On 30 September 2024, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Human history, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that public health measures and advances in medical science in modern human history helped raise global life expectancy from about 31 years in 1900 to over 66 years in 2000? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Human history. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Human history), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
@Jenhawk777: I'm sorry that it didn't work out with the nomination. The expectations for wide-scope articles like this one are usually higher than for articles on more narrow and less important topics so just getting this type of article to GA status is already a significant achievement. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:22, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Pselph, I'm really curious how you go about learning and writing about so many big topics comprehensively! In particular, what is your background/area of expertise, and when you decide to tackle a new topic, where do you start and what process do you go through? It is a wonderful world (talk) 21:08, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi It is a wonderful world, that's a good question. When tackling a new topic, I first aim to gain a broad overview of all the main subjects it should cover. To get a comprehensive perspective on a topic X, I typically rely on overview sources of the topic like encyclopedia articles on X, encyclopedias of X, handbooks of X, introductions of X, and textbooks or academic books titled "X". Ideally, this approach helps divide the topic into different sections, with each section dedicated to one or several subjects based on how much weight these subjects get in the overview sources. More specific sources can then be used to write the details of each section.
How well this approach works usually depends on the number and quality of the available overview sources. I often work with topics somehow related to philosophy that have been around for centuries or millennia. For them, this is mostly not a problem. Some topics provide special challenges, like when the overview sources present divergent perspectives or when the topic is studied by different fields of inquiry but each source only presents the perspective of one field. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:49, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the above article in specific but given your successful attempt to take Education to FA status, do you think you could weigh in on this FAC for infant school? UC is currently disputing the article's balance between historical context and modern relevance, as well as its distinction from general primary education. FrB.TG (talk) 16:32, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Congratulations, Phlsph7! The article you nominated, Algebra, has been promoted to featured status, recognizing it as one of the best articles on Wikipedia. The nomination discussion has been archived.This is a rare accomplishment and you should be proud. If you would like, you may nominate it to appear on the Main page as Today's featured article. Keep up the great work! Cheers, Gog the Mild (talk) via FACBot (talk) 00:05, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the prompt review, I just saw it and highly appreciate your feedback. It appears that most of the issues were with the references, which i'll endeavour to find more reliable sources or remove the text until a suitable reference is found. i'll work on these asap when i can find some free time.
i'll also fix the typos not caught before publishing.
after all of these have been addressed i'll resubmit for a new GA review.
Hey Phlsph! I'm a big fan of your broad concept articles — I'm real excited whenever a new one gets to GA or FA. I know you and Cerebellum got Human history to GA about a month ago, and it made me think that History itself might be a fun one to collaborate with you on. I've been looking at that article for a while; it's a bit messy at the moment and I think it could benefit a lot from a top-down rewrite. This is a big task though, and I thought it'd be fun to do it alongside someone who's seasons with writing to that level of breadth and summary. I know that you probably have a lot of articles on your to-do list at the moment though, so no pressure for anything immediate. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 16:15, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Generalissima, that sounds like a really exciting proposal and it would be an honor to work alongside someone as experienced as yourself. It would be a big project indeed and we would probably have to figure out what needs to be done and whether our visions for the article roughly align.
I'm currently occupied with reworking the article Hedonism. Most of the main changes have already been implemented but it will probably still take another week or two, depending on how much time I have available. After that, I could get started with going through the literature to get a rough overview and figure out what changes to the article History may be needed. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:07, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ooh, that's a fun one! And yeah, it'd require finding a structure that makes sense. I'll also search through academic literature on history as a field (I'm bet there's good stuff from Cambridge on that) and see if I can take a leaf from how it's divided into subconcepts. I'm imagining something similar to how you structured Philosophy, starting with its evolution as a field over time in different contexts, and then detailing subbranches and methods of historical inquiry. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 18:05, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Using this structure sounds like a solid approach to get started. There is probably a wealth of sources on specific history topics, like sources on particular branches of history. Let's hope there are also some good overview sources focusing on the topic of history in general. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:44, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Generalissima: I've mostly finished my other project so I have some time now for the article History. It's probably best if we focus first on the body of the article and concentrate on the lead once we are happy with the body.
I've had a look at the article and several overview sources. Some of them are on history specifically while others belong more to historiography or philosophy of history. I don't think we can directly read off the structure of our article from any of them but they could come in handy for questions about scope and what should or shouldn't be included. A few overview sources that might be helpful are:
Little, Daniel (2020). "Philosophy of History". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 6 November 2024.
I have something to say on most sections of the article. Focusing on the points you have raised so far, I agree that having sections on the evolution of the field, its main branches, and methods makes sense. We currently don't really have a section on the evolution. Our current section on the branches has too many subsections. Maybe we can reduce them by using the major subdivisions "By period" (e.g. ancient history), "By geographic location" (e.g. history of Africa), "By theme" (e.g. economic history), and possibly a section called "Others" for branches that don't fit this division.
Our current section "Methods" is a little odd: it starts with universal history in the early modern period and then gives historical reflections on methodology and a criticism of history. Some of these ideas might fit better elsewhere in the article. My initial impression is that it might be better to talk more directly about the methods, like source evaluation, different types of sources, interpretative approaches, and interdisciplinary considerations, to provide a clearer understanding of how historians conduct their research and write history.
Woolf's 2011 A Global History of History and The Oxford History of Historical Writing from your source list look like great sources for the section on the evolution of the field. I have access to Woolf's 2019 A Concise History of History, which is a revised and abridged version of his 2011 book. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:08, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As for workflow, it seems like it'd make the most sense for us to each take different sections of the article and write those, and then we can look at it as a whole and make edits from there. I'd be interested in writing about the evolution of the field - would you want to start on methods and branches? Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 01:28, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's a good approach, I'll see what I can do about the methods and branches. I was considering a few more changes and I would be interested in your thoughts. I think it would be good to have a "Definition" section to discuss the different meanings of the word, like the contrast between history as a series of events and history as the study or representation of these events, which is often mentioned in overview sources. This section could also cover history's classification as a science or part of the humanities and questions about its scope, like whether prehistory is included. For an early draft of what some of this could look like, see User:Phlsph7/History.
I don't think we should have separate main sections for "Etymology", "Judgement", "Pseudohistory", and "Historians" since these topics don't seem to be important enough. The part on etymology is rather long. It could be integrated into the new section "Definition" in a condensed form. The contrast with pseudohistory would also fit in there. The section "Historians" only explains what the word "historian" means. This part could also be covered in the section "Definition".
The section "Teaching" should be more global and less focused on conflicts and biases. It could instead concentrate on things like curriculum and pedagogical approaches.
I was thinking about having a section to discuss the relation between history and other fields. This section could have subsections like historiography (which is currently a separate main section), philosophy of history (which is currently only covered indirectly ), teaching/education (which is currently a separate main section), and possibly some of history's interdisciplinary connections (like archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics).
The topic of the section "Description" seems to be rather vague as it covers bits and pieces of philosophy of history, discussion of sources, methods, the classification of history as a discipline, and its internal organization into branches. Its contents could be moved around to be covered in other sections with a more well-defined scope. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:47, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What do you think about informing other editors on the history talk page of our plans? It could be something along the following lines:
Generalissima and I were thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status. It currently has 6 unreferenced paragraphs and 2 unreferenced subsections. As first steps, we were planning to add a section on how history as a discipline evolved and to rework the sections "Areas of study" and "Methods". We currently don't really have a section on the evolution.
Our current section "Areas of study" has 15 subsections with several subsubsections, which is too many. Maybe we can reduce them by using the major subdivisions "By period" (e.g. ancient history), "By geographic location" (e.g. history of Africa), "By theme" (e.g. economic history), and possibly a section called "Others" for branches that don't fit this division. The current section is also repetitive in several locations. For example, it explains two times what military history is. I also don't think we need repetitive explanations like History of North America is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's Northern and Western Hemispheres., History of Central America is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's Western Hemisphere., and History of South America is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's Southern and Western Hemispheres.
Our current section "Methods" is a little odd. For some reason, it starts with universal history in the early modern period and then discusses methodological considerations in the ancient period and the following periods. I think the section should focus on the methods themselves rather than how they developed in the past. This could include discussions of the different types of sources, source analysis & criticism, how different sources are synthesized to arrive at a coherent narrative, and possibly what interpretative tools and approaches there are. This is also roughly how overview sources on the topic proceed, like [1], [2], and [3]. Maybe the discussion of how the methods developed in the past can be discussed in a paragraph or two, but this should not be the main focus of the section.
We were hoping to get some feedback on these and possibly other changes. For a discussion with more details and improvement ideas, see User_talk:Phlsph7#Idea_for_collab_-_History.
That sounds good. My initial idea would be to proceed chronologically from ancient to modern, maybe around 8 paragraphs in total. However, I haven't done much research on this topic and I'm sure there are other ways to write the section as well. I'm currently working on a draft of the section "Areas of study", which will keep me busy for some more time. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:29, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Generalissima: I've implemented most of the main changes I had planned and I'm now considering what to do about the section on the evolution of the field. I had a look at Woolf's 2019 A Concise History of History as well as [4] and [5] for how this section could look. I was thinking about getting started on a basic draft but I wanted to check with you first since I'm not sure whether you have already started something or what your plans for the section are. Phlsph7 (talk) 14:17, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize again for my tardiness with this; I have been reading sources and taking notes, but I am just now starting to formulate this into an actual section. I'll draft up the section over the next couple days and we can go over it together then, if that works for you! Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 17:44, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's a good idea. Given the breadth of the field, keeping the section concise will probably be one of the main challenges. Thanks for your comments to the article. I added a short passage on genetics. I also started a talk page discussion about the English variant at Talk:History#English_variant.
Concerning archaeology in the subsection "Related fields#Others", what do you think about expanding it to a full paragraph and discussing the other disciplines in the second paragraph?
Another change to be done is to rewrite the lead. But this is usually best done as the last step to merely provide a summary of the body of the article so we should probably wait until the evolution-section is finished. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:47, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
DYK for Mind
On 1 November 2024, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Mind, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that diverse fields study the mind, including psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Mind. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Mind), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
On 16 November 2024, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Ontology, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that ontologists disagree on whether green is real? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Ontology. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Ontology), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Thank you for reviewing the "philosophical pessimism" article and giving your verdict on it.
In accordance with your suggestions mentioned on "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Philosophical_pessimism/GA1", I have requested a peer review for the "philosophical pessimism" article; and I have also corrected the unreferenced paragraphs that you mentioned, as well as improved the wording of some sections -- also in line with your suggestions.
Are there still any details or fragments in the article that are in need of improvement that you could help me visualize and thus fix so that the article could meet the GA criteria? Alice793 (talk) 20:33, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Alice793, thanks for your work on the article and for implementing the suggestions. I would recommend ensuring that each paragraph in the body of the article has at least one reference. There are still a few unsourced paragraphs, like the ones starting with Arthur Schopenhauer introduces..., David Benatar argues that there..., and Julio Cabrera, Philipp Mainländer, and Drew M. Dalton.... If you need help spotting them, you could try a WP:User script like User:Phlsph7/ListUnreferencedParagraphs (but be aware that it is not perfect).
It might also be a good idea to deal with the WP:WIKIVOICE problem mentioned in the review. For example, the article currently states it as a fact that Constant dissatisfaction ... is an intrinsic mark of all sentient existence. However, this is not a fact, and most experts would contest it. This is an opinion common among Buddhists. This could be solved by attributing the statement: "According to Buddhism, constant dissatisfaction ... is an intrinsic mark of all sentient existence". If there are more cases like this in the article, this would be a stumbling stone for a GA renomination. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:46, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate you for introducing me to that script, Phlsph7! Many thanks.
As of right now, there are only two "unsourced" paragraphs according to your script, but they serve in actuality to introduce topics wherein the actual sources are contained right below, namely:
1. "Pessimistic philosophers came up with a variety of ways of dealing with the suffering and misery of life"
2. "A number of philosophers have put forward criticisms of pleasure, essentially denying that it adds anything positive to our well-being above the neutral state".
I also fixed the paragraphs containing the non-neutral points of view: (that is, both "Constant dissatisfaction — duḥkha — is an intrinsic mark of all sentient existence" and "The person who attains this state of mind lives his life in complete peace and equanimity").
I am currently unaware of any other cases where a non-neutral point of view is presented; if you do find one (or more), please don't hesitate to inform me and I'll fix them right away! Alice793 (talk) 13:48, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, the sourcing looks much better now. Spotting NPOV-views that lack attribution can be difficult and requires an indepth reading, which could be done at the peer review. It's possible that there are still other cases lurking somewhere. Having a short look, I spotted two more sentences: Taking one's life is a mistake, for one still would like to live, but simply in better conditions. and The ascetic way of life, however, is not available for everyone — only a few rare and heroic individuals may be able to live as ascetics and attain such a state.Phlsph7 (talk) 09:35, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for mentioning those two cases of NPOV-views that lack attribution, Phlsph7! I fixed them.
If there are still ways of further improving the article such that it finally becomes ready for another GA nomination, I would deeply appreciate your instructions. Alice793 (talk) 17:51, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ArbCom 2024 Elections voter message
Hello! Voting in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 2 December 2024. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Hi. You might remember I said some nice things about Algebra when you brought it to WP:FAC a few months ago. Today YouTube decided I should watch Climbing past the complex numbers so I did. This is the kind of stuff that would have gone right over my head before reading Algebra, but I was able to make it though the whole thing, only getting a little fuzzy on some of the stuff near the end. Greatly to my amusement, my wife came in about halfway through the video, looked at the screen, and said, "Don't tell me you actually understand that!?" to which I replied, "It's just algebra". RoySmith(talk)21:50, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith: That's an interesting anecdote! I have the feeling that, for many math topics, finding a key to understanding them can make all the difference between getting lost after the first sentence and being able to follow the train of thought. Thanks again for your helpful review by the way. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:42, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Misanthropy
Hey, Phlsph7, thanks for letting me know about the misanthropic arguement page section I was trying to input, I'm new here so I'm a little unsure of what is.
just to clarify, some of this for use was going for somewhat of a misanthropic use what with the use of gods destroying humanity due to them destroying things with their demands, you know all the whole "humanity makes everything suffer" stuff, ha. And I thought with some of this it could be for use what with religion and all for support of addition material.
Especially with overpopulation use, though i might be mistaking science worries of too many humans for "so many humans mean we're misanthropic". Jeremiah97478 (talk) 12:55, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Jeremiah97478 and thanks for bringing this to the talk page. According to WP:V, inline citations should directly support the material in a Wikipedia article. Misanthropy is a technical term with a specific meaning, so if you want to draw a connection to floods or overpopulation, the source has to support this explicitly. There were also some other problems with your edit, such as misleading claims ("with the ubiquitous event that is the great flood") spelling mistakes ("Arguements") and uncited text. The article Misanthropy is a WP:GOODARTICLE on a major topic, which makes it difficult for new editors to make non-trivial changes. It usually easier to make improvements to smaller and less polished articles.
Hm, I'm surprised since I guess the great flood wasn't everywhere then? I must've just heard wrong from both met and bbc, I apologize for such.
from these sources I have probably considered moving it to such of religion or whatever suits such. But hey if you want I could such a thing inputted somewhere like overpopulation or something of religion if you can point me to it.
Hey again! I was just thinking about how you nicely added a standard deviation metric for sentence length to Readability.js after I made a request to that effect. After a bit of research today I found a well known paper[1] with the simple equation that gives a pretty decent approximation of the distribution of sentence lengths in the written English corpus. It seems like it would be pretty useful to adjust metrics in proportion to this function, but I'm not sure how tricky that would be. Thanks again, in any case! Remsense ‥ 论03:40, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Remsense, that's an interesting find. If I understand the formula correctly, it says, for example, that 2.67 % () of all sentences of the English corpus have exactly 20 words while only 0.65 % () have exactly 40 words. I'm not sure how this could be integrated into Readability.js since it shows the Flesch reading ease score and adjusting it for sentence length frequency wouldn't be the Flesch reading ease score.
A different way to use the formula would to make a new script that colors sentences based on the general sentence length frequency. For example, many sentences in the English corpus are between 5 and 20 words. They could be colored green. Sentences with fewer words could be colored blue and sentences with more words yellow, orange, and red. We may have to adjust those values since, as an encyclopedia, we probably have longer sentences on average than the general English corpus.
Another possible use could be to make a diagram like the one on page 50 in paper, showing sentence length frequency not for the entire English corpus but only for the specific article. However, I'm not sure about the practical usefulness of these ideas. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:21, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you today for the article, introduced: "Most people are familiar with algebra from their school days, where they learned to solve equations like x 2 − 3 x − 10 = 0 {\displaystyle x^{2}-3x-10=0}. However, there is also a more abstract form of algebra, which is of particular interest to mathematicians because it provides a general framework for understanding operations on mathematical objects."! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:46, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
People often overlook the grand and generic subjects, because they're usually huge undertakings. I cannot believe the amount of times you've jumped into that ring. It's absolutely incredible! You're definitely one of our best. Panini!•🥪16:56, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Recently I learned about the Wikichatbot on your page, and I found it very interesting. I would love to learn about 1) how to use it in a more constructive way and 2) how it has been used on Wikipedia editing? Thank you so much for your time, looking forward to your reply. Phoebezz22 (talk) 14:06, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Phoebezz22 and welcome to Wikipedia! There are various ways how WikiChatbot can be used, ranging from copyediting and summarizing to brainstorming new ideas, such as images or wikilinks that could be added to articles. However, the underlying AI technology is still rather new and makes various errors, so you have to critically review each of its improvement suggestions yourself. Especially for new editors without much editing experience, it is usually better to learn first about the area you want to contribute to in order to get an understanding of how things should and shouldn't be done without relying on AI tools. Otherwise, the danger is high that articles are made worse if bad improvement suggestions are uncritically implemented. For more on the uses and dangers, see User:Phlsph7/WikiChatbot. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:44, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your detailed answer, I really appreciate your kindness and patience! Also send you a private email about a specific inquiry. Thank you so much for your help in advance! Phoebezz22 (talk) 19:21, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
