User:Robertinventor/Wikipedia mistakes or omissions

As I browse I notice mistakes and omissions in Wikipedia. Normally I'd just fix them or add a note to the talk page. Can't any more, since I'm indef blocked.

The list since I was blocked includes minor fixes I would normally do without first mentioning on the talk page.

It's also useful as it gives an idea of how many mistakes one notices while browsing Wikipedia if you are a regular user who also checks the information you find there - usually I notice several mistakes a week, most minor, but occasional major bloopers.

This doesn't include the errors in the astrobiology, Buddhism, and microtonal music topic areas. Those are too numerous to list individually. I commented about a few of the microtonal pages that need to be fixed in the microtonal project proposal before I was blocked.

Would post to talk page first
These include use of a fake news site (Kos telegram) as a source, and use of an unpublished non peer reviewed preprint on arxiv.org as a source. In those cases I'd post mainly to alert other editors of what happened rather than in expectation that there would be any controversy about the edit.


 * Colonization of the Moon article doesn't mention Dennis Wingo's thesis in Moon Rush. His main thesis is that platinum ores of high purity exist in magnetic anomalies close to the South Pole and will be a valuable lunar export in the future. He says in his book that catalytic converters will be its main use. This idea of platinum as an export is also covered in Crawford's review paper on lunar resources (summarized in his post to The Conversation here), and by others, e.g. Bill White's article here. I'd post to its talk page and ask the other editors if they are interested in a new section on platinum exports based on Dennis Wingo's books and other articles on the topic.


 * Blue Brain Project and Human Brain Project Several years out of date. Mainly talks about their optimistic projections in the early days of the project. Blue Brain Project has a note asking editors to update it. I would post to the talk page saying that it would be good to add a summary of this article from Scientific American to the page, as they don't cite it and don't seem to be aware of it. It is a good review from 2015 about some of the problems that arose in the attempts to simulate an entire human brain as a neural net.


 * Type Ia supernova Only gives the critical mass for carbon -oxygen white dwarf stars. Also doesn't cover neutronization / inverse beta decay. Would post to talk page suggesting they have a section on this. Here is one source on the critical masses for white dwarfs for other compositions, such as Helium, Silicon, Sulfur, Iron etc, also taking account of neutronization.


 * Tunguska event would post telling them about a new reliable source I found, published in 2019, which gives the number of deaths as 3, a figure much discusssed there

Here is a better cite: "Asteroids striking the Earth typically [Minton and Malhotra, 2010] have an impactor density of 2680 kg/m3and an impact velocity of 20 km/s.Assuming these properties, modern scaling relations indicate that a 10–15 km diameter projectile [Collins et al., 2008] created the 170 km diameter Chicxulub crater". The rough guideline is that an asteroid is about a tenth the size of the crater it creates. A comet if it hit faster would be smaller for the same sized crater. An 80 km asteroid making a 170 km diameter crater doesn't make a lot of sense, it should be more like 800 km. That is large enough to boil some meters of the surface of the oceans. A somewhat smaller asteroid or comet 30 miles across (48 km across) would be enough to boil the surface layers of the oceans and make all land life on Earth extinct with air temperatures of 500 C for weeks.
 * Chicxulub crater cites an unpublished arxiv arxiv.org preprint for the size. This does not seem to have been through peer review or published, so is not a reliable source. Wikipedia says "It was formed by a large asteroid or comet about 11 to 81 kilometres (6.8 to 50.3 miles) in diameter"  - usual range given is 10 -15 kilometers. 81 kilometers is hundreds of times more energetic . It is probably just a pre-publication error by the author, not spotted because it had no peer review.

A year is mentioned as the likely shortest warning period, not a few months as likely longest. Also the source used is from 2008, before the start of most of our modern all sky surveys. Warning periods increased since then. This is about a decade out of date. The closest gamma ray burst observed now is 140 million light years away, not the billions of light years away implied by "former epoch". There is now a lot of research based on nearby galaxies. I can help bring this article up to date on the topic.
 * Asteroid_impact_avoidance#Deflection_efforts says "in addition, the warning time is unlikely to be more than a few months", misparaphrases source, the source used says "warning period for a potential impact from a long period comet may be as short as a year"
 * Ozone#Physical properties - Colour of ozone - only one cite and minimal info. I found many better cites which the article could use while researching into my blob post What is the colour of ozone (not to cite the blog of course, but to suggest the same cites for Wikipedia)
 * Vinnytsia - Cites Kos Telegram - Would post to talk page to alert people that it uses a fake news site as a source.
 * Gamma-ray_burst "Knowledge of GRBs, however, is from metal-poor galaxies of former epochs of the universe's evolution, and it is impossible to directly extrapolate to encompass more evolved galaxies and stellar environments with a higher metallicity, such as the Milky Way."


 * Kevin_Anderson_(scientist) A bit out of date, more recent paper on his current views:

Though popular accounts of meteorology sometimes suggest this, it's not strictly true. Dew point is when the air reaches 100% humidity. Frost point is when it reaches 100% humidity over an ice surface. This is a higher temperature and it is important for processes in clouds, growth of icy particles is favoured over water droplets when both are possible, because the frost point is lower than the dew point. The meteorologist Jeff Haby explains here "The dew point is the temperature at which the air is saturated with respect to water vapor over a liquid surface. When the temperature is equal to the dewpoint then the relative humidity is 100%. The common ways for the relative humidity to be 100% is to 1) cool the air to the dewpoint, 2) evaporate moisture into the air until the air is saturated, 3) lift the air until it adiabatically cools to the dew point." '''"The frost point is the temperature at which the air is saturated with respect to water vapor over an ice surface. It is more difficult more water molecules to escape a frozen surface as compared to a liquid surface since an ice has a stronger bonding between neighboring water molecules. Because of this, the frost point is greater in temperature than the dew point. This fact is important to precipitation growth in clouds. Since the vapor pressure is less over an ice surface as compared to a supercooled liquid surface at the same temperature, when the relative humidity is 100% with respect to water vapor the relative humidity over the ice surface will be greater than 100%. Thus, precipitation growth is favored on the ice particles."'''
 * Dew_point - says "When the temperature is below the freezing point of water, the dew point is called the frost point, as frost is formed rather than dew"
 * History_of_SpaceX doesn't mention the first three rocket failures
 * Lunar_theory Doesn't talk about variation in ellipticity of the lunar orbit
 * 2010_AU118 "NEODyS lists the nominal 20 October 2020 Earth distance as 3 AU (450,000,000 km; 280,000,000 mi).[7]" - table now says 2.6771 au in the Delta column


 * Nuclear_winter Cites an article in New Scientist that doesn't seem to exist. and another online post from 2002 that just talks about increased UV not warming
 * Copernicus_(lunar_crater) - should say something about impactor studies that suggest it formed as a result of an impactor perhaps about 7 km in diameter

Minor, or expect no discussion, would just fix on the spot

 * Phoenix Lights#Explanations Says "Mitch Stanley, an amateur astronomer, observed high altitude lights flying in formation using a Dobsonian telescope giving 43x magnification." - source provided says 60x with no occurrence of number 43 in the story and there is no discussion of this on the Wikipedia article talk page..
 * 2013 Madagscar locust infestation - not updated since 2013 at the height of the swarm, add cite to FAO and summary of response and outcome in 2014 and 2015.
 * High-voltage direct current#Advantages for "±800 kV  line  voltage,  losses are about 3% per 1,000 km"  - cite for article no longer works, page has nothing about it (could also try archi8ve.org).
 * Space_elevator_economics - the cite says total cost $20 billion for first 10 years operation, or $40 billion with 100% contingency, not $6 billion, error introduced with this diff
 * AT2018cow "As of 29 September 2018, AT2018cow has been explained in various ways, including as a type Ic supernova, a gamma-ray burst, an interaction between a white dwarf and black hole, and as a magnetar. " which correctly summarizes their source, except the source is dated 28th September. Minor error.
 * Third-party_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings add cite for "Observations of Apollo 11" by Sky and Telescope magazine, November 1969, pp. 358–59. for:
 * "AIDA: Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment Mission Under Study at ESA and NASA" (PDF) broken url would fix by linking to Arxiv.org
 * False vacuum#Existential threat - inaccurate summary of linked to paper. Summarizes as: "They argue that due to observer selection effects, we might underestimate the chances of being destroyed by vacuum decay because any information about this event would reach us only at the instant when we too were destroyed"   Linked paper says :  "Given  that  life  on  Earth  has  survived  fornearly  4  billion  years  (4  Gyr),  it  might  be assumed that natural catastrophic events are extremely rare. Unfortunately, this argument is flawed because it fails to take into account an  observation-selection  effect whereby observers are precluded from noting anything other than that their own species has survived"   There is nothing there about whether information reaches us before or during the  time when we are destroyed.  Would post to the talk page suggesting a better summary of what the source says. It should also mention that this source predates discovery of the Higgs boson by eight years.

Corrections I suggested on talk pages before I was blocked - not yet done
It is very rare for any other editor to respond to these talk page suggestions to fix an issue - I normally would go back and fix it after the mention but I had a lot on last year, and I have a backlog going back a year of things I never got around to fixing before I was blocked.

Suggested corrections with no response
These are relatively minor edits that normally editors would just do on the spot under WP:BOLD. I was super cautious and posted to the talk page first. With no response then the natural thing is to just be bold and make the edit - and if another editor wants to revert or fix what I wrote in some way it is then up to them.


 * Wikipedia:Talk:Infrared_vision suggestion for new section about animals with infrared vision
 * Wikipedia:Talk:Copyright_law_of_the_European_Union - should mention impact on Wikipedia
 * Wikipedia:Talk:Apparent_magnitude 31.5 seems a typo surely is 31.2
 * Wikipedia:Talk:Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse article is out of date
 * Wikipedia:Talk:Halton_Arp should say theory is out of date
 * Wikipedia:Talk:Steady_state_model - should mention the historical solution to Olber's paradox for the Steady State model.
 * Wikipedia:Talk:Paleoclimatology should mention that earlier atmosphere could have been different in pressure - either lower or higher
 * Wikipedia:Talk:Google_Translator_Toolkit - should say that adding new translations is no longer supported
 * Wikipedia:Talk:ISS_ECLSS - just missing info from article
 * Wikipedia:Talk:Apollo_Command/Service_Module Only half the module was painted white - caption incorrect
 * Wikipedia:Talk:Circumbinary_planet - diagram needs edited caption or redone to scale

Implemented fixes myself after talk page mention

 * Wikipedia:Talk:Lagrange_point_colonization
 * Wikipedia:Talk:List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events/Archives/2018/February
 * Wikipedia:Talk:WR_104

Other editor implemented suggested fix

 * Wikipedia:Talk:KIC_8462852

Edit proposal lead to discussion so far inconclusive

 * Wikipedia:Talk:Coral_reef - my suggestion was unclear. I need to continue the discussion and explain more clearly what I think the article should mention - that corals are replaced by sponges when the sea is more acid. It explains in the History section that the other reefs were not corals but doesn't explain why corals went extinct.
 * Wikipedia:Talk:Clathrate_gun_hypothesis - many mistakes in this article - but to fix them would be a major edit and the editor who made the mistakes does not accept that they are errors. However another editor said to go ahead and that was the last comment on the page. Would post a new talk page comment asking if they want me to do the edits and if the answer is yes, do them slowly, giving time for other editors to comment on them, if no, then not do anything.

Other editor reverted edit

 * Wikipedia:Talk:WR_104 . I added a short sentence summary to the lede of the new tilt measurements mentioned later in the article. Never noticed that another editor corrected my summary to remove mention of the tilt diff.  I need to post to the discussion page explaining the reason why I think it should be mentioned in the lede, which could then lead to discussion of the matter. Also I have some new cites, see.


 * Perigean spring tide#Confusing first paragraph - this was a mistake on my part and I agree with the correction.

Other editor said to go ahead and do it (but only noticed after block)

 * Wikipedia:Talk:2012_(film) - that it should mention that NASA voted it the most scientifically flawed film ever made, in a conference held at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, in 2011
 * Wikipedia:Talk:Goldfish To mention popular belief about goldfish and that it is incorrect, with cites
 * Wikipedia:Talk:Great_Oxygenation_Event Should mention evidence for a mass extinction is not strong, with cites, similar edit for Wikipedia:Talk:Extinction_event

Mid discussion - would post another comment or add a new thread to the talk page

 * Wikipedia:Talk:Human_overpopulation should mention that middle of the range projection of the UN population division is to level off naturally due to prosperity rather than scarcity, and that many countries including Japan already have declining populations. I have many cites we can use for this.
 * Wikipedia:Talk:KIC_8462852 suggested extra para in lede about latest research on Tabby's star.