Talk:Metrology/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 04:51, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 04:51, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

I'll copyedit as I go; please revert if I make any mistakes.

• I don't think we should use a quote, even from an authoritative source such as the BIPM, for the primary definition in the first sentence of the article. I think we should stick with "the science of measurement", which is the commonest definition.
• The lead is a little longer than it should be per WP:LEADLENGTH; it ought to be around 2-3 paragraphs. I think the bullet lists in the lead aren't necessary; these could be given in prose at the summary level that's appropriate for the lead.
• I can't find support for Although fundamental metrology is formally undefined, it is considered the top level of scientific metrology which strives for the highest degree of accuracy in the cited source; can you point me at the right page? It's not a requirement for GA, but you might consider adding page numbers to your citations to that PDF to make it easier to find these things.
• Why do we need an overview section? Generally the lead of an article is an overview. I think it might be better to take this material and merge it with what's in the lead.
• The history section seems too short. Looking just in Google Books, I see for example thirty or forty pages of Theo Hänsch's Metrology and Fundamental Constants devoted to the history of the discipline. I can't see the contents, but A History of Engineering Metrology by Kenneth John Hume devotes 220 pages to the history, and Jan Gyllenbok's Encyclopaedia of Historical Metrology, Weights, and Measures is 677 pages just for the first volume. Surely this section could be greatly expanded?

Glancing down the rest of the article I don't see anything obvious wrong, but for a big topic like metrology I strongly suspect the whole article is too short. I'm going to pause this review here to let you respond; if you can convince me that the history section (or perhaps the whole article) doesn't need major expansion to meet GA criterion 3a then I'll continue the review. Note that GA doesn't require that an article is comprehensive; it doesn't have to fully cover every area of the topic, but at least in the history area this article seems quite undersized. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:43, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Imminent77, are you planning to work on this? I will fail the article in another week if I haven't heard from you. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:57, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Mike_Christie Sorry for the late reply on this, I have not been very active on Wikipedia recently. I have read over your suggestions and made some changes to the article. I will address them point by point below:

• Removed the full quote from BIPM and changed it to the science of measurement, however I left the reference to BIPM considering their importance to the field of metrology

  I've struck the point; I agree the BIPM is key but I think it would be better to just make it "Metrology is the science of measurement", and cite the BIPM. But this is good enough for GA. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:23, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

  ...and I see another editor came along and made exactly that edit. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:42, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• I have reworked the lead slightly removing the bullet points and now it is at 3 paragraphs in length

  Struck. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:23, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• When I wrote this I included the wrong reference, I have changed the reference and reworked the sentence slightly to better reflect what is in the source

  Struck. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:23, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• I included the overview section because of the length of the lead. I felt that the definitions of the three main areas and the elaboration of what metrology is needed more coverage than what would be appropriate for the lead section. Maybe this section could be reworked and renamed to something more appropriate. I will give this one some additional thought.

  OK -- I'll leave the point above unstruck until you comment on this again. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:23, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

  Mike_Christie - I have slightly reworked this section into a more general fields of metrology section and moved it after the history section where I feel it fits better now that it is not a general overview. --Imminent77 (talk) 17:22, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

• I kept the history section shorter because there is currently a separate article on the history of metrology. There is a lot of material on the history of metrology and this section definitely could be significantly longer, but I took the approach of supplying a brief summary and linking to the additional article. I feel like it would be very easy to have this section dwarf the rest of the article and I tried to keep from giving it too much weight with relation to the rest of the article.--Imminent77 (talk) 14:44, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

  OK, that's fair; struck. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:23, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Imminent77: sorry it's taking me a few days to get back to this. I should have time to look at it again this weekend. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:35, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Finally getting back to this.

• the BIPM has identified nine metrology areas: what is a "metrology area"? If these are units, why are there only seven units listed in the "Concepts" section? If they're not units, what are they?

  I have listed the nine areas that BIPM defines --Imminent77 (talk) 19:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• Why is semiconductor manufacturing called out as an example in the "Fields" section? It's just another industrial area.

  This has been removed --Imminent77 (talk) 19:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• Generally the "Fields" section seems too short. The three subsections do little more than give definitions, without giving details. Can we say anything about recent notable advances in any of these areas, for example? Are there controversies or areas of current research?

  I have added some additional information to the section, primarily some stuff about the SI redefinition in scientific metrology --Imminent77 (talk) 19:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• Although the SI base units are technically independent, some definitions depend on those of other base units: this is not what the source says; it says they are "by convention" independent, and goes on to point out that in fact they are not.

  This was altered during the copyedit and I missed it during my review. I have adjusted it to reflect the source --Imminent77 (talk) 19:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

• Shouldn't there be some coverage of New SI?

  I have included some coverage of the new SI in the scientific metrology section, I am not sure if I should also cover it in the concepts section as well. Do you have any input on that? --Imminent77 (talk) 19:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

  What you've added looks good. As a side note I was interested to see in the source you cite that the 20 ppb measurements did not all overlap; a bit of searching found this paper, which gives the details, but since it doesn't comment on the point I don't think we need to either. To answer your question, I think the article doesn't spend a lot of time on the philosophical difference between a physical standard and one derived from constants. I don't think the new SI needs to be specifically covered more in the concepts section, but would it be useful to add something to the concepts section about the move away from physical standards? I've just read Robert Crease's World in the Balance, about the history of metrology (one reason why I've been slow to get to this review), and he spends a good deal of time on this point. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the field to be sure this would be helpful, but it seemed like interesting material to me, so I thought I'd suggest it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:49, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

• The discussion of CRMs is unhelpful to someone who isn't familiar with the subject. This seems like another area where more details and examples would be helpful.

  The CRM stuff has been removed and the standards section clarified with an example from length metrology. --Imminent77 (talk) 19:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

  Looks good; I copyedited this a bit -- please check I didn't make any mistakes. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:49, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

  I have checked the copyediting, it looks great! --Imminent77 (talk) 14:33, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

• Much of "Traceability and calibration" is quotes. There's no reason for such a long quote; we should put this in our own words, for the lay reader. There's also no reason to name the Joint Committee in the text; that's just the source. The chart at the side is helpful; it would be more helpful if it were referenced in the text with an explanation.

  Removed the quotation for calibration and added a section referring to the chart --Imminent77 (talk) 14:33, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

• According to the Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement (GUM), each uncertainty value has two components: type A and type B: what is this Guide? It's referenced as if it's a key document, perhaps a BIPM publication, but there's no explanation or link. Ah, I see it's mentioned later; it should be explained the first time it's mentioned.

  This was removed when I reworked the uncertainty section --Imminent77 (talk) 14:33, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

• The uncertainty section again is too abbreviated for a layman to follow.

  Reworked this section to be less technical and more comprehensive --Imminent77 (talk) 14:33, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

  That does it, so I've struck the point, but if (as I assume) k is an indication of standard deviations then a footnote saying so would be useful to the reader. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:07, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

  Added footnote --Imminent77 (talk) 15:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Some more details in some of the organization sections would be helpful, particularly for the OIML and ILAC.

  Added details to OIML and ILAC --Imminent77 (talk) 15:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• Can we say which countries have an NMS, at least in general terms?

  Included the number of members that are recognized by the CIPM MRA --Imminent77 (talk) 14:33, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

• Can we get examples of the components of an NMS for one or more countries? E.g. an NMI, and an example of a calibration lab and accreditation body?

  Added examples --Imminent77 (talk) 14:33, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

  Looks good; can we add sources? Just a web citation to the relevant page for each of those organizations would probably suffice. Same for the prior point. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:07, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

  Added sources --Imminent77 (talk) 15:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

• I can guess how legal metrology is involved with radar guns and breathalysers, but it seems like a good opportunity to give the reader details.

  Reworded that for clarity and added a bit more to the paragraph --Imminent77 (talk) 15:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I have not yet reviewed the sources. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:59, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I have worked on addressing some of these points, I will continue to address the remaining points over the weekend. --Imminent77 (talk) 19:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Looks good; I've struck most points you've addressed, and left a question above. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:49, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

I have addressed some more points and will get to the remaining ones shortly. I have a question with regards to the points that I had replied to earlier but you did not strike, does this mean that you think that there is more work required to address these concerns? --Imminent77 (talk) 14:33, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

I've updated the strikes and replies above. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:07, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

The only thing left now is a couple of uncited sentences. Once those are fixed I will promote this to GA. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:01, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I have finished addressing the remaining points that you brought up. I have also added some references in the traceability section and the BIPM section where I thought more were needed. If there are more uncited sentences that you feel need citations just let me know and I will hunt them down. --Imminent77 (talk) 15:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

The last sentence in the OIML paragraph is uncited; it seems fairly obvious and quite uncontroversial so I'm going to promote without a citation there, but you may want to add one. Congratulations! Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the helpful review, you have made some great recommendations that have improved the article significantly! --Imminent77 (talk) 12:42, 27 March 2018 (UTC)