Eric Kvaalen

I have cleared this page because it was all old. For older stuff, see [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and most recently [6] Eric Kvaalen (talk) 08:06, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Metre sea water

When you made this edit to Metre sea water, had you seen the discussion at Talk:Metre sea water? Multiple definitions abound, so I'm very tempted to revert your amendments as by giving undue emphasis to one source I don't believe they actually improve the article. --RexxS (talk) 11:26, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

@RexxS:: No, I had not seen that discussion. I agree with you that these units are not very rigorously defined. I think my edit actually emphasizes that fact, since I mention that the USNDM gives two slightly different conversions into psi! Feel free to modify the article after my edit, but don't revert! I fix'd several things.

By the way, another thing that influences the pressure change per foot or per metre (besides the density of the sea water) is the strength of gravity (or to be more accurate, gravity minus centrifugal force!). That changes considerably from one part of the world to another, similar to changes in density.

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 12:37, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, Eric, the inconsistency in the USN Dive Manual is why it wasn't specifically attributed before, although Peter (I think) had used it as a reference. It's not a big deal, and as you say, the unit is a rather fuzzy quantity. I'm not going to revert your edits over such a small matter. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:09, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Alpha Centauri

I backed out your change. The source does not appear reliable (it appears to be an archive of an adaption from a defunct web page, and then the entry for Alpha Centauri is flagged as differing from other sources). Please find a better source, and investigate why that entry indicates it differs from Baily. Regards, Tarl N. (discuss) 05:22, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

@Tarl N.: Well, it's a good thing you question'd it. I've been lookin' into it and I realize now that the latitudes Ptolemy gives are ecliptic latitudes! As for the value, I find on p. 368 (or 377/673) of [Toomer's English translation a note sayin' that 41°20' "is the reading of D,Ar and an alternative reading in A. Other Greek mss. have 44°20'. −41°20' is more correct, but all other stars in this group are assigned too great a southern latitude, so −44°20' may have been Ptolemy's measurement. It is adopted by P-K." A text with 41 can be seen at [7], page 181. There are quite a few misprints in one or the other source – places where they don't agree. I will re-edit the article on Alpha Centauri.

That certainly make more sense, but then precession isn't involved - the ecliptic does not vary (our equator precesses relative to the invariant ecliptic). The current ecliptic latitude of α Cen is -42.5, which is more likely obtainable by simple proper motion in 2000 years plus measurement errors - Without doing the spherical trigonometry, I work it out to about ½ degree proper motion in that timeframe. But that's WP:OR. I'll just remove the comment about precession. Regards, Tarl N. (discuss) 21:15, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

@Tarl N.: Yes, precession is involved. It doesn't affect ecliptic latitude but it does affect equatorial latitude (what is important for whether someone can see the star from a certain country). You can think of precession as the stars circulating around the ecliptic pole, in other words around a certain point in Draco. They "move" eastward on circles around this point, which implies that they also move north and south as they go around. Each star "moves" northeast for about 13,000 years and then southeast for 13,000 years. Alpha Centauri is currently in the phase where it moves southeast. The zodiac constellations Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, and Scorpius are also "moving" southeast. The other six are moving northeast.

Added on to this apparent motion is the proper motion. According to the article, α-Centauri A has a proper motion northward of about 0.47 arc seconds per year, and α-Centauri B about 0.8. As I understand it, they differ because they are moving one around the other in orbit. They have similar masses, so the centre of gravity is moving northward about 0.6 arc seconds per year. So in 2000 years, the ecliptic latitude will go north by about 20 arc minutes, that is, one third of a degree. So back in Ptolemy's time the ecliptic latitude would have been about 42.8 South.

By the way, simple calculations are not consider'd "original research".

I will put back something about precession in the article.

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:49, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

You need a reference for the geocentric latitude. The reason I removed the comment about precession was that the sentence at the time had reference to only ecliptic latitudes. I'd rephrase the sentence you added, to something like "Although Alpha Centauri isn't visible in Alexandria today, it was in Ptolemy's time due to precession". Then if you can find a reference to what it would have been at the time, give the geocentric coordinates. Regards, Tarl N. (discuss) 18:09, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

December 2017

Please refrain from using talk pages such as Talk:Criticism of Windows 10 for general discussion of the topic or other unrelated topics. They are for discussion related to improving the article in specific ways, based on reliable sources and the project policies and guidelines; they are not for use as a forum or chat room. If you have specific questions about certain topics, consider visiting our reference desk and asking them there instead of on article talk pages. See here for more information. Thank you. Codename Lisa (talk) 11:22, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

It was for improving the article based on reliable sources! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 11:38, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Eric, it's unfortunate that you felt it necessary to go straight to WP:ANI because you weren't satisfied with hearing that Wikipedia's talk pages aren't a place for you to vent your frustrations about a subject. I already told you this once already, and I offer this comment as a second reminder. I've been here 12 years and I know what's what, so take my word on this -- being adverserial about this will not only fail to accomplish whatever goals you have in mind for the encyclopedia, it will make your time at Wikipedia even more frustrating than your experiences with Windows 10. Things always go better if you take the time to research the subject, then contribute from a position of expertise combined with proper attribution for the information you add. Warren -talk- 23:25, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

I did not see what you wrote to me earlier – you didn't Ping me. I know that we cannot put our own bad experiences into a Wikipedia article, but what I am asking for is for people to give us references for the kind of problems I have found. I am astounded that nothing is said about all the problems I mention. I certainly have the right to bring this up on a Talk page, and Lisa does not have the right to delete it. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:47, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to use talk pages for inappropriate discussion, as you did at Talk:Criticism of Windows 10, you may be blocked from editing. Codename Lisa (talk) 11:51, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

(This was because I put back a question I had written on a talk page which she had deleted!) Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:47, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Windows 10 advice

I come here after seeing your question on the refdesk and reading your list of problems on Win 10 criticism talk page. I'll write here because the refdesk thread is long enough already and the people there tend to follow the "buy parts until everything works" approach, which you might not want/have money for -- given that your "problem" is that your hardware is very old (last Pentium Dual-Core came out 10 years ago). You will never be able to get rid of most of your Win 10 problems without buying a bunch of new parts, for that reason. Windows 10 is optimized for computers with new CPUs running with 8+ GB RAM, so naturally after it crams whatever it wants to run in the background with 2 GB, you won't get a nice user experience. (Do note that if you do buy a new CPU and motherboard, you might not be able to go back to older versions of Windows, and if you buy a whole new PC with Windows pre-installed, it might be very hard/impossible to switch to another OS later on). Moreover, Windows 10 is a free upgrade because it's riddled with ads, telemetry and bloatware. That Twitter app is there because Microsoft wants to make money off of you and figures pre-installing and running stuff like this is more profitable than having you fork over $100-200 every 4-5 years. Now, you have several options:

1) Keep running Windows 10 and try to patch up everything. Some of this stuff will go away if you upgrade your PC, some will require 3rd party software or tinkering with settings. The latter might be a tall order and some stuff (e.g. the Microsoft Store) might never be able to be fully removed, or might re-install/re-enable itself in a later update. You will also need to at least buy new RAM. If your motherboard is very old and doesn't support more than 4-8 GB RAM, you might want to replace it, and if you do so you will need to replace the CPU as well, as well as any PS/2 keyboard/mouse. (Also, you might still be using DDR2 RAM, which hasn't been supported for years now.) All of these will set you back a few hundred dollars. The upside of this approach is that you won't have to reinstall anything to get a somewhat more useful PC. The downside is that you will want or have to remove some ways in which Microsoft makes money off of you (selling ad impressions, charging companies like Twitter for access to your personal data), and they have the home field advantage.

2) Downgrade to Windows 7. You can follow the instructions here, which may or may not work (it's been two years since you installed Windows 10). An alternative is to follow the instructions on this forum to install Windows 7 from scratch while retaining the original files on your hard drive (this will require reinstalling the programs you have on Windows 10). I'm not up-to-date if your Win 7 would still be valid, so you might need to buy a new Win 7 license on ebay for a couple bucks (FYI nobody will bother you even if it isn't legal). You might also want to buy another HDD and install Win 7 on it (500GB costs around $35-50, 1TB $40-60) if you don't have your data backed up or are otherwise worried you might screw up and overwrite your data. Windows 7 still works with all apps that you use on Windows 10, and will run a little slow on your hardware, but nothing like Windows 10. A small downside is that Windows 7's support for updates runs out in 2020. This is largely unimportant, as Windows 7 is already a pretty secure OS and there are a lot of good 3rd party security apps, but it might require a bit of extra work to keep your PC secure past that date, or you might want to install another OS or Windows version.

3) Switch to Linux. Linux has changed a lot since its early and newbie-hostile days and has become a competitive OS. The apps you mention you use (Firefox, VLC, LibreOffice) work perfectly there; some even stem from Linux originally! You will have to re-partition your disk and at least backup your data somewhere, so you will probably want a new HDD (it's a good idea to have at least a second HDD to back stuff up anyway). The main distros aimed at new Linux users are Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Q4OS and Zorin OS - they should all work fine on a 2GB PC (Q4OS should probably run the fastest). You can download live ISOs for these distros, burn them on a CD or DVD and boot, and see which you like the most, and then follow instructions to install (be careful not to overwrite your old hard drive!!). All of these are based on Debian, for which most 3rd party Linux apps are written. This will not require any hardware changes (except maybe a new HDD as mentioned before), as Linux has good backward compatibility. This is the cheapest approach and has the advantage of not having to care about Windows 7's end-of-life in 2020, but you'll have to familiarize yourself with a bit different OS.

Cheers Elephas X. Maximus (talk) 03:22, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

@Elephas X. Maximus: Thank you very much for the advice. A couple comments:

My processor is a Celeron N2840. According to List of Intel Celeron microprocessors it's from July 2014. So it's not ten years old. I bought it in the summer of 2015. (I see that there's a Celeron N4000, release date December 2017, with only 2 cores.) That list says that for memory it uses 2 × DDR3L-1333. I don't know what that means, but I guess it's not the DDR2 you mention.

My computer is a laptop, so I don't know how easy it is to make all the hardware changes you suggest.

I have installed Linux on computers in the past, in dual-boot with Windows. But as I have mentioned on Talk:Criticism of Windows 10, this computer came with all four partitions in use, which complicates things.

Some of the problems I have with Windows 10 I think are not due to my limited hardware. Do you think all of them are? Here is the list again, for reference:

1. Slow to start up
2. I've noticed using the Task Manager that it loads all kinds of things that I never use, like Twitter.
3. Even when I'm not doing anything the Task Manager shows that it's using quite a bit of CPU and disk IO.
4. Often the Task Manager shows that "System" is using a lot of disk IO.
5. As I look just now, I see that Microsoft Store is using a lot of disk IO, pushing my disk IO up to 95%. I have never used Microsoft Store!
6. Many times my computer almost grinds to a halt. This seems to happen when I'm using Firefox, so maybe it's partly the fault of Firefox. But even if I kill Firefox (using the Task Manager) it continues to run slow. The cure is to reboot.
7. It has happened that I couldn't even reboot without holding the power switch down for four seconds, which basically crashes the computer.
8. Often when I try to reboot, it tells me that it's closing down various applications (which takes an inordinate amount of time) and then, after closing some of them, it stops trying to reboot and just goes back to normal operation. I have to tell it to reboot again.
9. It takes a long time to do simple things like starting up Windows Explorer. Or if I do a right-click on a file in a folder, it takes a long time just to display the menu of options!
10. When I open a folder, it takes a long time to display my files. It seems to be sorting them by date (as I want), but takes forever to do so. (Even with just 20 files!)
11. When I press the Windows key, it usually takes a long time for the Start Menu (or whatever it's called) to open up. And then if I try to use the arrow keys to select something it doesn't respond for quite a while.
12. When I press Alt-Tab to switch tasks, it often doesn't actually switch to the task I select. I may have to do it several times before it "takes". (Sometimes I use a trick – I hit the left Alt, then while holding it down I press the right-hand Alt, and then I press Tab. This forces it to use an older version of the task-switching facility, which works much better.)
13. Sometimes it switches back and forth between windows without me asking it to do so at all.
14. When I open a new task, it usually opens in a window that is not on top. I have to go find it with Alt-Tab.
15. Windows 10 came with a Mail app that is a disaster. I won't bother saying what's wrong with it because of course you don't have to use it. I managed to get Windows Live Mail to work instead.
16. If you try to save a new document, it usually (or always?) opens a pop-up window, for you to say what to save it as, in OneDrive. Several times I have accidentally saved a file to OneDrive instead of on my computer. Which of course means that when I look for it, perhaps when I don't have Internet, I can't find it.

Obviously my problems with Mail (Windows) are not due to my hardware! I'd say Problems 2, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 are not due to hardware.

Do you have any references we can use in Criticism of Windows 10, for instance about it not working well if you have less than 8 GiB RAM?

And out of curiosity, why did you make a new account just to write to me?

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 08:06, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Re: Celeron, sorry about that, when you said "dual-core", I assumed you were talking specifically about Pentium Dual-Core and not just that your CPU has 2 cores. So, forget the part about needing to upgrade CPU & motherboard (it's for the best anyhow, these are the hardest parts to replace in a laptop), although it still stands that you need more RAM to comfortably run Win 10 in any case (and definitely to fix problems like 6,9,10,11).

The problems you mentioned, yeah, some can be improved by hardware, some by software. If you want to fix them all while keeping Win10, you'll have to get more RAM and new software. I don't really know which software fixes which problems. Some of this will require installing apps (e.g. [8] - this doesn't apply to your list of problems, but is something I installed before I decided that Win 10 just isn't worth it), some will require tinkering with registry and such (e.g. possible fix for your Twitter problem). In any case, it'll take a lot of Googling. That's why I'm suggesting to go back to 7 or to Linux -- it's less of a hassle and you get a working system out-of-the-box.

Re: changing components, the HDD is the easiest part to change. Usually there is a hard drive bay at the bottom of the laptop that can be accessed once you unscrew a couple of + shaped screws. RAM is harder to change and will require some more unscrewing and some finger twisting. There should be ample videos on Youtube showing how it's all done if you search for your laptop brand & model. Always remember to ground yourself e.g. by touching a heating radiator before touching the inside of a computer, you don't want to fry your components with static electricity. (Actually you don't have to replace anything if you just get an external HDD to backup the contents of your current HDD. Then you can reformat (a partition on) your current HDD if you want to install Linux.)

BTW you mention you have 4 partitions. If you have enough unused space, you can install Windows 7 on one of the partitions that don't have Windows 10 without overwriting anything, although you'll have to install all your programs again. Also, you can install Linux on one of the data partitions, although you'll then lose the contents of that partition. If you do this, you should probably get/borrow an external HDD for backup in case you screw up something while installing the OS.

Re: references, I don't know really. I don't think there's going to be much about RAM amount necessary, this is really user-dependant -- 2GB could be enough for some configurations of hardware & software & behavior expectance on the user's part, but on some, like yours, it's gonna be damn slow. For other topics things like [9] [10] [11] might count as reliable sources; I found them with this search. You can try similar searches if you want, although there seem to be a lot of people inexplicably happy with Win 10 on Wikipedia who could be ready to undo your edits.

As for the account, I don't normally do this. I read Wikipedia a lot and edit as an IP sometimes, and it's just that often I come across questions like yours on the net, and how often they get idiotic responses that bog down to "buy this and that and cope with what it doesn't fix", and this time I was too annoyed to keep browsing :) The username is because I'm uncomfortable having my IP associated with anything more than spelling fixes online. Elephas X. Maximus (talk) 02:11, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Elephas X. Maximus, I will look into those things. By the way, there has been more discussion of this (by FleetCommand and Andy Dingley) at Talk:Criticism of Windows 10 and by Codename Lisa at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 December 28#Problems with Windows 10. She now thinks the reason is not a lack of RAM. It seems that my computer is atypical for some reason. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:37, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Proxima's orbit

I put the image back. As best we can tell, that is indeed the shape of the orbit of Proxima, as viewed from Earth. You had no reason to remove it. That the foreground stars will be in front of other background stars is irrelevant, they aren't marked as landmarks. Tarl N. (discuss) 22:26, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

I will respond at Talk:Proxima Centauri. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:37, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

References

Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia. Remember that when adding content about health, please only use high-quality reliable sources as references. We typically use review articles, major textbooks and position statements of national or international organizations (There are several kinds of sources that discuss health: here is how the community classifies them and uses them). WP:MEDHOW walks you through editing step by step. A list of resources to help edit health content can be found here. The edit box has a built-in citation tool to easily format references based on the PMID or ISBN. We also provide style advice about the structure and content of medicine-related encyclopedia articles. The welcome page is another good place to learn about editing the encyclopedia. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a note. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:41, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

@Doc James: Speaking of references, what are you referring to? What was my sin? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:05, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Primary source http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/422/eaal3175.full rather than review or major textbook Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:51, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

@Doc James: It could be years before that research gets into major textbooks or reviews! The researchers found a treatment that gives good results for sufferers of "somatic" tinnitus. Do you not trust the results of this study, published in Science? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:30, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Was not in Science but Science Translational Medicine. It is a single trial of 20 people. So yes would want to see it repeated and would want to see the totality of the evidence discussed in a review. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:32, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

@Doc James: Yes, I know it was Science Translational Medicine -- I was just abbreviating. (It's the same outfit isn't it?) The article says

"Eleven participants noted subjective changes in volume, pitch, or quality that resulted in their tinnitus becoming less “harsh” or “piercing” and more “mellow.” Even participants who did not experience a complete elimination of their tinnitus reported anecdotally that their tinnitus was noticeably less obtrusive and easier to ignore."

It's not entirely clear to me whether that means all 20 participants, or all of the eleven. But that's not too important. The point is, it gave significant benefit to the majority of the subjects. Do you think this was just due to chance? Remember, there was a sham treatment as control, so it's not just psychological.

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:47, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Windscale core

Pleaae see table 1 on page 6, this has the activity in the different parts of the core, fuel, graphite, isotope cartidges and total

https://web.archive.org/web/20071019073030/http://www.irpa.net/irpa10/cdrom/00322.pdf

Cadmium (talk) 15:14, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Inex

You asked about the origin of the name "Inex". Probably it should be discussed on its Talk page; but anyhow, as I recall I got that explanation from the books of van den Bergh who coined the term. In any case it inspired him to order eclipses on a 2D grid with saros and inex as axes: maybe from that you can see how saros series relate through an inex. The books are rather obscure but Leiden University had them in the library in the 1980's when I studied there. Tom Peters (talk) 16:13, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Tom. I recently modified the Inex article and explain'd how the saros series relate to the inex.

If ever you find yourself in Leiden, take a look and write me again!

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 18:51, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Orbital inclination

Hello! I tightened up your contribution here, then decided it didn't fit where you put it. The rest of Section 1 (except for the discussion, just before yours, with the table of planetary inclinations) is on terminology rather than real-world implications. So I put those two bits in a new section following the terminology discussion. Spike-from-NH (talk) 03:10, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

@Spike-from-NH: I put back the words "than that distance", but I accidentally removed two commas and an "n"! Sorry. (What happened was that I took my version and moved the blocks of text till when I would do "Show changes" it looked like yours, in order to see what exactly you had changed. I didn't see the two commas and the "n" when doing "Show changes", so I left those places as they were in my version,) Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:32, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Yup, I figured; there was no good way to see I had not just moved your paragraph but tweaked it. I deleted "than that distance" during my Tightening, as it occurs just beyond the definition of "that distance," but your revert is fine. Spike-from-NH (talk) 14:13, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Superconductivity

I reverted your changes; please discuss them. Which reference are you citing for 93K? The original discovery in 1987 had wide error margins. Tarl N. (discuss) 15:20, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Tarl_N., I specific'ly went to that article because I redd something in New Scientist that gave −173°C as the temperature for "cuprate superconductors", which is 100 K, and I didn't remember seeing such a round number for cuprate suuperconductors before. I looked at the YBCO article and at the High-temperature superconductivity article, and I saw the paper giving the range 80 to 93 K. Then I looked at the Superconductivity article, and I found that someone way back in 2003 had put in the figure of 92 K, with no reference. Later someone put in a reference to the original paper, which in its title says 93 K (though it gives the range in the abstract). The Wikipedia article has a graph made by a woman in Denmark for her Master's degree thesis, which shows YBCO at over 100 K. It uses various colors and symbols for different kinds of superconductors. So I edited the article to include an explanation of the colors, and to correct the figure of 92 K to 93 K. And I wrote in parenthesis in the caption that her point for YBCO is higher than what's in the text. I think that's better than deleting the whole graph! And I don't see what's wrong with putting 93 K when that's what the original paper says in its title. Why should we (or you) put it back to 92 when there's no support for that and we know that the range goes higher than that? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 13:40, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

O.k. - points:

• • The 1987 paper says "from 80 to 93 K". The issue is that each batch made at the time had different transition temperatures, and they couldn't come up with a single number, they cited a range of what they had seen. That does not say they saw 93 K, they saw a range between 80 and 93. That does not mean they saw 93 K, and indeed, if my recollection serves (it has been 30 years since I read that paper), they saw 92.something.
  • We know now that the reason for the variation is that the transition temperature varies very sharply with the oxygen content, and with the methods they were using at the time, it was hard to control for that.
  • Specifying a single critical temperature for YBCO is incorrect; the temperature will vary considerably between O(6.5) and O(7). I don't know if they have explored values higher than 7, they are hard to reach. In any case, for that material it's probably best to say "up to" a value.
  • The graph in question was derived from an earlier graph by the same author, here. It looks like the author simply mispositioned that point - it's a low resolution graph, intended to show relationships not precise values. Perhaps you should ask.
  • I would prefer you not add confusion to captions. That simply makes the article harder to read, and presumably nobody is extracting precise values from low resolution graphs.

Regards, Tarl N. (discuss) 17:20, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't think the original graph was by Pia. It dates back to 2011 and she only did her Master's in 2015. She says hers is "based on the Wikimedia Commons figure "Sc history.gif" at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sc_history.gif where the timeline stopped at 2010 and did not contain more than one iron-based compound." So she made her own improved version for her thesis.

So what do we do? Leave the article as it is with an arbitrary number of 92 and no explanation for the different colors and symbols in the graph?

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:48, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Yup. Unless you have WP:RS to justify removing things, I'm simply not going to allow you to make changes you don't understand. Tarl N. (discuss) 18:02, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

References

Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia. Remember that when adding content about health, please only use high-quality reliable sources as references. We typically use review articles, major textbooks and position statements of national or international organizations (There are several kinds of sources that discuss health: here is how the community classifies them and uses them). WP:MEDHOW walks you through editing step by step. A list of resources to help edit health content can be found here. The edit box has a built-in citation tool to easily format references based on the PMID or ISBN. We also provide style advice about the structure and content of medicine-related encyclopedia articles. The welcome page is another good place to learn about editing the encyclopedia. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a note. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:30, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

You're repeating yourself. We already had this argument. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 18:49, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

April 2018

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Mary in Islam. 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. Chris Troutman (talk) 14:22, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

@Chris Troutman: You and the other guy just revert edits without any discussion. I said I was going to discuss on the talk page, and he didn't even give me a chance. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 14:33, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

First, your ping didn't work. Second, it is not for you to insist on "your version." Status quo ante remains until there's consensus to change, per WP:BRD. You have already violated WP:EW; the next instance will result in me reporting you to WP:ANEW. You should know better than to behave like this. Chris Troutman (talk) 14:35, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

I might understand you better if you wouldn't use all those acronyms. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 14:44, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

You've been an editor since 2004. I assume you've actually read our policies, guidelines, and essays. Further, each of those "acronyms" is a blue-link, so you can click on them and read what they say. Since you need a remedial Wikipedia lesson, here's a translation of what I said before: when an editor boldly makes a change, another Wikipedian can revert them and then a discussion is to take place to determine consensus. We can't abide endless changes back and forth. In fact, Wikipedia disallows more than three reverts in the space of 24 hours, which is what you've done. I therefore have grounds to ask that you be blocked to prevent further disruption. Competence is required to edit Wikipedia. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:20, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

No, I did not revert three times. You and the other guy did though, without allowing time for discussion. You set up watches on articles in order to prevent anyone making changes you don't like, and you revert them within minutes. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 07:19, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

You added, re-added, and one more time, all within 24 hours. I can see that you actually know a lot less about Wikipedia than I assumed. Yes, I have that page on my watchlist. I have almost 10,000 pages on my watchlist. I actively revert edits. You need to learn how to edit before attempting to do so. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:58, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Wow, what I said was even truer than what I thought. It looks like you now have a watch set on this page too. So as long as we're chatting, and in connexion with Maryam, what do you think of Matthew 1:25? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 07:10, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Parable of the Mustard Seed

{{ping}} me if you'd like back-up an independent opinion on this ongoing nonsense. Narky Blert (talk) 00:40, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Napierian logarithm

Eric, in this version, you added some details with many-place numerical values. I'm wondering if there's a source for those numbers, or for this approach more generally. I just changed another number, and added a source, but on further analysis have decided that the old number was closer to correct. I'm thinking of trying a rewrite to make this all more clear, explaining the magic numbers better, but would be happier if I had a good source to follow. Things like this book are simpler, but not precisely right. Can we make it look simpler and also precise? Maybe... Dicklyon (talk) 23:37, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Dick, it's very vague in my memory, since it was 10 years ago. I don't think I had any source for it. I probably just calculated it myself. As the article says,

$\mathrm {NapLog} (x)=\log _{\frac {10^{7}}{10^{7}-1}}10^{7}-\log _{\frac {10^{7}}{10^{7}-1}}x.$

That means that

$\mathrm {NapLog} (x)={\frac {\log 10^{7}-\log x}{\log {\frac {10^{7}}{10^{7}-1}}}}$

where we can use either the natural logarithm or the common logarithm. Using the common logarithm, we can rewrite it as

$\mathrm {NapLog} (x)={\frac {\ln 10}{\ln {\frac {10^{7}}{10^{7}-1}}}}[\log _{10}10^{7}-\log _{10}x],$

so the constant in question is:

${\frac {\ln 10}{\ln {\frac {10^{7}}{10^{7}-1}}}}\approx 23025849.8$

And if we take the natural logarithm route we get the other formula, with:

${\frac {1}{\ln {\frac {10^{7}}{10^{7}-1}}}}\approx 9999999.5$

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 12:13, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Based on reading the source I added recently, I think this entire development is actually wrong. Just wanted to see if there was any source for it. Dicklyon (talk) 13:54, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

I see that you have written about this on Talk:Napierian logarithm, so I will continue there. Eric Kvaalen (talk)

Cable stays

Strictly, and originally, "stays" (on bridges) were rigid, and supported bending forces (although they were never strong for this). The cable-stayed bridge design originated when it was realised that a useful bridge could also be made with flexible stays, i.e. cables. Although the first examples used bar chains, as wire rope wasn't yet available. So it's reasonable to link "stay" as a historical or etymological source for the name, but not as their current function. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:15, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Hello Andy Dingley. Are you referring to the my edit of Ponte Morandi or my edit of Cable-stayed bridge? I'm not sure I understand what you think a stay is. There are two meanings, listed under wikt:stay#Etymology 2 and wikt:stay#Etymology 3. #2 is a support, like a rigid bar. But #3 originally meant ropes used on ships. That is what I linked to in Cable-stayed bridge. They are certainly flexible. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 13:39, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Cable-stayed bridge. But Wiktionary (or any dictionary) is never a good source for a technical term. It's certainly a mistake (and a fairly big one) to confuse stays in the nautical sense with stays in the pre-cable-stayed bridge era. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:59, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley: I don't understand. Are you saying that the term "cable-stayed bridge" was definitely used at a time when such bridges used rigid props instead of bars under tension? If it was bars or chains pulling up on the deck of the bridge, then in my opinion they were called "stays" because of their similarity to stays on a ship, not to things like clothing stays! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 14:41, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

PSR J0337+1715

I made a change to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_J0337%2B1715

Now I am having second thoughts about what I wrote. Maybe I should not have changed anything. Can you take a look at what I changed/wrote and determine if what I wrote is correct? Thanks.Betathetapi545 (talk) 10:03, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

@Betathetapi545: Looks fine to me. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:48, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Critical T, P

Hi, I'm serious. Could you plaese reply at Template_talk:Chembox#Critical_point? -DePiep (talk) 23:10, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@DePiep: Sorry, I've been very busy the last couple of days. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:41, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

No problem, all fine. I'll wait some more days before adding it live, in case someone has extra thoughts. -DePiep (talk) 10:43, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• It's availble! It's live! See ammonia, ethanol. (so: the template handles it -- be sure to get the input right ;-) ). -DePiep (talk) 22:37, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi Erik. So we've done this for compounds. Do you think Critical point (thermodynamics) is relevant for chemical elements too? We could put it in their infoboxes. Please go to WT:ELEMENTS to propose this. -DePiep (talk) 23:51, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@DePiep: Yeah, of course. Will do. By the way, in that stuff that Zackmann gave a link to (below), they all scrupulously refer to you as "they" rather than "he" or "he or she". You are male, aren't you? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 08:43, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Context

Regarding this comment, here is a little context for you. --Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 01:35, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Read this. -DePiep (talk) 23:46, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Authorship of the Pauline Epistles

I am no longer an active editor. While I appreciate the request, I have no desire to fulfill it. The sentance in question appears to be sourced to Donald Guthrie's textbook, which I do not own (I believe I had it from a university library way back when). Feel free to dig up the original source to see if it adds the needed context you desire. So I googled for a few minutes and found this " He seems, however, in 6, to refer to another work on the Pauline Epistles,--a work of which we have no trace anywhere else, though we learn from Jerome's preface to his Commentary on Titus that Tatian rejected some of Paul's epistles, as Marcion did, but unlike Marcion accepted the epistle to Titus." from https://biblehub.com/library/pamphilius/church_history/chapter_xxix_the_heresy_of_tatian.htm Jerome's Commentaries were published in English in 2010, but I don't have access to them. I also cannot find a free version of the Latin online either. So maybe your google-fu is better than mine, or you have access to a library and can get some of these sources. I found a brief summary of the commentary that says "The Preface speaks of the rejection of the Epistle by Marcion and Basilides, its acceptance by Tatius, but without assigning reasons." so this may just be a dead end. I'm curious now, what is your concern? You just want more context, or you believe we have inaccurate information in the article? -Andrew c ^[talk] 11:54, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

@Andrew c: Thank you! It's just that I was curious what epistles Tatian rejected. Your edit said that Tatian "rejected other Pauline epistles", but it wasn't clear whether that meant just the other two "pastoral epistles", or what. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:03, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Hey I edited an addition you made to Novarupta.

I never edit and it was my first time. Figured it'd be a good idea to give you a heads up in case you disagree with my decision. I mainly removed your fact and source regarding the Volcano's effect to the Nile river because that, according to the source, seems to be something that can and did occur from any major volcanic eruptions and was not limited to Novarupta. So I thought it'd be best to remove what I saw was clutter and keep the page strictly focused on Novarupta itself. Sorry about that, especially if I'm in error in judgment.

I've been meaning to take your source and edit to perhaps a different page or article regarding Volcano's or their eruptions that deals with the topic in a more general way. You could always do so too if you'd like.

Sorry for the long winded comment. You seem to be large contributor which is very much appreciated and I didn't want to show any kind of disrespect, especially with my first edit. X5RV2 (talk) 13:49, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

@X5RV2: Thanks for your note, and welcome to editing! Actually I don't really agree with removing that. It's true that the source also mentions Laki:

“I find it to be a very intriguing study,” says Matthew Toohey, of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. He cites more recent eruptions, particularly those of Laki, Iceland, in 1783 and Novarupta, Alaska, in 1912, that we know affected the levels of the Nile river.

But that's only two volcanoes, and Novarupta is a lot further away than Laki. Anyway, it's not a well-known fact that volcanoes affect the level of the Nile, and it's interesting. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 16:01, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

@Eric Kvaalen: Thank you for the warm welcome Eric. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. The source saying "more recent examples" implies, in my mind at least, that this phenomenon is not particular to Novarupta. Rather, said phenomenon can be more accurately attributed to large volcanic eruptions in general. I'm assuming any Volcano would be able to affect the Nile; long as the eruption is strong enough, the location appropriate and any other environmental factors are sufficient.

I don't believe I'm mistaken in my conclusion, derived from the source, that this phenomenon occurred throughout history by other similar or stronger eruptions. Like the source said, he was only providing two recent examples. I take that as meaning he has even more. I could verify this with some further research, if you'd like. Either way, I can revert the change if you are adamant about it. I feel that is completely fair considering your contributions to the website and my new arrival. Thanks for responding. X5RV2 (talk) 17:05, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

@X5RV2: I'm not adamant about it. You're right that this probably happens whenever there's a large enough eruption, maybe every couple centuries. But I tend to want to include facts that are interesting and not obvious, like this.

By the way, you don't need to Ping me when you write on my own Talk page. I get notified whenever someone writes something on my Talk page (and so will you).

Why not edit your user page (User:X5RV2) and tell us a little about yourself?

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 19:24, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Hunic superterrane moved to draftspace

An article you recently created, Hunic superterrane, does not have enough sources and citations as written to remain published. It needs more citations from reliable, independent sources. (?) Information that can't be referenced should be removed (verifiability is of central importance on Wikipedia). I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of "Draft:" before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. When you feel the article meets Wikipedia's general notability guideline and thus is ready for mainspace, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. CASSIOPEIA^(talk) 06:45, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@CASSIOPEIA: Come on, why do you bother doing things like that? There are several articles that use the term "Hunic terrane" or similar, with a link. I was reading one such article (which actually didn't have a link, just the term), and I wanted to know what it was. So with quite a few minutes of work I managed to find out what it was, to write a little article to help others in a similar situation, and to link it to the articles in several other languages. Now you have undone all my work. Why can't you leave well enough alone, or go to those other language articles and bring over some references if it's so important? (If people want the references they can go to those languages.) Why can't you improve Wikipedia instead of undoing what others do to improve it? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 09:21, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Adding unsourced content doesn't improve Wikipedia. As you should know by now, we are more interested in verifiability than we are in whatever is true. That's policy. I warned you more than a year ago to learn how to edit before attempting to do so but I see you didn't listen. Chris Troutman (talk) 10:57, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi Kvallen, Greetings. First of all your article is not deleted but moved to draft space. You can find it here Draft:Hunic superterrane. Secondly, @Chris troutman: was right, as Wikipedia is an encylopedia and article's content need to be supported by significant coverage (at least 3 sources) of published independent, reliablesources, such as books and newspaper, for verification, where by the sources talk about the subject t directly in depth and in length. Please note "All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution." see - WP:PROVEIT. Let me know if anything else I could help. Thank you. CASSIOPEIA^(talk) 11:13, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Chris troutman and CASSIOPEIA: I don't see how Wikipedia is better without my little article than with it. You know, you two are under no moral obligation to enforce any rules or notions of what Wikipedia should be like. God didn't commission you to be Wikipolice, or to stand watch to catch anybody who doesn't do things just right! But you are under moral obligation to love your fellow man. So for the love of whom do you do what you do? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:10, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

It's not better off, but you have to play the game. Add another source and submit it for review. Lot of sources call it the "Hun superterrane", so add one of those. Dicklyon (talk) 21:45, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi Kvaalen, Greetings It is very kind of @Dicklyon: to provide you a link where you would find the sources. Kindly use "horizontal" format of WP:Cite Web for web source or you can use Citation Tool for Google Books, see - ['[12]. All you have to do is to paste the URL where you find the content from the Google book info into the "Citation Tool for Google Books" and click "load" then copy and paste the "citation provided" in to your article to support the contain claimed. We are all here to help you and serve Wikipedia voluntarily for the love of knowledge where I believe it should be shared where the content claimed could be supported by the source for verification. CASSIOPEIA^(talk) 01:06, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Eric, I'd like to correct some assertions above. First, Wikipedia is better with a few well-sourced articles than it is with a bunch of unsourced dreck. Unsourced articles could be hoaxes or copyright violations. Unsourced articles create a mis-impression among other editors that we don't require sources and this creates a "race-to-the-bottom" where all content gets worse. I welcome the creation of verifiable articles and it's really easy to do. Second, I'm not on some moral crusade: in fact, I have quit editing articles. Rather, I simply tried to help you understand the same rules of Wikipedia that you've been ignoring for so many years. Also, I'm a misanthrope and hate my fellow man. Thirdly, Dicklyon incorrectly tells you to play the game, as if all of this is an artifice, which is not so. Uncited content, beyond the earlier points made, is more of a mess for good editors to clean up. It's far easier for a good editor to create a sourced article from nothing than it is to carefully sort and fix a bad article written by bad editors. Every article that needs fixing is another maintenance backlog. Wouldn't you rather that our editors could have fun writing what they want to write rather than cleaning up your mess? Isn't that unfair to them? Chris Troutman (talk) 16:27, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Adiabatic flame temperature

Hi Eric, About my corrections to this article almost 10 years ago (in english). I hardly remember reasons of these corrections now. They may be related to the level of ionisation of the output gas. It must be gives different temperatures. Actually i'm not a specialist in this area. So please feel free to do any correction if it will improve article. BR,Anton Kopiev (talk) 08:30, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Water Pik

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

No evidence this company passes WP:GNG/WP:NCOMPNAY. Refs are mentions in passing/press releases/business as usual PR "notice us" reports. WP:NOTYELLOWPAGES.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:44, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

MEDRS and related topics

I'm leaving a note here in lieu of the VP discussion. If you sincerely believe that WP:RS, WP:MEDRS, or any other policies and guidelines need to be changed (particularly, loosened), at this point you need to move on to getting community comment rather than, er, sitting there under the belief that the community agrees with you.

Or you need to drop it. At this point it's a waste of any community member's time to engage with you if you're not going to start an actual consensus-gathering discussion.

I'll tell you now that I do not think your opinions have consensus. --Izno (talk) 16:50, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Izno, Isn't the Village Pump the place for getting "community comment"? I'm sure there's no consensus on this question. Some people think as you do, and some people think as I do. I'm sure most of the public would agree with me. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:23, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

The only thing liable to change MEDRS is an RFC, and what you're doing right now is definitely not that, so the way you are discussing right now is solidly in the "I'm here to be disruptive" category and not in the "I'm here to change policy and guideline" category. It is disruptive to waste people's times on your vague insistence that you are right and that multiple other experienced editors are wrong. --Izno (talk) 13:11, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

March 2020

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at Stephen C. Meyer. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Repeated vandalism may result in the loss of editing privileges. Thank you. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 17:50, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: Would you please not use that kind of pseudo-polite talk? As though I want to "experiment"! As you know, the talk page on that article is filled with people complaining about the presence of the word "pseudoscientific" in that sentence at the beginning of the article, "He is an advocate of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design." That sentence is not appropriate for an encyclopedia. I could just as well say that you putting the word back in was vandalism. Why should your side be able to maintain the status quo, and those like me who think it's inappropriate are branded as vandals and rule-breakers? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:09, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Its not pseudo-polite its a template from Wikipedia:Template index/User talk namespace. Please don’t use phrases like "Why should your side” as such insinuations of partisanship are WP:PA, don’t do it again. What you did was vandalism, if you continue to do it you will be blocked. Have a wonderful day. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 15:23, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: It may be a template, but it's still pseudo-polite. And now you're not even using a template!

When I say "your side", I mean those who think that it's vandalism to take out the word "pseudoscientific" from the sentence "He is an advocate of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design." Why is that vandalism? I feel "PA"ed!

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 11:22, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

There are no templates for use after the first message, you clearly still have a lot to learn about Wikipedia. Intelligent design does appear to be pseudoscientific, at least thats what the WP:RS say. Do you have a source which states otherwise? Horse Eye Jack (talk) 13:48, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: So no need for pseudo-politeness. Look, the question of whether "intelligent design" is "pseudoscientific" is a different question, and I'm willing to debate that with you if you'd like. But here the question is whether putting that word into that sentence is appropriate in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not meant to be a soap-box from which one side of an issue can preach to the world. The talk page is full of people protesting the presence of that word. So why are you threatening me for having deleted it? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 07:11, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Please review WP:FRINGE, wikipedia is not the place to argue over pet theories. If you have WP:RS which say that intelligent design is scientific of course we can re-examine the question, but nobody has yet been able to provide reliable sources which do so. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 16:33, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: You're not listening. The question is not whether "Intelligent Design" is scientific. The question is whether it's appropriate to put the word "pseudoscientific". Is that a scientific question? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 11:51, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

If WP:RS use the term then its appropriate. WP:RS universally describe intelligent design as pseudoscientific... Unless you have WP:RS that say otherwise thats the end of the story. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 16:12, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: Well, I see that you avoided answering my question. If the appropriateness is not a scientific question but a matter of opinion, then why do you condemn me as a "vandal" for taking the word out? And if it is a scientific question, then can you find a "reliable source" saying that it is appropriate to insert the word "pseudoscientific" in an encyclopedia entry about a person? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:40, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: While you're thinking about that, tell me, how is it that you happened to revert my edit of the article Hyrax just after our exchange here on the 5th of May? That morning I had added the fact that the plural is also "hyraces". Isn't that vandalism? As though you went looking for something of mine to revert. Or did you suddenly for no reason get an interest in hyraces? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:28, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn’t call what you did vandalism, although inserting WP:OR into the lead of a page can be seen as disruptive. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 16:04, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: You did call my edit vandalism: "Your edits appear to constitute vandalism". And I did no research, original or not. As I have tried to explain several times, I find the "weasel word" "pseudoscientific" inappropriate in an encyclopedia article about a person and his work. It's a gratuitous expression of the point of view of some people.

So why did you go looking for something of mine to revert on May 5th? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 05:11, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

You have explained yourself sufficiently and it is my current belief that you were simply mistaken about how to do things on wikipedia than being malicious in any way. Like how you think “ pseudoscientific” is a weasel word, it isn't but being mistaken or uninformed isn't your fault. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 18:31, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: All right, so you now agree that what I did was not vandalism (but I still think what you did at Hyrax was!). So in what way was I mistaken about how to do things on Wikipedia? Maybe "weasel word" is not the right term (I thought it meant a word that is slyly introduced to make the sentence lean in a certain direction). But I, and many other people, think it's inappropriate to put that word in the description of what this guy does. So I took it out. What's wrong with that? Why should those who want to put the word in forbid taking it out? What gives them the authority to do that? And it's not as though there hasn't beeen enough discusssion of the issue! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 11:08, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

I can’t help you if you’re not willing to admit you need help. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 15:57, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

@Horse Eye Jack: Help me with what? We're talking here about whether it's appropriate to label the work of a philosopher as "pseudoscience". I heard him in a group discussion, and I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but he (and the other two guests) are arguing about whether the majority of scientists are truly following the scientific method! Meyer doesn't espouse pseudoscientific views like that the earth was created 6000 years ago and all the rock layers were laid down during Noah's flood! He talks about the mathematics of the probability of, for example, the Cambrian explosion. These are perfectly legitimate scientific questions, and to label him as a "pseudoscientist" is simply bigotry (as one of the other guests says, who, like me, doesn't completely agree with Meyer). Anyone who can't answer what these guys are saying (one seems to be an agnostic or atheist, two of them are Jews) has no right to call them "pseudoscientific". So if I take the word "pseudoscientific" out again, what will you do? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 20:41, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Hello, I post here because I have noticed the now-reverted copy-paste at the Meyer article's talk page. I thought I'd point at Falk's criticism mentioned there, since it hits the spot, even if only one among many who explain it: a religious doctrine disguised and presented as scientific ("non-science", motivated pseudoscientific arguments). Similarly, Demski's Irreduced Complexity at first appears to be scientific since it uses some math. Math can express any idea (like philosophy using language to describe doctrines), reality-based or not, and analysis shows that IC is an extension of a religious argument for a creator, disguised as science (and the "scientific hypothesis", if it had been one, is already falisified by observation). ID activism cannot be done in mainstream biology journals, for a reason (and publishing through those journals is considered part of scientific work in biology, of being an active biologist or relevant scientist in the field). WP:PSCI is not about WP:SOAPBOXing of course, but policy about making clear when something is pseudoscientific. Then the WP:LEAD is a summary of the article's body, that does include valid related criticism. —PaleoNeonate – 13:21, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: Thanks for the feedback. At least you're polite, and not "pseudopolite" like Horse Eye Jack!

What do you think of the reversion that was done to the edit I did yesterday of Talk:Stephen C. Meyer? First of all, I thought it was not allowed to revert what someone puts on a talk page. And his edit comment was:

This wp:TALK page is to provide space for editors to discuss changes to its associated article. Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject.

But that's exactly what I was talking about -- a change to the associated article!

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:55, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response, I often check WP or edit minimally from various locations, leaving notifications pending for when I can check them from home so I don't inadvertently skip/forget them. Souza's revert message was a verbose reference to WP:NOTFORUM and the thread had been moved to the page from elsewhere (your user page). The revert thus seems to conform to WP:TPG. If there were new contributions by other editors before it was reverted, hatting/closing it would have been more appropriate if it leads nowhere. Since that conversation was mostly a two-editor dispute and did not include reliable sources contesting that the topic of the article included pseudoscience, or reliable sources about pseudoscience only being a political label (something that would best belong at pseudoscience or even WT:NPOV, rather than at Stephen C. Meyer), it did not seem very practical to improve the article. About WP:WARN templates, if you think that their wording can be improved, it's possible to suggest alternatives at WT:UW. —PaleoNeonate – 13:45, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: Thanks for the response. I don't mind your taking several days, so long as you answer!

What do you think of Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Editing others' comments?

Do you think it's appropriate on the talk page to discuss whether it's appropriate to label someone's work as pseudoscientific on the main page?

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 08:30, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

"Delete. It is common to simply delete gibberish, test edits, harmful or prohibited material (as described above), and comments or discussion clearly about the article's subject (as opposed to the treatment of the subject in the article)." Out-of-place comments were of course deleted, not altered. I see no included list of reliable sources that contest that Meyer promoted pseudoscience (something that can be productive to improve the article), mostly a rant about the topic and about WP processes when you were warned above... —PaleoNeonate – 15:33, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: Are you saying that what I wrote was gibberish, a test edit, or harmful or prohibited material? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:40, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I didn't use those terms, but to turn the question around: are you claiming that the original post was not a rant and included sources contesting the other RS that mention pseudoscience (since RS is what WP must reflect)? Or that this user-page thread would be adequate for the article talk page? I did what I could to explain how events happened the way they did, but we're back to point 1. I have nothing else to add though, the rest is up to you: you're not blocked and are free to retry, I'm also not an admin. It's only an essay but I'll end with WP:FIXBIAS, that I think contains useful tips. I'm open to future conversations but not to run in circles, of course... —PaleoNeonate – 04:14, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: I don't understand why you say you didn't use those terms! But to answer your question, yes I claim that my post was not a "rant". I do contest the idea that what Meyers says is psuedoscience, but that was not my point. Did you understand that I was saying that I think it is inappropriate in a Wikipeidia article on a person to use the word "pseudoscientific", and that I claim that the question of appropriateness is a different question from that of whether it's true? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 12:51, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

April 2020

You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you disrupt Wikipedia, as you did at [[:WP:VPP]]. If you continue beating this dead horse disruptively, you will be blocked. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:15, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: Why don't you address what I said, rather than threatening me? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 13:07, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Because there’s nothing to address that others haven’t already and I honestly don’t care one bit about Wikipedia’s internal policies on medical stuff. It’s not a threat, it’s a warning: either propose a formal RfC on whatever issue you have or you will be blocked for disruptive editing. Going to VPP and whining every time you disagree with someone is tiresome to those of us who watch that page. It does nothing and doesn’t move anything forward. For what it’s worth, I disagree with Izno that VPP is the wrong place to have an RfC. Guideline talk pages are the absolute worst page to have an RfC because the only people who watch them are the people who don’t want the guideline changed so I avoid holding them there at all costs myself. There’s still an issue here though: you’re not actually proposing anything, you’re just complaining. Either propose something or stop. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:36, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: So "If you continue beating this dead horse disruptively, you will be blocked" is not a threat. Glad to know that. Maybe it was just a friendly piece of advice so that I won't be blocked by one of those bullies who watch for anyone breaking their rules.

Look, you yourself have put your finger on the issue – if I try to change the policy in a Request for Comment, it will be shot down by those guys who set the policy in the first place. That's why I brought it up at the Village Pump. And as I said, of the people who contributed to the discussion, there were more supporting me than opposing me.

And then I brought up another issue (see the previous section of this talk page and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 156#Are policies being used to the detriment of Wikipedia?), which is connected because it's another case where the rules are being used to the detriment of Wikipedia. But no one replied because Izno had already closed the discussion, only a couple days after the last contribution by someone other than me.

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:09, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Hey Tony, what do you think of the previous section here? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:39, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Funny how people disappear. Maybe something happened to him? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 11:22, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Tony didn't disappear. He's still quite active. He made it clear he thinks you are wasting everyone's time. He's an admin, if you ignore the above final warning, can simply block your account, he isn't required to waste his own time in a futile argument with you. Tarl N. (discuss) 16:36, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Tarl_N., there is a Judge in heaven, and each of us will one day be judged according to how we treated our fellow man. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 07:11, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

June 2020

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Hydroxychloroquine; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. 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.

Points to note:

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 and 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. Alexbrn (talk) 06:58, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

@Alexbrn: Why did you put this on my talk page? Why not on that of Zefr? And why did you revert my edit? You simply wrote "more carelessness". Why can't you just fix whatever you're talking about?

Each time I edited the article in question I tried to correct the little things he was quibbling about. I added a link to the article that says Mehra is a respected cardiologist. I corrected the typo. This Zefr is always reverting edits of mine for no good reason. I think I should lodge a complaint against him, no? There's a rule against reverting three times, and if you hadn't come to his rescue, he would have broken it! Or is that why you did it for him? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:28, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

You seem to be the one repeatedly trying to force your edit. It would be better now to make any proposal you have on the article Talk page. If you want to "lodge a complaint" against an editor, the correct venue is WP:AIN, but I would recommend against that course of action. Alexbrn (talk) 15:47, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

@Alexbrn: I was the one repeatedly trying to satisfy Zefr's picayune complaints! You didn't answer my questions. Why did you revert my edit? Do you really think we shouldn't mention the fact that the paper in question was written by a prominent cardiologist (head of the Heart and Vascular Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital)? Do you really think we shouldn't link to the Wikipedia article on him? I try to do a simple edit to make a small improvemnent in the article, and Zefr comes along and starts reverting my edit as usual! Why did you take his side? And why shouldn't I lodge a complaint against him? It seems that there are some people who spend their lives watching Wikipedia articles to see what they can revert. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 05:23, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Please read WP:BRD. When you are reverted, discussion should follow on the talk page, and the edit should not be re-inserted in any form until consensus has been achieved on the talk page. Edit comments do not suffice. Having just read the edits, I found them to meet WP:PEACOCK grounds for non-inclusion. Tarl N. (discuss) 05:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Alexbrn: I looked up your "PEACOCK" link, which talks about certain words, including "respected". It says:

Words such as these are often used without attribution to promote the subject of an article, while neither imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information. They are known as "peacock terms" by Wikipedia contributors.[2] Instead of making unprovable proclamations about a subject's importance, use facts and attribution to demonstrate that importance.

But of course my use of the term "respected cardiologist" for Mandeep Mehra has nothing to do with that. I wasn't trying to "promote the subject of the article", I was simply pointing out that this paper was written by a respected cardiologist. By the way, in your edit comment, you didn't complain about the word "respected", you wrote "more carelessness".

The trouble with your recommendation "BRD" ("be bold, revert, discuss") is that it usually results in the status quo being preserved. Somebody like Zefr comes along and reverts, and then I bring it up on the talk page and maybe he replies, but no one else does, or one of his allies does, and that's the end of it. No consensus. Do you really think that such a tiny change like what I made was worth a discussion on the talk page? Do you think anybody would have joined a discussion on such a minor point? And do you really think that saying that Mehra is a respected cardiologist is a case of a "peacock word"? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 05:09, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

It's not the sort of thing this encyclopedia will ever say. As you gain more experience editing you'll get a better feel for this. For now I can only advise you to heed the wisdom of others. Alexbrn (talk) 05:59, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Now I see that it was actually you who reverted my edit, not Zefr. Well, I still disagree with you, and I'm redoing my edit, more or less. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 16:08, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

And now I've reverted your edit. Why you seem to feel it is necessary to specify which out of several authors retracted a study is beyond me. The study is retracted. The only place where it matters exactly which authors retracted and which didn't would be in an article about the study, or an article about the authors. Hydrochloroquine, as a drug, isn't a place where it matters what the personalities involved in studies are. Tarl N. (discuss) 19:13, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Help me!

Please help me with... Where can I find an explanation of the order of the interlanguage links for articles? They used to be alphabetical, but recently there has been a change and they are no longer alphabetical. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 07:44, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

I'll leave the request open in case I'm wrong (it's been a while), however, it is my understanding that you can find it at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/source/mediawiki-config/browse/master/wmf-config/InterwikiSortOrders.php; enwiki appears to be using the first setting as per https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/source/mediawiki-config/browse/master/wmf-config/InitialiseSettings.php (search for wgInterwikiSortingSort). 78.28.44.111 (talk) 08:50, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Eric Kvaalen, The link order is currently broken: see here. Darren-M talk 09:38, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Plutonium-238

I reverted your change. What you added was pure WP:SYNTH, and incorrect. The alpha is emitted with the specified energy, *period*. It has that kinetic energy with respect to the remaining nucleus. Your 2% calculation makes the assumption that the energy should be measured in a rest frame and that the U-234 nuclear is gaseous and free to move - which it usually won't be, since it's in a solid. Please do not make additions to articles without citations, since you seem to frequently make mistaken assumptions. Tarl N. (discuss) 05:28, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Tarl N.: It's true that I one time made a sign mistake on a talk page, but my point was true anyway. What do you think is the total decay energy for the decay

²³⁸Pu → ²³⁴U + ⁴He?

And how did you happen to look at that article just after I edited it?

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:40, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Ah. I see what you're getting at and where your 2% came from. The difference between the decay energy and the particle energy (which, indeed is not the same, it's 5.3583 Mev, vs. the decay energy at 5.593 MeV, I'll correct that) is about 4.2%. That's not from recoil, which is why I saw your edit as absurd. If you look in the CRC tables (my most recent edition is 2003-2004), you'll find a column of γ-ray energy, which for Pu-238 is listed as "U k x-ray". What that means is that when Pu-238 drops an alpha, it becomes a uranium nucleus with 94 electrons. Getting rid of those electrons causes simple electrochemical x-ray emission, in this case from the K-shell of the Uranium nucleus. That energy may or may not be absorbed, depending on the transparency of the material to that wavelength.

As to why I noticed you making that edit - it's on my watchlist. If you look back in the history, you'll see I made edits in May and April of '18. It's most of what I do on Wiki, watch for people making absurd edits and undo them. In your case, adding pure WP:SYNTH. Tarl N. (discuss) 18:28, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

See here on page 19. The last line, 92 U, where the k-shell electron binding energy is listed as 115606 eV. That's not a good reference for Wiki, but I don't have access to an x-ray data booklet on-hand. Tarl N. (discuss) 18:46, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Tarl N.: I guess you assumed I didn't check the decay energy.

My copy of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (49th edition, 1968-1969) has a "Table of the Isotopes", and for ²³⁸Pu it gives two alpha-ray energies, 5.491 and 5.228, with intensities 72% and 28% respectively, and then in the column labeled "Gamma energies (MeV)" it gives seven values, ranging from 0.0436 (43.6 keV) to 0.875 (875 keV). The next column gives "Gamma intensities", with 0.038% for the 43.6 keV rays and much lower values for the others. I don't know what all that means. It sounds like it means that in only 0.038% of the decays (alpha decays) there is a gamma ray of 43.6 keV, and even less often there are gammma rays of higher energy. Anyway, it doesn't seem to correspond to what you have.

It doesn't make sense to me to say that it emits a uranium K-shell electron and thereby gives off an X-ray. Emitting an electron (especially a K-shell electron) requires an input of energy, such as an X-ray photon. The number you cite, 115.606 keV, is the energy required to kick a K-shell electron out. I suppose it's possible that the alpha particle kicks out a K-shell electron, and then another electron falls into that hole, from an L-shell or higher, giving off an X-ray.

Here's a quote from an old book, Concepts of Modern Physics by Arthur Beiser, page 433:

The kinetic energy KEα of the emitted alpha particle is never quite equal to the disintegration energy Q because, since momentum must be conserved, the nucleus recoils with a small amount of kinetic energy when the alpha particle emerges. It is easy to show (see Exercise 23) from mementum and energy conservatoiin that KEα is related to Q and the mass number A of the original nucleus by
$KE_{\alpha }\approx {\frac {A-4}{A}}Q$
The mass numbers of nearly all alpha emitters exceed 210, and so most of the diintegration energy appears as the kinetic energy of the alpha particle.

Note that he doesn't say "so long as the atom is not in a solid". The uranium atom is given a momentum that corresponds to a speed of 279 km/s. I don't think it will just stay put where it was! It will penetrate through the solid for sosme distance. It will initially have about 94 keV. Now, it's true that if there is an X-ray, some of that radiation may escape. That may be a similar amount, if it's Kα radiation. So that means the energy of the alpha particle will be about 4% less than the total decay energy, as you say. The 2% going to recoil is energy deposited in the solid, and the other 2% going to X-rays may escape.

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 19:42, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

It's moot. I removed the entire section as WP:OR and replaced it with a cited reference specifying how much heat is generated per gram of Pu-238. If you'd make a point of citing your sources when you add changes, that will derail all these discussions - we can simply look at your cite and determine whether it says what you say. Tarl N. (discuss) 03:50, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

@Tarl N.: What you call "original research" is just a routine calculation! And why did you take out the density? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 04:31, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Calculating molar energy from decay energies via Avogadro's constant is routine, just tedious. Breaking it down into particle energies, x-ray emissions and recoil gets beyond tedious, and into the realm of detracting from the article itself (which is about Pu-238, not calculating molar energies). I removed the density from the lede, because that's the density of Plutonium itself, and not specific to Pu-238. Besides, the use of Pu-238 in RTGs is usually plutonium dioxide, so the density of the bare metal isn't particularly interesting in this article. Tarl N. (discuss) 05:45, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Well, I don't agree, but I'm sure I won't convince you. I have put back a correct density. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:26, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Care to explain how the density is even meaningful for the article, let alone the lede? I'm sure we can jam several dozen more factoids in there, and further complicate them with bogus calculations that mean absolutely nothing.

Do you have the 49th edition of the CRC, and verified the density of Pu-242, or did you copy it from elsewhere on Wikipedia? The 84th edition I have on my desk lists: Pu; at.wt. (244) sp. gr. (α modification) 19.84 (25˚C).. The atomic weight listed for unstable elements is generally for the longest-lived isotope, which in this case is Pu-244 at $8*10^{7}$ years. That doesn't mean the chemical characteristics (including density listed for the α allotrope) are given for that isotope alone - it's unlikely that enough purified Pu-244 (or Pu-242) was accumulated to measure its density, much more likely it documents the density of the available mixture. That would be mostly Pu-239 and Pu-240. Your addition of a calculation of 238/242, aside from being irrelevant to the article, complicating the lede unnecessarily, is as best I can tell, is the result of you making stuff up. Please revert your change. Tarl N. (discuss) 22:38, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

@Tarl N.: Yes, as I mentioned on Wednesday (Sept. 23) I have that old CRC handbook. So now they've changed it to 244 but kept the density the same! I don't know what you mean by "making stuff up"! But I agree with you that probably no one has made enough 244 to measure its density. Nor 242 for that matter. So I guess we have to retreat from that. Yesterday I tried to find the source for the density given in the Plutonium article (actually in the template "Infobox plutonium") and couldn't find any, so I modified the infobox and put in my CRC reference. But now I doubt that that's correct. What we really need (for the infobox) is a reference that gives the atomic volume, or the crystallographic dimensions so we can calculate the atomic volume (a routine calculation!). By the way, when you use <math>, you can write 8\times 10^7 instead of 8*10^7, so that you get a normal multiplication sign: $8\times 10^{7}.$ Eric Kvaalen (talk) 05:31, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

The point is that the CRC does not give you chemical properties on a per-isotope basis. That's why I regard your "242/238" elaboration as made up. You misread something (it happens to all of us), and then proceeded to elaborate on that misunderstanding to produce stuff that was purest WP:OR and WP:SYNTH, and false to boot. Don't do that. When you cite something, cite what it says, don't come up with fancy ways to derive stuff based on what you assumed it meant. Leave it as what you think it actually claimed, so it's obvious what went wrong when it turns out to be incorrect - fancy derivations just leave things in a mess, harder to unwind.

Again, Wikipedia is NOT the place to come up with new conclusions. It is a place to index what is said elsewhere. If you want the density of Pu-238, either find a reference which gives it, or don't put anything into the article.

Which brings us to the entire question of the density itself. WHY is the density even relevant to the pu-238 article, let alone so important it has to go in the lede? Tarl N. (discuss) 06:07, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree that it's not very important to give the density. But I do not agree to take it out just because you call it "original research" or "synthesis"! I did not "make up" anything. The CRC was simply misleading. Now I have found the atomic volume, with a good reference, and have put in the value based on that. That is a routine calculation, not "synthesis" or "original research". Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:12, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions

@Fa suisse: Hello. Last year you edited the article List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions, adding a column called "Consumption-based emissions" in MtCO
₂e. I wanted to check what kind of CO
₂ equivalent it meant, but when I go to the reference you gave I do not find the data. There is an Excel spreadsheet one can download, but it doesn't give the numbers you put, even after converting from tonnes of carbon to tonnes of CO
₂. Besides which, it's talking about carbon dioxide, not greenhouse gases in general. Can you help? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 19:19, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Hello, thanks for the message. Yes, I can help and I will take a look, but it could take a week or two before I sit down to do this. Fa suisse (talk) 19:32, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Hello again, I've taken a look and yes, I agree that it is all a mess and we need to clean it up. I began by updating figures for territorial/non-trade adjusted/production-based emissions using the new WRI website, ([13]) which you pointed to. I am now going to take a look at the consumption-based data. Regards, Fa suisse (talk) 19:39, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

You're right about mistaken figures regarding Consumption-based emissions. I don't know what happened but let's fix it. I'm going to simply remove current figures and start adding 2017 figures (the most recent) from the "2019 National Emissions v1.0" xls file at [14] instead. Fa suisse (talk) 19:58, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Regarding the fact that such emissions are CO2-only, you're also right, since the Global Carbon Project website mentions on separate pages a "Global Carbon Budget", a "Global Methane Budget" and a "Global Nitrous Oxide Budget" (addendum: or better yet, it's stated explicitly in the accompanying scientific article : https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-1783-2019). So we should either add data from those sources or simply erase the column if CO2+CH4+N20 are insufficient and we can't find other sources. Fa suisse (talk) 20:05, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

@Fa suisse: Thanks for the update. Meanwhile I have been in touch with people at the World Resources Institute, from which you got the data for our third column, and I ask'd them what kind of "global warming potential" they used. In other words, for which time horizon. In the end I got an answer, that they use the 100-year time horizon. But apparently that fact is not on line. One of them promised that they would put it on line, but didn't say when! I would like to give that fact in our article somehow, but I don't see how to do it when there's no on-line reference saying it. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 09:56, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

GC

Hey there! I'm sorry, but I don't think I understood your question. Did you mean to ask what GC pattern resin is? DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:47, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

@DRosenbach: Yes, that's it. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 08:05, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Contingent election

I saw your edit summary at 2020 United States presidential election. Maybe I am interpreting your statement and the archives wrong, but I thought it might be helpful to just comment... All of the state's representatives vote as one bloc in a contingent election. That Biden and Trump both won 25 states is not relevant - it's about the numbers in the House. So even though Biden won Michigan, it would likely vote Trump. So the original wording, Since there were 25 states for each candidate, there would have been a tie there too, is not correct. Hopefully I'm not out of line here. Urve (talk) 23:39, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

@Urve: All right, thanks. I wonder what happens if the Representatives of a particular state don't agree, especially if there are the same number for each candidate. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 19:11, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Help needed on the subject of Alexei Navalny!

Greetings,

I was just looking at the edit history of the Alexei Navalny (Russian politician) page, and noticed you edit pages related to him fairly often. Since you may have some expertise on the guy, would it be possible for you to look over a fairly heated debate thats happening right now at Talk:2024 Russian presidential election#Navalny? I thought that it would be worth mentioning him being barred from running in 2024 like in 2018 (likley for political reasons), but a user keeps insisting that its Western propaganda. Looking for a reliable editor to mediate. Thank you. LauraWilliamson (talk) 00:25, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

@LauraWilliamson: Sorry, I don't know the answer. I have been lookin' at his videos about being poison'd and about Putin's palace, and I have a lot of admiration for the guy, but I'm not an expert on him. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 13:39, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Analytic expressons

@Jochen Burghardt: Hi. Why did you write in a comment that sin(x)+sin(y) is not an analytic expression?

Maybe the sentence should say, "Closed-form expressions are an important sub-class of analytic expressions, which contain a finite or infinite number of applications of well-known functions". Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:14, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Ammonium diuranate

@Materialscientist: Hi. Are you sure that this structure is for "ammonium diuranate"? It has the same elemental composition, but the article you reference calls it "uranyl dihydroxylamide tetrahydrate". In other words, it's ${\ce {UO2(NH2O)2.4H2O,}}$ rather than ${\ce {(NH4)2U2O7.}}$ (Actually, the picture makes it look like ${\ce {(UO2(NH2)(OH2))2O}}$!)

For what it's worth, pings are processed by the signature translation (from ~~~~ into actual signature). Since you didn't sign the above paragraph, Materialscientist would never have received the ping. As a secondary issue, if you read his talk page (top box), he indicates that he has turned off ping notifications, so he wouldn't receive it anyway. You're better off putting a query like that on his talk page. Regards, Tarl N. (discuss) 22:07, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

@Tarl N.: Ah, that explains why I didn't get an answer from Jochen Burghardt either. Thanks! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 07:52, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

2021 United States cyberattack

I added a CSD tag to this article because both the user was a banned user and then also there was only one source which was a news article and didn’t seem to meet WP:NOTNEWS. AntoineHound (talk) 16:54, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

@AntoineHound: Well, it's certainly newsworthy. Some 30,000 businesses affected. It was the top news on the BBC yesterday morning. Sounds similar to the 2020 United States federal government data breach. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:09, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Gaussian cgs

Concerning [15], Gaussian units are weird, and there is a difference between these two unit systems, which makes it important to stipulate which system is used for which equations, because the dimensions aren't preserved from one system to another. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:22, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

@Headbomb: Yes, I know that. But the formulas that were referred to do not contain anything about the actual units. That's why I changed the wording. And you shouldn't have reverted my edit of Bohr magneton anyway, because I did more than just chnage that sentence! Please restore what I did. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 14:59, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Look at the article history, the other changes were restored two minutes later. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:52, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

@Headbomb: Ah, so you put it back. I got a notice sayin' you had reverted, and I didn't check what you did after that. But I don't see why you think "SI units" or "Gaussian CGS units" is better than "International System of Units" or "Gaussian system of units". After all, the formula

$\mu _{\mathrm {B} }={\frac {e\hbar }{2m_{\mathrm {e} }}}$

could be applied using mass in grams and so on. Maybe it shouldn't be, but someone could do that, and then it wouldn't have "SI units". Same comment for the nuclear magneton. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:23, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

The distinction here is between SI/normal and Gaussian/rescaled. And grams are still SI. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:25, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

@Headbomb: Well, feet and pounds then!

I'm copyin' this over to the talk page. 16:00, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Uranium–thorium dating

@Artoria2e5: I added to the article Uranium–thorium dating. Hope it satisfies your request for "missing information about algorithm for ratio to age". Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:31, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Concern regarding Draft:Galactic cap

Hello, Eric Kvaalen. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:Galactic cap, a page you created, has not been edited in at least 5 months. Drafts that have not been edited for six months may be deleted, so if you wish to retain the page, please edit it again or request that it be moved to your userspace.

If the page has already been deleted, you can request it be undeleted so you can continue working on it.

Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia. FireflyBot (talk) 11:01, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Convert

I noticed this edit at 2014 OS393 which added {{conv|30|km}}. Would you mind avoiding conv and writing convert instead. The saving in the amount of typing is inconsequential so conv has no benefit. The downside is that it causes confusion for other editors who know what convert is (or at least, could guess), but who may not know what conv is. There are over 3.2 million {{convert}} templates in articles but hardly any {{conv}}. A complication is that {{cvt}} is a useful abbreviation for convert and cvt has an extra property, namely that it sets |abbr=on so unit symbols are shown, not names. Johnuniq (talk) 05:52, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: All right, I'll try to remember. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 08:43, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Question to SloppyTots

@SloppyTots: You added a sentence "Julian the Apostate, Caelius Aurelianus, and others similar denoted toxicity symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by coal fumes" to the article on carbon monoxide poisoning (here). Can you clarify that sentence? I don't understand it. Also, the same reference is used to support the idea that Cleopatra died of carbon monoxide, but that doesn't agree with the Wikipedia article on her. If you have access to that reference, can you clarify that? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 08:11, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Eric Kvaalen:, thank you for the feedback. I will clarify that sentence to better articulate that the writings of Julian and Caelius document early knowledge of CO toxicity caused by coal fumes. Yes, there was a thesis written around 1888 by Ambroise Viaud Grand Marais that suggested Cleopatra died of CO poisoning; CO was known by carbonic oxide at the time of publication hence searching for the carbon monoxide-Cleopatra theory typically doesn't yield any results. I have not seen the original article, however, an apparent 'press release' of sorts in available in numerous 1888 magazines, such as Scientific American printed on July 21, 1888, p. 35, available free on Google Books ... also, I've heard a rumor that the paper that I often cite on the history of CO is freely available on Sci-Hub at www.sci-hub.se ... Regards, SloppyTots (talk) 13:19, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Question to Phoenix7777

@Phoenix7777: Hi. I can't figure out what the horizontal and vertical coordinates are in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Animation_of_2016_HO3_orbit_around_Earth_2000-2300.gif Can you help me? (I'm putting this on my own talk page because that way I'll get a notice when you answer...) Eric Kvaalen (talk)

Date of Easter

Do not add WP:NOR original research, as you did in your edit to "Date of Easter". The edit restored original research that was complained about in Talk:Date of Easter#Frequencies of the dates of Easter, in particular by adding suggestions about how the Gregorian Reform could be further improved.

In addition to the original research, the edit contradicts itself: "2,081,882,250/70,499,183 ≈ 29.5305869 days, correct to five digits after the decimal point." Jc3s5h (talk) 14:06, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The discussion is about the topic Eric Kvaalen repeats incorrect statement. Thank you. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:08, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

A trivial complaint, misunderstanding what I meant by "correct to five digits". I was talking about the correctness of the length of a month, not whether the division is correct! Here is his complaint. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 08:27, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

September 2022

Please do not add original research or novel syntheses of published material to articles as you apparently did to Atmosphere of Earth. Please cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. Your addition consisted of either WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. No, WP:CALC does not cover that insertion. Tarl N. (discuss) 05:40, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Do you really think calculating mass percentage from mole percentage is original synthesis research? I think you're persecuting me. Always pouncing on little improvements I make to articles, even if what I say is easy to see. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 20:46, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Belated reply. Yes, indeed. When I see an edit from you, my first reaction is to check to make sure the reference actually says what you put in the article. My experience with you is that it rarely does. You seem to have a preference for making changes which come out of your fertile imagination rather than reference. You have a habit of making calculations and assumptions to come up with new values which are not sourced. That is explicitly prohibited by WP:NOR. You seem to always want to claim WP:CALC allows it, not seeming to understand the meaning of trivial. Tarl N. (discuss) 23:24, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

GN-z11 10:10, 1 May 2021‎ "The galaxy has such a high redshift that its angular diameter distance is actually less than that of some galaxies with lower redshift."

Hi Eric! First off - I've only done a few dozen Wikipedia edits and I must admit I find these 'Talk' pages quite difficult to 'get' so I may not be conversing the right way on this, in which case, apologies in advance!

I came to the above GN-z11 page, from some piece of news from the last few years. And that sentence above... shouldn't it say: "The galaxy has such a high redshift that its angular diameter distance is actually //more// than that of some galaxies with lower redshift." not "... //less//..." (my // emphasis)?

We'd expect something further away to look smaller - so the current sentence scans oddly. I'd not heard of this odd 'size on the sky increases with distance at VERY large distances" but looking at the "Angular diameter distance" wiki page makes me think the same - that the sentence should say "more" not "less".

I've not changed it though because I could well be misunderstanding. I just wanted to double check. If you agree, and it was a typo, I can change it, or you can. If you think I've completely missed the point and got it wrong, that's fine, just let me know!

Thanks, Gordon Gordon Panther (talk) 18:18, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

@Gordon Panther: Actually it's correct, what I wrote. You're right that we would expect something further away to look smaller. But once the redshift goes past about 2, the size in the sky of objects of a given actual size increases! See Distance measure (cosmology) and this graph:

By the way, is "Gordon Panther" your real name? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 11:57, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Original research

Please do not add original research or novel syntheses of published material to articles as you apparently did to Gravity. Please cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. Thank you. - DVdm (talk) 17:25, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

@DVdm: This is ridiculous. All I did was to divide the masses by the distances squared and multiply that by the gravitational constant. And you call that "original research". Why don't you think about what is useful to people (like me) who come to Wikipedia wanting answers to questions? Please don't thank me. Here, for my own benefit and for the sake of anyone who might be interested, is the link to the table I added: Gravity#Other objects. What do you think is the purpose of the "No original research" rule? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 19:16, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

A very important issue in Wikipedia's aversion to original research is notability, as I said in my edit summary. Anyone can make a table with some calculations with parameter values of celestial bodies, but the question is, are these calculations actually useful? Do they belong in an encyclopedia? If nobody ever made and published such a table, Wikipedia assumes —by design— that such a table is not interesting. The existence of reliable, relevant sources is needed to (1) providing verification, and i.m.o. much more importantly, (2) demonstrating notability. - DVdm (talk) 20:08, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

So you should spend your time looking for things that people have put into Wikipedia because they are interesting, but which they haven't proved are interesting by finding a published article saying it?! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 09:56, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Not quite. I spend some time preventing others to spend a lot of "time looking for things that people have put into Wikipedia because they are interesting, but which they haven't proved are interesting by finding a published article saying it." - DVdm (talk) 18:48, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Retraction on source in sun

Eric - I just added a note on sun that a source has been retracted; it appears that it was added by you in this edit, so you may have more background than me to tell if the retraction is actually relevant to what is used in the article, or if there is a better source. LittlePuppers (talk) 22:38, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

@LittlePuppers: I disagree with adding that note, because the retraction had nothing to do with what I used the article to support. See the notice on the retraction. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 09:56, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Eric: Feel free to remove it - that's why I left you a note, I wasn't sure if the retraction was relevant or not. I don't read many papers in this area. (That said: I assume it's better to have sources that are not retracted, because in some cases error in one are may be a sign of errors in other areas. In this case, I ran across an extremely protracted discussion about the integrity of the paper, but I'll defer to you here regardless.) LittlePuppers (talk) 02:43, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

@LittlePuppers: OK, I've taken care of it. I added a note in the footnote. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 12:53, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Cocoa butter

@Smokefoot: Hi. On the Cocoa butter page you put an illustration with caption "The main constituent of cocoa butter is the triglyceride derived from stearic, palmitic, and oleic acids." The three acyl groups are in that order on the glycerine. But later you added in the Triglyceride article the sentence "Cocoa butter is unusual in that it is composed of only a few triglycerides, derived from palmitic, oleic, and stearic acids in the 1-, 2-, and 3-positions of glycerol, respectively", with a reference to Ullmann. So which one is right? I don't have access to Ullmann anymore. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:59, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Here is the quote from Ullmann "the proportions of different triglycerides in a naturally occurring fat generally do not conform to a statistical distribution. In vegetable oils and fats, unsaturated fatty acids are linked preferentially to the 2-position of the glycerol group, whereas in animal fats they appear primarily in the 1- and 3-positions (“2-random” and “1,3-random” distributions) [20]. Extreme examples of nonrandom distributions of fatty acid groups over the triglyceride molecule are cocoa butter (ca. 40% 1-palmito-3-stearo-2-olein) and lard (ca. 20% 2-palmito-1,3-diolein).." I will try to correct the error. --Smokefoot (talk) 13:37, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

@Smokefoot: Thanks. So the illustration is wrong. Can you fix that? I'd be interested to know what Ullmann says before that, about random and nonrandom distributions. Does it say that it's often just random? If they are not random, then the oil or fat should be optically active. One of us should add something about this subject to the Triglyceride article. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 14:13, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

I corrected the drawing, not any text, at least not yet. Unfortunately my incorrect drawing is in wide use. Per your request, the quote from Ullmann has been extended above. Feel free to ask for further info as my employer provides free access to Ullmann's.--Smokefoot (talk) 17:52, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

@Smokefoot: Thanks a lot! I don't understand what Ullmann's means by "do not conform to a statistical distribution". Eric Kvaalen (talk) 18:35, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Ullmann's is referring to the expectation that in the absence of some enzymatic guidance the fatty acids might be expected to attach to the OH positions on glycerol more randomly. For example, the finding of palmito-3-stearo-2-olein in 40% of the fats of a particular plant seed oil vs so many other options (1-palmito-3-stearo-2-palmito, 1-palmito-3-palmito-2-olein, 1-olein-3-stearo-2-olein, 1-palmito-3-stearo-2-stearo, stearin, olein, etc etc). The other example is the tendency of oleic to attach to the 1,3-positions of lard. One might expect all positions to be nearly equivalent. The biosynthesis of these fats begins with POCH2CH(OH)CH2OH (phosphorylated glycerol, aka phosphatide), whose OH groups are acylated with fatty acids in a manner that is selective positionally and selective for certain fatty acids. Eventually the phosphate group comes off and the final fatty acid is attached. These steps are apparently highly regulated. Many chemists are surprised that the acylation is sensitive to subtleties like palmitic vs stearic. Another way to explain the situation is that if palmito-3-stearo-2-olein were equilibrated, one could get many triglycerides. --Smokefoot (talk) 19:09, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

@Smokefoot: All right, thanks again. I think it should have said "do not conform to a random distribution", rather than "to a statistical distribution"! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:52, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Nomination of List of disproved mathematical ideas for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of disproved mathematical ideas 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/List of disproved mathematical ideas until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, 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.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:52, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Categories

Hi, thanks for creating Category:Crystals in space group 12 and others. I am in the process of doing the same at af.wiki and linked it to wikidata, but we seem to be the only ones crazy enough to do these thing... :-) Jcwf (talk) 06:47, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

@Jcwf: Thanks for the thanks. I've taken a look at af:Kategorie:Kristalstruktuur met ruimtegroep 12 and it looks very nice -- better than what I have done! Basic'ly I just thought it was strange that we didn't have Categories for crystals, but only for minerals, so I started creating ones when I happened to study some particular crystal structure. Also, I united some categories that were enantiomorphic, because minerals will not be in one or the other but both (that is, some crystals will be in one space group and others in the other). That wouldn't be true of crystals of chiral molecules, but I don't know whether there are any chiral molecules (such as natural organic compounds) that crystallize in a space group that is enantiomorphic to another space group (there being 22 such space groups, 11 pairs). Do you know whether there are? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 08:38, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi,

Sorry for the late answer.I spilt tea on my keyboard; had to get a new one I think I can answer your question. Unfortunately all the screw axes subscript were made into non-subs, but the space group numbers are clear:

The splitting of affine space-group types of three-dimensional

space groups into pairs of crystallographic space-group types

gives rise to the following 11 enantiomorphic pairs of

space-group types: P41=P43 (76/78), P4122=P4322 (91/95),

P41212=P43212 (92/96), P31=P32 (144/145), P3112=P3212 (151/

153), P3121=P3221 (152/154), P61=P65 (169/173), P62=P64

(170/172), P6122=P6522 (178/179), P6222=P6422 (180/181),

P4332=P4132 (212/213). These groups are easily recognized by

their Hermann–Mauguin symbols, because they are the primitive

groups for which the Hermann–Mauguin symbol contains one of

the screw rotations 31, 32, 41, 43, 61, 62, 64 or 65.

From int'l tables

Jcwf (talk) 00:39, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

@Jcwf: Yeah, that much I already knew, thanks. What I'm wonderin' is whether there are any chiral organic molecules that crystallize in one of those eleven. Sorry about your tea! (And your keyboard, for that matter...) Eric Kvaalen (talk) 07:07, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

There I cannot help you. I am a (retired) inorganic solid state chemist.Jcwf (talk) 14:09, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

September 2023

Your recent editing history at Moors shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war; read about how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you do not violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Skitash (talk) 21:17, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Glycerin heat of combustion

@Greg L:Hi. Where did you get the figure of 1414 as referenced in this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nitroglycerin&diff=prev&oldid=1131576684 ? I don't find it in the reference. I would like to know what the reaction of decomposition is exactly. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 09:58, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I see that you answered my e-mail. It went into my Junk folder! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 16:56, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

February 2024

Please stop. If you continue to use talk pages for inappropriate discussion, you may be blocked from editing. Bon courage (talk) 09:56, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

You're the one that needs to stop. What's the idea of reverting my edit? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:21, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Article Talk pages exist solely to discuss how to improve articles; they are not for general discussion about the subject of the article. See WP:NOTFORUM. If you have a general question take it to the WP:REFDESK or off Wikipedia. Bon courage (talk) 10:25, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

It goes without saying that my question is aimed at the improvement of the article! I don't have to say that. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:28, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Doubtful. Bon courage (talk) 10:30, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Malvina (character)

The article Malvina (character) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Fails notability

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. PatGallacher (talk) 21:52, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Sun, Moon, and the stars...

Hello. Yes, Sun and Moon, when referring to the objects themselves, are proper names and are covered in WP:ASTRONOMICALBODIES. Thanks for following up. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:23, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: Well, I'm sorry that they made that the policy. I don't think those words are proper names. If they were, then we would say "Earth goes around Sun and Moon goes around Earth"! As I said in my edit comment, traditionally they were not capitalized. No distinction was made between an astronomical context and a non-astronomical context, as that Wikipedia policy does. At some times in the past, lots of nouns, or maybe all nouns, were capitalized (at least by some people), as is done even today in German. But that applied to anything, not just heavenly bodies! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 19:23, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello Eric Kvaalen. Sun and Moon not proper names? Am interested, please tell me what you call the giant nuclear furnace in the sky that keeps everyone alive and that massive rocky object about a quarter of a million miles away? Thanks. There have been RM's in the past about the uppercasing, which, of course, has been upheld. Randy Kryn (talk) 22:05, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: I mean proper noun. "A noun designating by name a being or thing without a limiting modifier. Also called 'proper name'." (American Heritage Dictionary) Wiktionary explains:

In English, a proper noun is normally not preceded by an article or limiting modifier and is normally written with an initial capital letter. However, some proper nouns are preceded by articles (such as the Netherlands) and some are uncapitalized (kd lang), and many common (non-proper) nouns are also capitalized, like European. Some references erroneously conflate whether a noun is common or proper with whether it is capitalized or not, although these are not the same.

Since we use the words "sun", "moon", and "earth" with the article, I don't consider them proper nouns. I agree that if we use these words without "the" then we should normally capitalize them – but that's not the case, except that often "Earth" is used without "the" when writing about the earth in the context of it being a heavenly body among others. (In the King James Bible, there is a verse using "earth" without "the", and not capitalized: "Thy kingdome come. Thy will be done, in earth, as it is in heauen.") Eric Kvaalen (talk) 16:02, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I also object to the idea that we have to say "Earth" rather than "the earth" when referring to the earth as a planet. It seems like just enforcing some decision of the International Astronomical Union, as though we all have to do what they say. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:59, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Not to be unkind, but what do you call Earth? You are pointing to the most prominent large objects that humans have daily contact with - the Earth and the Sun. You seem to be saying that they have no proper name. The Moon is similar, it rules the tides and, reflecting sunlight, brightens the night. Is it without a proper name? Wikipedia uses commonsense and actually names these life-determining objects. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:26, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: You haven't understood the term. As I said, I mean proper noun. The American Heritage Dictionary defines this as "A noun designating by name a being or thing without a limiting modifier." And it goes on to say that this is also called a "proper name". That is the sense in which I have been using the term "proper name". For example, "Randy" is a proper name, but "the universe" is not. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 07:15, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

In either case they are uppercased when referring to the specific planet, star, or moon. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:28, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

In the past, I have had my spelling of these words corrected. I have learned what gets corrected on Wikipedia, and what doesn't. I now spell heavenly bodies with a leading capital letter: Jupiter, Saturn, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth. I omit the leading capital letter when I write earth, soil, dirt. Many planets have one or more moons, but Earth has only one, which we call the Moon. Dolphin (t) 13:50, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, I prefer to write the traditional way rather than follow the diktats of the IAU. 08:25, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

September 2024

Please do not add or change content, as you did at List of trigonometric identities, without citing a reliable source. Please review the guidelines at Wikipedia:Citing sources and take this opportunity to add references to the article. Thank you. DVdm (talk) 10:44, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

October 2024

Please stop. If you continue to use talk pages for inappropriate discussion, as you did at Talk:List of trigonometric identities, you may be blocked from editing. - DVdm (talk) 09:05, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

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