Talk:Albert Einstein/Archive 4

message: While the article is excellent, it misses two important points:
# The fact that, from an early age, Einstein went off religion (apparently it made no sense to him)
# His continued work against nuclear warfare in the last 10 years of his life.
203.129.48.8 06:52, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Omissions 

message: The career details are incomplete around 1900. It doesn't say when he started work at the patent office. CalJW 05:06, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there is some unreverted vandalism in the article.  Look here ; there is a much better discussion of the miracle year.  If I have time, I will try to put the missing text back.  Pfalstad 17:23, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I fixed this.  Pfalstad 22:54, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. It looks like someone (who was also anonymous) removed vandalism instead of reverting it. I do wish people would check to see what was changed, before cleaning up vandalism. 194.200.237.219 15:35, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Gap in the career outline

message: User:EarthBoundX5 added a loooong list of quotations and appended a COPYRIGHT notice.  I removed the list.  EarthBoundX5, please add these quotations to Wikiquotes if they are not in fact copyrighted.  (How the heck can quotations by Einstein be copyrighted, anyway?  Even by the Hebrew University, much less by this Kevin Harris?).  EarthBoundX5's only other contrib has been an apparent hoax article up for AfD.---CH  (talk) 19:29, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you made the right call on the removal. Aside from that... quotations can be copyrighted like any text but their use is usually considered "fair use" since they are usually such a small part of the overall work. There are more details at the Wikiquote copyright page if you'd like more information on how copyright law applies to quotations. --Fastfission 12:08, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotations 

message: made some changes that I reverted and I thought I would explain why. 
#I think the citizenship information was added because of endless disputes as to whether Einstein was German or American or whatever or not. I think it is a sensible thing to leave it in even if it is not ideal, because it stems off problems. 
#I don't know or care who is the "greatest physicist" but I think it is true that Einstein is "widely regarded" as the greatest scientist. I think "widely" here means "more than just the physics community", for one thing, but I also doubt that there is much "hard data" on whether or not Newton or Gauss is considered "better". If there is hard data, it should be added in the article somewhere (and cited) but doesn't need to be in the lead section, much less with an awkward note which references a basically empty statement. 
Just my feelings on it, and why I reverted these changes. --Fastfission 02:07, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Nationality & "who is the greatest"

message: I've been watching this page for a while and i've seen it being vandalized quite so often. Isn't there any mechanism in wikipedia to prevent changes to a page unless reviewed ? At least for frequently vandalized pages, one would have to spend a nontrivial amount of time checking if someone's added some crap. Manik Raina 13:40, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea tough it would not help much as revision would take time as well. Still, it is an idea and probably the best place to present it is at Village pump. -- Svest 17:15, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem with this system is that it gets rid of the Wiki philosophy that anyone can edit at any time. There are methods for page protection but those are only used in very limited circumstances. I don't think it's a big deal, it's not usually very hard to undo vandalism. --Fastfission 00:36, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that this article seems to be vandalized at least once a day on average.  Unfortunately, frequent reversion means that the article is gradually deteriorating over time.  Pages can be more or less protected, but this is usually reserved for the highest profile pages like the Wikipedia main page, so I am not optimistic.  If it were protected, naturally I'd like to see a nice clean (readable, minimally controversial) version protected.  Aye, there's the rub; others will want to protect their own version, possibly with a passion. ---CH  (talk) 00:47, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed folks, thanks for replying. Have a good day Manik Raina 01:58, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I notice that all the vandalism comes from anonymous IP numbers. If Wikipedia editors had to take the single additional step of first logging in—under any pseudonyme they like, even as ridiculous as, say "Wetman"— the thoughtless, spur-of-the-moment vandalism, here and at Leonardo or Michelangelo etc etc, would be largely elimninated, with no loss of anonymity...after all, who is "Wetman"? --Wetman 13:51, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Frequent vandalism 

message: I have to say that I agree with Fastfission, FayssalF, and other users that recent attempts to insert comments into the introduction of this article have been disruptive and should be reverted.  
The offenders, who are trying to discuss citizenship, etc. in the first paragraphs, should argue their views in this talk page if they desire instead of continuing to insert badly written material in a way which (in my view) disrupts the flow.  
My own view is that Einstein was by his own account about as far from being a "nationalist" as is possible, and that there is in any case little point in explaining at great length various tangled attempts by patriotic citizens of various countries to claim figures like Einstein or Euler, etc., as citizens of Switzerland or wherever.  However, if someone wants to argue that this is somehow a terribly important (despite Einstein's own views), let's discuss here where the best place to insert this material into the article might be, in terms of not disrupting what readability the article has left after so many previous careless edits has led to a certain "incoherence creep". ---CH  (talk) 00:47, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction

message: Hi, 24.253.120.206, I yield to no individual in my admiration of Albert Einstein's scientific work, but  I am not sure that any single person really deserves to be called the Father of Modern Physics.  Several others, such as Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, and Dirac, also played crucial roles in the rise of modern physics.  In fact, there are very few cases in modern science in which one person could really be called the undisputed father of any subject.  For example, hardly anyone who works in the field of information theory would fail to name Claude Shannon as the undisputed father of their field, but if you ask most scientists who work outside this area of mathematics (but use some concepts such as communication entropy in their work), you will find they are likely to name Norbert Weiner as a second "father" (and others such as John von Neumann also played a role in the events leading up to Shannon's 1948 paper).
Another problem is that according to the usual Wikipedia standards (which unfortunately tends to weigh the opionion of rank ignoramuses equally with that of experts), you can't say that anything about Einstein is undisputed.  While few reputable physicists or historians familiar with Einstein's work would fail to agree that Einstein deserves to be called the the father of general relativity or the father of special relativity, in fact both of these titles have been vigorously disputed, beginning with politically inspired hate speech of scientists like Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard in the 1920s and continuing to various individuals our own time who have axes to grind (see sci.physics.research for a current very silly but long-running thread on this repugnant "argument").  I happen to think this alleged controversy is kept alive by nonscientists with sometimes complicated or obscure extrascientific movitations, which is rather disgusting (and sometimes hilarious), but by Wikipedia standards, it seems that the onl thing which matters is the public controversy, however silly from a scientific or historical point of view, does verifiably exist.
If we accept that we need to remove the word undisputeable, it seems to me that there is no point in keeping the rest of what you wrote.  I believe it is quite sufficient, by way of assessing the magnitude of Einstein's scientific achievements, to say that he is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time, and in fact one of the most notable figures in intellectual history.
Can you please explain below why you insist on adding this new material to the introduction? ---CH  (talk) 06:58, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreement. -- Svest 07:12, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Not a big fan of the Father of Modern Physics line either, for the points just raised re: multiple contributors to quantum theory. Gaff 16:15, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Father of Modern Physics?

message: Incoherence creep is the phenomenon in which an initally well-organized and readable article, with a clear flow of ideas from one sentence and one paragraph to the next, is gradually destroyed by edits of the following kinds:
*well-intended additions of material by inexperienced editors which breaks up the flow of previous writing, or disturbs an internal organizational scheme (e.g., recent additions discussing Einstein's "national origins"),
*vandalism of the silly or scatological variety (this high-profile article is highly vulnerable to this; to mention just one example, I have noticed that teachers in some computer labs seem to assign a class to look at it, with the result that some students attempt to send real-time "amusing" or hateful messages to each other by editing the article),
*additions of material in pursuance of some agenda which disturbs the balance and flow of the article; examples are too legion to list but include the Tesla freak, persons eager to tear Einstein down by any means, such as insinuating that he "stole" [sic] his theories from others, cranks promoting their own "theories", someone pursuing some Asperger's syndrome agenda),
*careless attempts to revert this kind of edit (sometimes to an inappropriate version allowing earlier damage to survive).
If you have been monitoring this article on a daily basis, you have very likely seen many examples of this kind of edit.
My point is that permitting (almost, one might say, encouraging) frequent vandalism and otherwise minor but bad edits of high profile articles is destructive to the Wikipedia for several reasons:
*it tends to prevent users with expert knowledge from contributing good writing because they wind up spending all their "WP time" trying to correct damage to articles which they or someone else worked hard to whip into shape,
*despite such efforts, incoherence creep tends to gradually damage or destroy articles which at one time were well-organized, accurate, fair, and readable.
Accordingly, I'd like to see this article restored to such a happy state and then protected permanently.  Even this would not fix the problem over the long term, since not all admins have scientific or historical expertise or are unbiased when it comes to Einstein, and no doubt some admins would want to unblock the article, and indeed from time to time there might be good reason to add timely material (e.g. to note the current World Year of Physics honoring Einstein).
Does anyone know what is the best way to submit petitions of the kind I have in mind to Wikimedia?  
More generally, does anyone know of suitable forums for discussing the Wikipedia model versus the classic Britannica model for creating an encyclopedia?  I believe that the world wide web, wiki software, and other technological innovations offer promise for a blend of suitable features from this model which could lead to a "controlled content" encyclopedia which would offer better writing and factual reliability than the current Wikipedia but also greater timeliness (particularly on rapidly advanced technological topics) than a classical paper encyclopedia.
A related question: I am of course aware that I am by no means the only Wikipedia user who feels that Wikimedia will eventually be forced (by rampant vandalism and other destructive edits by anons which are overwhelming the current administration system) to abandon its strange insistence (which is unique to this site, in my experience) on allowing even unregistered users to freely edit content.  Given the inevitability of this step, it is in the Wikipedia's best interests that it occur sooner rather than later.  Would anyone else here be interested in circulating some kind of petition?  Any suggestions for how to do this effectively?  Anyone have past experience with previous attempts to nudge Wikimedia in this direction?  I think its pretty clear such a major step would have to be approved by Jimbo Wales, in fact I have the impression he is at once the only person who needs to be persuaded and the only person who could veto such a change--- please correct me if I am wrong about that!
Thoughts?  ---CH  (talk) 14:25, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Apparently you're going to get your wish; Jimbo plans to have stricter editing rules for some articles.  See .  I can't find any detail about this proposal on wikipedia itself, though.  Also check out Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Abolish_anonymous_users.  Pfalstad 15:40, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe, maybe not. At any rate, if you want an encyclopedia that you can edit but other people can't, Wikipedia isn't the place for you. I'm not sure that the "wiki" philosophy of "anyone can edit" is a workable approach, but it does seem like the number of janitors around here exceeds the number of vandals. An important question is "who gets bored first".  --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 23:07, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Bored? Who? Nothing! Bird Flu? Nothing! -- Svest 02:19, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, Jpgordon, if you read what I wrote more carefully, I actually mentioned several proposals, some less controversial than others, and I asked for suggestions about where might be the most suitable place to discuss these.  If someone can suggest such a venue, perhaps we can continue the discussion there.  OK?---CH  (talk) 21:07, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandalism, Incoherence Creep, and Page Protection, and a Modest Proposal

message: Hi all, as an example of vandalism apparently designed to degrade this article but remain undetected, note the recent edits by 206.254.117.182 in Texas, which consisted of dewikifying the introduction.---CH  (talk) 22:48, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Link vandalism

message: Is there any evidence that he has German ancestory? Ethnic German ancestory. I'm trying to remove all Austrian, Jewish and Swiss Americans from the German American category. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.141.217.93 (talk • contribs) 04:37, November 1, 2005  (UTC)
:Both of his parents were Jewish. He has no ethnic German ancestry.Vulturell 09:01, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Uhm, Germans who born in jewish family are not Germans? --128.214.69.47 11:37, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This "controversy" is an example of why I deplore inflammatory edits to this article.  128.214.69.47 from Helsinki, I am probably more sympathetic to your politics than to those of Vulturell (to judge from the comments above), but I wish you would avoid adding potentially inflammatory characterizations of Einstein's political views to this article.  The 00:32, 6 November 2005 version is noticeably less inflammatory re Palestine than versions which you wrote.  Please, let's all keep the focus on Einstein the man, particularly his scientific work, rather than attempting to hijack Einstein the icon to promote this political view or that.  TIA ---CH  (talk) 20:53, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Is Einstein German?

message: This talk page keeps growing, and an incorrectly coded signature of one participant, User:Gaff, messed up the fonts on the previous version of this page.  (I have left a note on the talk page of that user asking him to fix the problem with his signature.)  I have fixed the fonts in Talk:Albert_Einstein/Archive/2 and moved recent discusions to a new archive page (see link above).---CH  (talk) 22:30, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Font problems

message: Big improvement in the past few days, keep it up! :-)
From the history page:
*10 Dec (so far): V < 1 min
*9 Dec: blanked for 1 min
*8 Dec: no V (first time I've seen that in months!!)
*7 Dec: V 1 min, 5.5 hrs, 2 min, 1 min
*6 Dec: V 7 min, 1 min, 3.3 hrs, 1 min, 1 min
Maybe we finally have those pests on the run? ---CH 00:02, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Guess not, darn it, just saw a vandalism which was hear for 1.6 hours today. ---CH 04:27, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Some V Stats

message: Why don't we have a table in here about Einstein, like Richard Feynman, and most developed biographical articles? Or is it just no one has made one yet? -- Mac Davis ญƛ. 
08:29, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Table

message: I have changed the quote to what I found in the Calaprice 2005 book. (diff) Ligulem 16:50, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  World War IV quote