Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Members

Ideas to improve list

I like this new list, but I think it could need some simplicity to be made even more useful.

• Get to the list faster.

There is too much stuff above the table. Much can be moved to below. I will see what I can do about that soon. But, IMHO Headbomb's intro needs to be tightened

• Sort by interests category first then by name.

If possible it would be nice for everyone to appear in each of the categories for which they are interested. One of the most common use cases of the list should be to find someone who is interested in reviewing an article, for example.

• Do we need education to be listed here?

We make a big deal that everyone can contribute. Is knowing the persons education that useful to know for a table like this.

• Can we make the role column more useful?

Participant says nothing. Can we make a checkbox type situation with options like editor, reviewer, administrator, illustrator, grammatician, or whatever.

• Can we make it easier to add your name to the list?

• Can we make the table sortable?

TStein (talk) 23:03, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• Faster list: I'll add a section link at the top.

Nice idea. I still took the liberty of reorganizing the article a little to get to the table faster. TStein (talk) 05:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

• Sort by interest: Listing "per interest" is a nice idea, but that would introduce either a bunch of seperate lists or a bunch of duplicate entries.

I figured as much, but to me that would be the primary use case of this table. TStein (talk) 05:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

• Education: I would say yes, because you're if you are looking for an expert rather than someone who simply has "interest" this is where you would go. I know I used that section a lot of times.

I can see your point. I just don't want to devolve into education snobs. Education is good and important, but for any given point a knowledgeable amateur can know more than an expert who is a little out of his field. TStein (talk) 05:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

• Adding names: I agree it's currently horrible. I'll add three "new users" at the bottom of the page.
• Sortable table: It's already sortable by anything that can be sensibly sorted. Username, contact, joining date. For the rest you'll have to browse. I think I'll shrink the fonts to make the table easier to read however.

Thanks for pointing that out to me. It is sad how much I don't know about this site even though I have been editing here for almost a year. I didn't even notice those little sort signs. I was looking for links in the titles. Some of that is my own lack of experience and time to fully explore. Some of it, though is how undiscoverable everything on wikipedia. TStein (talk) 05:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Alright I gave it a shot. Not too sure about the smaller font, but it's now easier to get around, and you can sort by activity. User examples have been added.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:24, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

One of the barriers to providing useful information and text is the convoluted way Wikipedia sometimes works. In the reference earlier (2009!!!) to including Education, I had assumed that the contributor meant Physics Education which is a really big and important field, not the back ground education of the members although that might be of interest sometimes. Margaret J Cox (talk) 16:39, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Headbomb, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but...

Welcome!

The demographics of Wikiproject Physics ranges from high-school students curious about physics, to physicists with a lifetime of experience in research in a specialized field. All are welcomed to participate. All offer different insight. Experts find and correct inadvertent mistakes that only they can find. But they, like the rest of us, need someone to remind them that the world population is not made of Physics Nobel Prize Laureates. Between the experts and the novices are those who write the bulk of the articles. So, be WP:BOLD. Write or edit an article. You don't even have to be good at physics to contribute to WikiProject Physics. There are many things you can do here that have nothing to do with physics! If you're good with tables, we have plenty of ugly tables to fix. Maybe you're good at making sure the Manual of Style is followed. We need you too. Whatever your background and whatever your interest, you are welcome at WikiProject Physics!

Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW}
WikiProject Physics Coordinator (Self-Appointed)

I don't want to edit a message from you, but I thought that your opening paragraph while good needed some tightening up. I hope you don't mind my suggestion above. My goal was to make the verbs more powerful and to get rid of any sentence that were not strictly needed. I also broke some sentences into two to make them more powerful as well. Just some thoughts that I hope you find useful.

TStein (talk) 04:39, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Nah, go right ahead and place your sig on it all you want.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

More thoughts about table

I have been mulling over this table in between bouncing around from topic to topic. Not that this table is bad, but I think it can be made to be more useful if we can standardize it so that more columns are sortable. Some ideas that I have been mulling include removing the active inactive column for space. Maybe we can encourage strike throughs, removing the name or placing it in a separate list. Perhaps then we can split the education/experience into more manageable more standardizeable chunks. For education maybe we can encourage Degree first (BA,BS,MS,PhD). We can also had some psuedo degrees for self-taught if desired (Ama and Adv perhaps). We might want to then have an education field column (Physics, engineering, chemistry) as well. The job category will be harder to categorize. The wiki contribution should be its own column. I doubt we can make it sortable. It also may be useful to split up the role category into a short standardized description (Van (for Vandal patrol), Qal (Quality control), Jar (Jargon Police), Edi, Art (for artist)) and a longer summary if we can come up with a short enough list of standard things.

This is not something we can do overnight and it will take some experimenting to get it right. I am going to mull this over a little more then perhaps set up an alternate table to see if it is more useful. TStein (talk) 21:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Seems like a LOT of trouble for very little benefit. I'm also not very keen on switching "freeform" fields into list-friendly stuff. Sorting by education/role is iffy as well, as this could be interpreting as creating "classes" of members. Set up the table if you still feel it's worth investigating, but that really seems to be WP:CREEP for the sake of WP:CREEP. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:00, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how much trouble it will be yet. We have a difference of opinion on 'freeform'. In my opinion freeform is next to useless for quick searches of large tables. Most forms contain a maximum of one freeform answer for that reason. My main interest is speeding up the most common searches to make the table more convenient. If that means cutting columns thats great. If it means adding columns then we need to balance the cost of complexity. If I had my way I would leave education out of the table. But, if it is useful enough to have in the table it is useful enough to sort.

In any case, what I really want, despite all of my stumbling around in the dark to try and get it, is a list of common use cases. Then we can optimize the table for them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TStein (talk • contribs) 17:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Can we use this page for community building?

Would this talk page be appropriate to start a community building page. We could use it for things like nominating people for a 'Friend of Physics' type award and or publicizing barnstars. (User pages are nice for this type of stuff, but it also needs a public forum.) Perhaps it can be used for major personal announcements that affect the wiki as well: such as promotions, graduations, etc.. And/or it can be used for informal editing reviews, etc. that people don't think rises to the level on the main wikiproject talk page. We would need to keep it professional, of course. But, a well designed, professional community building area can go a long ways in my opinion to keeping people active and in preserving institutional knowledge. (Not that I know how that page should look like, though) TStein (talk) 20:43, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

No Confidence

I wish to express no confidence in Headbomb for any sort of leadership position in the project. Since he is self appointed, I request quick consensus to change his status to participant for now.

I also propose and to hold open contested elections, open to all participants (including Headbomb), for a leadership position of "coordinator" within 30 days. This should take place over a reasonable time period to allow editors to present a platform for where they think the project should be headed, then the voting should be by runoff or instant runoff when candidates are ready. The new director will take over any tasks that headbomb now overseens.Likebox (talk) 23:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Although the discussion concerns the contenst of this page, I have placed it on the main project talk page for greater visibility.Likebox (talk) 23:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Feedback

I've made some major edits to the page Neutral particle oscillation in the last couple of weeks. Can anyone interested in the topic please give me his/her feedback on the talk page of the article? Your opinions or suggestions will be quite helpful and if you have any doubt regarding the matter, I'll be happy to explain as best as I can.

— Soham92 (talk) 13:44, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Need help

Hello, I do not know that I am on right place or not. I am working on Gujarati Wikipedia on the article of Michelson–Morley experiment. I am unfamiliar with the mathematical source coding on Wikipedia, therefore unable to write some equations. Can anyone help me to write source coding of the equations I need. I can send the photographs of equations to those who want to help me. Thanks. --Gazal world (talk) 18:46, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Try checking out Help:Displaying_a_formula to insert things like: $E=mc^{2}$ Celia Cunningham (talk) 19:54, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Physics participants

Why is the table so wide. I can not see how to make it smaller. --Bduke (talk) 06:41, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Fellows of the Institute of physics

I think it would be useful to have a complete list of all the Fellows of the Institute of physics plus the Members MInstP to encourage links to their research and development work. This would start lots of new threads and topics not yet included in the Wikiproject Physics/Members

The current list on Wipedia is incomplete and amending it is too convoluted Margaret J Cox (talk) 16:34, 7 October 2024 (UTC)