Talk:Earth

Semi-protected edit request on 26 February 2025

"Extreme weather, such as tropical cyclones..."

Please add a wikilink to extreme weather in the above sentence in the life on Earth section

That said I realise it's not strictly necessary for the article or anything, so if my request is rejected because you consider it overlinking, that's fine.

Thanks! 2A02:C7E:2F55:BF00:15A2:1D1:5CC2:2EBE (talk) 04:28, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

 Done ―Panamitsu (talk) 04:31, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

That was quick! Thank you, have a nice day 2A02:C7E:2F55:BF00:15A2:1D1:5CC2:2EBE (talk) 04:34, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Use of ChatGPT/LLM on this article

Hello Wikipedians and editors,

I need your help! I am conducting research for my master's degree in environmental communication and I'm interested in the learning more about the use of LLMs during the editing/writing process of Wikipedia articles. In true Wikipedia fashion, I am entering this inquiry from a neutral standpoint - I neither support nor oppose the use of LLMs on Wikipedia articles. I am writing here in hopes of reading your anecdotes on how LLMs have been used or even encountered on Wikipedia articles within the WikiProject Environment.

You may see this topic a few times in your notifications, but please don't dismiss it as spam! I am posting the same topic on the WikiProject Environment talk page, as well as the Earth, Climate Change and Tesla Model S talk pages - because they are the only three Wikipedia articles that are both of FA quality and of Top importance according to the WikiProject Environment Article Assessment table. I am open to hearing experiences with using or encountering LLMs in the editing process of other Wikipedia articles as well, but I do want to remain within the limits of articles under the WikiProject Environment umbrella.

It is understandable if you want to remain anonymous to other Wikipedians in this discussion. If so please feel free to reach out to me via the "Email this user" feature on my User page! Otherwise, I encourage a conversation to take place on this Talk page so that it may inspire others to contribute.

Finally, I am only in the design/digging around phase of this research. If anything that is said will be used in my actual research, all contributors will remain anonymous (unless requested otherwise). Consent forms can be made available at any time for anyone involved in further research that may be published to the public.

Some questions to inspire your storytelling:

- How have you encountered the use of LLMs on editing/writing Wikipedia articles within WikiProject environment?

- What impact has it had on article quality?

- Where do you stand on the use of LLMs in editing/writing Wikipedia articles dealing with environmental topics?

- What about the use of LLMs in editing/writing on other topics in Wikipedia articles?

- Do you have a community on Wikipedia that you communicate with about the use of LLMs in editing/writing Wikipedia articles? If so, please mention which one(s)!

All the best,

Wikipistemologist (talk) 14:41, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Dunno why you are asking on the article for planet Earth. LLMs are not allowed to be used in writing articles to my knowledge. They make shitty articles. GarethBaloney (talk) 21:02, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Why is the semi-major axis in km and not au like every other planet's page?

Title 198.150.204.8 (talk) 14:49, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

This seems like a rhetorical question, but I'm not sure what the point of it is. Remsense ‥ 论 14:56, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

AU is more astronomical should be included at least. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:16, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

It wouldn't be very useful because AU is just "the size of earth's orbit". So the answer (calculating the numbers) is 1.000001018 AU. That number is not really worth putting into the infobox, because it's just "1" and is not informative. Mrfoogles (talk) 05:49, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

My edits

54rt678 (talk · contribs) – Limit: 1000 per calendar month.

@Remsense said my edits were unneccisary but then I said that as long as they are not bad it is okay if I include those edits. my edits were to optimize the article because I have really really slow internet and I made the file for the article faster without taking away any meanings of the article 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 21:28, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

To be blunt, your idea of "optimizing" articles by shortening links as much as possible is not helpful: the idea is dogmatic on its face, and in effect it results in jagged, awkward phrases and sentences, e.g. Humans depend on Earth's biosphere and natural resources for their survival, but have a Human impact on the environment. is downright baffling in how it reads. If these impulses are imposed across many articles, it will become a disruptive pattern of behavior very quickly. Broadly, there actually is value in the stability of prose, as opposed to its fracture from thousands of hands, each with their narrow tics and tendencies. Wikipedia only works when people know how to avoid this and let things go. I'm speaking from some experience here, and I hope you can take that in good faith.

For another specific thing, Sunlight is obviously not correct, firstly per our article, and explicitly also in our Manual of Style. No change was an improvement, and it's not reasonable that some will make such lateral changes, but changing it back would be an affront. Remsense ‥ 论 21:51, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

they don't sound awkward to me and those are only two examples so the rest of the edits were good according to you too 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 21:55, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

None of the changes were improvements, and I pointed out two places where they are clearly erroneous. I'm not sure how I can better explain exactly how awkward that sentence is, so hopefully others will be able to chime in about it. The only thing I can think of is you've been thinking about it too long now, so it doesn't have the effect it does for a new reader. Remsense ‥ 论 21:59, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

my improvements made the page load faster on my Windows 95 PC without changing the meaning 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 22:06, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

To be even blunter: that's your problem. Don't force the ill effects from your weird computer choices on the rest of humanity. Remsense ‥ 论 22:08, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

It makes the article slightly faster for everyone 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 22:10, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

You literally wrote in your user page that you also like really old computers 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 22:20, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

And I don't make articles worse for it. Remsense ‥ 论 22:41, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

The article is not worse! by the way, what is your favorite old computer? 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 22:43, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't think I'm doing a good job at communicating why it is so, so I'm hoping others can help me out here. The above sentence very unnecessarily repeats "human". This is purely redundant information and the reader trips over it, which is a diction problem. Does that make sense?

Also, did you read the MOS passage I linked yet? It tells you plainly why Sunlight is wrong: it is good to get into the habit of checking these things when you're linked them—they are often much clearer than I am trying to explain things off the cuff. Remsense ‥ 论 22:47, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

I didn't say anything about sunlight 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 22:48, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

yes sunlight is the radiation from the sun which plants use for photosynthesis 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 21:56, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

To be clear, no article is perfect, but it's worth pointing out this is one of our most visible and mature articles—and for a one-size-fits all emblem of that, it's a featured article. I would at suggest you at least ponder more deliberately whether you're really helping fix things no one else noticed before in these cases, or whether you have something to learn about copyediting and technical writing yourself. Given you seemingly haven't read the bit of the MOS I linked you above yet, I really recommend you flip through it more, it's a highly educational skim. Remsense ‥ 论 22:08, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

What about this, you can reverse some of my edits but not all of them because some of them were genuinely good 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 22:11, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

also I did read the manual of script that you sent me and my stuff didn't violate it 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 22:12, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

I also checked through your edits and found none of them to be a significant improvement and most to be detrimental to the article, including some that were wrong. The text that we have in this article is the result of hard fought consensus, often taking weeks or longer to arrive at, involving multiple editors. Its best to use this talk page to discuss proposed changes first, rather than just going ahead and making them. Mikenorton (talk) 22:38, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

That is exactly what we are doing 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 22:40, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Here, it's the part that says

The words Sun, Earth, Moon and Solar System are capitalized (as proper names) when used to refer to a specific celestial body in an astronomical context (The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System; the Moon orbits Earth). They are not capitalized when used outside an astronomical context, such as when referring to sunshine (It was a clear day and the sun felt warm), or when used in a general sense (Io is a moon of Jupiter).

Remsense ‥ 论 22:49, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

ok do then just make it lowercase 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 22:52, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm trying to articulate specific problems, but I also have to reiterate that your ideas for "optimization" are myopic and counterproductive, and I strongly recommend you let go of them. I'm only saying this because I know how tunnel vision can be. It should be more clear there are general problems with what you're doing.

Here's more examples where the prose is clearly worse:

−

The Sun will evolve to become a red giant in about 5 billion years.

+

The Sun will undergo stellar evolution to become a red giant in about 5 billion years.

 – this is much less precise, and potentially more misleading about the nature of stellar evolution, for absolutely no good reason. This makes it sound like stellar evolution isn't a process unfolding throughout a star's life, and that it will suddenly begin in 5 billion years. The present prose better connotes that the Sun becoming a red giant is the culmination of how it's spent its entire existence so far.

−

The seven major plates are the Pacific, North American, Eurasian, African, Antarctic, Indo-Australian, and South American.

+

The seven major plates are the Pacific Plate, North American Plate, Eurasian Plate, African Plate, Antarctic Plate, Indo-Australian Plate, and South American Plate.

You did this in a lot of places. Read it aloud, maybe? It's made unbelievably clunky with the pointless repetition, and it feels abjectly wasteful.

−

In the Northern Hemisphere, winter solstice currently occurs around 21 December; summer solstice is near 21 June, spring equinox is around 20 March and autumnal equinox is about 22 or 23 September.

+

In the Northern Hemisphere, winter solstice currently occurs around 21 December; summer solstice is near 21 June, spring equinox is around 20 March and September equinox is about 22 or 23 September.

Please tell me you can see the problem re-reading this one? Remsense ‥ 论 23:52, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

maybe we should rename the article that is titled September equinox 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 00:05, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Maybe, maybe not, but right now we're thinking about the best way to write this article. With any project this broad, there are going to be inconsistencies between articles that annoy you (I know many annoy me) but much of the time we try to force consistencies, especially across a large number of articles, it can either create new, worse problems and edge cases. While our MOS and other content guidelines do make a lot of decisions, sometimes even ones that prioritize consistency between articles—we usually care much more about consistency within a given article instead—we are far better able to make flexible decisions about what to do based on the topic at hand. Some history articles will say World War I, and some will say First World War. That is fine.

See MOS:VAR—it's at the very top of the MOS for a reason. I think of it like we all have our tics and preferences, but this is the best way we can work together even if we have very different tastes and opinions on writing style. Remsense ‥ 论 00:13, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

I would also like for you to start using summaries 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 00:11, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

I've written pretty verbose edit summaries for you, and now have spent a lot of time here chatting. I ask politely that you refrain from telling me what to do in my engagements with others on here. Remsense ‥ 论 00:14, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

okay can you also tell me why why you reverted my edits in the star page. also I wanted you to give edit summaries when you continued to edit the Earth article 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 00:17, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

the edit summary given language tagging (see MOS:LANG) seems to suffice unless you have any particular concerns.

On Star it should be clear the root problem is exactly the same—you've got this idea of optimizing articles that is bad, and I've given examples above illustrating why the mindset is bad as well as the results. Remsense ‥ 论 00:21, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

what specificly 54rt678 (talk | contribs) 03:49, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

I'll try to soften my tone from now on.

• Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at the night sky is plainly ungrammatical—even though on an abstract level I can put together that we're "pointing" the naked eye "at" the sky like it's a camera, it unfortunately just isn't idiomatic formal English.
• The motion of the Sun against the background stars (and the horizon) was used to create solar calendars This one is mostly fine either way, but it touches on the fact that you seem to prefer repeating yourself in a sentence rather than use certain other vocabulary that better facilitates diction and may be more informative. See above.
• There was no reason to remove the link to Astrometry, save what I suspect happened, which is you couldn't find a way to optimize it. That's dogmatic, and not good, like I said.

Remsense ‥ 论 04:07, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Just going to jump in here and drop my opinion as a passerby. @54rt678 I'm not sure if these changes will slightly improve loading times in a way that matters for people with low performance (it seems unlikely, and unless you have actual benchmarks I wouldn't trust just guessing based on clicking reload), but I am sure they will significantly worsen the reading experience for everyone, because they will be nongrammatical, awkward, and break the meaning of the text. Using aliases for links (linking a word to an article that is not that word) is extremely established in Wikipedia articles, for a good reason -- often you need to do that to have a relevant link and have well-written text.

If you want to make major changes like this, you need to have consensus for them, which means the other people editing the page need to agree with you. So far it seems that people don't (yes, I know I'm saying this as one of the 2 people who have arrived, but it's very unlikely anyone else who arrives will agree with this change based on the norms of Wikipedia). Your only chance with this would be to make a formal proposal at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals), but that's also probably not going to work because people will oppose it. So, you're not going to be able to successfully make these changes. Mrfoogles (talk) 05:46, 15 May 2025 (UTC)