Wikipedia:Peer review/Jürgen Ehlers/archive1

Jürgen Ehlers

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I wrote this article shortly after Jürgen Ehlers' death (and note with some pride that, in the meantime, it has been translated to French and apparently helped make the German version more complete, as well). I've now updated it with information found in the special issue of General Relativity and Gravitation published in Ehlers' honour in 2009. With that, it should be reasonably complete, and I want to get it to FA status. It's been some time since I got an article ready for that (the last one was general relativity, I think), and I might be a bit rusty. Any helpful input would be greatly appreciated! Markus Poessel (talk) 19:31, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments, Part 1 of 2

Approaching this from a non-science (but interested) perspective.

Lead

• I'm always a little hesitant to include the word "notable" in an article, especially a lead section. The definition of the word is different outside of Wikipedia than it is in it, if that makes any sense. Anyway, the first sentence could omit the word and perhaps be a tiny bit more specific, and the first sentence of the second paragraph could include that he was known among [insert group of people here] for..., etc.
  • "notable" removed (this and later inset bullet points comments by Markus Poessel)
• "relativity group at Hamburg University" - Not quite sure what this means on first reading.
  • replaced by "relativity research group" - that should be clearer.
• The hyphen after "lecturer" seems superfluous, unless there's something I'm missing there.
  • Oops, that should be lecture- since the word is "lectureship", not "lecturership". Fixed.
• Since you already have a wikilink to Germany at the end of the first paragraph, I recommend removing the one in the first sentence, since it seems a tad more awkward. Either way, you'll have to get rid of one of them at least.
  • OK, looking at a few other biographical articles, wikilinking "German" is indeed unusual and, I agree, awkward. Wikilink removed.
• No comma needed after "foundations of general relativity"
  • Removed.
• Since general relativity is wikilinked above, you'll want to remove the second link here.
  • Hey, I like linking to that article! OK, you're right; second link removed.
• The sentence with the list of accomplishments simply seems too long, and its complexity makes it awkward to read. Don't be afraid to separate these out to give them some air to breathe, even if it makes the lead section longer.
  • I've tried breaking it up into two smaller sentences. Also dropped the "notable" and talked more generally about "worked", "formulated", "proved" etc.

Biography

Early career

• "went on to study" can simply be "studied"
  • Changed.
• "("Staatsexamen")" Not sure if you need this, but if you do, I think it needs to be in italics. Check the MOS.
  • I'd like to keep it, but you're right - WP:MOS says to italicize isolated foreign words that are not proper name.
• The phrase "While earlier, the main..." should probably be "Prior to his arrival,".
  • Changed.
• The rest of the sentence has quite a few interjecting phrases that make its syntax quite awkward. If you need to add a clause in that explains a particular theory, I don't think anyone would have a problem with separating out a couple sentences so that you can make it clearer. As it is, it appears as though the writing is terse (which is good) but awkward (which is not so good).
  • OK; I tried to break things up a bit.
• The same sort of goes for the sentence beginning with "He then held teaching and research positions..." and ends with "full professor of physics". It's very, very long. Have someone read this out loud to you to see what I mean.
  • OK, I broke that sentence into smaller ones.

Munich

• "brought into play" - The phrase feels too colloquial here. Perhaps a clearer way of saying it would be just "suggested"?
  • Agreed; changed.
• This is something I noticed in earlier sections too, but be careful about lists of people. It starts to sound like the social page of an old newspaper after a while: "The supper was well attended by person, person, person," ad nauseam. Just because these folks have their own pages doesn't mean they need to be listed.
  • I see what you mean, but I do think it's important to have those connections between biographical articles. Who worked with whom is an important aspect of a scientific career. Incidentally, having that list is not an original idea of mine; that's what Ashtekar finds worth mentioning in the article I'm quoting.
• "post-docs" You'll have to explain this term.
  • I've wikilinked instead.
• Delete "go on to"
  • Fixed.
• Scientific American should be italicized.
  • Fixed

Potsdam

• Delete "He was successful, and". Begin with "On..."
  • Deleted.
• "officially decided to found" - Did they officially decide to found it on this date, or was it founded on this date? If it's the latter, simply saying "founded the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam" might be less wordy.
  • It was the date of the decision to establish the institute. The founding presumably came later; it's one thing to decide to have an institute, and another to actually found it.
• The clause "when the institute started operating on April 1, 1995" would make more sense at the beginning of that sentence.
  • Switched as per this comment.
• Maybe wikilink "emeritus".
  • Linked

Honours and awards

• I'm thinking "Honours and awards" should be its own section, not part of the biography. It's related to his life, yes, but also his work, and seems to me like it could easily be split apart and placed below "Work".
  • Good idea. Done.
• Delete "In the course of his career,"
  • Done.
• Remember to stay with a summary style. I'd rather know the general significance of his acceptance into all of these societies than read them in a laundry list.
  • I would think it's important for honours to be listed, even though it does make for list-like reading. The two current FA physicist biographies where I could find honours do it in two different ways - as a genuine list for Stephen Hawking, and as a text that, by its nature, is not very far from a laundry list, for Ben Gascoigne. I'll leave this as is for now.
• I think "trianually" doesn't have a hyphen.
  • You're correct; also, this should be triennially. The official website I was quoting from gets that wrong.
• Italicize General Relativity and Gravitation.
  • Done.

Got to go for a run. More to come later. Runfellow (talk) 22:55, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments, part 2 of 2

Work

• Sort of like "notable", "important" is hard to define in an objective way, and as such it veers a little too far from NPOV.
  • Removed.
• "theory's" should be "theories'" because there are two that he tried to clarify.
  • OK, this was misleading. The single "theory" this refers to is general relativity. I've changed the wording accordingly.
• Maybe wikilink Heuristic?
  • Done.

Exact solutions

• The "in effect" interjection here seems to be trying to explain not only Einstein's equations but also what he was trying to do with them. As such, it's simply too much to try to cram into one interjection.
  • Fixed
• covariant goes to a disambiguation. Is there a more specific definition you'd like to use?
  • Proper link set
• Delete interjections "in fact,"
  • Deleted
• Maybe wikilink invariantly?
  • Wikilinked.
• Delete "To this end,"
  • There needs to be something to make clear what the connection with the previous sentence is. I changed this to "In order to do so", but "To this end" would have conveyed that meaning as well.
• Probably delete "seminal". Not that I'm disagreeing, but sounds like inserted POV.
  • Deleted.
• Seems like Hamburg Bible should be italics, not quotes. Not sure.
  • In WP:MOS on italics, I don't see this particular use case; seems to me the quotation marks are the way to go.
• The phrase "systematic exposition of the properties and characteristics of exact solutions to" seems overly complex.
  • Broke it up in two, somewhat simplified.
• "not quite begun" should probably be "not yet begun"
  • Changed.
• If, like in the case of the Ehlers-Geren-Sachs theorem, there is an article dedicated to these subjects, you probably need to use Template:Main at the top of the section.
  • On re-reading Template:Main, that should work for the Ehlers-Geren-Sachs theorem, but e.g. not for gravitational lensing (since I'm only talking about Ehlers' work on the subject, not gravitational lensing in general). But I've added it for Ehlers-Geren-Sachs.

General Notes

• To be honest, I'm a little skeptical that the "Work" section is a necessary part of the article, at least as it is written. Take a look at the Featured Articles for Physics and astronomy bios and you'll see that all of them are written in a completely chronological style. They include brief overviews of their work, but the vast majority of the articles are focused on the actions of the person, not a specific overview of their scientific work. The information regarding their work is typically integrated into the rest of the article.
  • I've looked at the excellend and also at the good articles, and what I'm doing here seems to be the same as in Albert Einstein - a biographical section, and then a "scientific career" section that is mostly, but not perfectly chronological. Following that lead, I've renamed the "Work" section "Scientific career". I think this splitting makes sense - for the scientific work, you want to summarize by topic; otherwise, you'd lose cohesion.
• It looks like there are a lot of repeated wikilinks. Check WP:MOSLINK, but in most cases, there really shouldn't be more than two links to a page per article, once in the intro, once in the article.
  • I removed all the repeated wikilinks I could find.
• It's tough to write something like this, because it is notable and important, yet hard for the average reader to grasp. As a result, you have to strike a fine balance between leaving the reader wondering what you're talking about by simply depending on wikilinks to let other people find their way through various articles or interjecting quick explanations of each of these concepts in this article. That's how this ended up with so many "that is, ..." interjections, which often confuse instead of clarify here. If you haven't already, go through Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable. No, you don't have to "dumb it down", but you're going to want to make it as accessible as possible. Right now, the second half of the article feels more like a literature review in a reviewed journal than an encyclopedic article.
  • Making things accessible is exactly what I tried to do in the second half. I know (and, some time ago, contributed to) Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable, and the current state of the article reflects my attempt to find a balance between explaining Ehlers' work on the one hand, and not getting too much into detail on the other. The article has to stay encyclopedic; in a popular science book about Ehlers, I'd take a much longer run-up than is possible here.
  • If you find it difficult to approach the subject from a more casual perspective, you may just want to tag it with Template:Technical at the top and ask some people for help to simplify it. No shame in that.
    • Well, yes, seeing that making things less technical is what I'm getting paid for, there would be some shame in that - and I think the problem here is deeper (see previous comment).
• In many cases, the original published article from Ehlers is a source, which is okay, but even if these were peer reviewed and well accepted, you're going to want a bit more than that in many cases. Something that might help with this is including layman reaction to Ehlers' work, which helps give the reader a better connection and understanding of the subject at hand (even if it feels perhaps too simple). For example: The New York Times referred to [person] as... etc.
  • If there were layman reactions, I'd have included them. I did include quite a number of articles in which other scientists comment on Ehlers's work (the memorial issue of General Relativity and Gravitation contained useful material in that respect), and also statements from various obituaries.
• Optional, but I'd turn the references into two columns. You can do this simply by turning {{Reflist}} into {{Reflist|2}}.
  • Done. I like the result; that was a very useful suggestion.

Please don't take any of the above as any sort of "serious" criticism. I realize these reviews can sometimes seem like someone is jumping all over you, and that is certainly not my intent. Clearly this is worthy of your time and effort, and I think anyone can recognize the serious amount of work you've put into this. Best of luck for improving the article, and please let me know if I can be of any assistance in the future. Runfellow (talk) 00:19, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks for your thorough reading of the text, and for your helpful suggestions! I appreciate the time you've taken to go through the article. Unless you object, I'll address each of your points (probably mostly with something along the lines of "Done!") directly in your comments sections; I remember this practice from the FARs in which I participated, and assume that it is acceptable here, as well. Markus Poessel (talk) 18:52, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm cool with however you'd like to address them. Some folks like to use strikethrough too, but it's a matter of personal taste. Runfellow (talk) 19:50, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, fine. Strikethrough is a good idea, too, I think - makes it clear at a glance what I've already addressed. Markus Poessel (talk) 17:20, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I've now addressed all the comments, including saying why I disagree with a few select of them. Thanks again for your helpful feedback! Markus Poessel (talk) 21:47, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Wadewitz

Sorry these are so late! I just have a few comments.

• He only had one doctoral student?
• I couldn't really follow the "Ehler's group" section, but perhaps this is just one of those areas that can't be explained to a lay person? The rest I could make my way through. I'm sure I didn't understand everything, but I could get the gist.
• The "Cosmology" section and other parts of the article seem to be cited to the original papers. Is this allowed in science articles? What is the consensus on that?
• If you are going to take this to FA, I would be worried that some people are going to complain about the lack of biographical detail. You'll just have to be prepared to defend yourself with the "no published sources" defense.

I hope this helps! Wadewitz (talk) 23:01, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks for your helpful comments! I've added one additional doctoral student, and would think there are many more, but cannot right now think of a systematic way of uncovering them. I've tried to make the "Ehlers group" section more accessible, but it is, by its very nature, technical. I'm glad that you got the gist of all the rest, though! I've added an additional reference to the cosmology section; looking over the article, the only papers without secondary sources are those on history of science and epistemology. Re-reading WP:OR, I don't find anything particularly objecting to using primary sources in this particular way, that is, to cite an article by X on Y to support a statement that X wrote on the topic of Y.

I'm somewhat surprised that you talk about a "lack of biographical detail" - compared with what is known about your average person meeting the WP criteria for the notability of scientists, I was quite surprised about the comparative wealth of information about Ehlers. Anyway, it's good preparation for what might come up in the FA candidacy. Markus Poessel (talk) 14:05, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I think that listing only two doctoral students is misleading - either list them all or none. That's up to you, though. On the point of biographical detail, I'm only comparing the article to the average FA biography. :) Wadewitz (talk) 22:25, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Hm. I think I'll stay with listing two, for the following reason: Whenever somebody finds a reference to a new student, they can add him or her. That way we will end up with a more complete list over time. As for the average FA biography: That's probably about someone much more famous - or someone whose biographical details have been the talk of the town! Markus Poessel (talk) 20:17, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Further comments addressing changes

The article is definitely better now, especially in terms of clarity. Part of it may be just the fact that this is my second time through it, but I really think you've done a lot to clarify the "work" section here. You deserve some serious credit for taking up a rather difficult subject. Some final notes, to address a few things you and others have mentioned above:

• You mentioned that you changed it to "lecture-", but it's actually "lectur-" right now. Unless we're talking about an alternate spelling... actually, not going to lie, a cross between a physicist and Lecter might make for some good cinema.
  • "Hannibal Lecturer". I see what you mean. That is scary. User:Dewritech has kindly fixed this, along with a few other things in the category "clean-up".
• The sentence beginning with "Ehlers' work on the construction..." feels a bit out of place, chronologically speaking, and it is the only sentence in that bloc that doesn't regard the group specifically. It might work better as the first sentence of the following paragraph, before "In 1961, having become", but I'm not sure if that still works chronologically.
  • I've separated the doctoral work (which belongs directly to his academic career) from the more general comment about his influence on the group.
• the clause "as the director of its gravitational theory department" might work better in that sentence after "in Munich". That way all that other stuff won't interject in the middle of your main thought.
  • I've removed the additional explanation about the Max Planck Society. It did distract from the key statement, and anyone who cares can follow the wikilink.
• To avoid pronoun confusion in the sentence beginning with "When he joined the institute in 1971" (with Biermann, the subject of the previous sentence), I'd recommend switching "he" here with "Ehlers". Then "Ehlers also became" can become "he also became".
  • Good catch. Changed.
• For lists, you'll want to be consistent with whether you want to use the Oxford comma. The list ending with "and Brandon Carter", for example, uses it, but most do not. WP:MOS says it's personal preference; American Institute of Physics MOS says use it. I don't care too much which way you want to go, but you'll want to make sure it's consistent.
  • Changed all the lists to the Oxford comma style.
• I'm always suspicious of the word "arguably", but I'm not sure how else you can phrase it.
  • The "arguably" does smell of WP:OR. I've looked up the Bicak article and, seeing how enthusiastic even Chandrasekhar was about the Kerr solution, have changed this to "one of the most important solutions of all".
• I don't think you'll have an issue with the lack of detail issue mentioned by Wadewitz above. Simply stated, if it ain't there, you can't use it. There are only a limited amount of biographical sources available, and the context of Ehler's work seems more important than his personal life (with the possible exception of the "popularizing science" stuff.)

I still think some of the career stuff could be integrated into the bio (to give a more chronological picture of who influenced who on what subject and when), but it's not something I'm going to lose sleep over. If you're happy with the structure, I'm happy. I'd probably shoot for a copyedit from the fellows over at WP:GUILD next (they're quite good at getting to the heart of things) and then go for GA soon. Since it sounds like you're very familiar with the subject, I'd say it might be worth your effort to try to come with a few more things relating to Ehlers for the Wikimedia Commons (for example, a graph or chart.)
Runfellow (talk) 03:12, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks for your feedback, and also for the exclusive barn star! I haven't used the WP:GUILD for my previous articles (and skipped the GA stage), but will give the guild a try this time. Markus Poessel (talk) 20:17, 25 October 2012 (UTC)