Talk:Temperature

I don't like this idea of condensing M/A into list pages. Each item here is an individual unit that can have its own individual article, just like every other concept that appears as its own individual article on this site. This certainly isn't how it works in a "real" encyclopedia, and I see no reason why it should be any different here. We are not the Borg. --Alan 01:01, 15 June 2007 (UTC)


 * We should not merge things just because we can. Nor should we keep things separate just because we can.  If a number of short articles are very much interrelated, then sometimes they are better together than separate.  I think that is true for the separate articles we currently have on temperature scales, and the four articles we have on ESP ratings.
 * As for "real encyclopedias", they certainly do have entries that sometimes just refer you to a more comprehensive entry else ware in the volumes, and we should not let the constraints of paper encyclopedias dictate how we organize an electronic encyclopedia.
 * With redirects able to point to sections, there is no good reason not to group certain things, any article can still link to absolute zero, and the redirect makes it work just fine as a link to the correct section of this article, and then instead of having to click on Celsius, Fahrenheit, Kelvin, and Onkian those items are right there where they can be easily compared.
 * Furthermore, right now we have five separate pages that all have a list of comparative temperatures. I cannot see any good reason for keeping those lists separate.  They would be much better combined.  Once that is done, there is no point to keeping what would then be two line stubs (the definitions of each scale) also separate. —MJBurrage •  TALK  • 12:58, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

PNA
Two areas of concern, really.

First, I'd agree with the above comments that the article should be pulled apart into its constituent parts. There should be Celcius, Farenheit, and Onklan articles.

Beyond that, though, the referencing for each of these terms is extremely indirect. Just giving as a reference for the term "Farenheit" isn't good enough. Also, I know there are many instances of "Kelvin" across the various series; it's shocking that there's no citation at all for that term, here. I'm puzzled, too, over the inclusion of the "Extreme heat" section. The episodes cited do speak of very high heat, but there's no citation whatsoever for the lead for the section. In other words, no episode explicitly speaks of the inconsequence of the difference between Kelvin and Celcius. The "fluctuation in temperature" section should just be "background" as it's based on the assumption that the temperatures are in celcius. Given that none of the situations involve Federation citizens making the obvservations about the temperature, it's unclear just why the degrees would "most likely" be in Celcius. Of course, the reason for all this sketchiness is the "Comparative list of temperatures" section. Instead of listing these examples under the appropriate scale section at the top of the article, the authors have chosen this big freakin' list. That's bad enough, but I'm not sure why the article demonstrates a need to translate all temperatures into the other scales, as canon only provides the temperature in one scale. Basically, including this section weakens the canonicity of the definition of the terms. If new articles were created for each scale, and this list were used to populate the resulting new articles, the canonicity of each term would be strengthened. As it is, the mathematical conversion, while nifty, makes it easy to miss what's canon and what's not. If a user wants to convert a canonically-established temperature, throw 'em a calculator.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  03:48, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I must point out that are articles for Celsius, Fahrenheit, Kelvin, and Onkian articles, which contain lists of references. I think this article, instead of having a long and misleading list, should just refer the reader to those pages, which will list all statements that "x is y degrees".  The comparative temperatures section can then be merged into them, leaving a skeleton temperature page. – Cleanse 04:57, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Wow. I'm on crack or something. What are the odds of spelling three words in a row so totally badly? :) Thanks for correcting my obvious error. :)  Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  12:25, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Slim to none, considering that all three articles were directly named and linked from the article you are criticizing... :)
 * Anyway, the question I have in mind regarding all these articles is: What exactly is really relevant about it? The three different earth temperature scales have fixed conversion formulas - which means they in fact aren't separate topics that have to have their own articles. It would suffice to have one section about "earth temperature scales" here, noting that all three are being used in the 23rd/24th centuries. We could have a separate article about the Romulan "Onkian" scale - but then, we don't know much about it, so that stub article might as well be merged into this one, too. -- Cid Highwind 10:53, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Back when redirects, could only link to articles (and not sections) it became policy to have separate pages on every topic for organizational and linking reasons. This led to three articles on temperature (Celsius, Fahrenheit, Kelvin) that were very similar, and one stub (Onkian).  In the case of the Earth scales, each article had a definition of the scale in question, links to the other articles, and a list of temperatures that had been given in that particular scale.  This resulted in anyone who was interested in temperatures in Star Trek having to click back and forth amongst the articles to compare items that are all part of one small subject.
 * Now that redirects can link to sections, there is no practical reason for the original seperate articles, and all of the informations could be combined in this one article. with say Kelvin as a redirect to the Kelvin section of this page, any other articles could still have  Kelvin  as a link, and the reader would not only see the description of Kelvin, but simply by scrolling they would also see the other temperature scales, and be able to compare the use of temperatures in Star Trek.
 * As Cid points out above this shows that it makes more sense to treat Temperature as one subject, rather than four. I had suggested this for similar situations such as pressure, but met with objections based on "that's not how we do things" (see Alan's not above) —MJBurrage •  TALK  • 08:36, 8 November 2007 (UTC)