Peterwoit

Yang-Mills

"At this point, I give up, lacking time to deal with this and any understanding of what mechanisms are available in Wikipedia to deal with such a situation.", taken from your blog.

The usual mechanism is to address the concerns on the talk page of the article or the talk page of a related Wikiproject (in this case WikiProject Physics). Pra seems to think that these are perfectly sane solutions, and while I can't judge whether they are sane or not because I don't understand one thing about YMT, it appears to me that a book from Smigma is a reliable source.

So you did half the process, you pointed out what you feel is a problem. I'm not saying there's no problem with the current version of the YM article, and Pra is opened to not include the reference from Frasca. However you simply came in and claimed that these solutions were more or less fringe science because they were ignored or not cited very much. Well that may be true, but not being cited often doesn't mean you're wrong, it simply means you aren't cited very much. The next half would've been to point towards a better reference than Frasca/Smigma, possibly a literature review on YM, or even better a paper that addresses Frasca and points out where he got things wrong. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 17:10, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

One problem here is that I'm not knowledgeable about the ways of Wikipedia, so I do not know what the most efficient way of dealing with this is. I thought it important though to at least point out the problem. Engaging in argument with Frasca about his claims would be a huge waste of time that I don't have, and quickly lead to the necessity of being impolite, which I want to avoid. He does not deny being Pra1998, and I don't see any why anyone thinks it is acceptable to have a large chunk of a Wikipedia article about one of the most important ideas in physics written by someone who goes on about his own ideas and references himself. Peterwoit (talk) 18:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I have not claimed being Frasca nor anybody else. Again you draw your conclusions and start your wars. Have fun. --Pra1998 (talk) 19:49, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

It is indeed important that you point the problem, and I let the physics Project know about it. We (at least I and most of the people I met on Wikipedia and on the physics project) certainly do not think it is acceptable to use one's own work to reference Wikipedia. That's basically a conflict of interest (Wikipedia:COI#Close_relationships). The guiding principle is basically "If your work is notable and pertinent, other people will naturally use it". You won't find many people saying that it's acceptable to "self-publish", and those who do people are usually the self-publishers. The thing is, there are not that many people on wikipedia that have the knowledge to edit a page about YM theory. You're affiliated with the HEP, so you probably could get a team of writers to expand YM theory significantly and make sure that the citations used to back it are mostly reviews by teams of physicists/theories and positively reviewed books rather than recently published papers.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)