Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review/Archive 3

message: Sholto Maud and Limegreen, with your permission, I would like to archive everything from the top to this section. Sholto Maud, if you would like to continue your methodological discussions in a separate subpage of this talk page, please reply here, and I will archive these concepts, including the concept of the automated parsers for SPR, to a subpage with a name of your choice. We can then continue the thread there. -- regards, --Ancheta Wis 22:49, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No problem here.--Limegreen 23:01, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree. I have decided to not respond to Shoto Maud above. Archive down to bottom of this section, I say. --Bduke 23:17, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Agree. Suggest a subpage named "/SPR methodology" for those who are interested in formalising SPR method, and possibility of SPRbot. Sholto Maud 23:39, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Archive 2

message: BTW, I think we should halt the nomination process until there is consensus about what the function of the board will be. In particular, I dislike the fact that many of the nominees have not bothered to participate in the discussion here. (or, for that matter, perform the "test review" on science.)  What I get out of this is that there are people craving the recognition but are unwilling to do the work. linas 18:18, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree. HereToHelp 18:21, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm... At least in my case, my free time comes in small, unpredictable chunks.  It's hard to tell whether it will take a matter of minutes or a matter of weeks for me to get to something, especially if it is important but not urgent.  Perhaps others are in the same situation. (Though I agree that closing nominations for now is/was a good idea). zowie 19:09, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I support closing the nomination process, although I would have prefered individual nominees to do it as I did and urged others to do. While understanding zowie's point of view, I too was worried that few of the nominees were contributing. I did not perform the "test review" for several reasons. One, I did not have the time and after studying the article in detail I thought it would need quite a lot of time. Two, I thought it should go to WP:PR. Three, I did not think it was a good test, as everybody could contribute. I wanted a test of getting a reviewer for an article where doing so was difficult. --Bduke 20:43, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

text: The markup isn't that important until we know exactly what we're doing.--HereToHelp 19:34, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Did you mean to strike out all the nominations? William M. Connolley 19:44, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. linas 20:20, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Close nominations 

message: The two proposals ignore the proposal that I made, yet nobody has said they disagree with it. The two key features both affect the "noticboard proposal". One, I believe it is vital that we use WP:PR as much as we possibly can. In other words, we use their system and put reviews on their page, as long as we can. Two, I see a role for the WikiProjects in science areas for the "noticeboard proposal", not just the "academic editorial board" proposal.
I dislike the latter proposal. It will be seen as "experts" coming down from on high to fix articles written by "ordinary wikipedians". It will be seen as introducing a SPOV (Scientific point of view), not a NPOV. It will be criticised and might make articles subject to delibrate changes to "muck up" the peer reviewed version.
"Scalability" is really a question of how many people get attracted to helping on review and on how much time they have. It is not really affected much by process. "Authority" is a dream. This is a wiki. All we can really expect is that a peer reviewed version will have lots of editors watching it on their watch list; that they will correct wrong changes; and that the authority of the peer review itself will be a good reason to explain to the editors who have made changes why they should not have made the change. We must let the magic of the wiki work, because we have no real alternative. Of course, the WP 1.0 project, or printing a version as the Germans are doing, may provide both a scope for peer review and a way of sealing in the authority of the peer reviewed version. Neither is there in the standard WP, so it is no good hoping they are or can be put there. --Bduke 21:07, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: When I signed up, what I was signing up to was a simple "review" of articles, essentially for scientific respectability: statements properly referenced to reasonable sources, mostly. Since that time things seem to have got rather confusing. William M. Connolley 22:10, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. And there's no light at the end of the tunnel visible yet.--HereToHelp 23:43, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Two working proposals

message: I personally do not think scalability is an issue. Bluntly, most articles are not worth to be peer reviewed. They are either written poorly, incomplete, ununderstandable etc. If we want a peer review system to replace WP:RfC, and the related stuff, it is not going to work.
Authority. You can have the number one authority in the field doing areview, and it can be biased as hell. Just because he does not like it. That is why you generally have two reviewers. And that is why you can protest. The question is this. Do we want NO peer review, or are we going to take the best we can get for the moment, although it might be not the best we could get? The latter will give us at least somewhat more than hat we have now. 
Yes, texts are going to be changed, and that is one of the major powers of wikipedia. Without perr review, and by generally non-specialist, we are close to the same level as the Brittanica, build by specialists. We can do better, and peer review can make a contribution. I see peer review more as the following. A group of editors has worked their butts off to make a good article. They are good willing, but realise they are not the experts that they would like to be. The article is getting to a point they know it is good, but would like to see what an independent expert thinks of that. That is the type of articles that is most likely to be asked for peer review, and that type would be the ones I would be aiming at. As soon as the peer review is done, new insights, additional information etc is going to be added. And yes, articles can go bad because of various reasons, including POV pushing. Though luck. Revert. That is why I have 300+ pages on my growing watchlist. That is part of wikipedia. In my field, there is a core article,. that is so bad, I was amazed that it got accepted. I know one of the reviewers, and he had recommened that it was fully rejected. That reviewer now uses it in classes as an example on NOT to do that type of research. If we want 100% correctness, from 100% authorative reviewers etc etc etc, we are not going anywhere. I am more in favour of lets start, let the wiki system work. In the coming year, we will probably change things and over time, it will get a better shape. And if it does not work, we will know. KimvdLinde 00:35, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. I was trying to describe what I thought would be "the happy middle ground" and instead of pleasing everybody, I see that I pleased nobody. Bduke and KimvdLinde seem to be saying that its all hopeless, that there is nothing that can be done, and that this effort should be ended -- this is a complete about-face from what I saw a few days ago, when people still seemed eager and hopeful. I'm going to withdraw from the conversation for a while, since this all seems to be turning toxic. linas 05:50, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, maybe I should not say some things sometimes.... I am definatly saying it is NOT hopeless. I see very good opportunities, and I think it is very important. I do however not see some of the bears others see. If me saying that we can not achieve 100% correctness, from 100% authorative reviewers etc etc etc, is saying it is hopeless, I am equally saying that real world peer review is hopeless, which I do not agree with. Ideal, no, usefull, yes. KimvdLinde 14:51, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

text: The spirit behind this project is a good one. What the end process will be I do not know. Here's my take (having only scanned about 3/4 of the discussion thus far). I like the "requests-for-scientific-review" bulletin proposed above. Perhaps from that could grow a more formal peer review process. I would watch it, though I would not join a board. Kudos is nice, but if I wanted recognition I wouldn't be on WP, I'd be publishing. Regarding what is an "expert", I'd say anybody with at least a PhD counts (for their field). That said, I'll get my PhD in a matter of months, yet I read a whole lot of rubbish in the hydrology and geomorphology pages. I have published, presented, reviewed, and acquired funding; I'd say I'm an expert (in my field). I already monitor the areas in my fields; I'm more inclined to fix them up as a normal WPian than via peer review. As for the nice Nature review, I don't really care. WP is trying to be right, not merely better. EnBrit has professionals, but are they "experts"? Establishing a scientific community on WP would be great. More power to us.  Cheers, Daniel Collins 19:59, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scalability, authority. 

message: I'm going to move Bduke's post all the way down here so that we can take a look at it - nobody has responded to it probably because the idea has sort of gotten lost amoung all the posts I think. It was done with this edit:  --HappyCamper 12:33, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't understand how Bduke's "proposal", above and below, differs from how things have been done in the past. linas 14:34, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't really know either...maybe that this page simply focuses more on "science related" articles? Maybe we wait for Bduke to respond. --HappyCamper 20:55, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I know Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics was notified. Karol 08:24, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I think so too. When this project takes off, WP:SIGN will be notified, and we can credit Adam for being instrumental in starting up with the idea. --HappyCamper 12:37, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's many different undergraduates, but an article can be tailored to have parts for the 1st year students and parts for the senior majoring in the subject. Starting from a WP article, it's relative easy for anyone who knows the subject  to add more advanced topics.  We need some way of adding a meaningful elementary explanation to pages such as the mathematics section, and , just as Happy Camper says, what's needed for this is not necessarily great scholarship, but great skill in teaching. We all know excellent researchers who present excellent beginning courses, and are proud of it. (I do not mean to imply that I am one, )
Some of those currently working on the math pages pages have deliberately written them to be at the very-bright-senor-undergraduate-major. One thing we could usefuly do with peer review is to encourage them to write otherwise DGG 22:59, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

text: My idea was indeed to lever in SPR starting simple. How does it differ from the status quo?
#Our "expert in physics", or wahtever, tag is added to the talk page of the article as well as the WP:PR tag.
#This might add the article to "Category:Articles in Physics needing review".
#The article is listed on our page under subject categories.
#We try to build up small teams in each of the Science WikiProjects to draw attention to the article on their page and seek reviewers.
#This is a kind of building a de facto board for each specialism. We let it grow naturally.
How does it differ from other proposals including Adam's original proposal?
#There is no formal board.
#The review report does in the current WP:PR place (at least as long as that is possible), not on WP:SPR.
Does it deal with the issue of "authority"? Not directly. I think the wiki way will work here. The fact of the review will be on the article's talk page. The date and time when the review material was incorporated into the article will be there. The page will be watched. The presence of the review is a powerfull argument for reverting silly additions.
Does it deal with the issue of "scalability". Yes, as much as any other suggestion does. It all depends on how many people get involved. We can not predict this or manage it.
I think I have covered the essentials of my proposal, perhaps clarifying it in part, but not adding anything new.
Other points:-
*I fully agree that we should have articles in science that do not go beyond the undergraduate level and that those that do go to that level would be important teaching resources. I think we have some that do go beyond undergraduate level. I'm afraid, HappyCamper, that the article we have both contributed to on Couple Cluster theory is one of them. We should simplify it and clarify it down to what an undergraduate might want to know or for someone in a different field of chemistry to just get an over view. There must be many articles like this.
*This point is so important that we should put it on the WikiProject pages as an important criteria to bear in mind when writing or editing science articles. However, let us get consensus here first and have a proper draft of what we might say on the project pages. HappyCamper, I think you have made a simple but brilliant contribution here.
*I fully agree about pseudoscience.
*I hope I have not being pushing people away in frustration. I'm going to limit what I say on this page for a while. --Bduke 22:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I'll support that. Like regular PR, but with specialists commenting? Sure. Just leave room for the non-experts to comment to (separately).--HereToHelp 22:49, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-visiting an idea... 

message: Spending a lot of time away from my terminal often improves my thinking and I have certainly been away from it for most of the weekend. Much as I think a Board could be usefull and will probably be needed at some stage, I think we should avoid it now. There is simply no consensus about whether we have one, what it would do, and how big it should be. The reasons are complex and I am not sure I can properly articulate them clearly. Part of the reason is the distrust of experts on Wikipedia or more precisely the distrust of experts who appear to be more important than other editors. I think we should stop discussing whether expert reviewers will get credit for it in their institutions or whether the article version that includes the results of their review should be labelled in some way. We have to accept the wiki way. If experts will not review then I'm afraid there is nothing we can do about it. We must "let the Magic of the Wiki take over" as HappyCamper said above. We must also fit into the normal processes as much as possible. So my proposal is:-
#Use the normal Wikipedia:Peer review. Identify an article, tag the talk page with their tag and put the review comments on their review pages. WP:PR may have its problems but I do not think it is broken. We should try to make it work for us. The trick now is to get experts to add to that review process.
#Also tag the talk page with, for example, the  tag as well as the WP:PR tag. We would use something very much like Wikipedia:Peer reviewers and the person adding the tags would use that to seek a reviewer.
#Let us make use of the WikiProjects such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry. At the beginning of this WP:SPR I put the idea to the talk page of that project. At least four participants in that project have contributed to the discussion here. Have the other science WikiProjects been consulted and asked for their views? Some one in each project could list the new entries in the category attached to our tag on their WikiProject page. This might also attract expert reviews.
::I know Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics was notified. Karol 08:24, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think so too. When this project takes off, WP:SIGN will be notified, and we can credit Adam for being instrumental in starting up with the idea. --HappyCamper 12:37, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Another proposal

message: I like Bduke's idea. Why not leverage the existing Wikipedia:Peer review system? It's not perfect, but it works. I did not want to say this too early, but projects like this take months to set up, and at least this project has been able to get the attention of lots of people. So, it is at minimum, on the mind of a few people already.
Bduke, actually, your post has raised a number of issues that I'd like to address, but probably best not to go too deeply into them because it might precariously sidetrack everything. I will say that the editing environment on Wikipedia is different from most places in academia - we need to target this project to address that environment, and the needs in that environment.
I like to think of it this way - and I am deliberately writing this with the perspective of "unveresity/collge" in mind - I also have similar analogies for those who work dedicatedly in industry et cetera...but we will focus on this particular perspective for a moment.
Think of creating articles on Wikipedia as creating course material for your students. The result of what we do here should be that you would feel comfortable giving the article to your students as introductory material to a particular topic. You would proudly show off these pages in class and in your lectures - and use them with confidence. Partly because you read through it the week before your lectures, but you notice that you didn't have to put so much effort into preparing your notes for that day...hmm...I wonder why? :-)
The article should contain information for everyone - targeted to smart, intelligent people who want to learn, and who have the drive to find the information they need. Wikipedia has a host of articles that are obviously on graduate-level and post-graduate level. If I may take some inspiration from the current peer review system on Wikipedia, most topics being reviewed are rather common things known to everyone, but just that no-one has bothered to articulate all the intricacies of the topic and put everything together. Take blank page as an example. Lovely article - and I bet that it would be pretty hard to find any better information on the internet about it in such a quick way. Hence, let use frame whatever peer review project we set up, as targeting primarily undergraduate education; something beyond the typical high school, but not quite so cutting edge that reviewing the article would benefit very few of the masses who visit here. This is a reasonable compromise between all the possibilities out there, and very much worth the consideration.
The discussions on Wikipedia are not anti-elitist per se - imagine it being more like this - you are in a room with perhaps 10-20 people. It consists of faculty members, undergraduate students, university officials - all in the same room, all with different perspectives. All are trying to figure out how to improve the current education that the undergraduates are receiving. On a talk page on Wikipedia, the traditional barriers which prevent good feedback are not there - people who engage in genuine discussions are those who care. We simply need to remember this in the back of our minds - and in doing so, we avoid all the pitfalls that mistakenly give the perception that Wikipedia is hostile to experts - it is not. It is simply different, where the expertise of someone is completely exposed to criticism, misunderstanding, or whatnot. This is the negative side of it. Knowing this, the expert is also keen to know how to work the system to their benefit - bring out the positive side of editing here. Pick the arguments that are worth fighting for, where there are people willing to listen, and where it will make an impact. What we are doing here is precisely this.
In my opinion, this project simply will not even need to consider contentions issues related to pseudoscience or whatnot. The fact, is that we will not offer any useful feedback that would be healthy for Wikipedia - addressing these articles is simply for another group on Wikipedia to worry about - the editors of those articles know that too. We don't need to worry on their behalf. What we can do, is be welcoming, and do the best we can if topics like this come up for review.
Now, I wrote this with some things in mind...people are leaving this talk page out of frustration. This is a project that will take months to set up. But it's all worth it. Simple is best - work incrementally, and gradually usher in ideas and changes that will benefit the project. The Wiki approach does work, but it just needs to be given time to mature - that is, for those active here to get a feel for what other people are like on this talk page. 
Alright, I really, really need to head off...apologies for unrefined posts and streams of consciousness. Closing points: 
# Target undergraudate education
# Don't worry about psuedoscience - that's for another group to worry about
# Focus, focus, focus.
Bye!! (And rushing off...) --HappyCamper 13:17, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's many different undergraduates, but an article can be tailored to have parts for the 1st year students and parts for the senior majoring in the subject. Starting from a WP article, it's relative easy for anyone who knows the subject  to add more advanced topics.  We need some way of adding a meaningful elementary explanation to pages such as the mathematics section, and , just as Happy Camper says, what's needed for this is not necessarily great scholarship, but great skill in teaching. We all know excellent researchers who present excellent beginning courses, and are proud of it. (I do not mean to imply that I am one, )
Some of those currently working on the math pages pages have deliberately written them to be at the very-bright-senor-undergraduate-major. One thing we could usefuly do with peer review is to encourage them to write otherwise DGG 22:59, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

text: My idea was indeed to lever in SPR starting simple. How does it differ from the status quo?
#Our "expert in physics", or wahtever, tag is added to the talk page of the article as well as the WP:PR tag.
#This might add the article to "Category:Articles in Physics needing review".
#The article is listed on our page under subject categories.
#We try to build up small teams in each of the Science WikiProjects to draw attention to the article on their page and seek reviewers.
#This is a kind of building a de facto board for each specialism. We let it grow naturally.
How does it differ from other proposals including Adam's original proposal?
#There is no formal board.
#The review report does in the current WP:PR place (at least as long as that is possible), not on WP:SPR.
Does it deal with the issue of "authority"? Not directly. I think the wiki way will work here. The fact of the review will be on the article's talk page. The date and time when the review material was incorporated into the article will be there. The page will be watched. The presence of the review is a powerfull argument for reverting silly additions.
Does it deal with the issue of "scalability". Yes, as much as any other suggestion does. It all depends on how many people get involved. We can not predict this or manage it.
I think I have covered the essentials of my proposal, perhaps clarifying it in part, but not adding anything new.
Other points:-
*I fully agree that we should have articles in science that do not go beyond the undergraduate level and that those that do go to that level would be important teaching resources. I think we have some that do go beyond undergraduate level. I'm afraid, HappyCamper, that the article we have both contributed to on Couple Cluster theory is one of them. We should simplify it and clarify it down to what an undergraduate might want to know or for someone in a different field of chemistry to just get an over view. There must be many articles like this.
*This point is so important that we should put it on the WikiProject pages as an important criteria to bear in mind when writing or editing science articles. However, let us get consensus here first and have a proper draft of what we might say on the project pages. HappyCamper, I think you have made a simple but brilliant contribution here.
*I fully agree about pseudoscience.
*I hope I have not being pushing people away in frustration. I'm going to limit what I say on this page for a while. --Bduke 22:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I'll support that. Like regular PR, but with specialists commenting? Sure. Just leave room for the non-experts to comment to (separately).--HereToHelp 22:49, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments 

message: Let's try this? Completely off the top of my head. Let's have a brave Wikipedian do a peer review writeup for any article of their choice, post it here, and have it thoroughly scrutinized and surgically analysed so we know exactly what it takes to do a peer review. A trial run will give us an idea of how much time is needed, what sorts of things we should include, what things are missing, et cetera, et cetera.
If nobody volunteers, I'll do this - by the end of May. Of course, anyone is more than welcome to beat me to this initiative...so if it would be a healthy endeavour, this is what I'll try and puruse. Thoughts? --HappyCamper 22:41, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I just thought of something completely crazy to go about doing this...why not put in an incomplete review (there is no reason why a single Wikipedian needs to write the whole thing), and let the Wiki process take over? Unless this turns out to be an absolutely poor idea, there's no reason why we can't mark reviews for science and computational chemistry as "incomplete" and simply work on these until we think the review itself looks polished. For SPR, what we do, is we say, put a cap on the number of incomplete reviews - say, at most 3. Then, anyone who's interested in improving these reviews does so, and on their respective talk pages, people decide when it is "done" - done in the sense that it would be useful for whomever is writing the article to come by and make use of the review. No reason why a review needs to be finished -  articles on Wikipedia constantly change, and the review and commentary that goes with it can change too. Well, I don't know...we just need to start from somewhere because we don't know what a review from this place is supposed to look like. Right now, we have no idea. I suppose like most articles on Wikipedia, we start from scratch! I'll jump in and do something in a little bit. I really don't have the time to sit and think about this at the moment. But as I said - by the end of May, I hope to have something to share. --HappyCamper 13:50, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops, I missed Sholto's comments - well, if we're daring enough to try writing a SPR on Wikipedia, then everything is logged, and we'll know how much time was spent on it. However, the review would essentially lose its primary authorship, which might not be what is needed here to convey an "authoritative" review. In my opinion, this is not so much of an issue. Trust is something that I don't quite understand on Wikipedia, but I do believe it if someone says they know X, Y or Z - all I need to do is to look at their edits. Those in the know aren't fooled, and it is extremely difficult for someone to pass off as an "expert" on Wikipedia - there is a certain maturity and quality to an expert's edits which is difficult to describe, which distinguish them from say, the "average Wikipedian". I think before we even worry about whether a review is convincing enough for the skeptical public out there, let's convince ourselves first that we can generate results which are meaningful to the project. Do this consistently, and the skeptics are won over. I am wondering whether the effort to write a review would be better spent improving the articles themselves, but then again, there's no point in wondering if one can actually do this and answer it once and for all! As I said, for me, end of May...end of May...end of May... --HappyCamper 14:04, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's a very good idea (and very much the Wikipedia style!) to just be bold and give it a try!  I don't think a "partial review" is a good idea IMHO.  I think each reviewer's perspective is different, and one only gets the full benefit from that once a complete review has been done.  The collaborative value should come from bringing together several complete reviews, not several incomplete ones.  I think, also, that the time taken on a review will depend on the time you have available - if you on a break you may take the time to check every reference, but if you are busy you may not.  In addition, a lot depends on your access to the literature - where I used to work in rural Vermont, even looking at a recent JACS involved a 100 mile drive, whereas now I have it electronically on my desktop, full text.  However, it's certainly reasonable to keep track of time spent on this task. Walkerma 05:35, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Oh, I see. Okay, I'll keep that in mind then. --HappyCamper 21:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't think that there exists any meaningful estimate of the value of a review.  You could ask what it's worth to the reader, but the reader probably wouldn't pay for it if asked, although he gets value from it.  So do you say zero?  Or try to guess the value he gets?  You could also ask how much the reviewer would get reviewing for a journal instead.  Personally I've reviewed for three journals and I've never been paid, I don't know if more famous people get paid, but I'd guess it's rare.  In general, reviewing pays for itself in that you learn by reviewing, plus you can put it on your CV and you hope that it'll be appreciated by the editors, who tend to be important people. So should these benefits be subtracted from the cost?  In my opinion there are a lot of questions here, and there are no answers, other than that the value of a review is ill-defined.  But I can say that reviewing an article takes about one afternoon, at least if its in your specialty. JarahE 22:14, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's true - frankly, it wouldn't be too meaningful for me either, but I'd keep track of how much time I spent on it anyway...It's just something fun to do along the side. --HappyCamper 00:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How about this? 

message: What isn't logged is the amount of time that is spent in libraries finding books/articles, and then reading them in order to verify an article. Re: usefullness of logging time, if we get an accurate reading for the amount of time embodied in construction and SPR of an article, we might then approach an estimation of the monetary value of the article, which is one (perhaps not the best) way of measuring the value of the article. Let's say SPR is worth about €30 per hour. Let's say normal article editing is worth about €10 per hour. For example, if the computational chemsity took 20 hours of normal editing and 10 hours SPR then the monetary value would be (€10 * 20) + (€30 * 10) = €50. I'm sure that there are many other stats that can found from this kind of measure. Sholto Maud 21:32, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, I see. Okay, I'll keep that in mind then. --HappyCamper 21:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't think that there exists any meaningful estimate of the value of a review.  You could ask what it's worth to the reader, but the reader probably wouldn't pay for it if asked, although he gets value from it.  So do you say zero?  Or try to guess the value he gets?  You could also ask how much the reviewer would get reviewing for a journal instead.  Personally I've reviewed for three journals and I've never been paid, I don't know if more famous people get paid, but I'd guess it's rare.  In general, reviewing pays for itself in that you learn by reviewing, plus you can put it on your CV and you hope that it'll be appreciated by the editors, who tend to be important people. So should these benefits be subtracted from the cost?  In my opinion there are a lot of questions here, and there are no answers, other than that the value of a review is ill-defined.  But I can say that reviewing an article takes about one afternoon, at least if its in your specialty. JarahE 22:14, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's true - frankly, it wouldn't be too meaningful for me either, but I'd keep track of how much time I spent on it anyway...It's just something fun to do along the side. --HappyCamper 00:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Re: Time log

message: I have added a page linked from the main SPR page as Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/Computational chemistry and added my review or at least a first draft of it. I have also copied over Stone's review from Talk:Computational chemistry. Please add other reviews and comments on my review. --Bduke 03:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Review of [[Computational chemistry]]

message: I have started by adding two pages for active recent reviews and archived old reviews. The former is transcluded into the main page. The latter is transcluded into the former. To edit the former click on "Edit here" above the heading "Scientific Peer Review - Recent requests for review" and edit in a new entry. To edit the later, click on the link titled "Archive of completed reviews" and edit it. The purpose of all this is that the page for active recent reviews can be transcluded into every Science WikiProject page to draw attention to the articles. It probably needs a bit of explanation adding before this is done, but I'm getting there. --Bduke 05:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup of main SPR page

message: To advertise new articles for review, I have started to add the following to the various Science WikiProjects:-
Start of inclusion.
End of inclusion.
Prompted by the new entry for History of Earth I have added it to:-
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Science
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Climate change
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Environment
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecology
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics
*Wikipedia:WikiProject Geography
as well as Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry which I added it to because of Computational chemistry. Please add it to other WikiProjects pages. Note that the addition transcludes the list of articles for review, including a heading. --Bduke 02:39, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is that everyone seems a little apathetic about the project. I say let's just do something. Yes, get it out to the different WikiProjects. The problem is that they won't contribute without others, and those others won't contribute without them. It's the chicken and the egg problem. Hopefully this will help.--HereToHelp 13:03, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Links on Science WikiProjects

message: Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory.  This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you.   B2T2 14:19, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project directory 

message: Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention.  Badbilltucker 19:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia Day Awards 

message: Sorry if this question has already been asked and answered, but is this project only for the natural sciences, or are the social sciences (including my own area, linguistics) also included in its purview? —Angr 06:12, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which science? 

message: The Scientific peer review pages have had little attention for nearly a year. I have archived old reviews, added a section on what to do when a review is completed and archived this talk page. I have removed the recently added list of chemistry review articles, just leaving a link to their page, as it seems to me that the list would be very difficult to maintain. I have also reviewed how the process has worked over the last year. See below. --Bduke 00:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Clean up

message: How has this worked?
Before I started to clean up, :Category:Requests for scientific peer review contained 9 items. One of these had not been added to the list in Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/recent reviews. Of the remaining 8, 3 were fairly extensive reviews, 3 had received no comment at all, 1 had a small comment but was really a request for a review of a possible rewrite of two paragraphs and not a review of the article itself - Physics.
The list at Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/recent reviews contained 6 items that were not in the category because the tag  had not been added to the article's talk page. One of these had not created the review discussion page - it was a redlink - so I just deleted it. Of the 5 others, there was one good review, one that only linked to Peer review, one that was a rather bizarre controversy that is really beyond our rules, one with a small comment, and one with no comment. The last one, Process Physics, was only added in November last, so I have fixed up the problems and it and the very new entry are now the only two listed. The rest have been tagged with .
So, this is a pretty mixed bag. I guess some of the other review processes attract no review comments. We have had some good reviews. I suggest we leave it for now, and I will try to keep an eye on it on a regular basis. Clearly it is important to check that a new request has been added correctly, both to the list and the category with the talk page tag. --Bduke 00:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Review of Scientific peer review

message: I think its more important to work on "stable versions", so that users can have some assurance that they are not looking at vandalized content. Once "stable version" infrastructure is in place, then we can talk about editorial roles. I envision something akin to scientific journal editorial boards: an editorial board, after conducting a review (and making needed corrections), places its "seal of approval" on a given "stable version".
Basically, for me, it makes no sense to go through the major effort to vet an article, only to  come back later to find its been completely restructured (not atypically, by some anon unfamiliar with the subject matter). linas 21:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stable versions 

message: I've archived Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/Herrerasaurus. Although there were no comments, it's been over four months since the request was made, and it seems unlikely that the peer review will receive any comments. Firsfron of Ronchester 21:37, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  archiving 4-month old science review without any comments 

message: Hi,
This thread came up on WT:ETHNIC. If anyone has an interest, all help appreciated: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic groups#Concerns about: Evolution of human intelligence Thanks --Ling.Nut 01:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  cross-post request from [[WT:ETHNIC]] re [[Evolution of human intelligence]]