Talk:Cycle studies

I put this page in as cycles and it was changed to cycle by someone else. This does not seem a good idea to me as "cycles" usually means the repeating type which this article is about, while "cycle" can mean either a process (such as the "carbon cycle") or uni-, bi- or tri- cycle. So I am going to try and change it back to "cycles". Ray Tomes

According to Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Prefer singular nouns articles usually go under their singular form by convention. Dori | Talk 22:12, Mar 17, 2004 (UTC)

For future reference, the reason you couldn't move it back is because it was improperly moved in the first place - it should always be done with the "move this page" link on the left - see Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page. If there has only ever been one redirect on the page, it should be overwriteable; otherwise you may need to ask for it to be deleted first.

However, I think in this case "cycle" is the correct title, as per naming conventions - you can certainly have one economic cycle, or one seasonal cycle. So I suggest a sysop/admin merge the history from Cycles here - there isn't much, so it's not urgent, but it's good to be able to give credit where it's due. - IMSoP 23:32, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

In this case the study of cycle makes no sense, it is only done wheh there are more than one  :-) RayTomes 02:42, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Having looked through my books on Cycles I find that I have 7 books with "Cycles" in the title and only one very ancient one with "Cycle" and I have magazines called "Cycles" and so it is clearly common usage. Someone please help me to put it back to "Cycles". The article Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Prefer_singular_nouns uses examples of economics and trousers as OK with "s" and I think cycles is the same. RayTomes 03:22, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I still disagree. The full page Wikipedia:Naming conventions (pluralization) and its discussion give some good reasons for sticking to the use singular policy. Even with a redirect in place, a plural title confuses the issue for newcomers who don't know that [[word]]s is more likely to work than [[words|word]].

A more concrete and specific reason can be obtained from the current text itself, in which various kinds of cycle are happily singular - there is a link, for example to the solar sunspot cycle. The only reason economic cycles is plural, is because it describes a category of cycles - each one would be a particular cycle. In fact, I've just realised that you referred to the carbon cycle at the top of this talk page - nothing goes through carbon cycles, merely through the carbon cycle.

Your usage would be correct for things like the "carbon cycle". However this article does not deal with that usage of cyle as a process but with cycles as repeating phenomena in time. It is rather rare to use cycle in that way although I agree that it is used for Sunspot cycle. RayTomes 23:18, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Point is, use of the plural or not would not be sufficient to distinguish between the two meanings anyway, so if there is a distinction (which I don't understand) we'd need to either cover both in one article or use the standard article (version) disambiguation style. Besides, I still can't see an example in the article where it's in the plural for any other reason than it's describing more than one cycle that fall into the same category (weather cycles, economic cycles, etc. - the latter is even linked as both singular and plural, rather proving the point). - IMSoP 23:47, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Having said all that, the bottom half of this article seems to have turned into a list of cycles, which probably deserves its own article seperate from discussion of the concept of a cycle (and nobody's going to claim you should have a list of cycle!) - IMSoP 14:48, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. :-) RayTomes 23:18, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I moved the page back from cycle to cycles. RayTomes 03:31, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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OK, I've gone through and edited this page as though it were living at Cycle, since I still don't see any reason for it not to. I've left the current version in place, though, to avoid an edit war, so my version can be seen at User:IMSoP/sandbox (where you can view what I changed (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:IMSoP/sandbox&dummy=1&diff=2852185&oldid=2851880)) or as this "old" version of Cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Cycle&oldid=2852072)

Ok, thanks for not moving it again. Maybe we could ask some other opinions on this becauise I still feel strongly that "cycles" is the right term. RT

A few things I noted while editing, some related to the naming issue, some simply Wikipedia conventions you may not have picked up on yet:

• "cycles studies" sounds like bad English: "cycle studies" or "studies of cycles" seem better, and point to the validity of Cycle

"studies of cycles" sounds good - it keeps the Foundation for the Study of Cycles alive a little bit. RT

• my version assumes we would also move Economic cycles to Economic cycle

This is the same as cycle vs cycles. RT

• your link to ice ages proves the need for consistency - being familiar with policy told me it probably existed at ice age, and indeed it does.

I admit that my study of cycles has biased me to thinking in the plural about things like ice ages. Sure, you can have one ice age.  :-) RT

• you mention a couple of researchers by surname only; this is probably valid usage in context, but they presumably have first names, and the articles for them would be at their full name, so you should probably use a link of the form [[Firstname Lastname|Lastname]]. I've put comments saying <insert name here> in various places, since I'm no expert in this myself, but get the impression that you will be able to fill in the information. If you don't know, I suggest you simply leave the names unlinked, or possibly remove them altogether.

Right. I have first names for some, initials for some and will have to search out others, so this will happen in stages but the point is taken. RT

• you may want to read the manual of style guidelines on links. It is generally agreed that articles should not be too covered in links, although the exact details are contraversial. To this end, I've tried to reduce the tendency of the article to have lists of links, as well as avoiding linking to the same article more than once.

I am learning about the style. I did overdo the links. And the point about repeats is taken. RT

• I looked through the list of links at the bottom of the page, and it looks like you have simply copied the results of one or more searches. Since any user can do this for themselves, this doesn't seem to add any value to the article. I've therefore trimmed it down to a more managable size. I'm not sure if I've chosen the best ones, but this is probably the maximum useful length for such a list.

Actually I did a bit more than that. Searching for "geological cycles" etc was the starting basis, but I found that often the items I found belonged better in another group. So I do think that the list would save people a lot of work. It took me quite some time to do this. RT

I hope I haven't taken out anything that you should have stayed in, or otherwise "gone too far". If you have any questions about why I made certain changes, or about Wikipedia in general, please feel free to ask. - IMSoP 04:02, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I haven't checked to see if you have removed anything that you shouldn't. I will have a further look. RT=RayTomes 09:25, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• I have asked 2 people, User:Isomorphic and User:XJamRastafire to have a look at cycles and this page and your link and give advice. If they both say that it should be "cycle" and not "cycles" I will concede. The same for economic cycles. RayTomes 10:27, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• With regard to the list of links, I think that it should stay otherwise I accept your comments and suggestions (subject to anything I didn't notice yet). The links are intended to follow a similar style to other major subject headings like physics, geology, biology etc. Although it might not be known on the same scale, cycles is a major heading because of its very interdisciplinary nature. Hey I just notices "physics" isn't "physic" :-) RayTomes 10:27, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hey I just noticed "physics" isn't "physic" - that's cos you can't have "one physic" :p Linguistic oddities aside, however, I've put this page on Wikipedia:Requests for comment, so hopefully a few people will come along and have an opinion to break the deadlock soon. - IMSoP 12:24, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

With respect to your point about the lists on other areas of study, I grant that my version probably cuts out a little too much. However, I still think the current version contains so many links that it is of little practical use - for instance:

• the various list of <foo> topics links, especially List of physics topics R-Z, are better covered by mentioning somewhere that the study of cycles is related to the study of <foo>, where <foo> has a link to list of <foo> topics already.
• similarly, articles already linked to from a more general one - such as the various types and properties of waves, or different kinds of calendar - are implicitly included by linking to that more general one. Unless any of them have particular relevance to cycles, it seems rather redundant to list them all. (And if some aren't listed where you think they should be, you can of course add them)
• topics which have some relationship to cycles, but which aren't intrinsically related to cycles - such as moon and the various links which essentially boil down to color - are better off having a link pointing to this article ("The range of hues can be considered a [[cycle]]", for example).
• some of the articles currently listed seem to have essentially nothing to do with cycles, such as puberty and video game, and therefore constitute noise with respect to the purpose of the list - as I say, if someone wants to search for the word "cycle", they can do so themselves.

Yes, video game seems to be an error on my part. Puberty was to do with menstrual cycles and should be replaced with a link to that if there is such a topic. RayTomes 07:55, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• finally, it is generally considered unnecessary to list articles multiple times - you may find you can drastically cut down the number of sections anyway, if you agree with my criteria above, but certainly listing Milutin Milankovic and his cycles multiple times seems rather a waste of space, especially given that they are already referred to within the main text of the article.

Well Milankovic is best known for cycles that explain ice ages. However ice ages obviously show up in geological deposits too. So a geologist would just as interested as a climatologist. I don't see any reason not to have it in both. RayTomes 07:55, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I hope this doesn't seem too over-critical of your work so far, but I think this is a case where a little less would be a little more. - IMSoP 20:55, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I am not worried about criticism per se, and respect many of the points and I am learning this wikipedia stuff. However a list of links can be a valuable resource. I have tried to add a small link in each of the major topics like geology to cycles although I haven't gone to "#geological cycles" which I think is possible (help on this please). By such means the parts of the list can be a useful resource for any geologist who goes directly to the right part and looks there, tho' they are free to look more widely as well. RayTomes 07:55, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This is already covered at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (pluralization). In short, the singular form is the right one in almost all cases. This is one of those cases IMO. --mav 05:49, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

A cycle is a single pattern that is repeating itself. Ray's comment that "the study of cycle makes no sense" is just grammar confusion - astronomy is not "the study of star." You can easilly talk about "the concept of a cycle." The word "cycle" refers in this case to the underlying pattern, so it makes perfect sense to talk about it in the singular. "Cycle" can also refer to a single instance of the pattern, e.g. "The sensors will be working by the start of the next sunspot cycle." But that's not how the word is being used in the title. Hence, article should be at "cycle." Isomorphic 16:51, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think that this is equally true of Economics as it is of Cycles. And it may be true that economic has a somewhat different slant to its meaning to economics, but so can cycle to cycles. Almost every book that I have on cycles uses "cycles" not "cycle" and there was the Foundation for the Study of Cycles. I always search for cycles with google and not cycle. Cycle is better reserved for a different type of thing, like the carbon cycle. RayTomes 06:09, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Firstly, "economics" is a bad example because there is no such thing as the singular noun "economic"; there's an adjective, but that's essentially coincidence. However, there is a wider issue, which is that if (as you claim) there are two distinct articles to be had here, having one of them at "cycle" and one at "cycles" would be just plain confusing, since both terms will in fact be used in reference to both topics. Perhaps if you can think of a way of stating the distinction, we could come up with a better pair of article titles to cover it. - IMSoP 12:50, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Actually, it seems to me like Cycle should be a disambiguation page, pointing not only to Cycles for the meaning of recurring processes, but also to Cycling the sport, and perhaps to the various types of Cycle (uni-, bi-, tri-). --Michael Snow 16:12, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Name, again

There was a suggestion above to move this page to "cycle studies", but nobody agreed or disagreed. Hence I'm raising this suggestion again. Please comment in the next few days.

(In this case cycle would become a disambig page) Gadykozma 03:13, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No comment so I'm moving forward. Gadykozma 13:06, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)