But I'm glad that Musashi had you explain that, 'cause I had no idea what was going on there.

From now on, whenever anyone criticizes one of my "extra" apostrophes, I'm going to tell them that it stands for the missing "(hey bub mind your own business)"

"Typo" has been a word of its own for a very long time. Even were it not, wouldn't it look odd to see it written typo'? Since you don't, you don't use the apostrophe in a pluralization, either. When it was still "hip slang," lo these many years ago, there was a period after it, which was, as I recall, put at the end for a typo, as in "typos." and not "typo.s," which, as you see, looks ridiculous.

But, yes, "others' typos" is perfectly correct.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I never did specifically answer the OP's comments, so...

This occurs far less often than it used to, for two reasons. First, the mods are doing a much better job listening to well-credentialed subject matter experts (SMEs). Second, the mods are doing a much better job actively policing the site (reverting shoddy edits and banning vandals).

Discussions aren't allowed under the article tabs. Any such edit is swiftly reverted. There is a discussion tab under which discussions take place.

Because of the rapid rise in editors (users like you and I), such "agenda pushers" are rapidly reported by the masses who severely outnumber them to the mods, and the mods take swift action.

The arbitration process used to be a joke, but because there are a lot more mods and admins now than there used to be, things are handled fairly swiftly.

Having said all that, I used to do a lot of editing on Wikipedia, but not any more, as for just about every subject in which I'm a SME, there are usually a dozen others who're equally qualified. I do edit for spelling and grammar when I spot errors, but that's about all, unless an article has gaping holes of knowledge in an area in which I'm a SME. Then I'll look up the resources online, add the content, citing the sources.

My edits almost always remain largely intact (and I no longer edit under my username, but rather without logging in, as one of the mods, a complete jerk, in my opinion, kept reverting nearly every edit I made, regardless of the topic).

So, yes, Wikipedia has some drawbacks, but it's vastly improved over it's short life-span.

You also mentioned:

Wikipedia is not a "single reference." It's a single source, but the articles have been compiled from many references, most of which are listed at the end of each article.

__________________
I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

"Staying young requires the unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." - Heinlein

"Freedom begins when you tell Ms. Grundy to go fly a kite." - Heinlein

Speaking of vandalism and typos, this thread reminds of something I noticed about a year or so ago, I think it was. I was trying to work through some formulas for Keplarian orbits or the precession of the planets or something, and the numbers weren't lining up. I got the distances for the orbits from Wiki, but I noticed that in order for the formulas to work out, the second (or third?) digit for each of the planets would each have to be one value greater (or lower?). So I checked the distances with other sources and sure enough, someone had changed the second digit for the distances of each of the planets very subtly, but effectively for anyone attempting to work with them. At the time, I didn't know it could be edited. I thought it was some prankster hacker or something. I meant to mention it on this board, but I'm not sure if I ever did. I hope it didn't mess with anyone else like it did me; a lot of time wasted with that one. I wonder if it's been corrected, surely by now. I guess maybe I'll take a minute to try to find it again.

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Let's put together the pieces of The Grand Puzzle . (website)

"Let's define another operator, Sz, which we won't pay any attention to."
"This transformation will automatically make zero equal zero."
"It may be true that zero equals zero -- and that is certainly an equality -- but I don't want to go into the details at this time."

Find it. It's history probably would tell us if a malicious change occurred like that--and even if it's been changed since, we can find the point where the errors were introduced.

Well, I looked through the pages for each of the planets, and it looks like they have all been changed back, except perhaps with the exception of Neptune, where the third digits of both the aphelion and perihelion still appear to be one value greater. The difference for the inner-most planets may have been the most obvious.

__________________
Let's put together the pieces of The Grand Puzzle . (website)

"Let's define another operator, Sz, which we won't pay any attention to."
"This transformation will automatically make zero equal zero."
"It may be true that zero equals zero -- and that is certainly an equality -- but I don't want to go into the details at this time."

Which pages?

Oh, sorry. This is the only one now, but it's hard to tell if that was one of the same ones I referenced before without the other ones to compare to as well, if they've already been corrected, especially since it's been so long, but I think so.

__________________
Let's put together the pieces of The Grand Puzzle . (website)

"Let's define another operator, Sz, which we won't pay any attention to."
"This transformation will automatically make zero equal zero."
"It may be true that zero equals zero -- and that is certainly an equality -- but I don't want to go into the details at this time."

The history page for that page shows some vandalism, but you can see what the pages were. When were you accessing them?

Well, I started the thread on Keplerian orbits in July 2006 and the one on precession two months later, but I remember being disappointed that the sizes for the orbits weren't even on Wiki, especially with all the other information they had on them. Apparently, an infobox was added on Jan 10, 2007, though, so I must have worked on it again at a later date. I couldn't determine much with Neptune, so I tried Mercury instead. I looked at all of the entries from Jan 10, 2007 to April 2, 2007, which doesn't sound like much, but it seems the entries are edited many times a day, which is incredible, so it took quite a while to look through even that much. I found only a couple of entries with the values changed as I had observed, one at 20:43 on Mar 19, 2007, but changed back just a couple of minutes later, where the aphelion was changed from 69,817,079 km to 96,817,079 km and the perihelion was changed from 46,001,272 km to 46,100,272 km. Another was a day later at 11:03 on Mar 20, 2007, and changed back six minutes later, where the values were doubled to 139,634,158 km and 92,002,544 km. Some of the entries were very interesting. I learned some stuff when reading through them, such as Neptune is made of blue cheese, and that Mercury fell into a black hole in 2000. I did not know that.

__________________
Let's put together the pieces of The Grand Puzzle . (website)

"Let's define another operator, Sz, which we won't pay any attention to."
"This transformation will automatically make zero equal zero."
"It may be true that zero equals zero -- and that is certainly an equality -- but I don't want to go into the details at this time."

We should get the BA to do a blog about it

Well, since it's on Wiki, simply reporting it to the mods on Wiki should be enough, provided you include links to websites (such as NASA's) which can be trusted to provide the correct answers. It'll also help the Wiki mods ID, catch, and permanently ban those who're making the erroneous changes.

__________________
I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

"Staying young requires the unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." - Heinlein

"Freedom begins when you tell Ms. Grundy to go fly a kite." - Heinlein