Talk:Quantum computing

Merge: Q17995793 Quantum Computing / Q176555 Quantum Computer Reason: Language links

They lead to the exact same article, but the Quantum Computing language links seem to supersede the Quantum Computer one. So there are about 30 links language links missing from the Quantum Computing article. Justcheckingin (talk) 05:22, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I see the issue that you are talking about, but I am not very familiar with Wikidata, so I am not sure about the best course of action. It seems that other languages of Wikipedia have separate articles for the two, like pt:Computação quântica and pt:Computador quântico, so I do not know whether it would be best to merge d:Q17995793 and d:Q176555 or just to add the missing language links to d:Q17995793. It might be worth asking at the help desk or teahouse (or maybe asking at the Wikidata project site instead).  — Freoh 11:11, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

If I understand the wikidata guide page wikidata:Wikidata:Sitelinks to redirects correctly, the solution is to make sitelinks to redirect pages and tag them with a badge “intentional redirect”. I wonder if there is a tool to do this since otherwise it involves a lot of manual labour. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 15:51, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I made a query here: wikidata:Wikidata:Project chat#Quantum computing and quantum computer Jähmefyysikko (talk) 16:47, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Received a reply: It should indeed be done by adding sitelinks to redirects, but unfortunately there is no tool. Also, I noticed that in some wikis, there are no redirects to their Quantum computing/computer page. In this case it is not possible to make a sitelink directly, but it would require a creation of a new redirect page to that wiki. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 11:59, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Jähmefyysikko, if I understand correctly, the best solution here would be to ensure that every language of Wikipedia that has a quantum computer page also has a quantum computing page (and vice versa), creating a new redirect for languages that have one but not the other. I do not speak most of these languages, so I do not feel comfortable making dozens of redirect pages with titles that I do not understand. Do you think that it would be appropriate to add Wikidata entries pointing directly to the existing pages? For example, adding an entry to d:Q17995793 linking to als:Quantencomputer? Then, we could leave it to people who speak those languages to create the quantum computing redirects and update the Wikidata entry to the (more precise) sitelink to redirect.  — Freoh 11:58, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree that we should not make new redirects to foreign wikis. Also, it is not possible to link d:Q17995793 to als:Quantencomputer, since that page is already linked to d:Q176555.

I did link some wikis (in european languages with which I am not very unconfortable with) to existing redirects, but beyond that I do not think there is much we can do from here. It is up to those wikis to create the pages and add sitelinks if they wish to. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 13:42, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Why is Skepticism buried so deep?

Given that Quantum Computing is far from producing useful results (aside from deliberately far-fetched demos), why is the material on Skepticism buried so deep under engineering? I would think that most of the readers aren't as interested in the mathematical formalisms as in whether QC is living up to the hype. Igor Markov 00:39, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Igor Markov for your recent additions to the article! I agree that we should make these limitations more prominent, but I think that we should avoid a dedicated top-level criticism section. I have just added an introductory paragraph to § Engineering that gives some better context, and I think that we could include more balance throughout the article. For example, as soon as we introduce quantum search, we could mention that the quadratic speedup is unlikely to be useful anytime soon. I will try to trim the mathematical formalisms in § Quantum information processing, but I think that it would be better to mention algorithmic problems in § Algorithms and engineering challenges in § Engineering rather than having a separate uselessness section.  — Freoh 22:48, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

@Freoh, this makes sense, except that it's more work :) If you can make such changes, all the power to you.

- Igor Markov 23:10, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

References

Lead too long

The lead on this article is too long. To be more readable to a wider audience, it should be shorter.

I caution anyone against putting a simple "lead too long" template on the article (Template:Lead too long), because it will show the message at the top of the article to all readers, whether or not they have the ability or desire to change the article. However, here on the talk page this message may be more signal and less noise. 96.227.223.203 (talk) 02:28, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Expression "exponentially faster" etc makes no sense!

I have corrected the wrongful use of the word "exponentially" in a couple of places where it was simply meant as an equivalent to "a lot". I am aware of this trend where "exponentially" has become a buzzword. But.. The word "exponential" is a well defined mathematical term (see article Exponential growth). Seeing expressions such as "expeonentially faster" etc in cheap tv-movies is one thing that one may shake one's head at and shrug. But, not least for reasons of clarity, I don't think this kind of buzzwording should occur in a technical Wikipedia article.

- RP Nielsen (talk) 13:02, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I support your change as an improvement. But "exponentially" does have a legit common meaning as "a very lot" in addition to it's mathematical meaning. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:26, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I reverted the change, because the use of "exponential" there was not "wrongful" or equivalent to "a lot". The whole point of the best know quantum algorithms is that they provide an exponential speedup over the bets known (and, as conjectured, the best possible) classical algorithms. Here "exponential speedup" means that as a function of input size (in bits) the best classical algororithms take an exponentially growing number of steps, while the best quantum algorithms only need a polynomial number of steps. Shor's algorithm is the best know example, but there are many more, see Quantum Algorithm Zoo.--Qcomp (talk) 00:11, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Well in that case perhaps that needs to be clarified, because the way it is presently articulated is confusing and misleading (as one is prone to think that "exponential" is used in the popular, 'urban' sense mentioned before), so I would say that at the very least those parts of the article need to be re-articulated, and special expressions or special use tof, need to be clarified. - The whole point of encyclopedic articles is to explain the topic to non-experts; in other words that one don't have to already be an expert who knows all the inside esoteric phrases, to be able to read the article.

- RP Nielsen (talk) 13:06, 3 November 2023 (UTC)