Talk:List of common misconceptions
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Split proposal
[edit]This page has Wikipedia:Article size problems, and it is at risk of having Wikipedia:Post-expand include size problems (i.e., that technical limit in which the refs break) if it continues increasing in size.
There are currently three main sections:
- List of common misconceptions#Arts and culture
- List of common misconceptions#History
- List of common misconceptions#Science, technology, and mathematics
The last is about half the page. I suggest creating three separate lists:
- List of common misconceptions about arts and culture
- List of common misconceptions about history
- List of common misconceptions about science, technology, and mathematics
What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:31, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- This works for me. I was going to propose an alternative of splitting off List of common misconceptions about human body and health and List of common misconceptions about biology, but this seems too messy and the history section cannot easily be split like this. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:41, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- We could put most of the "STEM" section in the third list, and a List of common misconceptions about health and biology in a fourth list. That would reduce the risk that we would need to split the science list again in a couple of years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:52, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- This is a good idea and would help ensure WP:MEDRS is followed if it is a pure "med" article. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 03:01, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- We could put most of the "STEM" section in the third list, and a List of common misconceptions about health and biology in a fourth list. That would reduce the risk that we would need to split the science list again in a couple of years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:52, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- We had a discussion about this exactly two years ago. Talk:List_of_common_misconceptions/Archive_27#Splitting_this_article. There was no consensus to split and considerable opposition.
- Is this a technical issue with the MediaWiki software or a content issue that that article is longer than most readers will find approachable? If it's the former, lets find out if this is still really an issue before rushing to judgment - from WP:TLIMIT
- The inclusion limits were put into effect on the English Wikipedia by Tim Starling on 14 August 2006. A new preprocessor was enabled in January 2008, removing the "pre-expand include limit" and replacing it with a "preprocessor node count" limit.
- Are we still using the same software and hardware that were in use in 2006 and 2008? I hope not.
- If it's the latter issue, then it's just an editorial judgment. I'd call attention to how Joe Phin's analysis in the discussion two years ago:
- There are currently 380 entries on the page. One year ago, in July 2021, there were 336 entries. Two years ago, in July 2020, there were 407 entries. Three years ago, in July 2019, there were 377 entries. Over the course of 3 years, we've had a net growth of 3 entries, one entry per year on average...
- So, the number of entries in the article is not growing substantially over time. I oppose splitting the article. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 03:18, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- The page gained 180k bytes between 2020 and 2022, a 50% increase, so Joe's analysis doesn't seem great. Even with leaving a lot of entries to be reviewed on the talk page, and with me just yesterday deleting 20k bytes by cleaning up references using unnecessary quotations, the page has still increased by 30k bytes. It's currently the 24th biggest page on the project. Using visual editor crashes constantly; you don't need to get bogged down in minutia at WP:TLIMIT to recognise the article's size is causing issues. An alternative to shorten the page could be strengthening the inclusion criteria. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 03:51, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- My analysis was based on the number of entries on the page, nothing more. If people add extra citations, that increases the byte-size of the page, but doesn't increase the number of entries. Joe (talk) 06:07, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- Mr. Swordfish, PEIS is a technical limit. It is strictly, automatically, and universally enforced without exception. This article is already using the #invoke workaround, and a quick test suggests that increasing the number of refs in the article by about 10–15% will make even that workaround stop working. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:36, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- The PEIS of this article is about 1.5M while the limit is 2M. So we're at about 75% of max.
- Might it be that the real issue is that many of the entries are over-cited? The factual statements should be adequately sourced at the topic article if the inclusion criteria is being followed, so we may not need to reproduce those here. WP:V only requires that assertions need to be verifiable not that every one have a ref[1] tag next to it. Yeah, I know, many of these entries are controversial hence the over-citing. The text itself is about 144K which is about 10% of the PEIS. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 14:56, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- Agreed that the citations take too much space. I propose the following guidelines:
- If there is good source that discusses both the substantive fact and its being a common misconception, that one citation suffices, unless it is Snopes (because we don't want to just be a mirror of Snopes).
- If not, exactly one (no more, no less) source should be cited for the substantive fact.
- If there is a good source whose primary topic is the misconception, one source suffices for that. This must not be an example of the misconception, but a discussion of the misconception. If multiple weaker sources are used, there should be a maximum of two. If there are only examples of the misconception, and no explicit discussion, we're getting into WP:OR territory.
- Footnotes should not contain quotations from the source.
- Any notes that are removed from the misconceptions article should be moved to an appropriate place in the source article.
- For example, we currently have 5 sources for the "five stages of grief" item, four of which are included in the Five stages of grief source article. But in fact the 1st source covers both the substantive discussion and the misconception quite well. And the 5th source (a brief obituary for Kubler-Ross) is irrelevant here, saying only "To debate the details or the validity of Kubler-Ross's thesis...is to miss the point of her life's work." (I'll remove it now).
- Thoughts? --Macrakis (talk) 16:10, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- In principle, I don't think that limiting the number of citations per fact is a good idea. For any given instance, of course, it could be the best choice (e.g., to reduce Wikipedia:Citation overkill).
- In other articles with very large numbers of citations (e.g., Donald Trump, with 830), many of the sources are narrow and could be replaced by a single biography. I doubt that would be possible for this article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:21, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- The Donald Trump article is irrelevant here. Each point in that article needs to be supported by a source, and the article needs to reflect a variety of points of view (WP:NPOV). Replacing them with a single source makes no sense at all.
- On the other hand, entries in this list of misconceptions are based on a source article. If the source article doesn't address both the substance and the misconception (inclusion criterion 2), then it's not eligible for this article. The reader can always consult the source article. There might be a case for clarifying in each entry in this list what the source article is (by using, say, a boldface link, ideally a section link to where the misconception is discussed); once that's clear, we don't need to repeat the sources found in the source article. --Macrakis (talk) 17:38, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- I give Donald Trump as an example of an article that has 800 different sources and could probably have 400 different sources, with some sources being used many, many times.
- I think this article has 800 different sources and probably needs 800 different sources. (We cannot rely on sources in the linked article, because (a) WP:V doesn't let us and (b) they could be removed from the other article without anyone here noticing.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:21, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- We could save quite a few bytes by removing
|access-date=
from every web citation with an archive, and from every print source. No opinion on split just yet: still at work. Folly Mox (talk) 17:48, 8 July 2024 (UTC)- I'd be in favor of trimming the redundant content within citations (as User Folly Mox suggests), especially if it can easily be done en masse - but I'd be opposed to limiting citation numbers. Lots of the best entries on this page require more than one citation, and removing them would significantly negatively impact the article's quality. At that point, I'd rather just split the page. Reluctantly, mind. Joe (talk) 19:13, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- Agreed that the citations take too much space. I propose the following guidelines:
- The page gained 180k bytes between 2020 and 2022, a 50% increase, so Joe's analysis doesn't seem great. Even with leaving a lot of entries to be reviewed on the talk page, and with me just yesterday deleting 20k bytes by cleaning up references using unnecessary quotations, the page has still increased by 30k bytes. It's currently the 24th biggest page on the project. Using visual editor crashes constantly; you don't need to get bogged down in minutia at WP:TLIMIT to recognise the article's size is causing issues. An alternative to shorten the page could be strengthening the inclusion criteria. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 03:51, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not in favor of splitting for reasons relating to readership/comprehensibility, however, if there is some technical issue that can only be addressed by splitting, then 'what can you do?' Might I ask, if we were to bundle more citations together with a format like a., b., c., would that help, or is the problem the total number of bytes in citations? I'm guessing it's the latter, but I don't actually know. Joe (talk) 06:07, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- Re; readership: editors in past years have noted the article has bad readability, as it's too long to be comfortably read from beginning to end in a sitting. And I think a lot of misconceptions deserve to be on the page which aren't here, which would exacerbate issues. Splitting would definitely help readership. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 17:49, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
If we did have to split the page, I'd prefer as little splitting as possible. So, for example, spltting things in half like:
- List of common misconceptions about arts, culture, and history
- List of common misconceptions about science, technology, and mathematics
Not my first choice, but if we have to, that'd be my preference. Joe (talk) 06:13, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- I agree with Joe here. Oppose splitting for editorial reasons, will support splitting if it's technically necessary, favor the two-article split if we have to split. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 14:33, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
Support splitting Other editors have made a brief mention of splitting affecting readability, comprehensibility, or "editorial reasons" like above. I think those who oppose should provide more detailed explanation since I do not really understand the reasoning why splitting would impact the above issues. Since Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, it is read on electronic devices, some of which are lower-range. Even my mid-end laptop struggles to load this page, taking around 7 seconds. I imagine it to be double in older mobile phones, with significant lagging while scrolling. I also don't think list will become less comprehensive when split. 100% of the information currently in the list will be divided into neatly organized sub-articles. No loss of content here. Some people above are discussed measures to decrease page size like removing details from the citations and in the last discussion, shortening summaries. That would actually decrease how comprehensive this list is. One editor also made mention of notability issues in the last discussion. This is not an issue since WP:SPINOUT recommends Long stand-alone list articles are split into subsequent pages alphabetically, numerically, or subtopically
. No one's argues that List of PC games (A) is not notable since no RSes discuss games that specifically start with A. Ca talk to me! 12:32, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
- I have an incredibly old device, and I never have any problems loading this page, editing it, or anything else. People have made the argument that this page is too long to be comprehensible in the past, which is silly (most books are longer and they're not 'incomprehensible'). That said, the possibility that the page may have too many citations for Wikipedia to be able to handle (I'm not familiar with the technical details) has been brought up, and if that can't be resolved by removing redundant formatting or unnecessary publication dates or other information in the many, many cites we've got, it may be that splitting is the only option. I certainly agree that we shouldn't limit the number of citations or anything like that. If this technical issue can be solved by de-fattening the citations then I oppose splitting, but if not, eh, what can you do? Joe (talk) 17:39, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
- Joe do you ever have issues switching from visual to source or vice versa? My device isn't old but I keep losing my edits when trying to switch due to time-outs, and only on this page. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 17:46, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
- This doesn't surprise me at all. Editing a huge page with relatively complex formatting (e.g., all of those refs) is always going to be at risk of time-outs. Time-outs probably might have more to do with your internet connection than with your device (how good your internet connection is, but also factors outside your control, like how much traffic there is in general and how close you are to one of the data centers [so, e.g., editors in Dallas, Texas are better off than Portland, Oregon, and Amsterdam is better off than Paris]). Opening the editing environment is more dependent on your device.
- When you are switching, I suggest doing a quick ⌘A and ⌘C to "Select all" and then "Copy" it. If you get hit by a timeout, you can re-open the same editing environment and paste it in. (This will work best if you're switching from, and therefore copying, plain old wikitext.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:14, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
- I can see this working when going from source to visual, and I'll start using it in those cases, but I'm not sure about the other way with preserving page layouts. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
- Copying the 'visual' content usually preserves the layout but not the wikitext's whitespace. If you know that your changes were all in the same section, I'd suggest copying just that section if you're in the visual mode. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:33, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
- Thankyou, I'll give it a go. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 06:29, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
- Copying the 'visual' content usually preserves the layout but not the wikitext's whitespace. If you know that your changes were all in the same section, I'd suggest copying just that section if you're in the visual mode. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:33, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
- I can see this working when going from source to visual, and I'll start using it in those cases, but I'm not sure about the other way with preserving page layouts. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
- Joe do you ever have issues switching from visual to source or vice versa? My device isn't old but I keep losing my edits when trying to switch due to time-outs, and only on this page. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 17:46, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
- Very weak support the split for article size reasons.Crunchydillpickle🥒 (talk) 22:28, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
- With the recent application of WP:JWB the Post-expand include size is now 1,155,959 which is only slightly more than half of the limit of 2,097,152 bytes. So, the argument in favor of splitting due to technical reasons no longer seems to apply. We might need to re-apply JWB periodically to catch cites that don't use the #invoke syntax, but it seems like the post-expand include size limit is no longer an issue. Like the discussion from two years ago, there does not seem to be a consensus to split for editorial reasons, and a weak consensus to keep the article intact. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 18:13, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Before this is closed, could someone please clarify for me whether the article having an Unstrip post-expand size of 4254075/5000000 means the article is still near a hard technical limit? Or is that just Post-expand include size posing a danger? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 20:08, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
- I've asked at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#PEIS question. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:21, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
- I have also asked. I can't say I got an answer that's definitive. But the folks there didn't seem to think it was a serious problem. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:45, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah I wish there was more definitive answers there. They do seem on net to say it should be avoided even if the page doesn't completely break, but also it just seems like their opinion. I don't care if an infobox at the bottom looks bad. I guess it matters more if other templates start breaking they haven't mentioned/don't know about, and maybe it's not worth taking that risk. Rollinginhisgrave (talk)
- I have also asked. I can't say I got an answer that's definitive. But the folks there didn't seem to think it was a serious problem. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:45, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
- Support split. Preferably to 3, more wieldy, articles. Current one is too big and splitting loses nothing. Bon courage (talk) 21:32, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
- Support split If you've got to the point of removing parts of citations to try and hodgepodge the article into working, you've likely already got other problems (as other have already mentioned above). As per Bon courage I support splitting into three. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:36, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
- There were a number of ideas spittballed to address the technical issues above. Assuming we can get the technical issues resolved without implementing these "hodgepodge" fixes - which seems to be the case - then this technical argument is moot. If you'd like to make an editorial as opposed to technical reason for the split, please do so. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 02:00, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
- Then you'll still be left with all the other issues, as per the point of my comment. Also the 'fixes' will only last until the next issue, where you have to come up with a new bodge. There will never be an end as the article is to large, and any additions or changes will cause the same or some other issue. Just split now for the benefit not will bring to editors and readers. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:54, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
- The point of my comment was that if your hitting technical issues then you've already got editorial ones sometime ago. There is no technical fix that will last and the editorial ones will just keep getting worse. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:56, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
- There were a number of ideas spittballed to address the technical issues above. Assuming we can get the technical issues resolved without implementing these "hodgepodge" fixes - which seems to be the case - then this technical argument is moot. If you'd like to make an editorial as opposed to technical reason for the split, please do so. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 02:00, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
- Oppose split. This page is still far lighter than most bloated modern websites, and Wikipedia itself isn't compatible with my old device as of a few years ago anyway. This is such an old and well established article, I'd also hesitate so make any drastic change unless truly necessary. Benjamin (talk) 23:33, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
No activity for a week, I think the convo leans split but I also think I'm too close to make that call. Any opposition to a WP:CR? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 23:14, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
- Pretty big article, problem probably won't go away, split seems sensible thing to do. Selfstudier (talk) 08:07, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
- Well, the "problem" as articulated in the first post in this thread is that the PEIS limit was close to being exceeded. This has been solved, with the current value of PEIS being about half of the limit. It has gone away.
- There seems to be a lot of confusion between the technical and editorial concerns here. This thread was started to discuss splitting because of technical limits. That argument is now moot. Somehow, it morphed into a different discussion about editorial reasons for the split. Seems to me that that is a different line of argument and would warrant a new thread if we're basing the decision on that. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 14:01, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
- Seems like all the same (and/or related) discussion per ActivelyDisinterested above. Selfstudier (talk) 14:38, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
- I will note the Village Pump convo explicitly concluded that templates will break, soon, so it's unclear why you think technical concerns are moot. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 14:49, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
- I think that the fact that we already have to use workarounds is proof that we currently have technical problems. "We used a workaround that 99.9% of editors have never seen before and don't know how to use themselves, so it's not visibly broken at the moment" is not the same as "the technical problems have been solved". I think that we need to split this so that we don't have to use weird workarounds on every single ref.
- Additionally, I think it would be more readable, and specifically more readable on a phone/small device. WP:SIZE suggests thinking about summaries and splits when an article reaches 10K words, and WP:SIZERULE says that at 15K words, it "Almost certainly should be divided or trimmed". This is already 24K words. It would take someone about an hour and a half to read the whole thing. I don't see much opportunity for trimming, so we need to talk about dividing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
- Where does anyone say " that templates will break, soon" at the link you provided? I don't see anyone saying anything close to that. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 23:58, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
- Soon may be overstating. They responded to an encroaching limit by advising to split.
Reduce their size per WP:SIZE/WP:SPLIT as expected of such pages.
Templates breaking:You may lose styling from TemplateStyles at the end of the page if the limit is broken
andI don't know which extentions can be affected.
, one template known to break, unclear what others will or will not break. Btw, in the 11 days since you posted the enquiry, ~7% of the remaining distance to the hard limit has been closed. At this rate we've got 6 months. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 00:34, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
- Soon may be overstating. They responded to an encroaching limit by advising to split.
- So is anything happening with this? Shall the split be done - we seem to have a consensus. Bon courage (talk) 06:45, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
- The first thing to do is find out whether anyone disagrees that we have achieved an agreement. Also, would anyone feel more comfortable if the result were officially spelled out by an uninvolved editor? If so, one of us can list it at Wikipedia:Closure requests#Other types of closing requests. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
- It's not clear to me that there's consensus to split the article at this time. The original reason supplied seems to have been supplanted by the invoke syntax for cites, and I haven't seen a clear consensus to split for editorial reasons. But agree that it's time to close this discussion, so I'm in favor of submitting a closure request. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 20:10, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Support merge into and move subpages. This page has already been split but the result is forks. Subpages like Scientific misconceptions mentioned previously should be named systematically. Perhaps parentheses like "Scientific misconceptions" → "List of misconceptions (science)", "about" per nom, or "List of common misconceptions" → "Common misconceptions".
I prefer focused articles. This list has grown by more than 6x since 2010. MEDRS per Rollinginhisgrave, and spreading edits across pages helps watchlisting.
Most previous opposition was not towards splitting but {{Editnotices/Page/List_of_common_misconceptions}} preventing WP:BOLD. One editor was concerned about split notability but accepted that of existing sub articles
, a proposal I'm re-tabling. 142.113.140.146 (talk) 23:43, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Help! I've come to this with a view to closing it, and I immediately got stuck.Whenever I come across an RfC that asks an either/or question, as this one does, my first question is "Are the options mutually exclusive?" In this case, I don't think they are. I don't see why we can't do both. By using transclusion, we can have one unsplit page with the entire list, and other split pages with partial lists, and offer readers the choice of which view they prefer, without having to maintain two separate pages. We can even use the magic of LST to include only part of the partial list on the main page, which might solve a lot of things.My assessment of consensus is that both sides are supported by persuasive and reasonable arguments, so that's how I'd love to close it, but I'm loath to do so when nobody else has considered this option, so I've !voted instead. What do we all think?—S Marshall T/C 14:41, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think you've recommended splitting. Specifically, you've suggested either:
- Splitting, but keeping everything on one page so that we solve neither the WP:PEIS technical problems (which would get worse through transclusion and require that all of the split pages keep using the current technical workaround for refs) nor the human-attention-span/reading-time problem on the main page (which would be unchanged at best), or
- Splitting, and using Labeled section transclusion as a method of managing the Wikipedia:Summary style approach and reducing the content on the main page.
- I don't love either of them. I'd prefer an ordinary split with ordinary {{Main}} summaries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:54, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not sure that I understand LST in sufficient detail, but it sounds like you are proposing something similar to partial postbacks via AJAX. That is, when the user clicks on the page, only a part of the list is streamed from the servers, with more material streamed when the reader clicks the section headers.
- This would seem to resolve the main arguments in favor of splitting 1) less processing at the server since only small parts of the article are streamed with the initial request (and subsequent requests) and 2) it does not present the user with a large amount of text, instead only rendering the parts of the article that the user has requested.
- I've used AJAX to do exactly this, but it's been a few years and I have no idea how to implement it in the Wikpedia environment. It sounds to me like it could be a viable approach, but I'd like to see it first before committing to it. Would you be willing to demo this in your sandbox so we can take a look and comment? Mr. Swordfish (talk) 17:45, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- No, that's not how it works. LST is like this:
- Open article A, and tag some bit of the text as approved for transclusion.
- Open article B, and put in a code that says "Go swipe the marked bits in article A, and stick it in right here".
- Reader at article A has no idea that any of this happens.
- Reader at article B sees everything written on article B plus the copied bits from article A.
- This was used extensively in COVID-19 articles, with the justification that it helped keep certain information (e.g., recent case counts) synchronized across multiple pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:23, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- My thought was that we could use LST to selectively transclude the references, so the child articles include full references, but the parent article only displays one citation per entry.—S Marshall T/C 21:20, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think that if you were to put a hundred or so copies of
<section begin=chapter1 />
text and first ref for a single bullet item<section end=chapter1 />
in each of the child articles, editors would revolt. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:44, 29 August 2024 (UTC)- Maybe. We are dealing with editors who seem happy to put an #invoke in all their citations... they seem pretty tolerant. Anyway, that was my attempt to find a way that satisfies both sides.—S Marshall T/C 22:40, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- It's not that hard to fix up citations as they are added and add the #invoke syntax. I'm not sure what the ongoing maintenance headaches would be for an LST solution. Too bad we can't just use AJAX/JSON to dynamically load material as the reader navigates the article. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 23:49, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- Maybe. We are dealing with editors who seem happy to put an #invoke in all their citations... they seem pretty tolerant. Anyway, that was my attempt to find a way that satisfies both sides.—S Marshall T/C 22:40, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think that if you were to put a hundred or so copies of
- My thought was that we could use LST to selectively transclude the references, so the child articles include full references, but the parent article only displays one citation per entry.—S Marshall T/C 21:20, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- No, that's not how it works. LST is like this:
- I think you've recommended splitting. Specifically, you've suggested either:
Proposed entry: Caesar salad
[edit]Hello,
I would like to propose an edit about Caesar salad. It would be something like this:
Contrary to popular belief, Caesar salad was not invented in Rome by Julius Caesar, but by Caesar Cardini, an Italian-American restauranteur, in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1924.
Thank you.
Sussybaka6000 (talk) 04:36, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
- The first step would be presenting some reliable sources that identify this as a common misconception. I wasn't aware that anybody thought the salad was related to Julius Caesar. signed, Willondon (talk) 05:14, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
- This misconception is addressed in a source already on the page: Origins of the Specious: "Julius bears no responsibility for Caesar salad, either. The king of the salads was invented in 1924 by Caesar Cardini, a chef and restauranteur in Tijuana, Mexico." (page 71) Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 05:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
- Some more sources:
- Snopes
- Hindustan Times
- NZ Herald: "contrary to popular belief" language
- Book currently in article as ref 45: "What Caesar Did for My Salad: The Curious Stories Behind Our Favorite Foods"
- Seems sufficiently covered in RS. Do any editors have issues with the entry? I think if it's added to the topic article and stays in (which it almost certainly will) it will meet the inclusion criteria, and I see no issue with adding this. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 16:28, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
- Is this a 'common misconception' or just a mistaken claim? If the scope of this article is really just 'mistaken claims' that get corrected somewhere, it's going to need to be a bazillion times bigger (everything in Snopes, for a start). Bon courage (talk) 05:22, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Bon courage, we include "mistaken claims" that "get corrected somewhere" if the belief is referred to in RS as common. I understand you haven't heard of this, but it's pretty well addressed in RS, including being the title of a book about mistaken beliefs, held as emblematic. The Caesar salad page is also currently WP:ECP partly because editors kept trying to say it was invented by Julius. If you think the current inclusion criteria are insufficient to keep the page from WP:INDISCRIMINATE, you could propose:
- A) multiple RS describe a belief as common
- This would potentially disqualify the Caesar salad entry.
- B) Stricter requirements of what words are equivalent to "common misconception" to avoid editors being overly inclusive on interpreting sources as calling a belief common
- Would probably not affect this entry, but will trim other entries that are more tenuously referred to as commonly believed. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 06:42, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
- I think @Bon courage may have been asking about the difference between a common mistake (guess, assumption, etc.) and a common misconception. If you say 4 is 80% of 5, therefore adding 20% of 4 will equal 5, you've made a mathematical mistake (because 20% of 4 is 0.8), but that mistake is not necessarily a misconception, strictly speaking. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:24, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
- If we want to draw a distinction there I can see a few items it would be affecting, i.e.:
- "Ancient Greek and Roman sculptures were originally painted with colors"
- "The letters "AR" in AR-15... do not stand for "assault rifle"."
- "The "Minute Waltz" takes, on average, two minutes to play as originally written."
- Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 22:37, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
- If we want to draw a distinction there I can see a few items it would be affecting, i.e.:
- A) multiple RS describe a belief as common
- Hi Bon courage, we include "mistaken claims" that "get corrected somewhere" if the belief is referred to in RS as common. I understand you haven't heard of this, but it's pretty well addressed in RS, including being the title of a book about mistaken beliefs, held as emblematic. The Caesar salad page is also currently WP:ECP partly because editors kept trying to say it was invented by Julius. If you think the current inclusion criteria are insufficient to keep the page from WP:INDISCRIMINATE, you could propose:
Flying saucer entry
[edit]I'm trying to understand what the misconception is here. Although the entries on this page are written as corrections to the underlying misconception, for almost all of them it is easy to see what the incorrect notion or misconcept is. I"m at a loss for this one. I don't see anything illuminating in the topic articles, or anything that would seem to satisfy our criterion #3.
The best I can guess is that some people think Kenneth Arnold used the term flying saucer when instead he said that whatever he saw flew like a saucer, which hardly seems like much of a misconception.
One of the topic articles has this to say:
- Starting June 26 and June 27, newspapers first began using the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" (or "disc") to describe the sighted objects. Thus the Arnold sighting is credited with giving rise to these popular terms. The actual origin of the terms is somewhat controversial and complicated.
Which implies to me that if the origin of the term is the alleged misconception, the fact that it is "controversial and complicated" would argue against it being a misconception.
So, can anyone explain what incorrect notion is sufficiently common to include this entry in the article? Mr. Swordfish (talk) 00:35, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
- Paging @Feoffer:. I believe this is their kind of thing! Bon courage (talk) 22:48, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
- Added it. People think Arnold coined the phrased, when in reality headline writers did. 'Controversial' isn't really the right word, I'll go fix that too. Feoffer (talk) 15:39, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
- Ok. I guess I get it now, but the entry is longer than it needs to be. I'll take a stab at trimming it. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 01:20, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
- Added it. People think Arnold coined the phrased, when in reality headline writers did. 'Controversial' isn't really the right word, I'll go fix that too. Feoffer (talk) 15:39, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Sex and old age entry
[edit]The recently added entry says:
- People do not lose interest in sex or become sexually inactive in older age.[2] One survey in England of people aged 60-69 recorded 86% of men and 60% of women as sexually active.[2]
The cite says:
'86% of men and 60% of women aged 60–69 years reported being sexually active, as did 59% of men and 34% of women aged 70–79 years, and 31% of men and 14% of women aged 80 years or older. Even 10% of people older than 90 years reported being sexually active in a Swedish study
So, 86% to 55% to 31% to 10% as males age from 60 to over 90 is not a decline? (It's 60% to 34% to 14% to 10% for females)
I think we need to be more careful about the language. Perhaps language more in line with what's in the topic article, which says:
'Both male and female libidos tend to decline with increasing age, and women tend to lose their libido faster than men. However, desire for sexual activity is not lost completely. Neither does it decrease for everyone.
I'll take a stab at editing the entry to better conform to the cite and the topic article. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 17:54, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
References
Saving lives
[edit]The San Francisco Standard says, wrt to suicide prevention and Lethal means restriction that "The popular belief that [suicidal] people will just find another means is untrue." Method substitution is not a typical response to restrictions (MEDRS-quality sources in Suicide methods and probably other related articles). Presumably this would fit under List of common misconceptions#Mental disorders, but I wonder if that's close enough to meet the minimum? I haven't really looked for additional sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:29, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
- It's certainly a common argument, e.g. "If we restrict guns people will just find another way to do it.", which is trotted out for both suicide and homocide. Meanwhile, 85% of suicide attempts with a gun result in death, while other methods result in death less than 5% of the time, so it's not a very strong argument. Is it a sufficiently widespread misconception to qualify for inclusion? Well, we'd need some sourcing at the minimum.
- Do you have a link to the SF Standard article with the quote above? I think we'd need to have that so we have a cite.
- I think this is a good candidate for an entry. Let's find some additional sources and draft a proposed entry. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 13:29, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
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