Stopped reading after "Yet in the mathematical equations that define the Standard Model, the eight gluons are distinct from one another in the same way that the W and Z bosons differ."

W and Z bosons, photons, etc have fixed masses, charges, interaction strengths with other particles. These properties can exactly be listed and looked up in a table of elementary particles with discrete rows.

Gluon color is continuous property in a vector space. Gluons can have any color in that space, with any combination of the 8 basis vectors (and that choice of basis is also completely arbitrary). The color |g1> is no more valid than the color (|g1> + |g2> + |g8> / √3) or any other of infinite combinations.

Calling this "8 gluons" is like saying there's "3 photons" because they can have momentum in 3 dimensions. If you want to argue there's infinite kinds of gluons, go ahead, but there aren't 8.

> W and Z bosons, photons, etc have fixed masses, charges, interaction strengths with other particles.

But you can form a continuous set of linear combinations of these things, just as you can with gluons. Indeed, what the article calls W and Z bosons (and photons) are just such linear combinations--the ones that appear in the low energy limit after the electroweak phase transition occurs. Before that phase transition, different linear combinations (i.e., a different basis of the electroweak vector space) are the ones that naturally appear. So saying that there are two W, one Z, and one photon is really counting basis vectors in the electroweak vector space, just as saying there are 8 gluons is really counting basis vectors in the gluon sector of the strong interaction vector space.

The gluon with color (|g1> + |g2> + |g8>) / √3 is just a superposition of the gluons with colors g1, g2 and g8, the same way you can make superpositions of any other particles. You are right that the choice of basis vectors is arbitrary, but that doesn't make it wrong to count the number of dimensions. It also doesn't make it fundamentally different than, say, polarizations of photons or even flavors of quarks. You can have superpositions of photon polarizations or quark flavors.

All of these are continuous properties in an n-dimensional vector space.

And the different charge W bosons are just the same particle, via time reversal symmetry.

8 color indices, why not call that 8 particles what is the point of commenting like you are better than the article when you so clearly show you are not in one sentence never speak on physics again please

Huh, I didn't even know we had sub-species ID of gluons now