's "chasing gulls" epilogue in the "From Hell" compilation: there comes a point in which you stop studing the original object and distract too much you attention as a researcher to the "researching" of the all previous "researchers". I'm not stating that any researcher in the middle would be wrong, but just that investigations can get polluted.
Of course, as an encyclopedia, we're and must be all about secondary sources, that's more agreed, but the least we should to is stablish some order with our sources. From the oldest, to the newest, from the archaic to the currently recognized by academies; from the most reliable to the least proffetional... and so on. Then again, since I don't have neither the time nor the deep knowledge tools, I went with the practical thing: The books of the ground breaking authors in chronological order, then the million of contemporary academic/scientific researchers, then academic/scientific internet, then the rest of the iternet crap. I did my best and I mean well in terms of verifiability.--20-dude (talk) 03:17, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Dear Dude: I don't understand exactly what you are addressing. For example, it appears that you had Phi and phi reversed, and you reversed them in your comments about JRSpriggs's correct use of notation. That was clearly explained in Golden ratio, so you had to ignore that article to reverse the notation. I am not confining my remark to sources. Regarding sources, I don't know what you mean by "from the archaic to the currently recognized by academies; from the most reliable to the least proffetional" [sic]. There are no extant archaic sources on the golden ratio. The "least proffetional" [sic] are, by definition, not reliable and therefore are not usable on Wikipedia at all. Wikipedia's sole criterion for sources is reliability, the more reliable the better, as understood today. Finell (Talk) 05:57, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I have been wrong for over 5 years about it. As for I don't understand exactly what you are addressing, me neither, don't take me too seriously, I divagate a lot. I sometimes consider the "least proffetional" [sic, haha :P], when they take you to good souces or "the most reliable". Now let's divagate some more: Tadao Ando was a truck driver and a boxer, to make the story short, I'll just say that you don't need a university title to get a Pritzker. That's the reach of the least professional.--20-dude (talk) 05:11, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The image of the three triangles is not my image; Jheald (talk · contribs) deserves credit for it. I merely picked from the images on the wiki-commons. I tried to pick the image which defined the golden ratio in the most immediately obvious way (to me). If someone can make or find a better one, I would applaud him. JRSpriggs (talk) 07:33, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Even if somebody does so, nobody can deny (not that somebody is trying to either) you have been really helpful to the cause.--20-dude (talk) 05:11, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Project Banner and Stubs

I have made an assessment banner located here there are a couple examples of functionality transcluded to the talk page, tell me what you think. (I know the image isn't right yet, but I had to use something. Adam McCormick (talk) 04:11, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

There's also a stub tag here. I'll be back on tomorrow if there are any major issues. Adam McCormick (talk) 04:55, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Given the lack of opposition, I'm going to move these to project space and link to them from this page. Adam McCormick (talk) 02:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Having reviewed the stub sorting policy page at WP:WSS/P I'm not sure of the need for a stub template. But the banner will stand for now. Adam McCormick (talk) 02:55, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Placing the banner

Hey, thanks to 20-Dude for placing some project banners. I've fixed a couple remaining issues and gone through the banner placements. PLease have a look at the assessment scale before placing ratings in these articles as only about two were classified correctly. Also note that you can use the banner without parameters (ie: {{WPGoldenRatio}}) and I'll be happy to assess the article for you (as I have been assessing articles by this scale for over a year now). Thanks again. Adam McCormick (talk) 01:05, 21 March 2008 (UTC)