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Here are some general ideas for improving the article. They are not intended as criticisms, so please don't take them as such. I will look at the details of the text next week. Please bear with me since I am new to wikipedia editing.
Nomenclature. The discussion of the historical differences between the terms 'autowave reverberator', 'spiral wave', 'autowave vortex' etc is very interesting. However, I feel it is misrepresenting the current state of the literature, which uses 'spiral wave' as a synonym for what this article prefers to call an 'autowave reverberator'. For good or ill, even the Russian authors now use 'spiral wave' (at least in English language journals) regardless of whether the wave is rotating around a defect or not, while autowave reverberator is a somewhat old-fashioned term which has fallen out of use.
Verbatim passages. There are a couple of sections copied directly from a textbook. I think I saw a wikipedia rule about this, but can't find it. In any case, perhaps it would be better to replace these section with original text and cite where appropriate.
Pictures. Some pictures of rotating waves would make things less abstract. Ideally there would at least one experimental and one numerical picture with arrows to indicate direction and a plot of the wave tip. I can provide such a picture from a numerical simulation if necessary. Also, the pictures that are included in the article have captions in Russian. Perhaps we can work to change this for the English language article.
References. I noticed that a lot of the references are to articles in Russian. Presumably all of these could (and should) be replaced with appropriate references from English journals. In some cases original Russian articles are reprinted in English. Where that doesn't apply, we could perhaps discuss alternatives.
1) If you have read attentively, you could notice that it is NOT "discussion of the historical differences between the terms 'autowave reverberator', 'spiral wave', 'autowave vortex'", but it is discussion of differences in their essential properties. This is the point.
And what is the problem with which you've met? There are three types of rotating autowaves. Spiral wave is only one of them, and it is the autowave which rotates around an obstacle. This point of view should undoubtedly be reflected in this Wikipedia article.--
Andy Quarry (
talk)
20:04, 21 March 2014 (UTC)reply
Well, do you see why it would be confusing for someone to read that a spiral wave is the 'autowave which rotates around an obstacle', when the vast majority of current research papers ignore this definition? (N.b. Please see that I have begun copy editing, but will refrain from changing content since there is disagreement here.)
2q4b (
talk)
21:47, 21 March 2014 (UTC)reply
2) Verbatim passages? You are free to improve that.
3) Some more pictures are in the main article '
Autowave'. And we have links in the top of this article to the main article. However, if any additional good pictures arise from anywhere, why should we not add them?
4) It is a quite good idea to replace references from Russian into English sources. Do you know anybody, who could perform that? Heh, I know one of
new references where the matter is discussed in English. Will we add it?
Re: This article may be confusing or unclear to readers (April 2013)
On April 2013,
Stuartyeates has marked
this article as "confusing or unclear to readers". My argumentation, which I placed in the
User talk at 17:46 on 23 April 2013 (UTC), was ignored by
Stuartyeates. Hence, I am forced repeat those arguments here again for their public discussion.
Besides, the co-author who puts the tag {{Confusing}} are strongly encouraged to use the parameter "reason=" to explain what is confusing for him/her, as it is recommended by Wiki-rules. If
Stuartyeates has no reason,
Stuartyeates should not confuse readers about confusing article.
However, I would not like to insist that the current version of the article is irreproachable, because the translation of the article was performed by me, and my skills in English is not so good as a native speaker has them.
Hence, we (
Stuartyeates and I, for example) might in couple edit the English version of the discussed article, in order to make the article better, - if
Stuartyeates will be able to explain clearly the problems, by which he was confused, and then I try to explain more clearly the correct meaning of the confusing parts.
In the other cases, the tag {{Confusing}} should be removed.
I have read through this article and in my opinion it does deserve to be marked as confusing. I would like to help make any necessary improvements.
Andy Quarry: let me know if you are interested in collaborating and I shall provide a short list of issues that appear confusing and could be addressed.
2q4b (
talk)
14:15, 24 February 2014 (UTC)reply
Thank you,
2q4b. I think that such a collaboration could be helpful. Why you do not provide your "short list of issues" right through the text of the Wiki-article as it is recommended in the rules?--
Andy Quarry (
talk)
19:55, 24 February 2014 (UTC)reply
Excellent. I have been very busy this week. For now I will just post up some points for discussion (see above). I will have more time next week to go through things properly. Regards,
2q4b (
talk)
20:55, 28 February 2014 (UTC)reply
Vocabulary definitions
Independent of the discussion about which words mean what in the current literature, the section called "Basic information" is much too long. The distinction between a wave that spirals around a quiescent obstacle (necessarily in an inhomogeneous medium) and one that spirals around a self-sustaining, possibly mobile point in a homogenous medium (necessarily with subtler pointwise dynamics) can be accomplished in fewer words. The long quotation from an original source is just too long.
It is a shame that the articles
Autowave and
Autowave Reverberator, and some related articles, don't get more attention. They perform a valuable service in highlighting important Russian contributions that are not well-known in English. But they need verbal smoothing, more explanations of terminology, and more context connections if they are to achieve a higher degree of authority.