Talk:List of common misconceptions

Article split & transclusion

I've implemented the article split and transclusion of the sub-articles. Some implementation notes:

• Having the sub-articles in a subdirectory did not work as well in the main space as it does in a user space so the three sub-articles are at the root of the main space. If anyone has a better way to do this, I'm all ears.

• I've spot checked "What links here" and the dozen or so links to this page that I checked seem to work. I did not check them all.

• There are still three cites that I can't figure out how to prevent from being transcluded so they show up at the end of the article. Would appreciate any help with this.

• The new sub-articles have attracted attention from a few editors who don't seem to understand the context and have made some "helpful" edits - I expect more of this.

• Each sub-article has its own talk page and its own history. I'd recommend adding them to your watchlist since changes to them don't appear in the history here. Not sure what to do about potentially four different venues for discussion, but maybe it won't really matter in practice.

• Currently, there is no edit notice on the sub-articles. I'll take a look at adding these. UPDATE: the edit notice has been applied to the sub-pages.

Mr. Swordfish (talk) 01:24, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Could we perhaps package the include control and the ref tag into a template to make it easier to edit entries?

Something like {refnc|name=xxx|yyy} => <noinclude> <ref name=xxx> yyy </ref> </noinclude> and {refnc|xref=xxx} => <noinclude> <ref name=xxx /> .

By the way, why did you use onlyinclude and not noinclude, which seems easier to understand? --Macrakis (talk) 16:36, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not conversant with packaging controls into templates, but have no objection if it accomplishes what I think it accomplishes.

I used onlyinclude because that was how User:S Marshall did it in the mockup. noinclude is probably the better way to do it, but I was not aware of that tag until now. I'll take a look at changing it, shouldn't be too hard since it's mostly just a find and replace exercise. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 18:20, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Article is broken due to syntax errors in included pages

I have not read the second half of the page yet, but in the first half, I have noticed multiple occasions in which segments were clearly swallowed by other segments.

For example, the item about Du Bois reads

The African-American intellectual and activist W. E. B. Du Bois did not renounce his U.S. citizenship while living in Ghana shortly before his death. In early 1963, his membership in the Communist Party and support for the Soviet Union led the U.S. State Department to refuse to renew his passport while he was already in Ghana. After leaving the embassy, he stated his intention to renounce his citizenship in protest, but while he took Ghanaian citizenship, he never actually renounced his American citizenship. It is not true that by using the indefinite article ein, he changed the meaning of the sentence from the intended "I am a citizen of Berlin" to "I am a Berliner", a Berliner being a type of German pastry, similar to a jelly doughnut, amusing Germans. Furthermore, the pastry, which is known by many names in Germany, was not then — nor is it now — commonly called "Berliner" in the Berlin area.

clearly containing the correction for the myth surrounding Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.

The reason for this is that the included pages make extensive use of onlyinclude, and in some segments (such as the quoted one), this is done poorly: There seems to be some intention not to include the references, but by choosing to onlyinclude the text, rather than noincludeing the references, every time someone forgets to re-open the onlyinclude after the last reference of an item, the start of the next item is swallowed, all the way up to after the first reference of that segment, if the editor "properly" re-opened onlyincludeing after that reference.

This may be due to brute find/replace, since the page also includes numerous pointless empty onlyinclude segments, and in the given case, the error is caused by wrong usage of a self-closing ref-tag. In other words: It looks like somebody brutishly replaced <ref with </onlyinclude><ref and </ref> with </ref><onlyinclude>, and in those cases where people falsely inserted XHTML-style <ref />-tags there was no closing </ref>-tag and thus no opening <onlyinclude> being included.

I have left it as is, both for documentary purposes as well as because this approach is something fundamental to be debated by the self-elected maintainers of this page and correction will probably require checking and editing all pages that make up List of common misconceptions.
77.22.117.146 (talk) 17:02, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I have fixed this issue. Are there any others that you noticed? Mr. Swordfish (talk) 18:35, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The Islam section ends with unintroduced comments about Judaism. 89.1.140.176 (talk) 03:13, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. Fixed. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 03:20, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I have tested the RegEx /(?<=<\/onlyinclude>)(?:.(?!<onlyinclude>))*\n\*(?:.(?!<onlyinclude>))*/gs against both the old revision and the current one of the history subpage.

It found five matches on the old revision, none on the current.

So it does seem like you caught all the ones that were obvious. If you haven't done the other pages yet, feel free to try the Regex against their page sources.

No guarantees it'll catch everything, but it'll at least narrow down spots you should check.
77.22.117.146 (talk) 23:16, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Dodo misconceptions

The dodo is one of the most famous extinct species, and one of the most commonly cited examples of recent manmade extinctions. However, there are many erroneous beliefs about the dodo popularised by pop culture and misconceptions that should be on this list

1. "Dodo's were hunted to extinction due to their immaculate taste" This is untrue, as historical accounts wrote of its unsavoury flavour. Its extinction was mostly caused by invasive species as opposed to direct human predation like the passenger pigeon or quagga.
2. "The dodo was too stupid to survive" This is also untrue, as genetic research has shown that the dodo had average to above average intelligence like other species of pigeons. Its perceived "stupidity" is more akin to naivety and passivity caused by living in isolation without significant predators similar to the moas, Galápagos tortoises, and Steller's sea cow prior to being discovered by Europeans or the Māori. Sources: Dodos might have been quite intelligent, new research finds | ScienceDaily The Dodo and the Solitaire: A Natural History - Jolyon C. Parish - Google Books

Edelgardvonhresvelg (talk) 07:21, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Tripitaka Koreana

It is a popular misconception that the Tripitaka Koreana does not contain a single error;[23] a survey found that the text does indeed have missing characters and errors.[24][25] Benjamin (talk) 04:39, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

American Gothic entry

Reviewing the sourcing, it's not clear whether the woman depicted is supposed to be the wife or the daughter. Some sources clearly state "daughter" while others say that it is unclear. I'm raising the issue at the topic article since presumably the editors there are more familiar with the material.

I've commented out the entry pending resolution. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 23:34, 13 January 2025 (UTC)