Welcome! Hi!

Hello LouScheffer, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page). Thank you for your care in using an edit summary when contributing. Thanks for the new section in binomial theorem. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:29, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, please sign your posts with ~~~~. About the article, since it's merely a section of a movie, its proper place, if it belongs anywhere, is on the page of that movie, Kentucky Fried Movie. --InShaneee 06:02, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Let's keep this civil, I have nothing against you personally. Also, you CAN redirect to a specific point on a page. Here's the format: [[Blah#Specific Blah]], where Blah is the article name, and Specific Blah is the specific section header. That help any? --InShaneee 06:38, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bizzare...that page must be outdated, because I use that type of redirect all the time. I'll have to look into getting that info changed. In the meantime, go ahead and merge the info and try out the redirect to the anchor for yourself! --InShaneee 07:08, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • The 'allies' section of Teen Titans (animated series) is where I first encountered them. It appears to work for a section titled like this: ===Blah===, so try using three "="'s when you create your new subsection, that should work. --InShaneee 07:36, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • No, unfortunatly, it appears you were right. I was thinking of the wrong thing, my bad. Still, the merge/redirect seems to solve the problem. Since "Zinc Oxide and You" is the name of a segment within Kentucky Fried Movie, I see two possibilities. One, someone is looking for more info about KFM, which this takes them to. Two, people are looking for that specific segment in that movie, which is not only on that page, but the information about the rest of the movie may be of interest to the user as well. This is typically the policy, anyway, as once someone started creating articles about individual chapters of "Great Expectations", and the verdict on that was to merge them into the article about the book as a whole. --InShaneee 05:20, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The reason I removed the TOCRight was that a while back it was up for deletion under the rationale that, if TOCRight is going to be used to remove whitespace in an article, then what's stopping us from using it in every article, or just making it the default altogether? In the end, the consensus was that it was only really appropriate for pages like this. And as for most users not scrolling down and only seeing the top of the page, well, that's why articles need good introductory paragraphs :) QVanillaQ 15:21, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Found the old discussion: Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/TOCright QVanillaQ 15:37, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent editing! Rklawton 19:51, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Spacecraft propulsion is up for a featured article review, and I noticed your name often in the edit history. Detailed concerns about the article may be found here. Please leave your comments if you're able to help us maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 03:41, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That last edit of yours after mine works. My reason for adding-in the Art Center bit in the first place was personal. I added Scripps afterward just to make Tech look better. I later regretted starting this war. Thanks for ending it.

By the way, I tried InShanee's way of linking to a header on a page, and it works, but it's ugly. Any way to hide the "#"? Grammarmonger_TALK 17:36, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, Lou, I was referring to the "#" symbol, which directs the browser to the specific article header. Grammarmonger 18:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I thought I did this. Look at the heading above - it says Academics at Caltech, but goes to the right spot in the article. I thought this is what you wanted - the # is no longer visible to the reader, though it is to the editor. LouScheffer 18:32, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's the ticket. I see it now. Thanks! Grammarmonger 18:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that the image is creative commons. The website requires explicit written permission to be reused. Do you have a copy of that to link to from the image page? mikm 14:37, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Prof. Davidson gave explicit written permission. Here is the email trail I have for this:

From: Louis Scheffer <lou@cadence.com> To: Michael W. Davidson <davidson@magnet.fsu.edu> Date: Jan 4 2006 - 10:40am

Thanks! I've included it on the page,

Lou Scheffer

Original Message-----

From: Michael W. Davidson [1] Sent: Wed 1/4/2006 8:48 AM To: Louis Scheffer Subject: RE: Can I use a picture of your on Wikipedia?

Lou,

That will be fine.

Mike

Michael W. Davidson National High Magnetic Field Laboratory 1800 East Paul Dirac Drive The Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida 32310 Email: davidson@magnet.fsu.edu Phone: 850-644-0542 Web: Molecular Expressions (http://microscopy.fsu.edu)

Original Message-----

From: Louis Scheffer [2] Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 6:58 PM To: davidson@magnet.fsu.edu Subject: Can I use a picture of your on Wikipedia?

Hi, Prof. Davidson!

I made a Wikipedia page for silicon art. It refers, of course, to your web site for examples.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_art

I'd like to have an example for the page, and was wondering if I could I use one of your pictures? I was thinking of the picture on

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/buffalochips.html

because, as an original author, I can get the permissions for the design itself, so all I'd need is permission to use your picture of it.

Can I get this permission? I'd be more than happy to credit you, and your web site, which I think is great.

Thanks, Lou Scheffer

LouScheffer 15:48, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on ECAD, Inc., by Witchinghour, another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because ECAD, Inc. seems to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting ECAD, Inc., please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Please note, this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion, it did not nominate ECAD, Inc. itself. Feel free to leave a message on the bot operator's talk page if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot. --Android Mouse Bot 2 11:46, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good work, maybe I should tag few more articles for deletion to get people working. nice job --Witchinghour 17:48, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

By the way that was meant as a joke but somebody missed it :( --Witchinghour 20:07, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Lou. I have a small note. Per WP:MoS#Sections and headings, one should use lowercase in section headings, so one should write

==The binomial theorem in popular culture==

instead of

==The Binomial Theorem in Popular Culture==

Small thing, but I thought I'd let you know. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:30, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for uploading Image:ChipWorksLandShark.jpg. Wikipedia gets thousands of images uploaded every day, and in order to verify that the images can be legally used on Wikipedia, the source and copyright status must be indicated. Images need to have an image tag applied to the image description page indicating the copyright status of the image. This uniform and easy-to-understand method of indicating the license status allows potential re-users of the images to know what they are allowed to do with the images.

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This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. If you need help on selecting a tag to use, or in adding the tag to the image description, feel free to post a message at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. 21:06, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Your addition Intelligent life need not be technological is also touched on in the section They are too alien. Perhaps you might look at merging these? - Vedexent (talk) - 05:27, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A reasonable question. I've moved it to Talk:Fermi paradox. LouScheffer 06:03, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I guess I'm being "re-bold." One thing I will say: if a section goes in unsourced, it should be removed. It's the bane of this page. Anyhow, we can save it for article talk. Marskell 16:59, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

HI the main Hubble Space article is superb but the Telescope artice is quite poor indeed, Is there any way you could help write it professionally with references into a GA encyclopedia article. I came acrosss it just now expecting to see another great article and was quite disappointed with it compared to other work on astronomy on wikpiedia. It didn;t even had a history -I've added it - it just needs condensing and structuring and a great deal of work. Thanks ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^{"Expecting you?" Contribs} 16:59, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Council on EDA, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Council on EDA is a redirect to a non-existent page (CSD R1).

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Council on EDA, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. CSDWarnBot 02:32, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, some collateral damage was had there whilst cleaning up the nightmares of stupid edits. Something for me to clean up tomorrow when i've got a fair few more neurons firing. Thewinchester ^(talk) 16:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

beautiful job on fictional use of real materials. I suggest what is needed now is a few real sources from secondary works, to show it can be done. At the AfD I suggested dilithium, but most of these should be discussed in reviews, etc. then, perhaps for the biggies, like gold, and water, there should be a breakout to a separate article. As you know, what happens at AfD is unpredictable--please make sure you have a copy off-wiki to use in reconstructing it in other ways, which can be considered if necessary. I'd help more, but this is a busy day at WP. See [3]. DGG (talk) 22:19, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure no slight or malfeasance was intended, but please do not move my talk page comments into a different section that pertains to the same incident. I was neither replying to your comments already there nor discussing the same subject matter; placing them into the same section makes it difficult to have a threaded conversation on two different subjects. Thanks! /Blaxthos 14:22, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Hi! I was busily cleaning up Fictional applications of real materials to address most of the objections when it was deleted. Since the AfD started, I added scope limitations at the top, removed a bunch of stuff that was just trivia, and was busy adding secondary and tertiary sources (For almost every remaining entry I was able to find a secondary source, and I have added about 5 so far). (You can compare the article from before the AfD to the current one to get a sense of these changes). You yourself say:

As a result, I vote, and recommend, the use of "Delete unless cleaned up", "Delete unless expanded", etc. — if somebody cares enough about the article to have it kept, then they will generally fix it up during the AFD vote, which is five days long, and drop me a line on my talk page to ask me to have another look.

This is exactly what I was busy doing. I'd be grateful if you could take another look. LouScheffer 22:19, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your message. I'm happy with the way I've closed this one but you're welcome to ask for a deletion review. Stifle (talk) 17:16, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the notice. /Blaxthos 21:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While pointing out specific fee-based access to IEEE and ACM publications "servers a useful service", such service is not the purpose of Wikipedia. The template is a cookie-cutter that was very inacurrate about ATPG. It would have been more useful to pointout the International Test Conference. I suggest that you remove these templates as they break the style of "See Also", are not subject specific, and are a form of advertising. TeamX 03:13, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Community member - I am attaching the following SPAM template. There are three key issues with your template:
1) It refers readers to external links where a fee is required.
2) It is not consistent with the "See Also" sections of the articles.
3) The wording of the template does not fit all articles.

Please discontinue use of this template and instead consider putting specific links to specific, relevant articles. Thank you. TeamX 00:16, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, one or more of the external links you added do not comply with our guidelines for external links and have been removed. Wikipedia is not a collection of links; nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Since Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, external links do not alter search engine rankings. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page before reinserting it. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you.

Your statement about adding the "template text" suggests that the template is not standard - and indeed it cannot be if it must be modified for each topic. PLEASE remove it. Also, you are breaking the "See Also" section style. TeamX 07:15, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The new wording is marginally better-- at least you didn't turn a sentence written in active voice into one written in passive voice-- but still reads awkwardly.

And, yes, I do find it a little disconcerting to find an article with a paragraph discussing my work, carefully written and rewritten in such a way to avoid mentioning my name. Geoffrey.landis 06:23, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, the reason the page uses aluminium is not b/c that's what the discoverer named it, but rather because that's what IUPAC decided as its official name. [Sulfur is the official name of that element; sulphur is an accepted, but incorrect, spelling.] Samer (talk) 15:30, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Lou, I'm currently reading the semiconductor device modeling article. the article talks about a figure 1b which I cannot spot in the article. Can it be that the article is currently missing this figure? Thank you! --Abdull (talk) 11:23, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thank you for adding the image so fast. To appreciate your work, I bestow you a little Kinkajou: . Don't feel worried. Their conservation status is of least concern. Bye, --Abdull (talk) 20:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for uploading Image:TCAD-circuit.jpg. Wikipedia gets thousands of images uploaded every day, and in order to verify that the images can be legally used on Wikipedia, the source and copyright status must be indicated. Images need to have an image tag applied to the image description page indicating the copyright status of the image. This uniform and easy-to-understand method of indicating the license status allows potential re-users of the images to know what they are allowed to do with the images.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

• Wikipedia:Image use policy
• Wikipedia:Image copyright tags

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. If you need help on selecting a tag to use, or in adding the tag to the image description, feel free to post a message at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --OrphanBot (talk) 02:08, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I want to thank you for the addition you made recently to the Near-Earth asteroid article. Your explanation of why the probability goes up and then down again, with the accompanying graphic, is really clear and easy to understand. Is there by any chance a source we could cite for this information? (I'm not myself challenging it as WP:OR, but I would hate to lose that content because someone else thought it violated that policy!) (sdsds - talk) 02:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for catching that. I dont know how I ended up misspelling that, lol. Must of been doing two things at once or something, and got mixed up on something. Thanks again :) Whammies Were Here 11:40, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for coming and checking the article out. Thanks for putting TNT equivalents for Type II, and Type III, it did add quite a bit of perspective for the laymen audience. I will be doing my best to refrain adding to the Kardashev scale, until the current dispute can be talked about more. I've responded to your discussion on the Talk:kardashev scale. Thanks again for coming by and be involved.--Sparkygravity (talk) 14:21, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hubble Space Telescope has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. --Kaypoh (talk) 05:05, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was so pleased to see that HST was kept at FA. It's always a bit daunting to copyedit a technical article - especially such a long one - and with the added pressure of this one being up for FAR, I was particularly concerned about getting it right. Thanks for all your hard work on it, and for being so receptive of my edits during the FAR. It was a pleasure to work with you. Maralia (talk) 05:37, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your work. It's always helpful to have another set of eyes look over an article, even when (and maybe especially when) they are not super familiar with the area. You noticed (and fixed) a whole bunch of issues I must have seen a hundred times, but did not even notice they could be improved until you fixed them. It was a pleasure working with you as well, LouScheffer (talk) 06:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• And my thanks, especially to you, Lou, for your continuing attention to this article. Sardanaphalus (talk) 08:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Four and a half years later...and I am back to talk about the same article, in the same thread! I noticed that HST needs cleanup again. I will start tackling the ref formatting and excessive images and external links. If you have time, would appreciate if you could address the 'outdated' tag, and consolidate the STS-125 info that was added after FAR (it seems we have 'Servicing Mission 4' and 'Debate over final servicing mission'). Of course, there is no rush—just trying to keep it in good shape. Thanks. Maralia (talk) 16:15, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just a quick note - I took the liberty of moving your response to my posting about privacy concerns with the DOI bot. In trying to respond to it I couldn't figure how to do it so that my response would be clear to readers who didn't see the history. So I moved your response to after the initial post, and then indented my response below it. I hope that is okay. Thank you. Zodon (talk) 01:39, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks for your "test" - it was good fun, and turned up one CrossRef bug I would never have spotted!

So... Did I pass?

Smith609 Talk 00:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good. I tried it myself but still got the old results (I guess you are running new code). As you find new examples that have problems, you can add them to the page, so you can verify new changes don't break the old fixes.... LouScheffer (talk) 04:43, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I've just suggested the QUIET telescope article for a Did you know? entry on the Main Page; the nomination is at Template talk:Did you know#Articles created.2Fexpanded on May 23. Hopefully it will receive a surge of traffic from that in a few days. Thanks for starting the article. Mike Peel (talk) 18:03, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I was quite surprised when you started to add to the article so quickly after it was created. Many times technical articles on rather specialized topics just sit there, but you expanded it from a near-stub to a real article almost instantly. (This was my eventual intention as well, but it would have taken a lot longer.) I really appreciate Wikipedia as a great resource for technical topics, and it's always great to see new stuff appear. And thanks as well for the pointer to the 'did you know' section - I had no idea of how snippets got there. Thanks again, LouScheffer (talk) 19:53, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed your additions of links to the article on Template:CMB experiments and Cosmic Background Imager, and thought that it would be a nice article to expand and get on DYK. It helps that I work in the field (but not on this experiment). At some point I plan on doing the same to the rest of the CMB articles, but I have a finite amount of time. :( I figure that they'd make a nice featured topic eventually. Mike Peel (talk) 20:26, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi and thank you for your edit at Hubble Space Telescope. I didn't believe you so I decided to check for myself and contacted Lars Lindberg Christensen from the European Space Agency (ESO) regarding origins of the video file Image:Hst15 black hole2 1.ogg. I must concede with your arguments. Because of you, in turn, I have made a change to the file reference. The "reference" section is now called "annotated reference" and describes the issue you raised within the edit summary of your afformentioned edit. Thank you. --CyclePat (talk) 18:45, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On 28 May, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article QUIET, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--BorgQueen (talk) 16:47, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

for the record, though the port chicago disaster involved a larger quantity of explosives, the blast-force recorded was actually less than that of the halifax explosion. amplification occurred due to the elevation of the blast in relation to the harbour bottom. it was a unique scientific discovery at the time, which eventually led to the decision to detonate the first atomic weapons at a specific altitude (rather than on the land surface), because they knew it would increase the weapon's power to devastate. this information comes from a documentary which periodically airs on the discovery channel. 142.68.133.42 (talk) 18:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To: Lou Scheffer, GPS Editor

I am somewhat confused by the sentence,

"Dividing the speed of light by the distance adjustment required to make the pseudoranges come as close as possible to intersecting results in a guess of the difference between UTC and the time indicated by the receiver's on-board clock."

in the subheading "Using the C/A code" of the "Calculating positions" heading in the article, GPS.

The confusion arises because the result of the division gives a quotient which is in inverse time whereas the later part of the sentence indicates that the dimensions of this quotient should be time rather than inverse time. Should this quotient be (distance adjustment)/(speed of light) instead? You may reply to my talk page if you wish. RHB100 (talk) 19:42, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I did not write this section, but reading it, I agree completely. A distance divided by a speed gives a time, which is exactly what is mentioned in the second half. So your proposed change makes both physical and mathematical sense. LouScheffer (talk) 20:10, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think the equation you added is good and I hope it will be judged readable by a general audience. I made a small change to the notation used for actual received time in order to avoid conflict with the r4 notation used below.

The material in the paragraph beginning with "The following description shows a straightforward iterative way." is good.

Although there are well known techniques for finding the root of a single non-linear equation, the problem is far more difficult for the case of multidimensional non-linear equations. In "Numerical Recipes" it is stated, "Why is that task (relatively) easy, while multidimensional root finding is often quite hard?" So with regard to your first bullet under the equation, I do not think the equations can be solved so simply.

In your second bullet, you mention the intersection of hyperbolas. But do we know of any reference to a GPS receiver vendor who uses the intersection of hyperbolas or hyperboloids. The Garmin User's Guide talks about the intersection of spheres but not hyperboloids. The Wikipedia article, Multilateration, does not mention GPS as an application.

The third bullet describes a technique which may work but the reference is not accessible to the general reader. The description of the overall approach is not enough for the general reader to understand how this algorithm works.RHB100 (talk) 23:44, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I thought that was a random comment on that article. I was in a sort of hurry, and I noticed that in the last minute. ~ Troy (talk) 23:23, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thw equation, ${\displaystyle p_{i}=(tr_{i}-t_{i})c}$, defines ${\displaystyle p_{i}}$ as the value computed based on no clock error since the received time is tr_i and the sent time is t_i. Since tr_i is defined as the received time it has no error. Since t_i is defined as the sent time it has no error. To include the clock error, the pseudorange must be defined as p_i = (tr_i + b - t_i)c . The following is quoted from where the problem occurs. "Now the receiver has four measurements (the received time of the four messages) and four unknowns - the x, y and z coordinates of position and time t. Since the receiver already has a clock, what is solved for is not the actual time the messages arrived, but the clock bias b, which is the amount by which the receiver's clock is off. Let the coordinates of each satellite, and the time the message was sent, be [x_i, y_i, z_i, t_i] for i = 1, . . ., 4, the received time be tr_i for i = 1, . . ., 4, and c be the speed of light. Then the distance to each satellite should correspond to the signal travel time:

${\displaystyle (x-x_{i})^{2}+(y-y_{i})^{2}+(z-z_{i})^{2}={\bigl (}(tr_{i}+b-t_{i})c{\bigr )}^{2},\qquad i=1,\ldots ,4.}$

These equations are often written in terms of a pseudorange, which is simply the range computed without the clock correction included, or ${\displaystyle p_{i}=(tr_{i}-t_{i})c}$." —Preceding unsigned comment added by RHB100 (talk • contribs) 03:12, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. On this edit, I think you changed the sentence to reduce the tensity of the situation. Anyway, I was just going to ask you if it's alright if I change it to the sentence before—since it looked like a nice form of literature. :-) No offence. Anyway, it would look like this:

During the Middle Ages, the descriptions of Ibn Sahl, Robert Grosseteste, and Ibn Al-Haytham made monumental advances in not only the understanding of light and the law of refraction, but also the magnifying properties that abide by those laws.^[1]

Your's looks like this:

Studies of properties of lenses and refraction in the Middle Ages[1] by scholars such as Ibn al-Haytham and Robert Grosseteste laid the groundwork for the development of telescopes.

Sincerely, InternetHero (talk) 09:17, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for handling that. I got stuck on confrontation mode before I could back off enough to see where the actual misunderstanding was. Your explanation was very patient and lucid. - Eldereft (cont.) 08:15, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To: Lou Scheffer

You have made the statement, "Also, in practice, receivers use additional clues (doppler shift of satellite signals, last known position, dead reckoning, inertial navigation, and so on) to give degraded answers when fewer than four satellites are visible."

in the Method of Operation section of the Global Positioning System article.

I do not believe it is true that GPS receivers in general use inertial navigation as you state. Military systems sometimes have both GPS and INS but I do not believe this is true in general for non-military systems as you state. Where is your reference to show that GPS receivers in general are supplemented with inertial navigation information? I am also skeptical with regard to the extent these other methods you mention are used. RHB100 (talk) 21:00, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

These methods are quite common, particularly in GPS built into cars. You can see it work quite easily - the map moves continuously when you go under a highway bridge, where a hand-held GPS will show there is no signal. In the built-in units, the car helps the GPS by telling how far it has gone since the last fix. The GPS extrapolates from the last fix and direction (dead reckoning)[4][5] or sometimes uses a gyroscope (or sometimes the car's steering wheel angle) to detect changes in direction [6]. This is a simple form of INS. Military systems, as you point out, often couple GPS with a sophisticated INS. LouScheffer (talk) 11:22, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thank you these references although lacking in some areas do have some good material. And you have provided a good explanation. You can call the system you describe as a simple form of INS if you want. I won't argue at least for now. The word inertial suggests to me that an INS must have an accelerometer but I guess it doesn't make too much difference.RHB100 (talk) 00:51, 23 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To: Lou Scheffer

You have stated as a reason for one of your edits to the GPS article that, "The problem with 3 satellites is not that there are two intersections, but that the distances are uncertain since the timing is unknown."

I think that it is certainly not the case that there is either one problem or the other. Actually the fact that are two intersections is a problem in addition to the problem that there is a clock error. The problem with your approach is that you start talking about the errors before the fundamental concept has been explained. It is better to explain the fundamental concept of GPS to the readers before explaining the clock error and the topic, Correcting the GPS Receiver Clock Introduction.

Also I think saying " using geometry and trigonometry" with a reference to [trilateration] does not satisfy the scientific curiosity of the readers. It is better to explain the fundamental concept rather than leave them bewildered knowing nothing more than that it has something to do with geometry and trigonometry. RHB100 (talk) 22:10, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The "GPS Guide for Beginners", December 2008, Revision A, part number 190-00224-00 produced by Garmin explains on page 8 how a fourth satellite enables the GPS receiver to resolve the ambiguity associated with the two point intersection of three sphere surfaces. RHB100 (talk) 19:06, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also it is stated in [7] that "But if you want to calculate the altitude of an airplane or how high some mountaineers have climbed, you need a fourth satellite to yield that dimension.] It should be kept in mind that GPS receivers include all GPS receivers, those used for military purposes and for any other purpose." RHB100 (talk) 20:06, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your statement, "In other words, the receiver uses four measurements to solve for four variables: x, y, z, and t." is extremely misleading. There are many people who operate under the delusion that anytime you have four equations you can solve for four unknowns. This is true for the case of four independent linear equations but it is not true in general. With your misleading statement, you perpetuate this delusion. RHB100 (talk) 20:31, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that you cannot always solve 4 equations for 4 variables, in general. But in GPS you can, by design, and it's exactly what the receiver does. The fact that there are other systems of equations that cannot be solved this way is not relevant here, since we are explicitly talking about GPS. At least this is the way I read it. Clearly you read this differently. Let's add it to the talk page and see what others think. LouScheffer (talk) 20:43, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

About the edit you've undone in the GPS article. "It might seem that three satellites would be enough" (for calculating the position) No, it might not. Please, this is not trilateration as you undid my edit and put the reference to it again; and it's not like "3 satelites to solve 3 variables xyz and 4 satelites to solve xyzt".

I dont want to go much deep here, but it's 4 satellites for 3 dimensions as an analogue situations would need 3 points for 2 dimensions, 2 points for 1 dimension and so on. This is about Locus. Time is some quite more complex thing you're putting in, and it gets more precise with the more satellites you have. But having more satellistes has the only function of increasing precision - if we had a planck time clock we would need 4 satellites and that's it.

Well, you see, two people have undone my edits so far, none of them seemed to understand too much about satellites (a guy that did understand something about the matter said my images were good illustration, maybe he isnt a much good Professional Engineer in the field of Control System Engineering or wrote Philosophy on How GPS Article Should be Written just to play with people). The other guy that undone my edit just didnt answer when I asked the reasons for his undo - just as I don't really expect that you'll answer me at all. Anyway, I'll probably just give up as It seems my text is just too poor for this and people don't want to be bothered with the geometry behind the GPS concept. Almighty001 (talk) 16:26, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The statement "In other words, the receiver uses four measurements to solve for four variables: x, y, z, and t." is cute but not informative. The receiver needs 4 measurements of time message sent, 4 measurements of time message received, and 2 measurements of distance of intersections to earth just to name a few. There is no basis for saying there are 4 measurements and 4 unknowns other than to come up with a cute sounding statement. The term user-friendly is trite, uninformative, and sounds like an ad for juveniles. Don't you understand that the readers have enough sense to tell if it is user friendly or not. This unsophisticated language is certainly not needed.RHB100 (talk) 00:46, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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Thanks for your support, but these guys are just trying to bully me---they hate me for some reason. I think its coz I mass-convasses one time... Ya, I was wrong to do that, but I seriously just want to get the right information on the telescope... Thanks for your support---I put your paragraph instead of mine after a while, coz I thought they got you to bully me as well. I ended up looking at your version, and it was good. Don't be to obliged for this article---I think they're acting out of hate, and sometimes, its a bit stronger since they have something to prove. Thanks anyway, InternetHero (talk) 17:27, 27 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have any problem with the idea of the IC-->SCPA shift. But there are a number of technical inaccuracies in the summary. I hope you won't mind if I just correct them.
PraeceptorIP (talk) 19:41, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just an FYI, This discussion is already on-going at Talk:Telescope. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 16:28, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PLEASE DO NOT Modify my TALK as you did here with unsigned inserted comments. Also you should refrain from "voting" for other editors and signing their names to it as you did here. Such edits can be considered vandalism. I appreciate your trying to organize the discussion but you should follow the guidelines re:inserting comments sequentially. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 17:18, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! OK, I just broke out 'It is dangerous to communicate' into its own sub-section, under 'They choose not to communicate'. I hope this addresses some of your points, although I realize it does not appear in the table of contents (the major section, 'they choose not to communicate', does). LouScheffer (talk) 03:23, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at that Lou. I think you did a good job and it makes the text more logically correct I think. I dont mind it not making it into the main table of contents because as a heading in the section '...choose not to...' it still achieves 'a skim read can get the main points' idea. I am faintly disappointed that the 'Crying baby in the woods' metaphor didnt make the cut but I can see it is possibly too over-the-top and might be seen as a bit histrionic.

Thanks for you time and efforts.WalrusLike (talk) 23:46, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Lou: Thanks for the support. I hope you will maintain some interest. Brews ohare (talk) 05:11, 13 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please take a look at Talk:Speed_of_light#Merged_proposal. See what you think, and thanks for the help. Brews ohare (talk) 18:33, 14 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Lou, I notice you've joined in editting some articles related to this discussion Noticeboard#Comments_by_an_expert_in_a_.22letter_to_the_editor.22_pure_opinion_Vs_plausible_expert_opinion_and_fact.. Your opinion there could be useful. Email me if you'd like a copy of the sources in question. Dicklyon (talk) 00:08, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I noticed your cogent points on the talk page of SETI. The criticism section is rather ridiculous right now (I even had to remove a quote by Michael Crichton, of all people!). While I believe there are good criticisms one can make of SETI, the current section is currently bogged down with weak ones. For example the notion that SETI is not falsifiable. And the idea that claims are not scientific unless they are falsifiable. I left a remark on the talk page. Regards. --C S (talk) 03:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In my revert of vandalism I noticed my inadvertent revert of of your following edit but I did not restore it. See Talk:Cassegrain reflector#Mention of Bonaventura Cavalieri for my reason. Sorry for the confusion. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 06:12, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Lou:

You're making great progress here.

I have some questions about the ideas behind your revisions. For example, in changing the link to Michelson-Morley back to the article on that subject and away from the discussion on Speed of light, what is the objectve? The Michelson-Morley article is referred to in the Speed of light section. It seems to me to be helpful to show the reader the section on Speed of light and then let them elect to go elsewhere if more detail is needed. The idea is: why have a section about this topic on Speed of light if it is better to go directly to Michelson-Morley? In principle (at least) the purpose of having it on Speed of light is to fit the topic into this context, or perhaps to provide a simpler summary that might be all the reader of this introductory article wants.

Another question is GPS: my prejudice is to spell out Global Positioning System because GPS is an acronym the reader may not understand. It is super-annoying to have things sprinkled with unidentified acronyms.

And another question is why the link to relativity is removed from the first appearance of relativity and placed at the second appearance?

Any thoughts? Brews ohare (talk) 23:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A tag has been placed on Ed Kane's Water Taxi requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a company or corporation, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such articles may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, as well as our subject-specific notability guideline for companies and corporations.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the page does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that they userfy the page or have a copy emailed to you. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 21:02, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Ed Kane's Water Taxi, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process because of the following concern:

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All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised because, even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 22:36, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have nominated Ed Kane's Water Taxi, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ed Kane's Water Taxi. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Hipocrite (talk) 00:14, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

it is now in "Electronic circuit verification", which is in "electronic design automation". If you think it is important to include in both, no objections. I agree it is a major design step. - Altenmann >t 17:14, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am afraid you are pointing to the wrong piece of FAQ: nobody argues that a page may be in many categories. The issue at hand is whether a page may be in several categories along the same hierarchy chain. You don't want a page, say, Synopsys to be in Category:Electronic design automation companies&&Electronic design automation &&Category:Electronic design && Category:Design &&Category:Visual arts &&Category:Skills && Category:Knowledge &&Category:Information &&Category:Fundamental && Category:Articles] && Category:Contents] (and it is probably not the longest chain :-). A more appropriate rule is Wikipedia:Categorization_and_subcategories#Duplicate_categorization_rule. - Altenmann >t 17:39, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is the wrong question, I think. Perhaps better is whether EDA is too big to understand flat, or needs to be sub-divided. I think it's not too big, and there should be a flat characterization (too big in my mental model is more or less whether it fits ona page). So I don't think it *needs* to sub-divided, and forcing it to be sub-divided removes important relationships. On the other hand it's handy and useful to have categories of only sub-topics, and it surely does not hurt to have both. That's why there are books and conferences on both EDA in general, and on specific sub-fields such as formal verification. So I'm not against smaller categories, just don't remove from the big one until and unless it becomes too big. LouScheffer (talk) 13:54, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for adding citations to the Agneau/Agnew section in Professor Moriarty. Of course it makes articles better the more citations there are, but surely the onus is on the contributor to back up his/her amendments to the article, rather than the reader? I far more frequently cruise around wikipedia idly reading articles than I do contribute to them, and if I encounter points which don't seem to be supported with sources I'll just tag them, I won't start searching around for supporting evidence. Wikipedia is there for the reader's convenience, not that of its contributors. Opera hat (talk) 20:16, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I understand the convenience factor. But if you add a "cite needed" to a fact that is both true and easily verified, you have introduced unnecessary doubt in many (21000 each month for this article) reader's minds, for no good reason. So if I come to a dubious statement I'll type in *one* google query with the relevant terms, and if it finds the answer I'll add the cite, otherwise the tag.

Sure, the original editor *should* have done this. But they didn't for whatever reason, and who knows when they will return to the page, or if they even know the syntax for adding references and cites. Conversely, I know how to add references, so if it's super easy to verify I'll add them. I like Wikipedia a lot and enjoy improving it when it's simple to do so. LouScheffer (talk) 03:40, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fair points. Maybe I am being overly lazy, and your one-google-search test seems a good one; I'll probably apply it more frequently in future. Opera hat (talk) 18:58, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bravo! Thanks for fixing this. I was prepared for a 3 week argument with Martin over this, as previous encounters suggest he believes in a Platonic universe of absolutes more real than anything measurable. Brews ohare (talk) 18:34, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well Lou, this is never going to end unless you play a part. Please take a look at Talk: Speed of light. Brews ohare (talk) 15:33, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I don't mind that you deleted my new paragraph because it is similar to what is already in the Drake's equation section. Fair point. However, that part (in the Drake's section) is in parentheses at the very end. I think this idea, that no civilization can use itself as a basis for statistical extrapolation on the chances of finding life elsewhere in the galaxy, is the most powerful idea in the whole Fermi's Paradox litany. It is abuse of this (what should be a) restriction that is causing so much of the misinformed debate. So it should not be relegated to footnote status in a section bearing a different name (Drake viz-a-viz Fermi) than the main article. So I would ask that you look at promoting this essential point to a much more prominent place in the article.

As an example, look at the new (9 July) comment on the discussion page, titled "Foolishness, all of it". This is typical misinformed commentary, oblivious to the restriction that we can't use Earth as a starting point for statistical deductions. Most people think along these lines. Wikipedia should be highlighting the basic flaw here. EricFlesch (talk) 22:15, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is a reasonable point, but also has some limitations when applied to the Fermi paradox. It's currently in the Drake equation portion since it's a very standard part of the Drake equation discussions, where it's pretty widely accepted. However, it's not as clear when applied to other sections of the Fermi paradox, since it only applies when a prerequisite MUST be attained before the question can be contemplated. For example, a civilization would not need to be technical, or self-destructive, or mathematical, or expansionist, or paranoid, to think about the Fermi paradox, whereas it *does* need to be intelligent. Therefore the anthropic bias argument has much less weight when applied to most other explanations of the Fermi paradox. However, at least a somewhat greater weight in the article seems reasonable.

Read the article on Inflation Theory - it is considered a scientific theory as it makes testable predictions - all of which have been verified to date. Also, even if it's not science, the entire subject of the Fermi Paradox is mostly pure speculation to begin with. I doubt we'll ever be able to test the Simulation Argument, but that's in the article. Mjk2357 (talk) 03:36, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that inflation, by itself, has lots of testable predictions. (The CMBR spatial anisotropies being the most well known, and not explained by any other theory.) But the multiverse versions seem inherently untestable, by the definition of universe as "all we can sense by any means". I agree that the simulation argument is also untestable, or very nearly so. That's why I don't think this point should be removed - just shortened, in particular since the author himself doesn't think too much of it. LouScheffer (talk) 05:04, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm fine with your shorter edit. To the degree to which I understand the math, it seems that multiverses are an inevitable consequence of inflation. Actually, there have been a number proposals to test directly for the existence of multiverses that have to do with black hole physics, the so-called "Dark Flow," etc., though none have yet returned conclusive results to my knowledge. Mjk2357 (talk) 18:31, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In accord with the edit notice ([8]), a portion of your evidence submission has been moved to the talk page.[9][10] None of the information has been deleted. Everything moved from the main evidence page is entirely preserved on the talk page. It is possible that the moved portion may require more supporting links to be appropriate for evidence or that the portion moved is simply more commentary than evidence. Please review the moved portion to decide if it needs revision as an evidence submission or if it should remain on the talk page as commentary. If you feel that this contribution was moved in error, please feel free to contact me to discuss the matter. Thank you for your understanding. Vassyana (talk) 07:48, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to find good science writers who may wish to help out. And with your sustained work on the Fermi Paradox, you classify as a good science writer. So, with swine flu (H1N1), I'm trying to get a good baseline of information, as well as key points such that, in children, a relapse with high fever may be bacterial pneumonia (presumably in adults as well). I think we can make a real difference. Please help out if you can. Thanks. Cool Nerd (talk) 21:44, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a possible further extension you might want to consider:

In unusual situations, a set of NOR gates with an incomplete set of mutual inhibitory connections has been used to realize a circuit with a set of meaningful stable states that is not a one-hot code, and having a number of stable states not equal to the number of NOR gates, but otherwise resembling the NOR-based flip-flap-flop.

Since the source is my own work, I won't touch it. See here. Dicklyon (talk) 18:29, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the link to Chip art, I enjoyed that. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 17:55, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In the FAC for Speed of light, I was asked for a page number in the citation you added in this edit. Could you please provide it? Thanks in advance. ― A._di_M.^{2nd Dramaout} (formerly Army1987) 19:34, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. It's on page 1. LouScheffer (talk) 20:45, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again. ― A._di_M.^{2nd Dramaout} (formerly Army1987) 21:09, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This revert goes against just about every policy and guideline. I asked you for good sourcing several times on the talk page and you produced none. Your revert also removed identifying characteristics essential to the topic, namely, that of an unpublished hypothesis. Can you give a reasonable explanation for your changes on the talk page please? Please refer to the MOS and our citation guidelines and content policies if this isn't making sense. Continuing to add unsourced OR is against policy. When your changes are disputed because of a failure to provide sources, you do not continue to add the dispute content. You use the talk page to discuss your proposed changes. Viriditas (talk) 01:32, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have done this, and provided the sources, direct from the source document. Please tell me, using these statements, where I am mistaken. And let other editors weigh in. LouScheffer (talk) 01:34, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You have not done this at all. Is there a language barrier here? You used the talk page to present an interpretation of a Wikipedia article. We do not do that. Do you understand what it means to "provide sources" and how to use them? Viriditas (talk) 01:38, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we are not allowed to use huge quotes without permission, so we need to paraphrase. You may call this interpreting, but it seems to me that "Astronomical observations have shown no signs of intelligent life" is about as clear of a summary as is possible of the arguments I quoted. How would you summarize the lines I have quoted on the talk page? LouScheffer (talk) 03:55, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Observable universe" encapsulated the paraphrase and does not indulge in OR. I still fail to see how your latest revert improved the previous version. Perhaps you forget what site this is and what we are doing here. Let me remind you then: This is a general encyclopedia where we formally describe concepts in the context of their adherents and attribute whenever necessary. This idea is classified as a hypothesis, and we describe it as such. The American social scientist who proposed this hypothesis in an unpublished paper, is properly described per encyclopedic style. That is to say, while you may not personally find it important in the short term, an encyclopedia takes a long term perspective, and we write for the general reader who may not be aware of who coined the concept. In other words, the information that you feel is useless has an intended purpose, and good encyclopedia style attempts to inform the reader whenever possible. Your continued removal of basic information from this article demonstrates your misunderstanding of how articles are written and for whom. In other words, the article is not being written for you. It is composed for readers who do not know the topic. Until you understand and acknowledge this fact, we will continue to have problems. The idea is correctly referred to as a hypothesis in the sources and the author is appropriately referred to as an American social scientist. You may not find this information important, but it is how we write for the reader, providing them with as much information as necessary to know who is proposing the idea and what kind of idea it is. Your most recent revert also removed a simple explanation of the idea in terms of the FP, and placed it in parentheticals, which is generally the opposite way of doing things; Parentheticals do not help the reader when a clear explanation will do. So again, I am confused by your edits, and fail to see how they have improved the coverage for our readers. Our job is not to muddy the waters, but to clarify and explain. Viriditas (talk) 07:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please stop adding unsourced original research to Wikipedia? The Fermi paradox is not dependent on "centuries of astronomical observations". Surely you must know this by now? Viriditas (talk) 13:22, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop adding unsourced material to Great Filter. Hanson does not say anything about "centuries of astronomical observations". Please stop adding it. Viriditas (talk) 09:27, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Our job is not to muddy the waters, but to clarify and explain." Exactly. Explanations (which do not advance positions i.e. conclusions) are permitted. Viriditas is editing against the consensus.--Michael C. Price ^talk 12:02, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus does not override core policies. You cannot interpret a primary source to say something it does not when we have reliable secondary sources that accurately describe the topic. It's also a good idea to stop removing maintenance tags when the problem has not been addressed and discussion is ongoing on the talk page. Viriditas (talk) 13:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind criticism, but I wonder why you didn't do it yourself. I hope you'll forgive me when I consider this a conversation between fluid containers. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 17:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't add it myself since (in my opinion) it was quite well referenced already (click on Milky way, and there is the star count, with 3 references, right in the infobox). Now if you think that's too indirect, that of course is your right, and I certainly have no quarrel with it. But if you care enough to add a rather complex "citation needed" type template, why not add a citation directly? The use of such a template indicates you have more than enough technical skill to find, and add, a good reference.

In my opinion, "citation needed" type templates can easily confuse the reader, who might wonder whether the claim is controversial, original research, or simply not referenced. So I prefer not to add them, and instead whenever I find a claim that seems unproven, if a one click search (google or another article) finds a good reference I'll add the reference instead. LouScheffer (talk) 18:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing complex about typing {{code|{{cn}}}}. As far as the necessity of the cite is concerned, you suffer from being knowledgeable in the field. I wouldn't have tagged it on my own, as I recalled something like 100 million, but it has been challenged, so an uncommented revert does not suffice. Would of course simplify things if we could just rely on the experts. ;)

As far as referencing another article is concerned, there are two problems with that. First, our articles are currently not reliable sources. Second, articles should be self-contained, because they might be reproduced in contexts outside of Wikipedia.

"confuse the reader": I wish someone finally did some solid research on our "target" audience. If you ask me for my personal opinion, I'd rather have a confused reader than one unaware of concerns about the stuff s/he's reading. But that's of course only me. Paradoctor (talk) 18:34, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm not sure whether you are watching this page that you created 4 years ago, but could you have a look at Talk:Multi-layer insulation? Han-Kwang (t) 17:26, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This edit [11] is word for word in google scholar search, a Czech article - so did they copy our article I wonder? Dougweller (talk) 21:17, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you type "although four satellites are required for normal" into Google scholar, you find 7 papers that use this very sentence (or other similar versions from Wikipedia) in scholarly references. Using the maxim that anything is possible if you don't care who gets the credit, I treat this as a complement. LouScheffer (talk) 22:16, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there seems to be quite a bit of copyvio from our article, I've mentioned several on the talk page. If I have time, I shall be forwarding some edits to some editorial boards. Dougweller (talk) 11:09, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Lou.

I just reverted an early July edit of yours on Atlas V where you removed a {{nonspecific}} tag. The tag had been added in good faith by an editor who actually could not verify the information in the cited source. Your edit comment did, however, supply sufficient info where a non-rocket scientist—one who does not know the esoteric meaning of the term "mass fraction" and who, in any case, could not have searched the 8-page article for "mass fraction" since mass fraction was not the term used in the original Wikipedia assertion. Of course, once your edit summary moves back into deep history, other non-rocket-scientist editors would not have been able to see your comment; so it would be lost again.

I have now fixed the citation, and removed the {{nonspecific}} tag for the right reason: the citation is now specific enough to verify.

In short, I don't think you should remove such tags unless the citation is fixed. Cheers. N2e (talk) 21:55, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You might be interested in some edits I've recently made to Fermi paradox (also see the talk page) and comments I've posted on Talk:Silencium universi. In particular, I have done some research which not only confirms my original claim that 'the Great Silence' is often used as a synonym for 'the Fermi Paradox', but suggests that it is not used otherwise. However, I do not want the article to be wrong, and if you know of any sources that demonstrate a distinct use of the 'Great Silence' (or 'silentium universi') terminology (other than the many copies of the old WP article), I'd like to see them. Also, no offence has been taken, and thanks for your interest. False vacuum (talk) 00:36, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Lou, please see new arguments on HST article discussion page, section that concerns "data is" issue. Here is the link for your convenience: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hubble_Space_Telescope#Discuss_changes_made_on_13.2F14_of_May —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nyq (talk • contribs) 14:55, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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Hi LouScheffer,

I just wanted to give you a heads-up about the next wiki-meetup happening in SF. It'll be located at our very own Wikimedia Foundation offices, and we'd love it if some local editors who are new to the meetup scene came and got some free lunch with us :) Please sign up on the meetup page if you're interested in attending, and I hope to see you soon! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It looks credible to me (the article, not the fruitcakes). Is there any reason why the New Scientist article isn't linked directly to that publication? Cheer, Jimfbleak - talk to me? 18:56, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the New Scientist article has a much less intuitive title, "Outsider physicists and the oh-my-god particle", and I thought the reader would be less likely to follow the link. LouScheffer (talk) 19:04, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, how do I do this?? Creation of this article seems to be blocked.... LouScheffer (talk) 21:01, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I never thought to check. Protection now removed, so you should be able to move the page to article space. The New Scientist bit isn't a big deal, I just prefer first hand refs. I suppose you could include a link to the original article in your ref, or add it as a second ref, but that's up to you Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:58, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Added article and fixed the ref to include links to both sources. LouScheffer (talk) 12:35, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for taking my "hint" and "acting boldly" about Wertheim vis a vis "circlons". Phaedrus7 (talk) 17:19, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As a current or past contributor to a related article, I thought I'd let you know about WikiProject Stanford University, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Stanford University. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks and related articles. Thanks!

Good call. The entry added by the IP was based on the entirely fictional tale told in Daylight (film), one of Sylvester Stallone's not-very-good movies. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:53, 15 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

	The Original Barnstar
	I'm more and more appreciating your contributions. Thanks! Woz2 (talk) 01:13, 19 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Mr. Scheffer, you made some comment recently to the effect that most users won't know what the Bancroft algorithm is. This provides a very good reason why we should mention the Bancroft algorithm as one of the methods we use to solve the navigation equations. By so doing we will have educated this person. He will know we use the Bancroft algorithm and he may have his curiosity stimulated to find out more about this very interesting mathematical algorithm. RHB100 (talk) 00:47, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi LouScheffer, thanks for your offer to edit the Berkeley Design Automation article. Unfortunately I do not see a response from the editor that blocked the original article. How do I go about requesting that it gets unblocked so you can edit it?24.9.124.182 (talk) 19:40, 11 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the followup on the references I added to the HVAR article. It is certainly a worthwhile convenience for anyone to be able to call up the "EATON CANYON" article with a simple click at the end of the article. HVAR seems to be very popular with model airplane builders. I get inquiries for details about HVAR and complaints about the confusing misinformation floating around about it and the so-called 3.5" family of Caltech rockets which are actually based on a 3.25" diameter motor. "EATON CANYON" and Mulvaney's Ordnance Tech Data Sheet should help eliminate much of the persistant confusion, at least w.r.t. HVAR. I've collected a fair amount of general information about these and several other rocket programs that might be of interest to you. Some has already been placed in Wiki articles (e.g. SM-65 Atlas) but most has not. It's a PDF file of about 17 MB that I will be glad to email to you (no charge) if you are interested. I like the sort of articles you are into and the help you give to less experienced Wikipedians such as myself. mdeanblack@yahoo.com Magneticlifeform (talk) 06:57, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for reviewing and editing my changes to the Drake equation article. Your edits and edit summaries are quite precise and greatly appreciated. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 16:37, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Again, thank you. 'Guesstimate' is slang, and in the in the first line was too much. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 00:21, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not angry, but I wanted to let you know that you shouldn't have cleaned up the complainer's mess on the Gas-generator cycle (rocket) page. If someone is going to go around selectively enforcing Wikipedia policy on their pet pages they need to know that passive aggression cuts both ways. Even if it just took a few minutes to fix doing so still enables the behavior. Non-constructive nitpicking is what drives potential editors away from this site so I try to take a stand against it.Sturmovik (talk) 06:37, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Natural Philosophy Alliance is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Natural Philosophy Alliance (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

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[12]. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 16:54, 1 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can assure you that Spherical cow is far more relevant to Unobtanium than Widget, an entry I moved to place the list of links in alphabetical order. Furthermore, Adamantium, Mithril and Vibranium are all part of the List of fictional elements, materials, isotopes and atomic particles already linked in the same section. There's no need to list them again. Why just those three? Why not all the others too? They have virtually nothing in common with Unobtanium beyond the notion that they're fictional. 71.236.145.234 (talk) 16:22, 25 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly agree on taking out any entries that already appear in the article. On the other hand, spherical cow is not related to unobtainium, in my opinion. The only thing they have in common is that they are both imaginary. The cow would not work better for any application if was spherical, nor is there an application that works poorly for normal cows but would be much better with spherical ones. Instead, it's an approximation used since the real cow is complex. There is no sense of whether this approximation is better or worse than a real cow; it's just that it's possible to analyze it where the real cow cannot be used. This is very different from the idea underlying unobtainium. LouScheffer (talk) 18:18, 25 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Removed widget. Also removed the link to (real) materials in science fiction, since they really exist. Pointed out that the 3 examples are just that, examples. (But they are among the more common examples. At least I had heard of them, as opposed to many materials in the list). Also, they share with unobtainium that they are hard to get but have spectacular properties. Further changes and improvements are of course welcome, LouScheffer (talk) 18:30, 25 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for starting it. I heared one of the Maven people say: Nasa said the electra module is on the payload system, so we said yes we will take it with ous, but Nasa said no you also have to connect it. So Maven like all other orbiters does not like to be the relay for the rovers, but somebody must do the job. --Stone (talk) 21:30, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Do you have to be edit warring in the article that is on the front page? Don't you think it would be better to discuss instead? What's more you have now littered the article with spelling errors. It's duplexer, not diplexer. Yes, a diplexer can be used in reverse, but so can any multiplexer. This article is about filters and as you said yourself in the edit summary, duplexers do not "have" to be a filter design. SpinningSpark 13:27, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Hello LouScheffer,

Re the missile, please see background to issue and my more detailed reasoning at Talk:Malaysia Airlines#Missile?. Regards, 220 of ^Borg 15:40, 20 July 2014 (UTC).[reply]

• If there was any dispute, then I'd agree with you. But I've seen zero dispute over *whether* it was shot down, though plenty of dispute over who did it. At this point, saying merely that is was downed are a case of Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words, implying that there is some controversy where none exists. LouScheffer (talk) 18:36, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the way it was worded wasn't the best, but what I was trying to do was mainly keep consistency within WP. The level of detail other editors were adding at Boeing 777 was not really necessary. Let alone causing inconsistency between the 777 page, Malaysian Airlines(MA) (also causing inconsistent text on the same page) and inconsistent with the 'main' article page at Malaysian Airlines Flight 17.--220 of ^Borg 04:46, 21 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My opinion is that consistency here is not what is needed. For a reader of the 777 article, high odds of an outside force are enough, and plenty of reputable sources state this. For the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 article more detail is warranted. For example, if an air-to-air missile was the cause, the picture would change completely. So it makes sense that the flight 17 article makes the point that a (ground to air) missile is not yet formally confirmed. LouScheffer (talk) 20:55, 21 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I have no problem with it, in general. I just realised, literally,that what was at the back of my mind was probably the mid-air explosion of TWA Flight 800 in 1996. Initial speculation blamed that on a missile, but after a long investigation turned out to be a fuel tank explosion caused by short-circuited wiring. 220 of ^Borg 02:49, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is not just that mathematicians have found a flaw in his argument, they have shown that it is impossible to use a strategy such as Otelbaev's to prove wellposedness:

http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/finite-time-blowup-for-an-averaged-three-dimensional-navier-stokes-equation/ http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.0290 http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/finite-time-blowup-for-an-averaged-three-dimensional-navier-stokes-equation/#comment-271071

Terrence Tao is a fields medallist. It should be noted that such a obstruction to such strategy has been known for decades by the fluids community.

Otelbaev's paper does not belong on the wiki. There are many influential papers that are not on the wiki such as:

Partial regularity of suitable weak solutions of the navier‐stokes equations, L Caffarelli, R Kohn, L Nirenberg Direction of vorticity and the problem of global regularity for the Navier-Stokes equations, P Constantin, C Fefferman Navier-Stokes equations with lower bounds on the pressure,G Seregin, V Šverák

or for possible blow-up of related Euler equations

Finite Time Blow-up of a 3D Model for Incompressible Euler Equations, Thomas Y. Hou, Zhen Lei

Although I don't think the wiki should be a list of papers on the NSE, especially those which have been discredited.

AnonymousMath (talk) 12:52, 9 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The goal of a Wikipedia article is not to interpret the latest mathematical thinking on the problem (as Tao does). The main criteria is notability, and you cannot get much more notable than by being the subject of an article in Nature, perhaps the pre-eminent scientific journal in the world. Discredited proofs are part of the history of the problem, as well. They are features in the articles on the four color theorem and Fermat's last theorem, for example. LouScheffer (talk) 22:48, 9 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is a news article of Nature not a journal article on Nature. Indeed Nature has no mathematical journals. So I would disagree, Nature is not at all notable in the area of mathematics. If this work was notable then he would be cited by other experts in the field which it clearly is not. Those two wikis mention proofs that stood for a long time and introduced new ideas. Otelbaev's proof was very quickly discredited and is widely believed to contain no new ideas -- indeed that article you referenced says as much. AnonymousMath (talk) 10:58, 10 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think you have this backwards. A news article is evidence of notability - something that Nature thinks will be of general interest (not just to mathematicians, who as you point out are not Nature's audience anyway.) And the P versus NP problem shows a discredited result can still be news-worthy. LouScheffer (talk) 13:19, 10 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The article International Symposium on Physical Design has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

no evidence of importance

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The article AvTurf has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Appears promotional. GNG is questioned. FAA source appears to be misused.

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A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Fringe science organizations is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

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I have reported your revert to WP:NORN#Pioneer anomaly. jps (talk) 20:37, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:37, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Fermi paradox. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. Jim1138 (talk) 00:17, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, please familiarize yourself with WP:BRD and wp:consensus. Thank you Jim1138 (talk) 00:30, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Jim1138:Hi, Jim! I edited the talk page before making any changes, outlined my reasons for the change, and included "please talk" in the initial edit summary, even before the first revert. Each of my reverts has been accompanied on the talk page with additional reasoning. Reverts of my edits, on the other hand, have happened with no discussion on the talk page. While edit-warring is of course undesirable, I think I've been acting in "good faith". It's quite hard to reach a concensus when one party reverts, citing no concensus, says please move to talk, but does not participate in the discussion. LouScheffer (talk) 00:51, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lou, you revert after two editors (BatteryIncluded and I) felt differently than you did, and you did this rather quickly, without letting possibly other editors even comment at talk. You might have given it a few days at least. I'm not trying to monopolize the talk there, but, rather, wait for others to weigh in. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 00:58, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) If someone reverts you and asks that it be discussed in talk, generally consensus should be reached before restoring your edit to the page. This is the WP:BRD approach. As the edit was done by one editor and your restore was undone by a second editor twice, it would be a good idea to get both editors' input. Things do move a bit slow sometimes. You can wp:ping the other editors or leave a note on their talk page. This may or may not speed things up. Cheers Jim1138 (talk) 03:03, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Isambard Kingdom:@Jim1138:Hi, Isambard and Jim! BatteryIncluded made the initial change with no reasons given, either in edit summary or talk. I felt it was wrong, for the reasons I've explained on talk, but waited a day to see if anyone else thought so too. When there was no other response, I outlined the reasons on talk first, then reverted, and requested discussed on talk in the edit summary (as Jim1138 recommends above). I was therefore expecting no revert without discussion of the issues. In general I believe in proportionate response. If a change is made with no explanation, I feel free to change it (though I always try to provide a reason). If there are reasons given in the edit summary, then I'll also give reasons in the summary for any changes I make (especially reverts). And if someone explains their reasoning on the talk page, then I don't revert unless I've at least explained where I disagree with their reasoning on the talk page. I hope you agree that the current version is an improvement - if not I'm not offended, but please explain your reasoning. LouScheffer (talk) 03:19, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lou, your first revert was quite acceptable. It was the second and, especially, the third that brought you into the realm EW. Best to have stopped after the first and continued discussion on the talk page. Thanks Jim1138 (talk) 03:30, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(cont) Really, there is no rush to put in those corrections. Cheers Jim1138 (talk)

Lou, thank you for taking out redundant material. And thank you for being communicative. Sincerely, Isambard Kingdom (talk) 03:37, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, and no hard feelings, LouScheffer (talk) 04:33, 24 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

    There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding your behaviour in a talk page. The thread is Uncivility problems in Talk:Third-party evidence for Apollo Moon landings.  Thank you. Elendaíl (talk) 00:32, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Lou,

This is regarding the "Attempted solution" section for the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness page. While I understand that nature mentioned this proof attempt in an article, I still think it should not be included. No serious mathematician takes it seriously. Furthermore, it doesn't seem that this proof attempt teaches anything new about the problem. So there's nothing notable about this attempt apart from the fact that it managed to get a mention in a nature news article. It also wasn't a big news event unlike some other famous mistakes. I don't think wikipedia is supposed to be a dumping ground for every factoid that can be traced to a press mention, even if the fact is not informative so I don't this section should be included on the page. Please let me know your thoughts. Tmfs10 (talk) 03:29, 8 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Thanks for the civil conversation. I agree with a lot of your reasoning, and I understand that most think this approach is not particularly promising. However, I think this should be included as an example (to the casual reader) of how mathematics works. And it's not out of line with other articles such as P=NP, four color theorem, and Fermat's last theorem, which report on unsuccessful methods, some repaired and some not. I started a section on the talk page of the article, since others may want to weigh in on this topic. LouScheffer (talk) 12:19, 8 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently you believe that an edit I made "resulted in statements that are not technically true". I do not believe my edit changed the veracity of the text at all. Nor can I see how such things as removing one of two spaces after a comma, or replacing "i.e." with "such that" could cause you problems. If you are going to undo edits that someone has taken the time to think about and make, perhaps in future you would explain as clearly as possible what your problem was, and only undo the bits that actually bothered you. 222.29.61.49 (talk) 15:19, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the "such" and two spaces were fine edits. But they were combined with others that are not so good, IMO. The "major" is needed - the reader should know right away that this is perhaps the most important open problem in all of computer science. The "informally" is needed too, since "quickly" super useful to the casual reader, but not well defined. Godel mentioned one of the most important implications of the problem, but did not discuss the problem itself. So it's an early reference but not an exact one. I believe all these points are made on the talk page of the article, as well. I also alluded to them in the edit summary. LouScheffer (talk) 16:10, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lou, I apologise for my recent and overly strident reverts of your contributions at Fermi Paradox regarding physical colonisation and communication. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 13:23, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. Though I don't always agree in the details, I appreciate your effort to keep it fact-based, insofar as this is possible on such a speculative topic. LouScheffer (talk) 13:55, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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I made an edit supported by guidelines. A couple of people undid it without explaining why, so I asked for the guideline which supported the alternative, as I was not aware of it. You undid my edit yet again, and yet again without bothering to link to any guideline. Did you edit because you thought there was a guideline supporting your edit? If so, why didn't you say what it was? If not, why did you edit? 27pc (talk) 02:10, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I explained why in the edit summary, then added the detailed guideline on the talk page. Better to discuss there where others can weigh in. LouScheffer (talk) 02:34, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You didn't at any point explain which guideline you were following. It was not a trick question. The article can be discussed on the article talk page. I want to discuss your conduct here. Did you edit because you thought there was a guideline supporting your edit? If so, why didn't you say what it was? If not, why did you edit? 27pc (talk) 06:05, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Guidelines are just that, guidelines. They are to be followed, unless there is a reason. So when violating a guideline, the response is usually a reason, not another guideline.

Also, guidelines often conflict. In this case, there is a guideline that says they lead paragraph should be easy to read and have only the most useful information, and the ways a reader can get to the page should be bolded, so they know they are in the right place, particularly in the case of re-directs. But for `Oumuamua there are 4 ways (current names and old names), two of which will hardly ever be used, as they were replaced by the new names. This violates the guidelines on clutter and importance.

So the compromise was to put the old names in the Nomenclature section, but bold them so someone who follows a redirect knows they are in the right place. This was discussed on Talk:ʻOumuamua#First bold subject of the lead, and agreed to (by other editors accepting this edit). It's the reason I specified in the edit summary when you removed the bolded text, and I changed it back.

Later, I found there is an actual Wikipedia guideline for this case, which is exactly what we did. I added the explanation to the talk page under Talk:ʻOumuamua#Bold text in Nomenclature section. But I did not know that was an actual written guideline at the time I reverted, nor is it needed to explain why.

I hope this helps. Wikipedia has lots of conflicting ideas, and not everyone agrees. If it makes you feel better, my edits also get reverted, often without explanation. Then the next step is to try to understand why. Sometimes it's just an opinion about what is better, but other times there are good reasons. LouScheffer (talk) 13:05, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your recent edit, you added a solid ref to my offhand point about central obstruction MTF effects in Ritchey–Chrétien telescopes. However, your edit seems to have obliterated my key point: RC benefits come at the expense of exaggerated obstruction size. RCs are the worst at this effect compared to other Cassegrain types, due to (1) the way the optical prescription formulas work out to enlarge the obstruction vs other Cassegrains, and (2) that the RC is ubiquitous because it removes (certain) aberrations at low f/numbers better than anything else but low RC f/numbers also generate exaggerated obstructions. If we considered this lumpy MTF as a kind of aberration, which it is, RCs would be more justly understood as not deserving the free-lunch one-size-fits-all magic reputation. So I hope you and/or I can edit this point back into the text, in this article where it is relevant, being a distinctive weakness of RCs that is often not depreciated. RCs solve a lot of problems, but this MTF effect can be a spoiler.

Another RC weakness that should be noted is that collimation is a nightmare without elaborate/expensive tools. The RC is extremely sensitive to miscollimation. All that low-aberration performance is lost in real practice than a cheaper alternative. The collimation downtime and overhead are a notable disadvantage. What's your point of view on that? The article seems unbalanced fandom if it doesn't cite these trade-offs.

My view is based on my general satisfaction but slight disappointment in owning an RC. Stars are sharp; planets are sharp bowls of mush. Richard J Kinch (talk) 16:36, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I included the mathematical effects, but not the viewing effects, since there seems to be no concensus on this issue. Many argue as you do, but the opposite view is also common. See, for example, Refractor or Reflector – Which is “Best” for Astrophotography? or Telescope Optics Myths. The general argument is that a 150 mm refractor might beat a 150 mm RC, but it's many times more expensive and hard to mount. For a similar price you could get a 300 mm reflector, where the larger aperture helps more than the central obstruction hurts.

The collimation argument is interesting. Im looking for a serious references. LouScheffer (talk) 22:34, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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science in science fiction

Thank you for quality articles such as QUIET, Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation, Signal integrity and Materials science in science fiction, for service from 2005, for " Wikipedia has lots of conflicting ideas", - Lou, you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:51, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A year ago, you were recipient no. 2188 of Precious, a prize of QAI! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:18, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I just wanted to thank you for keeping the LSST article up to date. Those of us involved in LSST haven't been editing the page with the various exciting bits of public news, but I'm very glad that someone is. If you have any questions or want to make some collaborative edits, please message me! - Parejkoj (talk) 15:43, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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Hey, Lou! You made a comment at this talk that I wanted to discuss, and I didn't want to get off track there with the main discussion. You said In general, I believe many technical articles are not written by starting with a specific source, and then distilling it. Instead, an editor creates an overview of the main ideas from a whole field - ideas that have been around for decades and are entirely non-controversial. As the field evolves through various technical articles, there in fact may be no simplified description phrased the same way as the wikipedia article. In fact, this synopsis is exactly what the Wikipedia article is meant to provide. I don't write technical articles, so I can't speak for editors like you who do, but you may want to get input from those writers about this. There may be no simplified description phrased exactly the same way as the WP article -- in fact, there shouldn't be unless they're copying from us or we're both copying from a public domain source -- but if no one is saying anything like it in any reliable source that we can paraphrase, we shouldn't be saying it either.

In general, our advice for writing articles is to gather your sources, then start writing from those sources. WP values experts like you, but writing for WP is different than writing for the academy. We're not writing for other experts in a field. We're writing for eighth-graders and people whose first language isn't English. —valereee (talk) 12:19, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for a courteous and thoughtful comment. However, I think you are missing something. Technical articles on Wikipedia have a quite different (and dare I say, more pleasant) set of norms and procedures than more general pages. Statements that are wrong are jumped on immediately, resulting in articles that are quite reliable. There is a strong emphasis on why a technique is used, and what its advantages and disadvantages are, which is wonderful (most math textbooks simply tell you what how a technique works, not its plusses and minuses). Verification of reliable sources is quite different - it's expected the verifier, (who is already familiar with the field, or willing to learn) will take the time to read and understand the reference, then see if the statement in the article is supported. This is much more similar to peer review, where the 'peer' implies the reviewer is already familiar with the field as a whole. Socially, discussions typically happen on the talk page first, then are reflected in the article after consensus, not by dropping tags into an article and expecting a response.

For an example of this difference, see perhaps Singular Value Decomposition and its talk page. (I have had nothing to do with this page, so I'm neutral in that respect.) Articles like this are a wonderful feature of Wikipedia - more accessible and more readable than math books, free for all, and quite accurate.

Overall, I think that when many editors of Wikipedia speak of norms, or consensus, or verification, they often confuse how they view wikipedia, with how it is viewed in different contexts. LouScheffer (talk) 16:54, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Lou, I can tell you that the article as it is wouldn't pass a DYK review, the lowest-level peer review process on Wikipedia. But I'm interested in learning more.

Pinging Pbsouthwood, who is both highly experienced and a writer of technology articles. Peter, LouScheffer is a subject-expert editor who has written many tech articles. This discussion started at the article talk when I added a couple of citation needed tags to an article they created in 2007 and LS objected, saying they weren't necessary and that tech articles are written differently from other Wikipedia articles and don't need the same level of sourcing. I don't write about tech myself. —valereee (talk) 11:01, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As a followup, rather than Singular Value Decomposition, which doesn't have an assessment, let's instead look at something like Halin graph, which recently became a Good Article, or Air-Cobot, which became one in 2016 and had only one uncited para (I tagged it). Any other recent Good Article or Featured Article, I'd be happy to use as an example. —valereee (talk) 11:23, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Valereee! Comparing these two is fine. I would argue that in terms of what Wikipedia is for, Singular Value Decomposition is a much more valuable article. It's read by more than 1700 people per day, whereas Halin graph is read by 6 - see [13]. It outlines many more practical uses.

Mathematics is a much older enterprise than Wikipedia, and values correctness even more. It has evolved different ways to do this. An article's worth of statements is verified all at once (peer review). Then anyone is free to question any statement in the article. There are several possible responses to this. The least convincing is a pointer to another article. More convincing is a proof of the step in question. Still more convincing is the same step, proved independently by different techniques. Most convincing of all is an formal proof, where every single step is explicitly written out and checked by computer against the basic rules of mathematics. This last method is incredibly tedious but is becoming more practical as computer assistance improves. See Four color theorem for an example. In particular, appeal to authority (the Wikipedia gold standard) is considered the least reliable verification method in math. Lots of eyes on the problem, each calling out any error they see, is the norm.

Articles such as Singular value decomposition are heirs to this tradition. Any one of the more than half a million readers each year can point out any error that they see. This is normally done on the talk page. If the error is real, an editor fixes the article. The article also contains sections where references are important, such as Numerical Approach and History. In these sections references are provided.

Overall, I think the Wikipedia way of ensuring correctness (a reference for every statement) is not the only way. Mathematics is older, and more reliably true, than Wikipedia. These methods should not be dismissed. LouScheffer (talk) 12:51, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Valereee, LouScheffer makes several good points, though I may not necessarily agree with them entirely on everything. Firstly, the requirement is verifiability, not that every statement is backed up by a specified statement in a specified source, particularly on non-controversial topics that are well understood and generally accepted in a technical field (medical claims excepted). When one is very familiar with a technical topic, it may be hard to see, a priori, what the readers will need to have verified in the text, as there are many levels of knowledge and familiarity with a topic, and many technical topics are not controversial to any significant degree. Many things work, and how they work is understood, demonstrated in practice, adequately documented, and may have reached the status of standard practice. It is necessary to make some assumptions about the foundational knowledge of the readers, and for some readers these assumptions will be wrong. If one starts with the assumption that most readers will know nothing about a topic, then one writes a primer, a basic introductory text, which is a useful thing to have in an encyclopedia, but there are also aspects of topics thar require sufficient foundational knowledge to be comprehensible within a reasonably sized article and in those cases one must assume that background exists. When someone tags one of the statements that one has assumed that they will already be familiar with, it may be that they need to read another article first, that explains that aspect in more detail. Wikilinks are very useful for this, but sometimes the point must be rewritten to make good use of links.

When the writer is very familiar with a topic, it is efficient to plan the structure of the article around what one considers relevant content, and an order which will make the content easier to follow. This can result in writing the basic content first, then referring the reader to sources which support the content, but not necessarily in the same order, or scattered around a bit. This is how technical educational texts are often written, because if the text one wanted had already been written, it would not be necessary to write it again.

In my own experience, this is how I write when I can. I write after carefully researching the details of a topic when I must, because the familiarity is not sufficient. Often it is a bit of each.

That said, It is expected of a Wikipedia editor to add a reference on request, and I will do that in most cases when I can find one without wasting too much time, but sometimes I don't have access to the sources I need at the time, and it may have to wait. If I think a request for clarification or citation is frivolous I will ask for a second opinion or just leave the tag until something comes up. When in doubt, it may be easier to just add another citation sometime. This applies to generalities. It is almost always better to provide a source to back up a highly specific claim, which would be the case for a dyk hook.

I hope this is sufficiently relevant to be useful in this context. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 15:36, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Pbsouthwood! (Please let me know if you'd prefer not to be pinged again here.) I do understand that there may be statements that are difficult to source, especially for an expert who learned that stuff long ago and uses the knowledge regularly. For me the problem is that for a subject-area expert editor, assessing which assertions are general knowledge for the average reader is probably challenging. I literally have zero idea what either of the passages I've tagged even mean lol. My knowledge base is in vastly different directions.

LouScheffer, the SVP article may seem to you like an excellent example for us to use to discuss, but for me it's not (because while as I do see it has many uncited sections, it's probably mostly being edited by people with the specialized knowledge it takes to overlook that lack of sourcing) as it hasn't passed a GA review so it's not useful for showing me that an article with large numbers of uncited sections (excepting things like sections on routine calculations) will fly at peer review. Can you find an article that has recently (say in the past five years) been passed for GA that has that few citations? If math is what you're looking for, would Pell's equation work? It passed GA in 2020. If not, there are lists of GA for math at Wikipedia:Good_articles/Mathematics#Mathematics_and_mathematicians and for engineering at Wikipedia:Good_articles/Engineering_and_technology#Computing_and_engineering. —valereee (talk) 15:59, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. On the Internet no-one knows you are a dog, but on Wikipedia, no-one knows that an article was written by an expert (unless, perhaps, they are also an expert on the same topic). Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 15:42, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Or they're pretty good at online stalking lol... —valereee (talk) 16:00, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And take the trouble to check who wrote what. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:27, 21 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some notes (in no order) LouScheffer (talk) 02:17, 21 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• (a) Looking at the list of good articles, they are almost all on less popular topics. For example, the non-GA article Eigenvalues and eigenvectors is more widely read than the first 10 good articles combined (see page views.) So the article users think are good and the articles Wikipedia thinks are good may not coincide.
• (b) I think your statement "it's probably mostly being edited by people with the specialized knowledge it takes to overlook that lack of sourcing" is dead on. In addition, it's also being read by such people. So maybe requiring sourcing is not the best way to improve such articles.
• (c) In general, the articles are being written by experts. Who else would even want to write an article on SVD?
• (d) The quality is high because the articles are constantly being read by experts or near experts who will flag any errors. Why would an expert read a Wikipedia article (as opposed to writing one)? In my experience, if you talk to a technical expert, and you ask them something that they cannot answer off the top of their head, the first thing they will do is check Wikipedia. It's much easier than trying to grab a book off the shelf and leaf through it. If Wikipedia fails you, then you grab the textbook. But Wikipedia supplies what you need a surprising amount of the time, often because the expert has seen the topic before (often long ago) and just needs to be reminded.
• (e) In technical fields, editors often write under their own name. This helps politeness in my experience. Editors who work under non-real user names often seem to feel free to blast other editors, make unreasonable demands, INSIST that they are right, believe they have Wikipedia policy behind them when they do not understand it themselves, and otherwise behave badly. People posting under their real name seldom do these things, as it reflects badly on them, not on their target.
• (f) Looking at some of the good articles, Vector space is heavily cited, but not in a useful way (in my opinion). The references span 31 textbooks, most not online. If I have a question about a statement, it's likely *why* this is true, not *whether* this is true. The text may or may not help, and it's a lot of trouble to go get it in the first place, particularly if you do not have access to a university library. In contrast, Pell's equation seems to have roughly one reference per section, not per statement. This is more appropriate level of reference in my opinion.
• (g) An alternative to references to each statement might be a statement, by one or more named expert(s), that they believe this article (as of a given date) is essentially correct. Some on-line journals, such as eLife are going in this direction. The reviews are published along with the article, under the reviewer's name. This is a potentially different way to determine if something is a "good article". — Preceding unsigned comment added by LouScheffer (talk • contribs)

LouScheffer, a few comments on your comments:

• (a) Number of views/popularity is a poor indicator of quality, more an indication of usefulness. GA status is also of limited value as an indicator of quality, as the reviewer may know little about the topic, it just shows that the article is not obviously wrong or incomplete, and it follows the manual of style. It does not have to be very useful, but it has to have at least one reference for every paragraph.
• (b) May be true in specialist fields. In other fields, it can be very much not so. Nevertheless sourcing is useful as it helps with further research.
• (c) Probably true in proportion to how technical the topic is, and inversely to popularity.
• (d) Interesting point, may be worth a study.
• (e) Fits with my experience.
• (f) No opinion, not my field.
• (g) OK for a static article, not sure how it would work with work in progress, which is typical of Wikipedia articles. References remain useful, and in theory can be used to check whether the current content is accurate.

For many fields opinion is a major factor, Wikipedia's rules for verifiability serve as a filter for minority and outright loony opinions, so we hope to present mostly mainstream and even expert opinions. It may not be ideal but it sort of works well enough most of the time. Similar comments apply to notability requirements. We are working in the same environment as people writing about law, economics, politics, religion, sport, and entertainment. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:21, 21 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lou, re: f: yes, it's fine to have only one source per paragraph; in general it indicates the entire paragraph came from that source, and it usually is inserted at the end of the paragraph. If you'll recall, the first cn I dropped into that article was for a paragraph that did have a source in the middle of it, followed by several sentences that didn't appear to have a source. I added the tag at the end of the paragraph, which is the normal place to request a source for information you feel needs one but isn't dubious. (If I'd felt those assertions were dubious, I'd likely have tagged each of them, then circled back in a week to see if they'd been fixed and removed them if they hadn't.) Vector space isn't recent GA, it was promoted in like 2008, so again not a good example. —valereee (talk) 15:22, 21 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Peter Southwood says "We are working in the same environment as people writing about law, economics, politics, religion, sport, and entertainment.". This, I think, is the problem. Wikipedia has evolved rules that makes sense in these environments. Technical fields have evolved a different set of rules, suitable to their environment. Editors from non-technical fields wander into technical articles, and start demanding they adapt the standards from more controversial fields, despite (a) not being familiar with the field, so they don't know what is uncontroversial common knowledge in the field, and (b) being oblivious to the existing Wikipedia culture of the editors of such articles. This has several ill effects, primarily driving away technical editors (who often do not like controversy and argument), and un-productively using the time of the technical editors who remain (many of whom have fulltime jobs in the fields in which they edit). Wikipedia already has different conventions for different article types - "biographies of living people" is a prime example. The same courtesy should be extended to the field of editors of technical articles. LouScheffer (talk) 16:48, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We do tend to be a bit Procrustean at times, but there is also some advantage to keeping the rule set small and universal where possible. It makes it slightly less difficult for the ordinary editor to get started and survive long enough to do something useful. If you feel that a request for citation is unreasonable, ask the tagger to explain what they see as the problem. If it is not urgent, leave it until someday you chance on a suitable source, then add it. Maybe someone else will do it and save you the trouble. Maybe their citation will open up a new opportunity to find out something to improve the article, or your own knowledge of the topic. I often tag my own work to remind me to add citations some day, not because I have any fear that the statements are controversial, but because references are useful, but I don't have easy access to an appropriate one at the time. Often when I find one it inspires me to expand or clarify the existing content. Maybe we need two types of "citation needed" tag, one to challenge a dubious statement or one which policy requires must be backed up by a reliable source, the other just to point out that it would be nice to have a citation for that statement for further research. Maybe "Citation requested", or "Citation recommended", with a parameter to explain why. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 17:49, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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