- Project news
- In the past 8 months, article assessment for the Version 1.0 Editorial Team has progressed considerably. As of writing this, 761 articles (up from 572) carry the {{HistSci}} banner, 541 (up from 370) of which have been assessed. Many relevant articles, particularly biographies, remained untagged. Please help identify and assess more history of science articles; this is especially important for determining which articles will be included in upcoming static (e.g., DVD) releases of Wikipedia. For instructions, see the Assessment page.
- Member news
- The project has currently 103 members, with 15 new members since the September newsletter: Notafly, Luca Borghi, Michael Daly, MrBrumby, Lsisson, Jfdwolff, Piotrus, Shannon bohle, Acnadwe, ScepticalChymist, MasterOfHisOwnDomain, Wloveral, JTBurman, Bwwm, Dr Dendro and Paulrach. Espresso Addict has rejoined the project as well. Historian of science Alan Rocke (Ajrocke), who penned a letter to the History of Science Society Newsletter (in response to an article I wrote) encouraging academics to participate in Wikipedia, has also been contributing.
- Editing news
- Archaeoastronomy—the focus of considerably attention from SteveMcCluskey, Alun Salt, and Breadh2o—was just submitted for peer review and the editors hope to achieve Good Article and Featured Article status soon. Assessments and suggestions from other project members would no doubt be appreciated.
- History of timekeeping devices (which went from a new stub in November to its present Good Article state thanks to the work of J-stan, Grimhelm, Keilana and others) is also undergoing a peer review. Anonymous Dissident produced some related new articles: Merkhet and Clockkeeper
- Two history of science-related biographies reached Featured Article status in the last quarter of 2007: Rachel Carson (led by Ragesoss) and Joseph Priestley (led by Awadewit).
- Good Article promotions (in addition to several prior Good Articles added to the project, the now-Featured Priestley article, and the timekeeping article): Nature (journal) (thanks to JayHenry); History of evolutionary thought (through a wide collaboration led by Rusty Cashman); Islamic astronomy (thanks especially to Jagged 85); History of aspirin (written from scratch by Ragesoss), Friedrich Accum (thanks to Bwwm, who is also working on the related History of manufactured gas)
- Rising standards for Good Articles and Featured Articles resulted in the demotion of several history of science articles that had been promoted in years past, when citation requirements were less strict: Galileo Galilei and Carl Friedrich Gauss dropped from FA-class to B-class (with Galileo subsequently promoted to GA-class thanks to the work of David Wilson), while Industrial Revolution, History of science and Luminiferous aether went from GA-class to B-class.
- History of computing hardware is undergoing Featured Article review; it was promoted in 2004, and Ancheta Wis and others are working to bring it up to the current FA standards, lest it be demoted.
- As usual, historical material related to military technology has been growing and improving, thanks to the strong military history community on Wikipedia. The significantly historical Cannon article achieved FA status thanks mainly to the efforts of Military history WikiProject members (including Grimhelm of this project), and history of cannon and history of gunpowder have seen considerably development as well.
- Carcharoth has created a series of new biographical articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
- Jpbown has been working on science- and technology-related institutions such as Catalyst (museum) and Micro Gallery.
- Among other contributions related to Islamic science, Jagged 85 started the article now titled Islamic psychological thought (as a fork of Early Muslim sociology), which attracted the off-wiki attention of historian of psychology Chris Greene and sparked a serious on-wiki historiographical discussion about interpreting historical thought in modern terms.
- D.H has been working on history of special relativity, Lorentz ether theory, and some of the other history of physics articles listed at User:D.H.
- Macdonald-ross has been working on biographies of Victorian scientists such as Thomas Henry Huxley, John Tyndall and Alfred Newton.
- MasterOfHisOwnDomain has created and is working on Prehistoric medicine and Medical Renaissance.
- Wloveral contributed a Timeline of zoology.
- Espresso Addict has worked on biomedical journals, eg Journal of Cell Science, as well as working on bios based on Lancet obits.
- [If you've been working on content that would benefit from the attention of other project members, or that you'd like to let others know about, please list it here. This list was created mainly by checking members' talk pages to see what they've been up to recently, and it only reports a small portion of the work that has been going on in history of science and related areas.]
- Other news and opinion
- As covered in the Wikipedia Signpost on February 11: "Vatican claims out-of-context Wikipedia quote was used to attack Pope"—a quote regarding the Galileo affair. Wikipedia got caught up in the fallout from the recent conflict between the Vatican and Italian scientists; Wikipedians tried to sort fact from speculation regarding who got what quote from where.
- I wrote two articles exhorting professional historians of science to edit Wikipedia that were published in recent months:
- An article hit count tool went live a few months ago, providing day-by-day statistics on individual Wikipedia articles. You can now find out how many people are reading about your favorite topics. I blogged about the general viewing trends for history of science articles in March.
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- About this newsletter
This is the fourth issue of the History of Science WikiProject's newsletter, the first since September 2007. The newsletter is issued periodically to help keep participants up-to-date about Wikipedia goings on related to the histories of science, medicine and technology.
I encourage all members to get more involved and if you are wondering what with, please ask.
--ragesoss, Editor
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- Project volunteers
- Volunteers needed - if any members feel able to take on project tasks such as creating history of medicine or history of technology Task Forces, monitoring and maintaining the Announcements template, managing Assessment activity or anything else you believe needs special attention, please let me know.
- Special thanks to Carcharoth for gathering much of the editing news and encouraging me to publish this new issue of the newsletter.
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- Collaboration of the Month
- The History of Science Collaboration was revived by Laurascudder after months of hiatus. Greek mathematics, the collaboration of the months of March and April, has seen a bit of improvement. For May (and probably June), Louis Pasteur will be the new collaboration. Grab your copy of Geison's Private Science of Louis Pasteur or whatever source is handy and let's make this month's collaboration a success!.
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- Newsletter challenge
- The first person to start each challenge article gets lasting fame and a mention in the next newsletter. This edition's general article creation challenge is the therapeutic revolution, the 19th century re-conception of diseases as specific pathologies with specific causes and potentially specific cures—which has been a central feature of the historiography of American medicine since the influential work of Charles E. Rosenberg on the topic.
- The history of biological sciences challenge is History of cytology or cell biology. Previous unanswered challenges are Caltech Division of Biology and PaJaMo experiment.
- The history of physical sciences challenge is atomic bomb patents, the subject of a recent article in Isis which made mainstream news as well. The previous unanswered challenge is Book of Nature.
- The history of medicine challenge is ethical drug; it is currently a redirect to prescription drug, but "ethical drug", as the antithesis of patent medicine, has a somewhat different meaning historically... a meaning central to the rise of the modern pharmaceutical industry. Previous unanswered challenges are history of endocrinology and History of public health (both redirects that need their own articles).
- The history of technology challenge is (still) to create any technology-related article that begin History of..., based on historical literature. Previous unanswered challenges are history of the microscope and technological sublime.
- Challenge awards
 Jsarmi created a stub for the previous general challenge, Laboratory Life.
DGG started Gunther Stent, a previous unmet challenge.
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