Talk:Dark matter: Difference between revisions

	Dark matter was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Current status: Delisted good article

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In the section Modified gravity, add the following sentence at the very end of the section (after the sentence ending with `…some form of dark matter present in the universe.[21]`):

A further physical hypothesis attributes the observed rotation curves to a time dilation dependent on the local length scale, which would obviate the need for additional matter.^[1]

Rationale: This adds another alternative hypothesis to the section for completeness, citing the author’s collection of works detailing the theory. Quantumnerd1 (talk) 11:33, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done. This appears to be a self-published by preprint by an author without any obvious expertise/reputation as a physicist, see Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_sources and WP:PREPRINT Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:20, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article is in the following category:

• Articles with unsourced statements from April 2016

This is not severe except that there are other unsourced and untagged materials. Two paragraphs in the “Undiscovered massive particles” subsection have dangling content after the source. The first paragraph of the “Primordial black holes” subsection is unsourced.

The B-class criteria #1 states, The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations. It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited. Although some could just be misplaced, sourcing it is likely that not all are. — Otr500 (talk) 13:58, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please tag the paragraphs/sentences with {{cn}} directly. Putting a list in the Talk page just creates more work. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:38, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I worked on those two areas. The statements are supported by nearby citations, but not always subsequent refs, and sometimes after intermediate refs. If there are concerns about specific statements I would be glad to move refs to better locations, or add named refs in additional locations. Amientan (talk) 07:58, 20 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Comparing to this, I think the article right now reads worse. The logical flow is disrupted since the various dark matter candidates are no longer discussed together; furthermore, all the different subsections have the same section heading format (at least they are not very different from one another). Direct detection of particle-based dark matter ought to be its own section. I prefer the original ordering. Wondering what others think about this. Banedon (talk) 14:40, 20 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Amientan made a lot of changes and we did not intervene. I think it is unreasonable to undo all of it based on an issue around the content on dark matter candidates. Is your primary concern the section “Composition”? Maybe you can give more details of your concerns? I agree that the current organization of this section has some puzzling choices. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:19, 21 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The whole point of the reorganization is that particle dark matter theories, implications, and detection attempts were discussed in different places throughout the article. Now they are all together, with the “Composition” section being a coherent outline tree structure instead of a flat list of disconnected topics. The section on direct detection of particles was its own section before and still is its own section now, but now it’s under the detection attempts heading, under particles, under non-baryonic, under composition. Honestly your concerns are exactly what I tried to address. Amientan (talk) 21:05, 21 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]