Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-07-30/Citizendium analysis

message: This frankly reads much more like a hit job than objective, verifiable fact-based reporting. 
Also, if the following is true: 
*"seven [approved articles] are derived from Wikipedia articles but unattributed as such"
*after the unmodified Wikipedia articles were purged, many users added up-to-date Wikipedia content without acknowledging the source
I'd like to see the hard facts of this so it can be corrected rather than the mere charge.
Stephen Ewen 21:40, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: All seven articles are identified in the article.  You're welcome to compare the articles yourself; in each case it is quite clear that the current CZ versions were influenced to varying degress by the corresponding Wikipedia articles.  Several of them have the issue brought up on the discussion pages, and in two or three of the cases (Franklin, d'Herelle, and possibly Metabolism) it looks like simply no one ended up marking the WP bubble (at least for the approved version).  It also seems relatively clear that there were many Wikipedia cut-and-pastes after the Big Delete, and that it took some time to mark most of them appropriately (and I have no idea how many were missed aside from the Approved articles).--ragesoss 21:58, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As a comment on Metabolism, I've read through the Citizendium article and I can't see any of my work in it, so I don't think there has been any unattributed copying of the Wikipedia version of this article. Tim Vickers 19:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Tim, it is (or was) in the history section; it's one of the very few bits that still remain from before you started working on it, I think.--ragesoss 06:05, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Ah, I see. The remains of the stub. As a comment on the differences between the two I think the assessment of Citizendium aiming for a simple introduction is entirely correct. The Wiki version is more comprehensive and aimed at a higher level, while their version of the article looks like it is shaping up into a reasonably approachable introduction to human metabolism. With these two different approaches the Wikipedia and Citizendium articles could be complementary. Tim Vickers 15:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

text: This article has not yet been published, and I would have contacted someone at Citizendium before publication had Mike Johnson not found it first.  As for the John Franklin article... I overlooked Russell Potter's reply; I find some of Potter's contributions (as User:Profrap) in the WP article history, but it looks like the article evolved organically from the WP version, and Profrap's contributions don't seem to account for the remaining similarities.--ragesoss 22:17, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

text: For example, prose that originated from this contribution by another Wikipedian is retained in the Citizendium article.--ragesoss 22:28, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I will look at that, Sage.  But again, don't you think the professional thing to do is communicate such concerns on the article talk page or to constables@citizendium.org, which is published clearly?  Stephen Ewen 01:08, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My main concern is to report accurately on the state of Citizendium and the ways it relates to Wikipedia.  If some of the problems I've uncovered get fixed, that's great, but I don't have much interest in policing GFDL compliance.  This seems to be an endemic problem on Citizendium, and I suspect it goes beyond just the Approved articles I examined.  As a quick test, I pressed "random article" until I found an unattributed Wikipedia article.  It took ten tries (); the first version was marked WP, but none of the subsequent versions.  Another issue is that, even if a CZ article ends up with all the original WP precise text removed, the original structure will often have a strong effect on the result, and should arguably retain GFDL status.  Clearly, Citizendium cannot rely on Wikipedians to ensure compliance, as these problems have gone unreported so far.--ragesoss 01:36, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

text: As for bringing the matter up on the talk page: we can't. Only CZ members can edit there. Eugène van der Pijll 22:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a CZ account.  (I signed up during the 3 weeks of free-for-all signups shortly before the March opening.)--ragesoss 22:35, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I haven't said anything then. Eugène van der Pijll 22:41, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hit job 

message: Moreoever, 
*your statement about CZ's article on John Franklin is simply in error, see its talk page.  
*I fixed CZ's attribution issue on Félix d'Hérelle, and it was a mere clerical oversight; as you can see I explicitly stated on its talk page that it needed to be checked prior placement of the approval template.  Could you not have simply done the courtesy of bringing the matter up on the Félix d'Hérelle talk page rather than rush to put it in a signpost article?
 
Stephen Ewen 22:01, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This article has not yet been published, and I would have contacted someone at Citizendium before publication had Mike Johnson not found it first.  As for the John Franklin article... I overlooked Russell Potter's reply; I find some of Potter's contributions (as User:Profrap) in the WP article history, but it looks like the article evolved organically from the WP version, and Profrap's contributions don't seem to account for the remaining similarities.--ragesoss 22:17, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

text: For example, prose that originated from this contribution by another Wikipedian is retained in the Citizendium article.--ragesoss 22:28, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I will look at that, Sage.  But again, don't you think the professional thing to do is communicate such concerns on the article talk page or to constables@citizendium.org, which is published clearly?  Stephen Ewen 01:08, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My main concern is to report accurately on the state of Citizendium and the ways it relates to Wikipedia.  If some of the problems I've uncovered get fixed, that's great, but I don't have much interest in policing GFDL compliance.  This seems to be an endemic problem on Citizendium, and I suspect it goes beyond just the Approved articles I examined.  As a quick test, I pressed "random article" until I found an unattributed Wikipedia article.  It took ten tries (); the first version was marked WP, but none of the subsequent versions.  Another issue is that, even if a CZ article ends up with all the original WP precise text removed, the original structure will often have a strong effect on the result, and should arguably retain GFDL status.  Clearly, Citizendium cannot rely on Wikipedians to ensure compliance, as these problems have gone unreported so far.--ragesoss 01:36, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

text: As for bringing the matter up on the talk page: we can't. Only CZ members can edit there. Eugène van der Pijll 22:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a CZ account.  (I signed up during the 3 weeks of free-for-all signups shortly before the March opening.)--ragesoss 22:35, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I haven't said anything then. Eugène van der Pijll 22:41, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  More 

message: For more info, see this post. That was a while ago though, not sure if it's related to the current event.
Also, the automatic account request software should be on testbed, and then live soon. It is basically an extension of mine I whipped up recently. Voice-of-All 07:34, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nancy Sculerati 

message: Just a few suggestions how to balance your interpretation/selection of stats.
Why not compare CZ directly to Wikipedia? After reading CZ:Statistics you know that with a "launch bonus" CZ human resources, as of April, were slightly bigger than those of an average 25000 entries Wikipedia. Now it declined to about 3/4 of that last.
Furthermore, you discuss in details the page creation rate. This seems to oblige to mention that CZ does not encourage creating tiny stubs and actually has more developed ("almost complete") articles  than stubs (these developed articles were actively edited (they are "CZ Live"), not just  imported from WP).
Furthermore, there are explicit differences in culture that can be seen in policies (e.g. 0 unexplained revert rule, professionalism). So CZ members discuss content more than WP ones ;-) In fact, the CZ has significantly higher discussion rate (ratio talk edits /total edits) than a typical Wikipedia. Remember also that the project in its early phase is devoted to create the core of its policies, structures etc., which generate relatively many pages not in the mainspace. Shouldn't you explain this when chosing the mainspace modifications (number of edits daily, page creation rate) for analyse? 
Hope this helps.
Yours in discourse, Megavat 22:56, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is also the fact of the Citizendium Forums, which are well-trafficked and not counted in CZ:Statistics.  Forums is where nearly all meta-discussion occurs at CZ.  Not so at WP.  Stephen Ewen 02:31, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stats 

message: Above, I tried to describe an error debate which had already happened on CZ in an NPOV way, without judging the rest of the text myself, and drew some tentative personal conclusions from it. I have now had a closer look at the article and I was quite appalled to find several more serious mathematical errors myself, which have survived for a quarter of a year in one of Citizendium's "flagship" articles. With apologies to Ragesoss (this becoming a bit off-topic here, since it is a follow-up to the discussion on CZ's approval process above, rather than still a suggestion for something to to include into the article), I am describing them here, in addition to some minor shortcomings.
To say something positive first: Overall, the article is well written. A lot of care has been put in the exact wording of several statements. As Ragesoss has noticed, it is much less comprehensive than Wikipedia's complex number, but many readers might actually be grateful for that. The writing style is a bit chatty and slightly patronizing at times - put positively, a bit more pedagogical and accessible than Wikipedia's.
Now for the errors and shortcomings:
*"up to a scaling factor, division by z is just complex conjugation" - this is very, very wrong. The given formula says instead that division by z is the same as multiplication by the complex conjugate of z, up to a scaling factor (namely, the modulus of z squared). The author apparently confused z as the symbol for the constant by which the complex plane is multiplied with z as a variable denoting an element of this plane which gets mapped by this multiplication. (When z is actually viewed the variable in the domain, the mapping z \mapsto \frac{1} cannot be described by rotations, scalings and reflections. However, it still has a more complicated geometric interpretation, namely as the inversion at the unit circle followed by complex conjugation, see Inversion (geometry)#Anticonformal mapping property. This is a fact which can be found in most complex analysis textbooks.) 
*(Minor nuisance:) To the uninitiated reader, it remains a bit mysterious why the Schrödinger equation is chosen as an example for "Complex numbers in physics", as the description doesn't mention complex numbers explicitly. The point that should have been mentioned is that ψ is meant to be a complex valued function. The reader has to guess this from the appearance of an "i" in the equation. (Of course the point here is that the Schrödinger equation actually needs complex numbers, it cannot be written in a form involving only real numbers. The reason for this is not given, so the whole example is still a bit unsatisfying to the reader trying to understand the fundamental importance of complex numbers.)
*"the potential function might represent the attractive force per unit mass between the nucleus of a hydrogen atom and an electron" - this is wrong for three reasons: First, the potential function does not represent this force - its (negative) gradient, the electric field does. Second, this force is not per unit mass, but per unit charge - when dealing with arbitrary particles interacting with a hydrogen nucleus. But since the author restricts himself to the example of an electron, the "per something" is nonsensical anyway, since electrons have a fixed charge (and mass).
*"Now, there is some subtlety in the interpretation of ψ because a system can be affected by observation, and the functions ψ we 'see' must be eigenstates of the operator defined by the Schrödinger equation" - yes, actually a lot of subtleties, and of course the article can not and should not explain all of them here. However, if one chooses to say something about them, it  should be correct, and I don't understand what is meant by the last statement, that "the functions ψ we 'see' must be eigenstates of the" Hamiltonian; all interpretations I can think of are wrong. There are many physically relevant states ψ which are not eigenstates of the Hamiltonian, for example coherent states. If "functions ψ we 'see'" is intended to mean states of the system right after measuring an observable (i.e. collapsed wave functions), the statement is only true for observables which satisfy a conservation law. (And more trivially, ψ can always be changed by a phase factor and still describes the same state, so ψ can never be "seen" entirely.) I'm not interested in singling out writers to blame them, but as Nancy Sculerati has (in her remarks above) placed emphasis on the formal qualification of one of the CZ users involved, it should also be noted that the author of this error-riddled section got his master's degree in Mathematics twenty years ago and seems to have worked in other fields since; and that he has commented on writing this part as follows:
::Well, I've added a little section on complex numbers in quantum mechanics [...]. This was all pretty much off the top of my head while I sit here listening to the Science Channel. Greg Woodhouse 23:19, 17 April 2007 (CDT)
:and later;
::Frankly, I don't have a very good feel for the mathematics behind the correspondence between observables and operators - it just seems like a kind of "black box" to me. Greg Woodhouse 22:42, 24 April 2007 (CDT)
*(Minor nuisance:) The section on Cardano's method uses "x" to denote two different things. This has already been fixed in the Draft version by Michael Underwood on May 7, but the main article has not been updated so far.
Regards, High on a tree 01:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Several more serious errors

message: Hi all,
My companion piece is up over at User:Johnsonmx/News_from_Citizendium. Thanks in advance for the feedback. --Johnsonmx 17:01, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  News from Citizendium: companion piece