The article Mind you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Mind for comments about the article, and Talk:Mind/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack (talk) 12:02, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article Ontology you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Ontology and Talk:Ontology/GA1 for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Lisha2037 -- Lisha2037 (talk) 13:41, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article Ontology you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Ontology for comments about the article, and Talk:Ontology/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Lisha2037 -- Lisha2037 (talk) 12:24, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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:

• Arnold, John (2000). History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-285352-3.
• Bentley, Michael (2006). Companion to Historiography. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-97023-0.
• Jenkins, Keith (1995). On 'what is History?': From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-09725-3.
• Little, Daniel (2020). "Philosophy of History". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 6 November 2024.
• Tosh, John (2002). The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History. Pearson Education. ISBN 978-0-582-77254-0.
• Tucker, Aviezer (2011). A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-5152-1.

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.

I'm not sure if you agree with these points and I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:54, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Those look like good sources - I also compiled some other sources which seem useful here. (Will expand on rest later.) Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 19:46, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Phlsph7 (talk) 13:45, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This looks good to me! Sorry I haven't had as much time for wiki stuff last few days, hope to get back to this. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 08:22, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I made a few slight changes to the text and posted it at Talk:History#Changes_to_the_article. Apologies if I'm too eager. This is not a sprint but a marathon after all, so feel free to go at your own pace. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:32, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Phlsph7: I'm wanting to get back to this now, would you still want me to get back to the evolution of the field? Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 19:03, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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]

Hi Generalissima, I wrote a draft of the section on the evolution of history as an academic discipline at User:Phlsph7/History - Evolution. I took some ideas from your draft at User:Generalissima/History history while trying to get them into a more condensed form, I hope you don't mind. The draft is mostly finished so I would be curious to hear your thoughts. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:43, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I added the section and nominated the article History for GA status. I wasn't sure whether to include you as a co-nominator since you have been occupied with various other things in the last months. If would like to be part of the review process, I would be happy to add you. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:14, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Howdy, Phlsph7 I would love to be part of the review if that is possible - I'm so sorry I haven't been as active the past few months (life stuff has gotten in the way), but I have more really want to contribute as much as I can to help bring this to FAC. I'm going to look things over and see if there's any areas I can tweak up. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 20:16, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's great to hear, I adjusted the GA template to include you. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:36, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Great work guys, if you’re interested Historiography is in quite poor shape but no worries if you’re too busy Kowal2701 (talk) 19:44, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Kowal2701: I agree, there would be a lot to do for this article. I'll keep it in mind, but I'm currently occupied with various other things. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:23, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, we're still quite a bit under the ideal prose size max of 9000 words, and I think there's a bit more we can add to certain spots. I think I might work on the "Evolution of the discipline" (perhaps just 'Evolution' to be more brief and conform better to MOS:SECTIONSTYLE?) section a bit, and perhaps break it up into subsections. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 20:21, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My impression is that reviewers often consider shorter articles to be better as long as they manage to cover all the essential points. For example, Philosophy has a readable prose size of 6259 words and I don't remember any complaints during the FA review about it being too short.

If we keep the section "Evolution of the discipline" concise enough, we don't need to subdivide it. If we subdivide it, it might be good to use a chronological approach rather than a regional approach, following Woolf 2019 and Wright 2006. One practical disadvantage of a regional approach is that some regions had little to no traditions while others had major ones. Not all editors know this and it won't take long for them to add sections for the "missing" regions, which then get detailed treatments based on narrow sources even though overview sources barely mention them. For GA and FA, this could lead to challenges regarding WP:PROPORTION.

The current version has a few issues. Islamic historiography is usually considered a separate tradition rather than a subfield of Western historiography. Having contrasting sections for "Western historiography" and "Modern historiography" is odd. As far as I'm aware, modern historiography starts already with the Enlightenment (see Bentley's 2005 book Modern Historiography: An Introduction), i.e., well before the 19th century. I moved the current version to your earlier user draft to give us some time to fix these issues and polish the contribution, I hope you don't mind. This way, we avoid turning a level 2 vital article into a long-term draft space.

I was considering the title "Evolution" as well. One concern I had was that this term is primarily associated with biological evolution and may therefore confuse readers about the content of the section. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:39, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Generalissima, I'm happy that it worked out with our GA nomination! We can now nominate the article for WP:DYK. I brainstormed a few possible questions:

• Did you know that history has a history?
• Did you know that it is controversial whether history is a social science or belongs to the humanities?
• Did you know that various historians challenge the idea of objective historical knowledge?
• Did you know that some historians argue that history is more about the present than the past?

The first one is my favorite. I'm not sure if we could use the last one since it is not directly in article in this form. I'm open to more suggestions. What are your thoughts? Phlsph7 (talk) 17:52, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The first one is very nice - I agree that it's probably the best to use. #2 is interesting enough too though, so we could have it as an alt. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 17:54, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Great, I started the nomination at Template:Did you know nominations/History. Phlsph7 (talk) 19:07, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Generalissima: Would you be interested in attempting an FA nomination? I'm currently not planning any bigger changes, but to prepare the article, there are various smaller things to take care of. For example, it might be good to ensure that all the image captions have references. Another boring thing to do would be to add page numbers to all cite templates that refer to a specific chapter. For example, the template {{cite book |last1=Bentley |first1=Michael |editor1-last=Bentley |editor1-first=Michael |title=Companion to Historiography |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-97023-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kWmIAgAAQBAJ |language=en |chapter=General Introduction: The Project of Historiography |date=2006 }} needs a parameter |pages= to indicate where the chapter starts and ends. I would also read the article one more time from start to end for copyediting and to see whether something else catches my eye. In addition to that, a peer review might help to get more feedback. This would be my first FAC of an article in the field of history so we would have to see how it goes. What do you think? Phlsph7 (talk) 09:53, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd love to help there! I'll add page numbers and try to reference image captions. With how thorough UC's reviews are, I'd feel comfortable enough nominating this without a peer review - but I won't stop you if you wanna be sure. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 20:51, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My only outstanding concern is that I think some of the sources we use could be a little superfluous. There's a fair number of college textbooks; and while these aren't bad sources by any means, they're quite tertiary sources, and for some of them it might be better to cite what they're citing directly (although others, especially from higher-quality academic publishers, seem fine to leave in). I'd also like to incorporate my citing style of indenting the cites for particular chapters beneath the cite of the main book when we're citing multiple of a book's chapters. What do you think? Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 20:57, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for getting started with the page numbers. I'll look into the possibility of pruning some of the sources. This can be a bit tricky at times to ensure that all the relevant information is already covered in the remaining sources. I'm fine with indenting chapters that belong to the same book. I started a peer review at Wikipedia:Peer review/History/archive1 to be on the safe side. We already got a lot of feedback on the talk page and through UC's indepth review, so it should be fine even if we don't get much feedback from the peer review. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:59, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The page numbers for chapters are nice to have, but I don't think it's an issue if we can't find them for all sources. Especially for sources available online, this shouldn't be a problem. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:38, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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]

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]

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Mind, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Phenomenology.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 19:53, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

		The Mathematics Barnstar
		I'm floored by how comprehensibly and intuitively yet not extraneously the article algebra introduces the subject. This is, as of today, my front-line resource when somebody asks me what algebra is. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 00:54, 12 December 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]

Listen today to the (new) Perplexities after Escher. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:12, 12 December 2024 (UTC) Today, a 10-years-old DYK and new pics - look for red birds --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:01, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Listen today to Beethoven's 3rd cello sonata, on his birthday - it was a hook in the 2020 DYK set when his 250th birthday was remembered. I picked a recording with Antonio Meneses, because he was on my sad list this year, and I was in Brazil (see places), and I love his playing. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:58, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

	The Original Barnstar
	A congratulations on algebra, but then I saw your works include the like of logic, philosophy, education, human history... 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]

@Panini!: Thank you for the barnstar and the kind words! Phlsph7 (talk) 09:46, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Phlsph7,

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]

Hi @Phlsph7 hope you are doing great! I followed up on this conversation through email, please take a long when you get time ~ Thank you so much! Phoebezz22 (talk) 14:42, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Epistemology you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of It is a wonderful world -- It is a wonderful world (talk) 01:25, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for 1 February 2025. Please check that the article needs no amendments. Feel free to amend the draft blurb, which can be found at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 2025, or to make comments on other matters concerning the scheduling of this article at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/February 2025. Please keep an eye on that page, as notifications of copy edits to or queries about the draft blurb may be left there by user:JennyOz, who assists the coordinators by reviewing the blurbs, or by others. I also suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from two days before it appears on the Main Page. Thanks, and congratulations on your work! Gog the Mild (talk) 20:58, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations, Phlsph7! The article you nominated, Metaphysics, 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) 00:06, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you today for the article, introduced: "Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. Some of its main topics include the categories of being, the concepts of possibility and necessity, the nature of spacetime, and the relation between mind and matter. It is relevant to many fields, ranging from other branches of philosophy to the sciences, which often implicitly rely on metaphysical concepts and ideas."! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:36, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations to the promotion of Mind also! - Paul Plishka, a bass who sang 88 roles of all kinds at the Met was interviewed before his (first) retirement. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:06, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Phlsph7, Thank you for your comments and suggestions. Sorry to be late with this, but I did not pay attention to the alert sooner and I did not see your paragraph which appeared before the reviewer's. As you can probably tell, I am pretty much a novice at Wikipedia although I am an Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Villanova University and have written a thermodynamics textbook. I am trying to address some of these criticisms, but it is a bit discouraging in view of the reviewer's comments and the note from Kbk on the talk page of 3 January.Airman72 (talk) 17:01, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Airman72, unfortunately, Wikipedia can be frustrating this way. One cause could be that the expectations for good Wikipedia articles targeting a general audience are different from the expectations for good academic textbooks. You could try implementing the suggestions given on the article talk page, like making sure that each paragraph in the body of the article has sources supporting its claims and using a spellchecker like Grammarly. After that, you could ask for input at the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics and integrate their suggestions. Another thing to do before a GA renomination would be to start a Wikipedia:Peer review of the article and explain that you need help preparing it for a GA nomination. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:12, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you.Airman72 (talk) 15:59, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey! You don't know me, but that's about to change.

I've been working the article Equality (mathematics) for some time now as a bit of a practice ground for growing an article (I'm still pretty new to Wikipedia compared to most editors). My goal has been to get it to Good Article status, and I think it's getting to a point where that seems possible (It's currently rated C-class), but that's something I've never done before. I don't think I'm ready to nominate it yet, but I'd still like some scrutiny from other editors so I can keep working on it and based on your user page, you seem like you would be able to help. Would you be willing to look it over?

I've more or less been the only major contributor to this article since I started editing it (see the link below), so it's hard to tell what needs to be done. I asked WikiProject Mathematics the same question, but so far no major notes. How close do you think I am to GA status? And how would I go about nominating the article later on? I looked at the GA nominations for mathematics and some of them have been there for months.

(This is what the article looked like before my fist edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Equality_(mathematics)&oldid=1216998067) – Farkle Griffen (talk) 02:52, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Farkle Griffen, that sounds like an interesting project. I currently don't have the time for an in-depth review but I became aware of the following points:

• There are various unreferenced paragraphs, like the ones starting with "In mathematical logic and computer science, an equation may described", "An equation can be used to define a set.", "Equality and equations are often used to introduce", "In mathematical logic, this is called an extension by definition", "This says "Equality implies these two properties" not that", and "Extensionality is an axiom that defines objects of a certain". According to criterion 2b, these and similar passages require inline citations "no later than the end of the paragraph". Claims in the lead section can have references but do not need them if the claims only summarize sourced material in the body of the article. If you need help spotting them, you could try the user script User:Phlsph7/ListUnreferencedParagraphs, but keep in mind that it is not 100 % reliable.
• I'm not sure that the principle of extensionality, as defined in this article, is generally accepted in logic. I would have to check in more detail, but my hunch is that the current formulation implies the controversial principle of the identity of indiscernibles. The converse principle, the indiscernibility of identicals, is usually accepted.
• The passage This characterization is notably circular ("nothing else"). This makes equality a somewhat slipery idea to pin down. runs into trouble with MOS:EDITORIAL. You could check whether other formulations in the article also have this problem.
• There are several uses the first-person pronoun we. If used in the right way, it is not prohibited per MOS:WE but it's usually preferable to use different formulations.
• The sentence "This characterization is notably circular (“no other thing”) and paradoxical too, unless the notion of "each thing" is qualified." is a WP:CLOSEPARAPHRASE of the sentence "This characterization is clearly circular (“no other thing”) and paradoxical too, unless the notion of “each thing” is qualified." from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-relative/ .
• There are some spelling mistakes, like "greeks" (uppercase needed) and "centrury" (century). You could try using a spellchecker.

After implementing the feedback here and at WikiProject Mathematics, you could also send the article to WP:PEERREVIEW if you would like more feedback. If a GA nomination fails, it's usually not a big issue since you can just address the reasons for why it failed and renominate it. The problem is just, as you say, that a lot of waiting can be involved before someone reviews the nomination. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:27, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is extremely helpful, sure, but not exactly what I was looking for. I think that's my fault for not being clearer.

I'm absoluley not asking you to do a formal review of the article, that is far too much burden on you, and isn't very helpful for me beyond this article (although your notes are very appreciated, and I'll respond to them in a moment). I wanted this to be more a friendly review in broad strokes, beyond individual typos/phrasings: e.g. "Does this feel like a GA?", "Are all the pieces here?", etc.

See, I've never tried to have an article promoted before. I don't know the process, for one, but more generally, I don't know if what I have is something close to a GA or laughably far from it; does that make sense? Given that your comments are relatively minor, I'm assuming its the former?

(I'll respond to your comments in a separate reply) – Farkle Griffen (talk) 21:05, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

- "I'm not sure that the principle of extensionality, as defined in this article, is generally accepted in logic. I would have to check in more detail, but my hunch is that the current formulation implies the controversial principle of the identity of indiscernibles."

I'm going to ignore the definition of extensionality for now (because, you're right, I haven't researched that as much as I should have), but I'm pretty sure the Identity of Indisceribles is pretty often implicitly accepted in logic. From what I know, if a logical system has any reflexive relation satisfying the substitution property, it is called a system "with equality." Therefore, given some "indiscernibility" relation , we know it satisfies the reflexive and substitution properties, and thus this system "has equality", in other words, . I haven't found a source talking about this.

- "The passage 'This characterization is notably circular ("nothing else"). This makes equality a somewhat slipery idea to pin down.' runs into trouble with MOS:EDITORIAL."

I'd really like to get across the point that "Equality" isn't quite as simple as saying "its the same thing," and that we've only really begun to formalized the idea recently. Would it be better to say "Historically, equality has been somewhat slipery idea to pin down"? Or should that paragraph just be purged?

I'll work on improving the other items you mentioned. – Farkle Griffen (talk) 22:13, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for the misunderstanding. In its current form, the article would quickfail a GA review because of the unreferenced paragraphs. If all the references were added and the other points were addressed, I don't think the article would quickfail, meaning that it would receive a full review. To determine whether it would succeed would require a more in-depth study of the article and the corresponding sources. Maybe this could be done in a peer review. You could also try WP:GAMENTOR to find someone to guide you through the process.

Concerning the identity of indiscernibles: the lead paragraph of https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/identity-of-indiscernibles/v-1 says "the identity of indiscernibles principle has frequently been doubted and rejected". One solution would be to reformulate the passages in such a way that they do not imply that the principle of extensionality is generally accepted. If you want to keep the formulation as it is, you should make sure that high-quality sources explicitly support the current formulation without raising serious doubts.

Concerning MOS:EDITORIAL, the problem is not so much what you say but how you say it. This concerns the word "notably", and the expression "somewhat slippery" sounds more like a casual comment than an encyclopedic description. You could try condensing this paragraph into one sentence, attach it to another lead paragraph, and discuss the details in the body of the article. Maybe something along the lines of "Equality is often considered a primitive notion, meaning that it cannot be defined in other terms without involving circularity." Phlsph7 (talk) 17:09, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, "I don't think the article would quickfail" is honestly a compliment, and WP:GAMENTOR is very helpful. I'm also wondering if you have any information or general resources that may help. Equality has the unfortunate stereotype of being "simple", so most of my mathematics / logic resources have very little to say, only mentioning it in passing, and philosophy resources hardly ever talk about mathematical equality. I've also just realized I haven't mentioned Type Theory at all so far. I'm sure that is going to keep me busy for a while.

About the identity of indiscernibles, I agree it is controversial in philosophy, it's also controversial in math (I've tried to make this clear in the article so far) but it's specifically logic where it seems to be taken as "obviously true", with few authors giving more than a sentence or so about it:

Mendelson, Elliott (1964). Introduction to Mathematical Logic says:

""Let K be a first-order theory which has as one of its predicate letters A₁². Let us write t=s as an abbreviation for A₁²(t,s), and t != s as an abbreviation for ~A₁²(t,s). Then K is called a first-order theory with equality if the following are theorems of K:

(6) (x)(x=x) (Reflexivity of Equality)

(7) (x=y) implies (B(x,x) implies B(x,y)) (Substitutivity of Equality)""

Which is the status-quo for the textbooks I've found, essentially "Any first-order theory that has an 'Indiscernible' predicate, it is said to be a theory with equality"

Suppes, Patrick (1957). Introduction to Logic, p 103, is more explicit, saying:

"If every property of x is also a property of y, then x=y; for x has the property of being identical with x, and hence if every property of x is a property of y, then y has the property of being identical with x, so that y=x, and hence x=y. This principle is sometimes called Leibniz's law, or the "principle of the identity of indiscernibles."

This has been hard for me to try to explain, since I can't find any source mentioning this apparent disagreement. – Farkle Griffen (talk) 22:41, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To find sources, you could try looking through introductory textbooks of mathematics. Currently, inequality is not mentioned in the body of the article. You could include a discussion of it somewhere to show how it contrasts with equality. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:24, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article Epistemology you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Epistemology for comments about the article, and Talk:Epistemology/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of It is a wonderful world -- It is a wonderful world (talk) 12:25, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Well-being, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Age.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 19:56, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

	The Three-Quarter Million Award
	For your contributions to bring Metaphysics (estimated annual readership: 900,000) to featured article status, I hereby present you the Three-Quarter Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! AhmadLX-(Wikiposta) 16:36, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Phlsph7, please may I invite you to help review Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Purple Hibiscus/archive1 at your convenient time. Thanks. Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 14:04, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article History you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of UndercoverClassicist -- UndercoverClassicist (talk) 15:41, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Phlsph7

hope you re doing well , so since the moment I got your review on Espérance Sportive de Tunis article, I've been working on improving the article for 6 hours straight ,fixing the grammar as you suggested, adding missing citations, and finding better references. I really tried to address everything you mentioned. just a favour,if you have a bit of time could you take a quick look and let me know if it's worth nominating again? I just don’t want to keep nominating it over and over if it’s still not there yet.

Thanks a lot for your time, really appreciate it!

-- EL major (talk) 17:05, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for putting the time into the article. It looks better now but there are still several unreferenced paragraphs, like the ones starting with "With these players, the club won the Tunisian Cup", "Despite good results that saw the club finish first in the ", and "Since then, several sales points have been established". If you have problems spotting them, you can try the user script User:Phlsph7/ListUnreferencedParagraphs, but be aware that it is not always reliable. There are still a few copyediting issues, like spaces before periods or missing spaces after periods. Maybe the following list of automatically generated spelling and grammar suggestions helps. Some suggestions are right and other are wrong so don't implement them blindly.

Since you are getting started with GA, you could try nominating the article for peer review first to get some friendly feedback before a GA renomination. Phlsph7 (talk) 18:01, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I just saw that you are currently blocked from editing the article space. As far as I know, this also means that you are not allowed to edit as an IP, as you apparrently did in these edits. I'll ping @Beeblebrox: to clarify this point: your input would be appreciated. Phlsph7 (talk) 19:06, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's disappointing. A lot of effort went into coming to an agreement not to edit article space instead of being fully blocked, all for naught, apparently. Beeblebrox ^Beebletalks 19:21, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You really caught something here, in addition to the block-evading IP edits, they had edited this same article using a sock account and had a sleeper account waiting as well. They seem to think this was all within policy somehow. I suspect this is a CIR issue. Beeblebrox ^Beebletalks 22:57, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CIR seems to be the best explanation of their behavior since they did not make attempts to hide the block evasion. They had just started a GA review and were preparing the article for a second GA review despite being blocked from editing articles. Thanks for taking care of the issue. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:37, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On 10 February 2025, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Epistemology, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that according to one school of epistemology, nobody knows anything? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Epistemology. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Epistemology), 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.

—Kusma (talk) 00:03, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations, Phlsph7! The article you nominated, Mind, 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) 00:06, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article History you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:History for comments about the article, and Talk:History/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of UndercoverClassicist -- UndercoverClassicist (talk) 16:42, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Value theory you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Acer-the-Protogen -- Acer-the-Protogen (talk) 20:43, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! 198.163.195.14 (talk) 09:40, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article Value theory you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Value theory for comments about the article, and Talk:Value theory/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Acer-the-Protogen -- Acer-the-Protogen (talk) 14:41, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for April 2025. Please check that the article needs no amendments. Feel free to amend the draft blurb, which can be found at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 2025, or to make comments on other matters concerning the scheduling of this article at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/April 2025. Please keep an eye on that page, as notifications of copy edits to or queries about the draft blurb may be left there by user:JennyOz, who assists the coordinators by reviewing the blurbs, or by others. I also suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from two days before it appears on the Main Page. Thanks, and congratulations on your work! SchroCat (talk) 11:45, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]