Talk:ViXra

NPOV tag

If the person who added the NPOV tag would kindly explain what they think is not neutral about the article, I'll fix it. Otherwise, I'll remove the tag. SETIGuy (talk) 23:40, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Hello! I was the guy who added the NPOV tag, and I apologize for not stating my reasons. viXra is a brewery for all kinds of non-standard theories. A casual reader might get the idea that ViXra is an eprint archive set in proper scientific spirit, which it is not. viXra does not have any kind of peer review. And a lot of established scientists might not consider the creators of viXra as "scientists". You need to stress on these points. And there are factual errors in the article. arXiv is not owned by Cornell, it just happens to be funded (and hosted) by Cornell. Hope I made myself clear to you! Regards! — Fιηεmαηη ^[talk] 07:34, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I thought I had made it clear with the last sentence that content with little or no scientific value could be found on vixra, but I don't think that it would be appropriate to discuss the credentials of either the founders of vixra or the founders of arxiv. Maybe I should remove the word scientist from descriptions of either. I'm not sure that your disapproval of vixra means that the article doesn't have a neutral point of view. It appears to mean that you don't have a neutral point of view. I neither approve of nor disapprove of the existence of vixra. If you'd like to add a section discussing the "proper scientific spirit" and whether allowing non-scientists to post articles is "proper scientific spirit" and the necessity of censorship to the scientific process, but I can be fairly sure that wouldn't be NPOV. SETIGuy (talk) 17:05, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi! I'm sure I am not discriminating against viXra or your article. viXra is the kind of place where you can find articles written by Jesus Christ himself! I guess it should be clearly mentioned that much of the papers in viXra is quackery than veiling it in sentences like "As such, ViXra contains many articles of debatable scientific merit." Hope you understand. — Fιηεmαηη ^(talk) 17:23, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I think it's pretty neutral now, and the tag could be removed. As much as I'd like to open with "viXra is full of nonsense", in the same way that part of me wants to see the lede of homeopathy replaced with "Homeopathy doesn't work; there's nothing in it", we really have to try to keep an encyclopædic tone rather than polemic. bobrayner (talk) 20:46, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Good work! I have removed it. — Fιηεmαηη ^(talk) 21:49, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually I do understand your prejudice against an open archive that allows anyone to publish anything and claim it is science. I'm a scientist after all, so to some extent I share it. But I also understand the need to have relatively permanent archives with lower standards. The fact that viXra contains unscientific jibberish does not mean that the archive serves no purpose or that it contains nothing of scientific value. Saying that it contains nothing of value would not be NPOV. It might even be untrue. SETIGuy (talk) 00:52, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Prejudice? To me an open archive that allows anyone to publish anything and claim it is science is nothing but a storage service of pdf files. I don't understand how it is any different from Rapidshare or Megaupload. Would you consider Rapidshare as an alternative to arXiv? In that sense yeah, I am prejudiced! That said, I am not in for a flame war regarding this. Regards! — Fιηεmαηη ^(talk) 01:04, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I hope that some day, assuming you stay in the sciences, you will understand the difference between arXiv, viXra, and Rapidshare and why each is different, necessary and not a substitute for any of the others. SETIGuy (talk) 01:49, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I am the creator of viXra and I just saw this article. I won't comment on it directly because it should remain unbiased, but I have to comment on some of the comments made here by Finemann.

"viXra is a brewery for all kinds of non-standard theories" - thank you this is a great compliment, I hope it is seen that way. I only claim that it is open and without restrictions to authors whose purpose is to publish their scientific theories, standard or non-standard. Many of the greatest ideas in science started off as non-standard in their time.

"viXra does not have any kind of peer review", - neither does arXiv which just has an endorsement policy and moderation. Once endorsed an author can submit at will so individual papers are not being reviewed at all. There is also a moderation policy that may lead to articles being moved to other categories. I don't like these policies but they are not any kind of peer-review and that is a good thing because it is not the purpose of an eprint archive to carry out peer review. That is what journals are for. The eprint archive is there mainly to enable rapid circulation before peer-review. Many of the articles in viXra have passed peer-review, look in the comments where the journal reference is sometimes mentioned. Traditional peer-review is also just one step in the long process of scientific review that eventually leads to a scientific consensus.

"a lot of established scientists might not consider the creators of viXra as "scientists"" - I don't know what this personal insult is based on. I don't claim to be well-known as a scientist but I do have a PhD in physics. I have also published papers on physics and mathematics in peer reviewed journals. I even won a fourth prize in a recent FQXi essay contest that was judged by an expert panel of scientists. By the way I am also endorsed for submissions to arXiv. These are minor achievements perhaps, but which part of this sounds like I would not be considered as a scientist? If you think that many scientists would label me a non-scientist because I run an archive with an open submission policy then I think you misjudge them. Weburbia (talk) 20:04, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

• Fortunately this page has escaped deletion. If you intend to edit it please read the discussion page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/ViXra which has some reliable references that could be used. Please keep the page balanced. I wont edit the article myself due to conflict of interest. Weburbia (talk) 09:16, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
• The adminstrators comment at the top of the discussion page for the deletion is a complete distortion of the truth. There was no agreement that viXra is a site of dubious scientific quality as claimed. There were only two supporters of the deletion with five against (not counting myself) Weburbia (talk) 09:16, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
• The discussion page for the deletion has now been blanked because I made a compliant about the libellous and completely unjustifiable comment left by the administrator who closed the discussion. Weburbia (talk) 08:50, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
  • The closing comment looked quite reasonable to me. You should be careful when throwing around words like "libellous" so frequently - other editors might get the impression that you intend to achieve changes through legal threats that couldn't be achieved through discussion and reasoning; if that happened, you'd probably get swiftly blocked. bobrayner (talk) 21:33, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
    • The Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Libel makes it clear that an email should be sent if there is anything libellous. That is all I have done. I have not done anything remotely similar to threatening anyone with legal action. You are the one who should be careful what you say. The comment was not "reasonable" (It can still be seen using the history page for the AfD) It was clearly in contradiction of what was said on the discussion page and was an unwarranted criticism of viXra that amounted to libel. If you think it was reasonable then explain what you mean and I will defend it here. I was not able to do that on the AfD because it was closed to edits so I had no choice to complain about it. I tried to use "discussion and reason" by posting on the administrators own talk page but his idea of discussion was not to respond in any way. Weburbia (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:22, 8 May 2012 (UTC).

Creation of a new page about figshare

I suggest the creation of a new page about figshare , but I would be completely unable to write it.

I apologize if this is not the right place to make such a suggestion. I didn't know where to make it.

Milolance (talk) 11:06, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Reception?

There should be some information about how this project has been received by the academic community. Has it proved popular? Do researchers generally consider it a valuable resource? Is it experiencing growth or stagnation? Is the site more popular in particular fields of research? Have there been any papers published on viXra that have been regarded as especially significant or important? And so on... Right now the article mainly describes the purpose of the site, but does not describe how it has actually turned out. 129.199.99.140 (talk) 09:34, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

This may not be possible, as it has not really been mentioned in any reliable sources outside of those already used in the article. If you manage to find any post them here and we can take a look. a13ean (talk) 14:47, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

If that's true, then perhaps this article does not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. From WP:NOT#INTERNET, I quote: "Wikipedia articles should not exist only to describe the nature, appearance or services a website offers, but should describe the site in an encyclopedic manner, offering detail on a website's achievements, impact or historical significance." See also WP:WEBCRIT. I have added a notability template. 129.199.224.149 (talk) 22:14, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

It may be worth nominating it for deletion again as the previous AfD was inconclusive. The lack of subsequent RS on the subject may play a role. a13ean (talk) 23:37, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

References to news sources that reported the initial setup of viXra are

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/39845 Fledgling site challenges arXiv server (Physics World August 2009 p9) http://physicsworld.com/blog/2009/07/what_is_arxiv_backwards.html http://m.publico.es/240864 article in Spanish Newspaper publico 25 July 2009 http://blogs.nature.com/news/2009/07/whats_arxiv_spelled_backwards.html A reliable reference to the statement that viXra contains articles of dubious merit is http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.0788 , Mike Duff, Contribution to the Special Issue of Foundations of Physics: "Forty Years Of String Theory: Reflecting On the Foundations"

Please be sure to apply the same standards to all the other e-print archives in Wikipedia.Weburbia (talk) 20:22, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

The following looks more relevant, but unfortunately it does not yet seem to be reliably published: Kelk, David; Devine, David (2012), A Scienceographic Comparison of Physics Papers from the arXiv and viXra Archives, arXiv:1211.1036. Perhaps worth keeping an eye on, in case it achieves reliable publication in future. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:24, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Another source is "Peer‐to‐peer Review and the Future of Scholarly Authority", K Fitzpatrick is the journal "Social Epistemology" Volume 24, Issue 3, 2010, published by Routledge. Which says "It is worth noting the challenge posed to this already quite open system by a new pre‐print server named viXra, which removes any restrictions on the kinds of papers that can be uploaded" The same author noted viXra in her book "Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy"

It should be pointed out that sources do not have to be cited in the article to support notability. It is sufficient that they exist. I have given six independent reliable sources. There is no number given for the number of sources or other factors that justify notability in Wikipedia but people can compare this with other articles in Wikipedia in the same categories which are not being threatened with deletion.Weburbia (talk) 19:19, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

An anonymous user has added a claim that "Most scientists believe that some of the papers uploaded to viXra contain pseudo-science and do not contribute to further the knowledge in the respective fields." This would be equally true, irrelevant and unsupported by reliable sources if it were said of arXiv and many other repositories instead of viXra. It does not reflect well on wikipedia that this unbalanced statement has been allowed to stand. Weburbia (talk) 19:18, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

For values of "allowed to stand" that include "reverted by the next day", you mean? Anyway, it's gone now. As you could have accomplished yourself. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:44, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you David. I have to steadfastly avoid doing any editing myself on the article because any edit I make would allow the detractors to claim that the page is not neutral due to my conflict of interest. Weburbia (talk) 09:54, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Here is one further reference to viXra ftom a peer reviewed paper: "Automating the Horae: Boundary-work in the age of computers" by Luis Reyes-Galindo in Social Studies of Science (Sage Journals) http://sss.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/04/25/0306312716642317.abstract Weburbia (talk) 15:44, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

POV

I have added {{POV}} to the article as it is too positive towards ViXrA, which often contains crackpot articles, due to the inefficient moderation, . Dimension10 (talk) 10:01, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The moderation is not "inefficient". It is the policy of viXra to accept articles without any threshold for quality as stated in the article. If you look at the history you will see that this article is closely monitored and any biased changes either way are quickly reverted. Your claim that it "often contains crackpot articles" is vague and overly negative and cannot be supported by reliable references. The POV tag should be removed.Weburbia (talk) 10:53, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

It is not vague, and I believe it is factual, but it cannot be added to the article without a reliable source that says so. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:30, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The continued lack of new RS beyond the very few that accompanied its inception makes me think this needs to go back to AfD (or AfM to the ArXiv article). a13ean (talk) 18:45, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The crackpot claim can be proved easily. E.g. on vixra

you find dozens of 'proofs' of famous math conjectures (Goldbach, Riemann hypothesis, twin prime conjecture), which are fairly obviously very wrong (the 'proofs', I cannot judge the conjectures since they are open). The arxiv general math section had similar problems, but it seems to have improved since the site is moderated. In vixra's psychology section I found an article claiming that plants have an aura and that it is possible to communicate with them. Maybe, but the author does not give any evidence for his/her claims. Etc, etc, what else is crackpot if not this? -- MaLeZig w/o login. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.220.132.179 (talk) 12:52, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

It is so vague that if you said arXiv "often contains crackpot articles" quite a few people would agree with it. Unless you can carefully define "crackpot" and quantify it there is no substantive meaning to it. In any case what you need is a quote from a reliable source and nobody has ever said any such thing outside a blog or a forum and usually under the cover of anonymity. Furthermore you are not applying the same standards to other wikipedia articles in similar categories of academic website such as Category:EPrint archives or Category:Scholarly communication or Category:Bibliographic databases. Many of these have no independent reliable references at all and less information than the viXra article. The only reason you are attacking this article is because you don't like its content, but that is not a good reason and it is NPOV. May I also suggest that you read the information on the viXra website to understand better what its purpose is. Weburbia (talk) 22:30, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

merging with the arXiv article would make no sense at all because viXra is not part of arXiv. Why would you not merge every other eprint archive with arXiv and just have a generic article about eprint archives?Weburbia (talk) 22:36, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The few reliable sources we have on the matter indicate that viXra is only notable because it's an alternative to the ArXiv. a13ean (talk) 00:52, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

A reference to viXra in the arXiv article was recently removed. Merging viXra into arXiv will be seen as very controversial critcism and people would want to remove it. If you think it can be justified you may have to lock the arXiv article so that it can stay there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weburbia (talk • contribs) 06:19, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Concerning the Conflict of Interest Tag

A conflict of interest tag has been placed on this page concerning myself. I would like to point out that I have always been upfront about my involvement with viXra. I have never made any edit to the viXra article even when some people suggested I do so. Neither I nor anyone else involved with viXra had any part in creating or editing the article. The guidelines at Wikipedia:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide encourage people with a conflict of interest to post suggestions and sources in the talk page. That is what I have been doing and it means that it is completely absurd and out of place to add a conflict of interest tag to a talk page. Please justify why this has been done or remove the tag.Weburbia (talk) 09:30, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I would also like to add that although I acknowledge a "conflict of interest" since I founded viXra.org, this does not mean that I have a financial interest, or at least not a positive one. viXra.org is not a corporation or even a non-profit organisation. It is just a website that cost money to run and that money comes out of my pocket. This is not likely to ever change. The more people that use it the more it will cost to run. The small amount of advertising on the site covers less than 10% of the cost.Weburbia (talk) 13:11, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

The tag is for the benefit of other users, so they can evaluate your comments here in light of the fact that you are personally connected to the subject of the article. Any financial details are beside the point. a13ean (talk) 17:15, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

The first thing I said on this page was "I am the creater of viXra", so the tag is unnecessary. People may interpret the tag to mean that my influence has affected the neutrality of the page. This is not the case. I have not edited it and even my suggestions for further sources have not been taken up. My only role here has been to argue against the claims for lack of "notability" and "neutral point of view" and to defend the site from the unwarranted attacks that have been made on this talk page which are not backed up by reliable sources. Weburbia (talk) 17:55, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I added the point about the finances because a lot of the wording on the "conflict of interest" page linked to in the tag is directed at people who are promoting their own commercial interests in Wikipedia. Weburbia (talk) 18:00, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

This is the first time I have seen a "conflict of interest" tag on a talk page. Also, the "autobiography" tag is irrelevant to this talk page, and so is the "Neutral point of view" tag (irrelevant). I have been in a number of discussions with some heavy duty POV pushers, two of those went to ANI. Yet there was no NPOV tag, and no "Autobiography" tag placed on the top of the article. I request rationale be provided with some specifics that justifies the unusual use of these tags (on a talk page). Where in the "conflict of interest" guideline does it say this applies to talk page. As far as I can see User:Weburbia's editing behavior has been appropriate according to the COI guideline and the talk page guideline.

I am going to quote from the COI guideline : "When advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest." Also the COI guideline states " [He] may use the article talk pages to suggest changes..."

According to this definition User:Weburbia does not appear to be a COI editor. Having a connection to the article does not seem to automatically equate with conflict of interest. This editor has made no effort to edit this article, and has appropriately participated in discussions on the talk page. Unless I am missing something? --- Steve Quinn (talk) 02:02, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I placed this particular COI tag, which is explicitly for the case in which the user has never edited the article. The basis for the COI tag was Paul's declaration as well as the rather heated discussion at the AfD. a13ean (talk) 03:54, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

At any rate this may be a moot point -- we're now several years in and still have only the two reliable sources cited, plus some Spanish news article. I remained unconvinced that this meets notability, and will renominate for AfD when I have a chance. a13ean (talk) 03:56, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I have provided 6 reliable sources on these pages. The criteria for notability only requires that sources exist, not that they are cited in the article. Six is much better than most other articles in Wikipedia in similar categories. You can try your AfD if you want. Last time most people responded in support of keeping it. As I said the last time, I don't personally mind if the article is on Wikipedia or not, so long as it is unbiased, which it is now. From the comments here it is clear that a few people are against it because they dont like its contents, not because of the notability criteria. Weburbia (talk) 08:31, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Keep the page

The vixra site is a significant site on the web, and that must count for something. I support the retention of its wikipedia entry, for the simple reason that it is valuable to be able to objectively compare and contrast it with that other important site, arxiv. Several of the arguments above for deletion appear personally motivated, and the reasons for deletion contrived, so may I just add that if we were to go around deleting every site that personally displeased each of us, there would not be much left. John Pons (talk) 08:15, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree completely wiht JOhn POns. I have seen also many 'crackpots' in ARXIV.ORG and their papers are not deleted even when some professionals review them and say they are wrong , keep this vixra.org page in wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.85.13.91 (talk) 10:55, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Keep the page on this very small preprint server because some other much larger preprint server doesn't filter out all its crackpots? What logical connection is there from one to the other? How does this argument rely on Wikipedia's notability policies? For that matter, at this point in time, who is even trying to delete the ViXra page? —David Eppstein (talk) 16:46, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

That would be me. I think the very few independent reliable sources do not collectively satisfy GNG. a13ean (talk) 22:50, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank You for Article Creation

I applaud the researcher who created this vixra.org article. It shows that not all is lost to mob rule on wikipedia. Wavyinfinity (talk) 18:37, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Preprint Count

On Vixra.org the current count for articles as of November 7, 2014 is 9000. The cited source of only 4000 is off by 5000 papers. In other words the cite has more than doubled in preprint publishings in a little over 1 1/2 years.

From the viXra web site:

An alternative archive of 9000 e-prints in Science and Mathematics serving the whole scientific community.

Wavyinfinity (talk) 20:00, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't see the point in adding numbers to the article that you intend to update every single day. That's just pointless churn. Find a reliable source for updated numbers, rather than something that will be different every time you look at it. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:44, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Notability Of Vixra Is Published On Arxiv

David Kelk and David Devine published a scholarly and scientific comparison of arXiv and viXra on the Cornell University Site in 2012.

The article published statistics related to quality standards at arXiv, like number of authors and university affiliation, length of the text, and the style, as well as the number of references and where the references are placed and presented. From the arXiv article It seems unlikely that Albert Einstein could get his special relativity published in arXiv because he was not associated with a university at the time and had no collaborators. His later work on general relativity could probably be published on arXiv because he became a university professor and had collaborators some of the leading mathematicians like Hilbert, Weyl, Noether, and Levi-Civita.

In another arXiv article G. G. Nyambuya makes reference to his previous article on viXra that was continued from Nyambuya's earlier article on arXiv and eventually printed in a peer reviewed journal.

Is Nyambuya another Einstein? We don't know yet, but if he is, then viXra gets some of the credit for allowing him to publish the disputed article arXiv didn't want.

The notability of viXra is established by it's acceptance of original work by less known authors in controversial topics that are not popular with the majority of main stream academic writers. The vast majority of scientists work in private enterprise not connected to a university, so there is no intent of arXiv to cover the entire technical community, although a large variety of journals do cover virtually every aspect of science. A lack of peer review in viXra is compensated for by allowing any reader to publish a comment about any specific article, with some general limits and a system of resolving disputes.

I would vote to keep viXra page in Wikipedia for now and under occasional review, considering that it is less notable than it might be in peer reviewed references if the conservative side of the academic community was more tolerant of new ideas. Astrojed (talk) 23:18, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

References

You do know that arXiv papers do not go through peer review (unless they are also published elsewhere) and because of that are not generally considered reliable sources, right? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:49, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

The journal reference is the most reliable one, but there is only one journal reference and that is not enough to resolve the question of notability for viXra. Moreover the journal is about Astronomy and Astrophysics, the only branches of physical science that routinely reach outside the academic circle of specialists to invite contributions from amateurs and general practitioners. I could have listed another 19 references from Doctor Nyambuya on the Research Gate web site where there is more quality control than viXra, but less quality control than arXiv, however it is not essential to the topic and does not lead to additional journal references. It is notable that Nyambuya, a black African doctor of physics educated in African universities, specializing in the topics he publishes while working without collaboration in a lesser known African university has succeeded in getting a peer reviewed journal publication with the help of arXiv, viXra, and Research Gate.

The larger issue for me is one of diversity and inclusion knocking on the door of an exclusive society. Then there is the issue of new discoveries and who gets credit for first publication. Main stream scientists have recommended to me a first publication on Research Gate with proof of origin, before submitting it for peer review. Astrojed (talk) 18:21, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Cherry picking among recent papers

A high-water mark: http://vixra.org/abs/1706.0060 - not work that will set the mathematical world on fire, but it was published in an Elsevier journal (which makes their uploading it to vixra hard to fathom)

A low-water mark: http://vixra.org/abs/1705.0384 - sets out to present a physics theory of mind but veers off into reflections on unrequited love.137.205.101.185 (talk) 12:16, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Actually, vixra has a whole bunch of Elsevier-copyrighted material on it, which surely would result in a cease and desist order if Elsevier could be bothered to know or care about the existence of this dismal repository.137.205.100.47 (talk) 16:05, 21 June 2017 (UTC)