Talk:Time viewer/GA2

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 16:37, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Interesting topic, I will take this one. I think I've only read The Dead Past and the (not mentioned) 镜子 by Liu Cixin, so I hope to learn about other interesting uses of the idea. Review to follow over the next couple of days. —Kusma (talk) 16:37, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

• You might enjoy reading Liu's Mirror, which has been available in English since late 2020, see [1] [2] for reviews of the collection or [3] for more about it. A "superstring" computer is used to simulate our universe since the Big Bang. It is a perfect model that can be used to view any point in the past (but not the future). It is destroyed by its Chinese users to avoid a The Dead Past type situation, but some Americans later re-discover the principle. —Kusma (talk) 22:37, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Progress box and general comments

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

• Page numbers for Baxter 2000 would help a lot with verifying the citations.
• Image seems fine.
• No stability concerns.
• Prose is of decent quality.
• There is a strange gap between reference 1 and 2. Otherwise the reference layout is fine.
• No copyvio concerns, spot checks of sources work out OK.
• Cited to reliable sources, including their use of examples. No original research.
• Reasonably focused. Not fully convinced it is as broad as it should be in terms of connecting the examples but it is probably acceptable.
• No major MoS issues, just perhaps a longer lead would be preferable

Section by section review

• Lead section is too short, should summarise the entire article.
• Concept: one of the few sections not having (too?) many examples.
• Methods: tense seems off, probably best to use all present tense.

Need to stop now, will continue tomorrow or later. —Kusma (talk) 22:37, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

I have added page numbers for Baxter throughout, expanded the lead, and copyedited the "Methods" section for verb tense. TompaDompa (talk) 23:53, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Better, thanks! My apologies for the slow review -- there was more than expected happening in my real life. Will try to finish this weekend. —Kusma (talk) 18:13, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

• History: interesting that the concept is originally French. I don't know much about the early history of SF; how sure are you this is indeed the earliest?
• remained comparatively obscure Hm. This is Baxter speaking? Broderick says "a minor but significant contributor to the Time Machine literature." Personally I think this means it isn't obscure, just not a very large body of literature.
• Narrative function: could you gloss the cited experts so we know why we should listen to them?
• PEST analysis this is a comparison that Baxter makes; I am unconvinced this should be stated in wikivoice.
• Nahin nevertheless notes that interacting with the past via a time machine does not necessarily cause paradoxes. Not sure this adds so much here; surely authors of time travel literature still need to consider whether they are introducing paradoxes or not.
• Themes: Around a Distant Star by Jean Delaire it is perhaps useful to remark that this is not the orthodontist Jean Delaire, but a Mrs Muirson Blake. [4].

Replies:

• SFE says "Almost certainly the first clearly envisioned example of the device appears in 'L'historioscope'" and "it is almost certainly the first story to explicitly describe a Time Viewer", while Michael Sims says "This first technology-based story of this kind seems to have been" that one. So the sources do hedge their bets a little even if they seem fairly sure.
• Baxter says "During my background research into the theme I have been struck by the extent of exploration of this seemingly obscure theme", yes. It's not that there aren't many stories, but that they aren't that well-known.
• Glossed the experts.
• The first sentence was meant to convey that the entire paragraph is Baxter's analysis. I have given this sentence additional explicit WP:INTEXT attribution.
• Nahin's point is that paradoxes arise not from affecting the past but from changing it. That is to say, as long as one is content writing about stable time loops, one need not worry about paradoxes. I tried to clarify this a bit.
• Ah, my bad. I should have checked that the link went to the right person. I have tweaked the link and added a SFE ref.

TompaDompa (talk) 20:11, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

• That is a much better reference than mine: [5] (which doesn't even give her name).

• The historian in The Dead Past only gets the idea of studying Carthage with a time viewer because of government lies; anyway, the fact that Asimov's time viewer can only go back 120 years isn't so important here.
• I don't understand the sectioning and ordering of the "Studying history" subsection.
  • The first paragraph is examples of studying human history, the second dispelling myths/misconceptions, and the third studying astronomy and biology. Within each paragraph, the works are ordered chronologically. Studying ancient Carthage is an example of a potential application of a time viewer that is brought up. I thought the 120 year limitation was an interesting detail, and it seems a bit odd to bring up the idea of studying ancient Carthage while leaving out that it's impossible in the story. TompaDompa (talk) 01:25, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure they are studying astronomy, they are looking at the past on a more astronomical scale.
      • I guess you could say that. At any rate, they are not studying human history. TompaDompa (talk) 21:57, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

• Crimefighting: I think the Liu Cixin story mentioned above would also fall into this section (and "privacy").
• Entertainment: This section is short and you could discuss that observing history for entertainment isn't that far from "studying history". Much of the "altering the past" bit kind of is for entertainment reasons; not clear to me that there is a strong reason to separate them in the way you do.
• Overall, the "Themes" section is a bit weak on critical commentary; we mostly have a long list of examples, sorted by theme and then by time. Is there anything known about development between the different mentions / is there evidence of reception of one work in another author's work?
• Future time viewers: is there any connection between what Webb and Langford say and the examples?
• We have books/short stories and films. Anything in other media? (graphic novels?)

Further replies:

• The whitespace thing appears to be an issue with Template:Multiref2 adding a bunch of extra line breaks, and would probably need to be fixed at that template rather than here.
• Noted. None of the sources on time viewers that I have come across mention that story.
• I think there's a pretty clear difference between gathering information/doing research and presenting entertainment, and discussing the similarities would likely end up being WP:Original research. The Vicarion is an example of entertainment without altering the past and Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus vice versa. Merging the sections would necessitate removing one or the other, and I think either would be rather significant omission considering how the sources treat them.
• Nothing I have come across in the sources, no. The sources mostly talk about individual examples. I can always condense the section further by removing more examples, but there isn't much to do in the way of adding overarching analysis without straying into WP:Original research. I could also perhaps expand upon the analysis of individual works, if you think that would be an improvement (there's always the risk of going into too much detail about individual works). I have done so a bit in the "Entertainment" section—see what you think.
• Not really, no. Webb and Langford don't really elaborate further. Nahin mentions a fair number of examples, but provides no overarching analysis.
• A couple of television examples are mentioned by Nahin; I have added one of them. Beyond that, there isn't really anything mentioned by any of the sources on time viewers I have come across, no.

TompaDompa (talk) 21:57, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

@TompaDompa: Apologies again for being mostly offwiki for a few days. I've tried to fix {{multiref2}} by copying over the much better-looking sandbox version. Let me know if you find any problems with it. While I don't agree with you on everything in your responses, they are not WP:WIAGA issues so we can leave them be. Also, one could argue that not all of the stories are individually notable enough to be worth a future article (so might not need to be red links) but I don't have a good suggestion for that either. I still expect it is possible to find more connections between stories, perhaps in reviews of individual time viewer stories.

Could you perhaps expand the lead a bit further? You could mention that the concept comes up in various media (short stories/books/movies/TV series), or explain how time viewers provide entertainment etc. —Kusma (talk) 17:20, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I have expanded the lead somewhat. TompaDompa (talk) 23:01, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Ok, promoting. —Kusma (talk) 09:37, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.