Talk:2012 in science

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Proposed name change[edit]

Does anyone think it might be worthwhile to change the name of this article to 2012 in science and technology, as it says in the introduction? Many - perhaps most - of the news items here are about new technological inventions, rather than discoveries of new scientific phenomena. A lot of people are interested in new technology; renaming the page and including it in the 2012 template would make it easier for users to find this page when looking for technological advances. Any thoughts? I won't change the name unless there's some kind of agreement, don't worry. Michaelmas1957 (talk) 03:13, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support 2011 in science and technology is a much more apt name. Suraj T 05:02, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support But perhaps the other years should be renamed as well, for consistency? Wjfox2005 (talk) 09:41, 31 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I did not wrote in this article, but I read and follow it, remember put redirections in all the old years--Feroang (talk) 18:22, 31 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reconsidered - oppose Actually, on balance, I shouldn't have suggested it. "2012 in science" is fine, and changing it would require retitling dozens of other articles and setting up lots of redirects. Michaelmas1957 (talk) 14:33, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Though I apreciate your concern, I would like to know the extent of work to be done in case the rename is done, as I consider 2012 in Science and Technology to be more suitable. Maybe I can be of help in the work to be done. Suraj T 19:16, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's not so much that it would be difficult - more that it would be hard to get a consensus for it from hundreds of editors, because it would affect so many articles. Michaelmas1957 (talk) 19:34, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Added images[edit]

I've added a few images to the article to illustrate some of the major scientific events of each month, and to break up the solid wall of text that makes up most of the article. I'm thinking there should be maybe two images for each month section. Do other people agree? Michaelmas1957 06:54, 26 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think I may do the same for 2011 in science as well; it's even longer than this article, and also suffers from the wall-of-text effect, which can be a bit daunting to readers. Michaelmas1957 12:42, 26 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
What sort of standard should be set in regards to photos? I just added the tomato picture for the genome sequencing and I already get the feeling that the pictures are going to add up pretty quick. (Tigerghost (talk) 21:25, 30 May 2012 (UTC))[reply]
Well so far I've tried to keep it to two or three images per month section - usually with a half-page gap between. The tomato image is a good one, but after that one let's leave a bit of a break until mid-June, unless something really major (like life on Mars or something) comes up with a new image. Check 2011 in science and 2010 in science, where I've also added images, to see my idea of spacing them out. Michaelmas1957 21:28, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note that if it's a very long section, more than three images is fine, so long as there's usually some spacing between. I'm glad to have got rid of the wall of text, but a wall of images might not be the solution. Michaelmas1957 21:29, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for GA[edit]

This article is extensively sourced, offers a large amount of detail, and is attractively laid out with appropriate images and subsections. I think it could qualify as a Good Article, but I'd like to know what others think before I nominate it. Michaelmas1957 (talk) 15:36, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This article will be a quick-fail nomination per points at WP:GA? because everyday a user is adding information and therefore the article is not stable and the article is not comprehensive enough since we are only in October 2012. Additionally, the article's prose is written in list-format, something that wouldn't be accepted among GA reviewers, maybe try WP:FLC. Best, Jonatalk to me 17:14, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the advice. Michaelmas1957 (talk) 19:58, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A stronger stance on text reuse[edit]

While searching for DOI sources it's come to my attention that there is endemic copy-pasting from articles to use as entries on these pages, especially those (most notably by the BBC or Science Daily) that include a nice, bolded subhead. I think a strong reminder that this is copyright violation at worst, and poor form at best (e.g. when the content is government public domain) is in order, regardless of the fact that those that write press release (e.g. as found unedited on EurekAlerts) love it when they are reused without changes and encourage such uses.

Although some cases have such straightforward description (e.g. the item about the WWII bomb map—although I'm not sure it qualifies as "science and technology news" as such) that they slides okay, things like the copypasting from here or here are just unacceptable. I counted five such cases since the beginning of December alone (the other three being [1] [2] and [3]).

I'm warning editors to this page that I will be monitoring it (and the upcoming 2013 page) for any further cases and ruthlessly removing violations with talk page warnings, because copyvio is serious business. Circéus (talk) 04:27, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly agree - I always try to reword new entries to avoid copyvio, but there are so many that I often miss them. Your help would be much appreciated. — Michaelmas1957 (talk) 16:22, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've now added a note regarding copyvio to this article and to 2013 in science. Hopefully editors will pay heed. — Michaelmas1957 (talk) 16:36, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If they are press releases, then what's the problem? I won't be contributing to this page anymore if that's the case. Wjfox2005 (talk) 14:06, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to refer to Wikipedia:Copy-paste. Press release are still under copyright regardless of their intended use, and doubly so when published elsewhere with amendments. Whose exact copyright we are technically violating and whether they care are entirely irrelevant to our copyright policies.
We cannot justify ignoring our copyright policies on a given pages just to make contributing to it easier for people who wouldn't be bothered to do it if they had to do it properly. That just compromises the entire basis the encyclopedia is predicated upon. Circéus (talk) 16:27, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Non-free file problems with File:Skylon front view.jpg[edit]

File:Skylon front view.jpg is non-free and has been identified as possibly not being in compliance with the non-free content policy. For specific information on the problems with the file and how they can be fixed, please check the message at File:Skylon front view.jpg. For further questions and comments, please use the non-free content review page. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 08:05, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Malware Link Removal[edit]

--Gary Dee 18:11, 21 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for removing it. – Michaelmas1957 (talk) 20:37, 21 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion[edit]

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Broken references due to template limits[edit]

I didn't know this was a thing, but apparently the article is running up against WP:PEIS. I've brought it back under the limit by displaying a single author for some of the journal articles. If the rest of the journal articles are also short-formatted, there will probably be enough text space to complete footnote references for the rest of the page, but FYI. 〈 Forbes72 | Talk 〉 08:14, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's happened again, having been pushed over the limit big time by citation.bot cleaning up a lot of the references and adding IDs. I'll post in a couple of the WikiProjects, but I don't know what the answer is. ColinFine (talk) 20:29, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@ColinFine: I suggest we should split at least some content to new page(s). Looks like 2020 in science and 2021 in science have subpages organized by quarter, so might do the same here for consistency's sake. That would fix the issue more permanently I think. Thanks 86.167.32.204 for pointing out the broken references at the help desk. 〈 Forbes72 | Talk 〉 02:29, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Split of first few months is  Done 〈 Forbes72 | Talk 〉 04:49, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]