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User:HaeB/Citizendium approved errors

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Article name Error description Duration it remained in approved version Correction diff Notes
Accidental release source terms Typo ("gases such as [[ammonia] or") 417 days [1]
Air pollution dispersion terminology Typo ("Stabilty" instead of "Stability") 402 days [2]
Ammonia production Typos ("quantitity" instead of "quantity", "quantites" instead of "quantities") 519 days / 791 days [3] / [4]
Andrew Carnegie Typos ("inalianable right", "conections" instead of "connections"), missing word ("Carnegie hired the best steelmakers--own brother, Thomas M. Carnegie") > 1047 days Partially corrected in draft
Biology Factual error ("Being familiar with the theories of Aristotle and their popular interpretation, [ Antonie van Leeuwenhoek ] reported that he could actually see homunculi in the heads of the living sperm ...") > 1218 days See e.g. Clara Pinto-Correia: Homunculus. Historiographic Misunderstandings of Preformationist Terminology ("he never once makes use of the problematic word")

Corrected in draft ("van Leeuwenhoek was a Creationist, who disputed the Aristotelian notion that living things could emerge from inanimate matter"), see also talk page

Biology Typo ("would opened up" instead of "would open up") 227 days [5] Inserted in reapproval
Biology Misleading image and caption 72 days [6] Discussion: "... the zebra finch is not an island specialist, as the text implies, but a continental generalist. Should be removed. .... As the photo and caption stands it is misleading."
Charles A. Beard "Multiple grammar errors in just the opening paragraph"[1] ("was,", "in Indiana 1898", missing full stop) > 866 days Fixed in draft
Charles A. Beard Seriously outdated/distorting statement ("Beard's interpretation held sway for 40 years until Robert Brown (1954) revealed its contradictions and Forrest McDonald (1958) showed that Charles Beard had misinterpreted the economic interests involved in writing the Constitution.") > 866 days "This neglects the 'rehabilitation of Charles Beard' undertaken through quantitative methods by Robert McGuire and Robert Ohsfeldt in 1984 (here)."[1]
Charles A. Beard Wrong name ("He graduated from DePauw College.") > 866 days "This should properly be DePauw University as other biographies note (see Charles A. Beard: The English Experience). DePauw's website confirms that the institution was never known as DePauw College ..."[1]
Charles A. Beard Factual error ("After resigning from Columbia University in protest at pro-war actions in 1917, he helped to found the New School for Social Research in New York.") > 866 days "It's rather unclear what this means, but it's wrong. Lawrence Dennis, in his biography, clarifies: 'His resignation, in 1917, was precipitated by the expulsion of three professors ... who opposed America's entry into the war, which Beard himself supported. The heart of the matter seems to have been Beard's growing conviction that the trustees were interfering in academic matters. So, while the war was involved, the Citizendium rendering is wrong (see p. 149 of George S. Counts and Charles A. Beard, Collaborators for Change (SUNY Series in the Philosophy of Education)"[1]
Civil society typo ("Facism" instead of "Fascism") 815 days [7]
Complex number Factual error (multiplication instead of addition) 3 days [8] "This is a big error so I want it to be fixed as soon as possible. I can't imagine any editor would argue with this change / it is embarrassing and I feel responsible for it / I certainly take responsibility for nominating the article for approval without seeing this mistake" (see here, also contains further links)
Complex number Factual error (geometric interpretation of division) 813 days [9] See here, [10] ("The Complex number page still contains what I consider to be a blatant error...") and [11]. The amount of time and approval bureaucracy discussions it took to add these two words is astonishing. I still consider the reapproved version to be at least misleading, but it is an improvement.
Compressibility factor (gases) Typo ("accentric" instead of "acentric") 682 days [12]
Complex number Factual error (potential function) > 844 days [13] See here. Removed in the draft version
Crystal Palace Factual error (position of Paxton's bust, corrected in draft) > 903 days "Dear Mr Sanger - Forgive me for contacting you again about Citizendium's Crystal Palace article and the bust of Joseph Paxton,[...]. I would've contacted the History editor directly but could not see how to do that."[14]
Cypherpunk Inaccuracy ("the Electronic Freedom Foundation EFF's TOR project" - the EFF supported Tor financially from 2004 to 2005, but it was initially developed with support from the US Naval Research Laboratory, and it has been a project of the independent nonprofit "The Tor project" for several years as of 2010 [15][16]) > 169 days Corrected on Wikipedia [17]
Cypherpunk Typos ("synonymuous", "in" instead or "it": "In most contexts in means anyone ...", missing "a": "various forms of national uniform identification card", ...) >169 days Corrected on Wikipedia [18]
Demographic transition Typo ("intially" instead of "initially") 855 days [19]
Dog Typos ("reponse" instead of "response", "ehaviour" instead of "behaviour", "incapcity" instead of "incapacity") >1926 days Introduced in this edit via these draft changes [20] , [21] , [22]
Evidence-based medicine Typo ("even though the postulated focus on" instead of "... postulates..."), extraneous word ("The Bradford Hill criteria emerged were proposed in 1965") 279 days [23]
Evidence-based medicine Garbage text ("One proposed structure for a comprehensive evidence search is the 5S search strategy, and 6S Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 19755349 which starts with the search of "summaries" (textbooks).") >383 days Introduced in this edit
Fertility Typos (e.g. "flyctuated", "frquency") 798 days [24] Thanks!, just found this list and will work on the copyedits that any constable can fix -- Dēmatt (chat) 17:58, 14 December 2009 (UTC) (D. Matt Innis on Citizendium)
Frederick Twort Misleading wording in first sentence (corrected in draft) > 888 days
Free statistical software Wrong source cited > 89 days [25] "I had one citation to the wrong source, and have corrected it."[26] (Corrected in draft version only) Finally got it in approved version. -- Dēmatt (chat) 02:23, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Henry's law Mis-wording, changing the intended meaning to the opposite 215 days [27] "that boo-boo looks like one of those things you don't want in your approved article"

[28]

Homeopathy Typo in lede ("thouands of years") 280 days [29] Note: Other issues of this article are out of scope here (about the alleged bias of that article toward homeopathic viewpoints, see [30] and the links there).
Homeopathy Typo in lede ("Homeopath's believe that") 264 days [31] Introduced in reapproved version 1.1 [32]
Ideal gas law Typo ("Helmoltz" instead of "Helmholtz") 406 days [33]
Jane Addams Typo ("visitors from all over the world, in including William Lyon MacKenzie King") 827 days [34] Thanks again! -- Dēmatt (chat) 18:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Johannes Diderik van der Waals Factual error and dangling subclause in lede 7 days [35] "This sentence says that stable molecules are called van der Waals molecules (quod non) and furthermore the i.e. clause is dangling, what does it refer to? --Paul Wormer 09:40, 1 May 2008 (CDT) / The error was mine - sorry and thanks to Paul for pointing it out ..."[36]
John Franklin Factual error ("More ships and men were lost looking for Franklin than in the expedition") 2 days [37] "...somehow escaped my diligent eye. Must be a leftover from some WP text. ... No more than two dozen men died in the search for Franklin, as opposed to the 129 who died in the expedition. I'll leave it to your judgment as to whether this is the kind of "copyediting" change that can be made without a new Approval ...." [38]
John Franklin Typos ("Cincinnatti" instead of "Cincinnati", "dessicated" instead of "desiccated", "embarassment" instead of "embarrassment", "initialy" instead of "initially", "vareity" instead of "variety" 947-957 days [39]
Led Zeppelin Factual error in lede (wrong birth year for Jimmy Page) 377 days [40]
Life Typos ("mainain", "Hebert", …) 11 days [41]
Life Typos (article, verb and punctuation missing in the "For the possibility of extraterrestrial life..." paragraph) > 629 days Noted on the article's talk page
Literature Factual error ("writers ... such as Goethe or Shakespeare ... only became legitimate subjects of serious academic consideration very late in the twentieth century") 35 days [42]
Literature Extraneous word, changing meaning ("before or after" instead of "before") 82 days [43]
Literature Spelling ("Phoenecian" instead of "Phoenician") 957 days [44]
Merox Spelling error ("dagram" instead of "diagram") 583 days [45] Corrected in draft version [46] Corrected in Approved version now -- Dēmatt (chat) 02:20, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Neighbourhood (topology) Missing words ("to" in "the topology corresponding pointwise convergence", "a" in "A subbase for the neighbourhood filter is filter subbase") > 197 days
Nathanael Greene Numerous typos (3x "it's" instead of "its", "more small" instead of "smaller", "unwaivering", "Valley forge" instead of "Valley Forge", etc.) 63 days [47]
Natural gas Typo ("undergorund" instead of "underground") 152 days [48]
Nathanael Greene Duplicate word ("oversaw the the trial") 831 days [49] Since this version
Got it! -- Dēmatt (chat) 18:30, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Randomized controlled trial Typo ("discrepancies between planned and actual analyses and may occur") 166 days [50] Introduced in reapproval
Relative volatility Typo ("volatilty" insted of "volatility") 323 days [51]
Richard Hofstadter Factual error (year of Ph.D.) 626 days [52] Error was imported from WP's Richard Hofstadter article, but later fixed here by an anonymous editor.
Rottweiler Typo ("Meckar River" instead of "Neckar") 611 days [53] got it. -- Dēmatt (chat) 02:16, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Terrorism Typo ("illegaly" instead of "illegally") 948 days [54]
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Typo ("Energency" instead of "Emergency") 625 days [55]
Vacuum distillation Typo ("laboratiry" instead of "laboratory") 424 days [56]
Vertebral subluxation Typo ("coooperative" instead of "cooperative") 904 days [57] "Well, if that's not a straight forward typo correction, I don't know what is. :-) I can't actually make the change myself and you were one of the approving editors, so I'll ask Hayford to do it. --Joe (Approvals Manager) 16:09, 6 August 2009 (UTC)"[58]
William Ewart Gladstone Typos ("selfishness of the the upper ten thousand", "Bismark" instead of "Bismarck", "between the the local magistrates". "wife, She was", "Ireland not the refusal" instead of "...nor...", "Gladstone and Liberalism.' ", "in Jstor]") 629 days [59]
World of Warcraft Spelling ("are not availiable", "are only availiable", "is also availiable"), missing full stop ("totalling more than $200,000[6]") > 138 days

Remarks

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Additions are very welcome, but please restrict them to flaws which are unambiguous (errors of fact, spelling, grammar etc. - bias or style issues are out of scope here). And of course I am happy to see the listed errors becoming corrected in the approved version, please add links to such corrections in the "Correction diff" column.

There are likely to be many more errors, as this list is not based on a complete examination of all 121 of Citizendium's approved articles. And factual errors are likely to be under-represented in the list as I did not have the time or expertise to thoroughly fact-check more than a few articles (among them "Complex number" and "Prime number").

Since this list has been mentioned in the comments section of this article on Times Higher Education, I would like to point out that the comments signed "HaeB" there (as well as there) were not made by me, but by an impostor (see also [60]).

References

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  1. ^ a b c d John Limey: "More On Citizendium", http://onwikipedia.blogspot.com/, January 23, 2010 (this and several other postings have since been removed in a partial "shutting down" of the blog).
    Also remarks that "in general, the article is just woefully short on the short of basic biographical details you find even in a Who's Who entry" and that it "is primarily based on an import from Wikipedia on 11 April 2007 (see its history) and is perhaps not even as good as the Wikipedia article (which is rated as Start-Class, essentially the lowest rating an article can receive)".

See also

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