Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 83
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What to title microscope--microscopy articles?
I've been working on improving articles on microscopy, which is kind of a neglected corner of Wikipedia. It lacks its own wikiproject and yet is an important subject for a large number of them. (And in anticipation of this response - no microbiology =/= microscopy, even though the former makes heavy use of the latter.)
The first issue that I've come across is that there's zero consistency as to whether an article on a particular technique or mode is titled 'microscope' or 'microscopy'. Consider the following article titles: Optical microscope - Phase-contrast microscopy - Fluorescence microscope - Confocal microscopy - Electron microscope - Scanning electron microscope - Transmission electron microscopy - Scanning probe microscopy - Atomic force microscopy. There's no rhyme or reason to any of this! At the top level, there are both 'Microscope' and 'Microscopy' articles, but even though in theory one is supposed to be about the instrument and the other about technique, in practice, the two articles are effectively content forks.
Any ideas on how to proceed, and maybe how to set a policy on article titles on the topic? My proposal is that the default title should be '__ microscopy', barring a very good reason to instead go with '__ microscope' - 'Inverted microscope' would be an obvious choice for the latter, but I can't think of many other cases where it would be preferable. I base the default choice of 'microscopy' on the fact that most college level textbooks, from the introductory level up to the very specialized, almost always use the word "Microscopy" somewhere in the title.
Anyway, feedback on this would be most welcome! Peter G Werner (talk) 04:58, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- Agree on Microscopy. I will respond for the "electron" terms as this is my area.
- The two terms should point to the same article, with a brief clarification in the lead. Some knowledge of the hardware is required to understand the various techniques used. When teaching any/all electron microscopy there is always some coverage of the hardware such as how lenses, apertures and detectors work hand in glove with explaining uses and interpretation theory for the various imaging modalities. Similarly there is always some coverage of both in textbooks. Ldm1954 (talk) 08:29, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- All of the articles I link to have both the "microscope" and "microscopy" titles redirect to the same article, with the exception of the top level articles mentioned above. The problem is that there's not consistency at all as to which of the two possible titles is used for the article proper. Peter G Werner (talk) 09:23, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- As above, use microscopy in all titles.
- A suggested, generic first sentence would be:
- XXX microscopy is the technique of using a XXX microscope to obtain images and related information; this article describes aspects of both.
- (The "related information" is needed as at least electron microscopes do more than just yield images.) Ldm1954 (talk) 09:41, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, that's a good suggestion, though with the caveat that are many microscopes that are capable of multiple modes of illumination. For example, it's common for laboratory microscopes to be capable of brightfield, darkfield, phase-contrast, and widefield fluorescence microscopy, depending on which light paths and optical elements are set up. And it's definitely the case that in EM, confocal, and the like there are microanalysis modes that yield non-image data on top of their imaging capabilities. Peter G Werner (talk) 15:26, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- I was leaning towards "___ microscope" rather than "___ microscopy" until I read this comment. This is probably the best reason to focus the articles on the techniques rather than the instruments: The instruments are not necessarily distinct, but the techniques are.--Srleffler (talk) 05:21, 2 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, that's a good suggestion, though with the caveat that are many microscopes that are capable of multiple modes of illumination. For example, it's common for laboratory microscopes to be capable of brightfield, darkfield, phase-contrast, and widefield fluorescence microscopy, depending on which light paths and optical elements are set up. And it's definitely the case that in EM, confocal, and the like there are microanalysis modes that yield non-image data on top of their imaging capabilities. Peter G Werner (talk) 15:26, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- All of the articles I link to have both the "microscope" and "microscopy" titles redirect to the same article, with the exception of the top level articles mentioned above. The problem is that there's not consistency at all as to which of the two possible titles is used for the article proper. Peter G Werner (talk) 09:23, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- To me, microscopy for the technique, microscope for the actual machine. Red Fiona (talk) 09:09, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- In practice, the two topics are essentially the same. About the only topic that's purely "microscope" rather than "microscopy" might be the pure mechanics of a microscope, such as the rack and pinion system controlled by the focusing knobs. And in practice, there's not a whole lot of literature on that topic, it being largely the domain of in-house field service literature. Peter G Werner (talk) 09:20, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- Agree I think this consistency proposal is fine and harmless in any case where the xx-microscope redirects to xx-microscopy. I suggest you post your proposal to the two top level article Talk pages. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:42, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- Agree – I pretty strongly feel that the topic is generally microscopy, rather than simply a type of microscope. In general, the "microscopy" should be created before the "microscope" article, and in general the latter should be a redirect to the former, but may be separated as an article if characteristics of the instruments merit a separate article. It really makes no sense to talk about a type of instrument before talking about the technique that it is built around. —Quondum 18:02, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- I have been thinking over this and agree that "microscopy" is broader than "microscope", and so as a default titles should be microscopy and the article should explain the type of microscope(s) that can carry out this microscopy. There may be exceptions. CMD (talk) 03:54, 2 July 2025 (UTC)
- I agree with CMD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:19, 3 July 2025 (UTC)
How much more!!???
God. I've been searching wiki for FIVE MONTHS!!!!! and I think I an not 0.1% there. Dylanyuan1123 (talk) 05:06, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- If you ask how many articles there are here, it's over fifty millions.
- More precisely, 63,507,423.
--CiaPan (talk) 06:46, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- And, of course, a very much larger number of possible paths through hyperspace. Wikipedia abhors a deadend. Donald Albury 14:20, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- (That's pages, not articles. We "only" have 7,022,896 articles.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:20, 3 July 2025 (UTC)
