Talk:List of British innovations and discoveries

This is Nat bs, most of the inventions in the individual webpages were done post-1707, i.e. they were all British. It seems a bit of nationalist-racist-ignorant agenda to not have a collective page of all British inventions, all those invented after 1707. I don't mind having a separate Scottish, English and Welsh page, but it just stinks of the kinda small-minded cave-troll mind of some Scot nats. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.124.4 (talk) 11:30, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

This is massively disorganised. Utter chaos. We really ought to have some kind of standard for what counts as an invention, rather than just listing things which are vaguely on the topic of British innovation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.195.26.44 (talk) 20:35, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Invention of the metric system

I removed from the article the claim that a Brit, John Wilkins, was the inventor of the earliest concept of a Metric system as such an exceptional claim naturally requires robust evidence (see WP:EXCEPTIONAL) - here it had no evidence at all. MeasureIT (talk) 23:19, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I see that the claim has been reinstated, this time "supported" by a citation in which the only relevent reference is a direct quote from the website of UKMA, a self-proclaimed single-issue pressure group fighting for metrication in the UK. The reference does not even claim that Wilkins was the inventor of the earliest concept of a Metric system, so the claim in the article actually remains unsupported. MeasureIT (talk) 12:15, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I have now added an "irrelevant citation" tag to the reference as the cite (even with a quotation) does not address the issue of lack of support for the claim to be the inventor of the earliest concept of a metric system. If I am wrong, please explain why. Anyway, please engage in this discussion rather than reverting. MeasureIT (talk) 16:09, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Reading the reference again, I see that the cited quote ("The key principles … were proposed by Dr. John Wilkins") is a direct quotation from this page on the website of the UK Metric Association (and attributed in the referenced publication to them). In turn, UKMA (a single-issue metrication pressure group), credit the late Pat Naughtin with drawing attention to the work of John Wilkins. The credibility of Pat Naughtin's work is currently the subject of another talk page discussion at Talk:History of the metric system in the "Reference to the work of Pat Naughtin" section. MeasureIT (talk) 16:24, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I have now removed it from the article again as I believe the current consensus at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#That Englishman John Wilkins invented the metric system is that we cannot reliably support a claim that Wilkins invented this. MeasureIT (talk) 22:57, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Some more on the source being used: not only is it just quoting from the UKMA, but it misattributes the quote, citing it as though it came directly from Wilkins. A bit of looking into the International Journal of Applied Science and Technology shows that it's published by the Centre for Promoting Ideas - who are themselves accused of being a "predatory" or fraudulent publisher, and of lying about the editors of their journals: see the Times Higher Education, The Australian, or this letter to Viewpoint. I agree that a claim this significant requires solid sourcing - and a dodgy-looking paper put out by a dubious publisher doesn't fit that. Ergative rlt (talk) 02:41, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

MeasuteIT wrote I see that the claim has been reinstated, this time "supported" by a citation in which the only relevent reference is a direct quote from the website of UKMA, a self-proclaimed single-issue pressure group fighting for metrication in the UK. Has he read every other citation in this article. If then, then he cannot substantiate his statement. For example, did he click onto the reference "Naughton (2009)"? He obviously didn't, because if he did he would have seen that Naughton's article contained much more than did the [article]. Did MeasureIT actually look at the UKMA artcile? I ask this question because its URL has changed. In short, would MeasureIT please stop telling "porkies". Martinvl (talk) 07:06, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

The reference you used to support the Wilkins claim cited "(Wilkins, 1668)" and "(UK Metric Association, 2011)". It gave no url. I used Google to find "was first adopted in revolutionary France, the underlying ideas

also came from England" and found this UKMA page. Now retract your allegation that I lied. Also did you see Ergative's message above casting doubt on that source too? MeasureIT (talk) 07:48, 4 January 2013 (UTC)