Mayor improvement in wikipedia's thermal/statistical physics articles

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Recent edits have significantly improved Wikipedia's articles on thermal and statistical physics, correcting long-standing inaccuracies. Key articles, such as those on Helmholtz free energy and the fundamental thermodynamic relation, were updated to reflect accurate terminology and concepts. The discussion highlights concerns about Wikipedia's policies, which may hinder the correction of errors and discourage necessary discourse on foundational scientific topics. Despite these challenges, the recent improvements have made Wikipedia a more reliable source for thermal and statistical physics. The need for policy reform to better accommodate scientific accuracy is emphasized.
Count Iblis
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Many wiki articles contained horrible mistakes for many years until just a few days ago when I started to edit them. :smile:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Helmholtz_free_energy&oldid=212028025" This had been the wiki article since many years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmholtz_free_energy"
:smile:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fundamental_thermodynamic_relation&oldid=206545149" Utterly flawed statements in that article. Also the correct name is "Fundamental thermodynamic relation" not "combined law of thermodynamics" (the title now shows the corect name because it was later moved by me).

Then Count Iblis come along and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_thermodynamic_relation" :smile:

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/CombinedLawofThermodynamics.html" :smile:

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/HelmholtzFreeEnergy.html"
:smile:

Some other articles were also corrected by me. So, we can now say that wikipedia has become one of the most reliable sources on thermal and statistical physics on the intnernet. Not least because they were so bad until recently and many other websites had copied them. :smile:
 
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Well done count! :cool:

It's too bad that the nature of wiki articles allow for such errors to occur at all, much less to be cited!
 
robertm said:
Well done count! :cool:

It's too bad that the nature of wiki articles allow for such errors to occur at all, much less to be cited!

I'm going to raise this problem at the wiki policy sections. I think that the policies of wikipedia do not work well for the core scientific topics. They stress that everything must be cited and discorage what they call "original research". But this has had the effect that people simply wrote nonsense and gave a link to a few textbooks. Nothing was discussed because well, we aren't supposed to discuss the fundamentals we just write what is in the sources.
 
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