Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics

Portal updates

I'm going to be away from Wikipedia for a few weeks and I haven't had time to update the Mathematics portal. It will go bust next Monday unless someone updates it. Every week the portal looks for a new article of the week at a specific page. These pages need to be written ahead of time. Specifically, someone needs to fill out

• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 21
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 22
• Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 23

You can copy the basic structure from Portal:Mathematics/Featured article/2007 20. Just pick your favorite article and write a short blurb about it. Pictures are good. You can see a list of articles already featured at Portal:Mathematics/Featured article archive. -- Fropuff 07:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Some potential choices, culled from a discussion at the Reference desk proceeding from a request for an interesting math topic for a high-school presentation:

• Pascal's triangle (B?) article is a mess
• Interesting number paradox (stub) Too short
• Fractal (B+) Selected for 21
• Zeno's paradoxes (B+)
• Tic-tac-toe (B)
• Topology (B)
• Cardinal number (B) Difficult to find a good image; Continuum hypothesis used recently.
• Ordinal number (GA)
• p-adic number (B)
• Platonic solid (B+) Used recently
• Minimal surface (stub) Too short
• Monty Hall Problem (FA) but used last year
• Nomogram (start) Too short
• Analog computer (B)
• Map projection (GA) Selected for 22

 --Lambiam^Talk 19:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I've commented on the above. Here also is the list from Portal:Mathematics/Suggestions. Cronholm will be shocked that some of the above have not yet been rated! Geometry guy 11:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

• Derivative (GA)
• Nash equilibrium (GA)
• Ordinal number (GA)
• Order theory (GA)
• String theory (GA)
• Sylvester's sequence (GA)
• Znám's problem (GA)

To save this from breaking, I've arbitrarily put Fractal in the next portal. The blurb is just a cut and paste from the introduction, so needs improvement. Geometry guy 12:06, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

The only one that shocked me was Zeno's paradoxes and Platonic solids,the rest I can understand, I have updated the ratings.this is the other Cronholm144--Πρ 03:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Sadly noone improved Fractal or has made any further suggestions. One option is to go for Pascal's triangle next, even though it needs a bit of work. There is a colourful Image:Sierpinski-rgb.png to use as the lead image, connecting fractals and binomial coefficients. Just a thought. Geometry guy 19:41, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I tried to improve Pascal's triangle, but the closer I looked, the more I found it a confusing mess. I think this one is hopeless for the portal. Most of the other articles above are either too ragged, or don't seem to offer the prospect of a decent image. Map projection might be okay, so I would suggest that. Any comments? Geometry guy 15:32, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

A quick skim of map projection is encouraging; looks like an above average article with a variety of content, broad appeal, and numerous figures and links. The most apparent weakness is that the mathematics does not go very deep. --KSmrq^T 15:19, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Now copied in... Geometry guy 12:56, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

...but with a link to Fractal, which a user kindly fixed today. Unfortunately it is too much work to bring deep mathematics to the portal, and no one appears to be up for that, so I've found a nice A-class basics article, namely Golden section for number 23. I guess we will just have to ask Fropuff please not to take any more holidays ;) Geometry guy 18:32, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Liminal property

According to this article, "liminally compact" is another way to say "locally compact". I asked the author of the page two months ago whether some reference could be added (see User talk:Wikimorphism). I got a reply that it was definitely used as claimed in the article, but no references have appeared and the author has vanished. So, is anybody familiar with this usage? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Apparently the contributor was not sure it had every appeared in print. The article is only a stub, and a dubious one at that, so it would be no great burden to recreate it should the need arise. I have PRODed it. --KSmrq^T 13:19, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Uh... I think I made a mistake on this one. :( after the PROD expired I "deleted" the article, but I don't think I have the power to actually delete articles. Could an admin fix my mistake? Thanks--Cronholm144 19:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Importance of mathematics articles

I promised several visitors to my talk page to initiate a discussion here about importance ratings in the maths rating system, and this seemed an appropriate moment to do so.

Although there are many articles for which the current class grading is wrong (and I have made many such mistakes), it is usually clearly or uncontroversially wrong, and therefore easy to fix. Importance is harder to handle for at least three reasons:

1. lack of clear definitions of what the importance levels mean (in particular, for mathematics articles);
2. lack of guidance on the context within which importance should be assessed;
3. are we rating the importance of the topic or the article?

First, here are the current definitions:

• Top Subject is a must-have for a print encyclopaedia
• High Subject contributes a depth of knowledge
• Mid Subject fills in more minor details
• Low (WP 1.0) Subject is mainly of specialist interest. (WP 1.0 Math) Subject is peripheral knowledge, possibly trivial.

The top and low importance seem to me to be the most problematic. What does "a must-have for a print encyclopedia" mean? Which encyclopedia? EB? An encyclopedia of mathematics? And does "must-have" mean that such encyclopedias have an article on the topic, or that there would be mass protests if the article were removed? As for low importance, is "specialist" the same as "peripheral"? It certainly isn't the same as "trivial". Also there seems to be quite a gap between Low and Mid, which means that Mid is getting overloaded.

A proposal to update the scheme has been made, which seems to be an improvement in some ways, but not in others. For example, it concentrates a lot on whether a topic has achieved local, continental or international notability, which is largely irrelevant for mathematics. Also it seems confused over the second issue above, context.

Consider e.g., motive (algebraic geometry): this is an extremely important topic in modern high-brow algebraic geometry, but within geometry as a whole it is relatively less so. How can we compare it to platonic solid, for example? And within mathematics as a whole it is certainly only of specialist interest, and hence, arguably, peripheral.

So far I have been taking the view that it is more helpful to assess the importance of a topic within its own context, since it is more discriminating. However, I think this needs to be discussed.

Finally, articles vs topic. For articles about mathematical subjects, the distinction is probably rather minor, but for articles about mathematicians, there is another closely related question: are we rating the importance of the mathematician or the article? So far, I believe we have been following the WikiProject Biography guidelines, which suggest the former.

To illustrate the difference, consider Ramanujan. Certainly he was a genius who made remarkable contributions, but his impact on mathematics is not in the same league as Euler or Gauss. Yet an article on Ramanujan is a must-have, not only because of his contributions, but because of the fascinating story, and the deep insights it provides into the mind of a mathematical genius.

I think these issues need to be clarified in a way that makes the importance rating as useful as possible to the Maths Project, and that we really need to have mathematics-specific descriptors. Geometry guy 15:26, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Overall importance or within context?

I think that we should have relatively few articles of "top" importance (say, 2% = 300 articles within mathematics) and that the majority of articles should be "low" importance. Articles of "top" importance should appeal to non-mathematicians so they can't be about deep concepts; there may be some exceptions like Poincaré conjecture that are important in maths and have hit the headlines in the newspapers. That means that we should be very selective: after 50 or so mathematicians and elementary stuff like square, triangle, addition, there is not much left.

"The importance of a topic within its own context" depends a lot on what you consider to be its own context. The article on pseudo-differentiable quasi-widgets is not that important in the context of mathematics, more important in widget theory, and crucial to the theory of pseudo-differentiable quasi-widgets. I hope that Geometry guy can clarify this point.

As an example, I'll explain the ratings that I have in mind for numerical analysis:

• Top: only numerical analysis itself.
• High: major subfields like optimization, interpolation, root finding, numerical integration; and also the most important methods (I haven't thought this through, but I'm thinking about Gaussian elimination, Newton method, fast Fourier transform, and no others); about a dozen in total.
• The rest to be divided between mid and low.

I haven't rated any of the articles mentioned, except numerical analysis which I upgraded from "high" to "top", so I've no idea what the actual importance ratings are. But I've seen quite a lot of articles being rated, and most importance ratings match with how I'd rate them. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

This is quite a different view to the one I was trying to express, but I think I agree with some of the points. At the moment there are 135 Top importance articles. About 2200 have been rated so far, and I estimate that there are about 6000 articles worth rating at the moment. So 300 seems to be about the right ballpark, although since Top importance articles are more likely to have been rated already, we are possibly undershooting. I also agree that we should have #{Low} > #{Mid} > #{High} > #{Top}. This is not going to happen with the current definition of "Low", because editors who have worked hard on articles they are interested in are hardly going to call the subject "peripheral". For instance Lazy caterer's sequence is currently rated "High" (see the talk page history). At the moment there are more mid importance articles.

The main point where I disagree with Jitse is on the prioritization of elementary mathematics. I don't think we should be afraid to say, for example, that the Atiyah-Singer index theorem is High importance (possibly even Top). This is partly because I find it unhelpful to think of WP as a single encyclopedia like EB (which is 20 times smaller, with only about 70000 articles on 1/2 million topics) — it is more like a nested family of overlapping encyclopedias. Within our Encyclopedia of Mathematics, there is also an Encyclopedia of Numerical Analysis, and so on.

So I think there is a good case to be made for rating importance within context. When I wrote the above I wasn't sure what this should mean, but following the discussion below, I think context should be interpreted using categories. Thus if Category:pseudo-differentiable quasi-widget contains a large number of varied articles in it (and its subcategories), we can be pretty confident that its lead article is very important! On the other hand if the category doesn't exist, or is rather meagre, then the context for pseudo-differentiable quasi-widgets will be a category like Category:widget theory in which it could be of rather low importance, or it could be one of the major examples.

From this point of view, Optimization (mathematics) is probably Top importance. On the other hand Square (geometry) is probably not. Triangle is also currently rated "High", but "Top" is arguably more appropriate. Addition is, of course, top importance. Geometry guy 16:49, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Re: This is not going to happen with the current definition of "Low", because editors who have worked hard on articles they are interested in are hardly going to call the subject "peripheral". — there is some of that, I'm sure, but I wonder if there's also a selection effect here: the articles that get enough attention to be rated are also less likely to be on topics of low importance. —David Eppstein 06:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

List of fields

I would like to propose expanding the current list of Fields for the rating scheme. Especially if we take up Geometry guy's suggestion to assess importance within its own context, it's crucial to have a proper classification for various contexts (i.e., fields) that can occur. In particular, I strongly believe that Algebraic geometry should be its own field, not part of Geometry and topology. This would greatly alleviate some of the thorny issues mentioned above, not just concerning motives, but pretty much all modern algebraic geometry. Arcfrk 03:14, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I definitely think we need to re-consider field, problematic articles abound say Talk:Cross product and Talk:Sheaf (mathematics) both have reasons for being in geometry and algebra, the latter could nicely fit in algebraic geometry but the former less so. One possibility is to have allow two fields so you could have field=algebra and field2=geometry. There is also a good case for an algebraic geometry field as there are a large class of articles in this group. There is also the mathematician who could well do with being listed by their field of study as well. The danger with too much expansion is that we end up duplicating the category system.

As to importance, I've always been a fan of the proposal mentioned above as it seem to be a more objective criteria, loosely we could have coverage or scope

• Of high importance across all numerate discipline - everyone should know this
• Of high importance throughout mathematics - all mathematicians should know this
• Of high importance in a major field of mathematics - all those working in the field should know this
• Of importance within one field (high importance in a sub-field) - most working in the field would know this
• Mainly limited to a sub-field
• Specialist, mainly work of one researcher.

Curiously principal component analysis could be applied to this: there are several ways to rate articles: how well known something is, the number of fields/sub-fields its covered by, how useful the result is, when its likely to be taught. These are likely to have a strong level of correlation. Assuming you could give each of these a numeric score, you could put all of these into a big matrix, find the cross correlation matrix and perform SVD to get the largest eigen vector, representing the principal mode of variation. When you get at the end is probably the important score. The task is then to find a set of words which descibes this well. ::--Salix alba (talk) 09:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Look again at sheaves; they are relevant to logic as well as geometry, with topos theory as common ground. In fact, MacLane and Moerdijk have written Sheaves in Geometry and Logic: A First Introduction to Topos Theory (ISBN 978-0-387-97710-2). We lose deeply interesting connections in mathematics when we try to force every topic into exactly one area. As for algebraic geometry, I think it transformed into a rather different field when it refounded itself on schemes, something that can be very confusing for a reader at the level of, say, Bézout's theorem. For example, on page 294 of Hartshorne we find, "In other words, a curve is an integral scheme of dimension 1, proper over k, all of whose local rings are regular." Few of our readers would see it that way! I'm not sure what the implications should be for this discussion, but it should at least caution us that different readers and different editors may frame a subject in radically different ways. --KSmrq^T 09:41, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Interesting comments! There are certainly problems with the field system — in particular, the fact that only one field can be assigned means that compromises have to be made. However, I have not found this so difficult in practice: for instance Cross product is clearly an article set in the context of elementary Euclidean geometry, even though the same concept could be discussed in a more abstract-algebraic way. I also don't have a problem with the fact that the same subject can seem quite different at different levels of abstraction. For me, sheaves a very geometrical way of looking at things, even logic, but then I would say that ;) — there is certainly a case that they belong in foundations.

I would prefer, as far as possible, to take a pragmatic point of view. I think a field2 would overcomplicate the system. For mathematicians, an alternative would be to use the same trick that has been introduced for historical articles, i.e., replace the mathematician field (which isn't a field anyway) by a mathematician=yes tag.

I agree with Salix alba that we don't want to start duplicating the category system: categories provide plenty of context for importance assessment, and also address some of KSmrq remarks. So I am against expanding the field system to take on this role: it isn't up to the job, it isn't needed, it would be too complicated and too much work.

Pragmatically, fields were introduced to break up the assessed articles into manageable groups. I would therefore propose just to split up fields when they become too large. At the moment algebra and geometry and topology have twice as many entries as any other field, and there is no sign that this trend will change. Myself, I'd prefer to split the latter into geometry and topology, rather than separate out algebraic geometry (partly because of the overlap with number theory and algebra). (In fact, I'd already been planning to do that!)

Any ideas for subdividing algebra? Geometry guy 11:10, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

On the question of field2, there have been a few articles that have crossed my Watchlist recently, where I think there's quite a strong case, eg:

• Talk: Information theory. Currently Applied mathematics. Also Probability and statistics ?
• Talk: Information entropy. Currently Probability and statistics
• Talk: Asymptotic equipartition property. Currently Probability and statistics Applied mathematics.
• Talk: Sigma algebra. Currently Probability and statistics Analysis
• Talk: Spinor. Currently Geometry and topology. Also Mathematical physics ?
• Talk: Spectral theorem. Currently Analysis. Also Algebra ?

... etc.

Bearing in mind that the most important thing is the reverse lookup here -- ie what shape are articles in that are important under Probability and Statistics, under Applied Maths, etc., I think it may be quite valuable for a few articles for their ratings to appear on more than one of the sub-lists.

I also wonder whether it's right that Numerical Methods appear to be by default being filed under Analysis? (eg: Talk: Newton's method) Jheald 15:20, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually it is quite easy to list an article under more than one field because VeblenBot produces the tables using "What links here". All you have to do is link the relevant field page on the article talk page. However, I'm worried that this could be overused, which might reduce some of the benefits of breaking up the articles by approximate field.

For instance, information theory relates to probability, statistics, physics, and applied mathematics, but it may be better to decide on one of them. I'd prefer to go with applied, since it best reflects the variety of applications/influences. Also the applied mathematics field is rather underpopulated, and not yet clearly defined: its meaning is partly going to be determined by which topics we decide it covers. For instance, we may decide that it covers numerical analysis as well. A similar decision (between probability and analysis) could be made for topics in measure theory.

In other cases, the existence of two plausible fields may suggest a need to actually have two articles! I think this is the case for Spectral theorem, and spinor field seems to be a redirect with possibilities! Geometry guy 17:16, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

PS. A lot of these issues will go away if/when Wikipedia:Category_intersection is implemented.

I would suggest pretty much all articles on information theory subjects at least go under Probability and Statistics, because it is very much a statistical idea, dealing with probabilistic quantities; and it is often provides useful ways to think about statistics and statistical questions. It is very much another tool in the statistical armoury. Information theory itself should maybe dually go under Applied mathematics as well, but constituent articles on subjects like Information Entropy, Asymptotic Equipartition Property, Minimum Message Length etc ought primarily to be under Probability & Statistics. Jheald 21:40, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

You may be right, I am no expert, but I am a little wary of the argument that information theory is another tool in the statistical armoury. I can only attempt an analogy: the derivative of a function is very much a geometrical idea, dealing with tangency between a line and a curve, or more generally, tangency of a linear subspace; it is one of the major tools in differential geometry. Does that mean it is most helpful to place Derivative in the geometry field? We have to try and remember that the maths rating field is not a categorization, but an organizational tool. Geometry guy 22:26, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I am a bit surprised to have encountered such entrenched resistance against introducing Algebraic geometry as a new field for the purposes of the rating project. For once, I would have to regretfully conclude that Geometry guy's argumentation, which is usually a model of clarity, is self-contradictory. If the field Geometry and topology is getting overloaded, then it would seemingly make sense to split off Algebraic geometry, which is uncontroversially a well-defined field of its own, with its peculiar scale of importance. Moreover, he amply illustrates the need to assign the proper context in order to rate the article, so that we do not end up comparing motive (mathematics) with platonic solid (both currently within Geometry and topology). Additional pragmatic advantages would include simplifying the task of raters and making the whole process more objective. In particular,

• it would help editors pick the articles in subjects that they are experts in and in which they can provide a fair rating and, especially, helpful comments for further development;
• for the editors involved in broad rating project across multiple fields, it would streamline the process of assigning the importance by gauging it within the correct field.

Other comments: I quite like Salix alba's definitions of levels of scope/importance, as the ones currently in use really make me scratch my head for nearly every article save the very top importance class, such as Geometry, or clearly technical ones a la Apothem. We just need to come up with descriptive, easily remembered names for his six classes. I also think that to be useful the list of fields should be less precise than the AMS Subject Classification (and of course, the categories system), but agree with Jheald's point that the reverse look up feature makes multiple fields desirable in some instances. As for specific examples of expansion, besides my suggestion of Algebraic geometry above, I think that Numerical methods should not be part of Analysis and (unless it is already covered by Applied mathematics) deserves to be its own field; and Representation theory can be split off Algebra. Arcfrk 00:40, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I have filed all "numerical analysis" articles under "applied". We should at least be consistent (of course I think that I'm right and that it should go under "applied" instead of "analysis"). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 01:53, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree and would be happy for us adopt this as a convention, accepting that their can also be a deep analytical compoment in numerical analysis. I would like to adopt a similar convention for information theory. Another issue (which maybe deserves a separate debate) is Galois theory. At present the categories emphasize the algebraic rather than number-theoretic aspects of this, which surprised me. Geometry guy 02:36, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I only have time to reply briefly to Arcfrk. I'm sorry I was not clear, but I don't think I was being self-contradictory, nor do I see here any entrenched resistence, just a preference, expressed only by me, to split geometry and topology into a geometry field, and a topology field. The problem I have with algebraic geometry as an organizational field (rather than a category) is that it has too many points of view: arithmetic, algebraic, analytic and geometric. The overlap between number theory and algebra is already quite tricky without bringing arithmetic algebraic geometry into the picture. One would also have to decide which parts of commutative algebra are algebraic geometry (well, all of it really, but then I would say that ;) )

However, the main point I was trying to make by comparing motives with platonic solids was not that these are incomparable because one is geometry and the other is algebraic geometry. The same argument would apply to a triangle and an exotic sphere, or to an elliptic curve and a Grothendieck topos. They are incomparable. This is why I believe that context should be provided by categories, not by broad-brush fields. There is no need to reinvent the category system here. Geometry guy 02:36, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Linking to article hierarchy

I was starting a thread on the same topic as this one but one day later on the wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 page and expressing my viewpoint that the importance assessment should better be done within the context of all of maths. Based on the discussion above, my augmented list of arguments in favour of single maths context for importance is the following:

• Assessment within disciplines would lead to a serious proliferation of Top/High labels; this I think is inevitable unless an unusual number of articles turned out to be more important viewed accross categories/fields/subdisciplines than within them, which I find hard to believe;
• Deciding how finely grained subdisciplines to use adds another layer of complexity; obviously the finer the grid the more Top/High-importance articles; this debate has clearly started on this page;
• Assessment within the totality of maths fits in my mind better with (one of) the goal(s) of the whole grading exercise: prioritising the articles form the viewpoint of importance to a high-quality encyclopaedia.
• The importance rating (or prioritization) accross all of maths is possible if difficult (and sometimes inevitably contested - but so is assessment within fields). It is in fact an execise that editors of paper encyclopaedias have had to do in the past to choose topics for major / minor articles, sections in articles or omission. For Wikipedia, while there is no cap on the number of pages to produce, we have another scarce resource: editors' time. Hence the prioritisation on the level of mathematics still makes sense, at least for as long as we are quite far from having good-quality articles covering all topics which should definately be of Top / High importance within all of maths; and
• As the rating appears on the Maths tab, related to the WikiProject mathematics, it also seems natural to keep the rating on the level of the WikiProject (unless we want to start splitting the project, which probably is not a good idea at this time).

As for how to implement importance assessment on the level of Mathematics, I made the following poropsal that would explicitily link the importance to the hierarchy of mathematics articles:

• The main subdisciplines in maths (plus some selected "general" articles) should receive Top importance (e.g., Number theory, Algebraic topology, Analysis, Integral). These articles could then refer to High-importance articles for further details.
  • (That would partially resolve the issue discussed above wrt Algebraic Geometry — no matter whether one thinks it should be a new "field" in our classification, it definately is a Top-importance article and thus creates an importance sub-hierarchy in this model)
• Second-order subdisciplines within the Top-importance areas as well as the very few most important objects / theorems should have High importance (e.g., Homology and cohomology, Elliptic curve, Harmonic analysis, Fourier transform). These articles could then link to Mid-importance articles for further details.
• Third-order subdisciplines (or theories) within High-importance topics as well as most definitions, theorems etc. that should belong to a good graduate student's general knowledge regardless of own field of speciality could for the Mid-importance layer; and
• The articles of Low importance could be those that would not likely be interesting to people outside of the speciality.

As for the very valid point that several concepts (such as sheaf) may be found at various levels in such a hierarchy (e.g., sheaf on a quite low level in analysis --> microlocal analysis compared to topology), a possible solution would be to choose the highest rating based on the article hierarchy (which in my mind would bring sheaf to High importance under Top-importance article on Topology).

In any case, a more structured hierarchy of articles, starting from ones with wide coverage with limited technicalities and progressing towards more specific and technical articles through links is something I think is needed for maths articles. And indeed, work has clearly started towards that goal on many topics (Integral, Algebraic geometry come to mind as top-level examples). I have been making a plan for algebraic topology articles for such a treatment. It would be great if the importance assessment scheme could support that kind of "global" structuring effort in addition to pointing out articles for "local" improvement.

But however we decide to use the importance scales, I agree with Salix alba that we need clear (and sufficiently verbose) definitions for the importance grades so that everyone can agree on at least the principle if not specific application of them.

Stca74 08:58, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I replied to the original post here. There are certainly arguments to be made about making assessments all across mathematics rather than within context, or at least partially taking into account how specialized a topic is. However, I think the comparison with a paper encyclopedia is flawed, as I have already mentioned: WP is a very different beast (encyclopedias within encyclopedias). Furthermore, we seem to keep forgetting what importance ratings are for: they are for editors, not readers! They are not there to say "These are the most important articles in mathematics, dear reader, read them first", they are there to say "Hello, editor, I see you are an expert in homotopy algebras and you want to help improve some articles: these are the articles which the project thinks are highest priority". If we rate across mathematics, all homotopy algebra articles will be low importance, which is not terribly useful. Geometry guy 09:37, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I surely agree that Wikipedia is different from a paper encyclopaedia, and I also quite like Geometry guy's metaphor of nested encyclopeadias. However, there is also the "top-level encyclopaedia" here, the one that this whole project started to build and the one that is being prepared for the v1.0 "fixed" edition. And it is in this context that I have seen the usefulness of the importance gardings: guidance to those who would like to contribute to finishing the "top-level" first. And I agree, this is clearly guidance to editors, not readers (a point on which I do not perceive serious disagreement in the discussion above). On the other hand, providing such "global" guidance certainly does not prevent anyone from contributing to articles of more specialised interest (this is more or less what I've been doing in the few contributions I've managed to make so far...). As for the specific example of homotopy algebra topics, this is how I would see it: Algebraic topology:TOP --> Homotopy theory:HIGH --> Homotopy algebra:MID --> Individual homotopy algebra topics:LOW (unless MID due to specific reasons..). But in the end, whether such grading is seen as useful depends very much on the ultimate goal of the importance ratings — top-down completeness of the general encyclopaedia or guidance to more specific sub-encyclopaedias. Both are valid goals, and in principle we could have parallel ratings for these purposes, but I'd prefer not to complicate the "overhead" associated to project maintenance. Further comments welcome! Stca74 13:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I am glad you like my metaphor! I am also grateful to Stca74 for bringing up the v1.0 fixed edition CD: I was about to add a comment on this myself, because I shouldn't go around boldly declaring what the ratings system is for without mentioning its original motivation to produce the v1.0 CD (which is why the assessment project is called Wikipedia 1.0 in the first place)!!

While this is still an important motiviation, the ratings system has clearly grown since then. However, I don't see an incompatibility between rating in context and building WP 1.0. In fact, it seems to me that Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Release_Version_Criteria#Importance_of_topic supports the in-context point of view. Specifically, it gives an example of a hierarchy History -> History of Europe -> History of Poland -> Polish kings and queens. and then goes on to say:

An article labeled as "Top-Class" for the subject of history would probably warrant inclusion in V0.5, V1.0 and other releases. A "Top-Class" article for the history of Poland would be a reasonable candidate for inclusion, but most "Top-Class" articles on Polish kings & queens would probably not be included in early releases. Nevertheless such ranking within a subject area is very helpful in deciding which articles are included first as the scope of the Wikipedia 1.0 project expands.

In other words, the kind of downrating by subtopic proposed by Stca74 will happen anyway when articles are selected. I wasn't sure when I first posted this thread, but this seems to make the case for rating in context rather compelling. Geometry guy 13:39, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Moving forward from here

As the discussion has died down a little, I thought it would be useful to summarise some of the issues with a few comments, and outline some steps forward.

1. There seems to be agreement (or at least no disagreement) that there should be more articles rated as lower importance than higher importance, and in particular that only a few hundred articles (out of several thousand rated articles) should be rated Top importance. This is not going to happen unless some changes are made: at the moment, the Mid category is the most populated.
2. There appears to be some consensus that context should be taken into account when assessing importance, although there are concerns that this might conflict with point 1, and no agreement whether elementary material is intrinsically more important than advanced material. On the other hand, rating importance within context appears to be coherent with the v1.0 fixed edition plans.
3. There has been much less agreement on how and to what extent context should be taken into account, although several suggestions were made.
   1. The field entry in the maths rating should be the context in which importance is assessed (see also point 6 below).
   2. Context should be assessed using the main category to which the article belongs.
   3. Other mechanisms and ratings schemes should be introduced, such as User:Salix Alba's scope.
4. The fields should be clearly defined to help editors to be consistent about which topics are rated under which field. This may involve making conventional choices: for example, topics in Numerical analysis should be rated under applied, even if it is also analysis.
5. Further to this point, some editors suggested that a field2 would be useful. This can also be achieved more informally simply by linking to the relevant field page from the article talk page. However, yours truly cautioned against overuse of this feature as it might defeat part of the purpose of the field entry in the ratings template.
6. In conjunction with 3.1, Arcfrk suggested that the number of fields should be expanded and in particular that algebraic geometry should be a separate field. Certainly the geometry and topology and algebra fields are already too large to be manageable.
7. The question of how to assess importance of articles on mathematicians has not yet been discussed.

In response to this, I have created Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance. At present, it mostly consists of material copied from other pages, but the intention is to develop it to provide mathematics specific guidelines which at least address points 1 and 2. I have also created /defn subpages of the field pages to provide descriptors of the fields. These are gathered together at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Fields: please improve and add to these definitions! I hope this will help to address point 4. For point 5, the linking could be tried out with some of the information theory articles, which are the most obvious examples so far where the single field approach is inadequate.

Concerning point 3, I'm not sure it matters too much that there isn't consensus for time being. As long as we agree that some context should be considered when assessing importance, a diversity of opinion on how much is not going to make a huge amount of difference to the way articles get rated. The ratings system, like the rest of Wikipedia is definitely a work in progress, and I would prefer to take a fairly conservative approach to improving it. This partly underlies my view on point 6. Some expansion of the number of fields is going to be needed, and in the long run, I could certainly imagine geometry and topology being replaced by maybe even six fields such as

elementary geometry, differential geometry, algebraic geometry, general topology, differential topology and algebraic topology.

However, doing something like this would require a lot of work, and the case for it is not yet clear, in my opinion. I would prefer to experiment with the geometry/topology split and see what the numbers look like: this would at least make it easier to subdivide geometry later on if this proves necessary.

Finally, apologies to other editors if my over-active participation in this discussion has conveyed the impression of a hidden agenda or a point of view to promote. I initiated the discussion precisely because there were several issues that I was unsure of, and some of these have been greatly clarified thanks to the comments made here so far. However, I freely admit that my developing point of view is also influenced by issues of implementation: any improvement to the rating system needs to have editors willing to do the (often substantial) work required to implement it!

Further comments most welcome either here or on the relevant talk pages in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 (such as the new pages above). Geometry guy 15:40, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Splitting algebra and geometry

I found about 100 articles in Geometry and topology which are clearly topology, so I guess a geometry/topology split would be about 400/120, which is not ideal. On the other hand, I only found about 70 algebraic geometry articles. Taking algebraic and differential geometry together yields about 190 articles, and the remainder (apart from the topology) is mostly elementary geometry. I would therefore suggest a three-way split into (elementary) geometry, topology and differential and algebraic geometry. The last of these could be split later if necessary.

I haven't yet investigated the Algebra field, but would guess there are quite a lot of linear algebra there. Geometry guy 16:42, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

No there aren't: only about 60 rated linear algebra articles so far. Geometry guy 17:05, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. However, then I would split algebraic geometry from differential geometry right from the beginning. There's been discussion on this in talk:Elliptic curve, and a joint algebraic/differential geometry field would increase the pressure to treat artithmetic issues and geometry in positive characteristics as part of algebra instead, a development that I would find regrettable. However, I could also accept an argument for keeping the current larger geometry and topology field as it is. Even the split of 120 topology, 70 AG and 120 diff. geom. is not that bad, in particular as none of these fields has achieved desired coverage yet. Stca74 17:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I just had a quick look at the exchange and the article itself: it looks like geometry to me, but there is a case for rating it as number theory either instead or in addition. I don't understand the argument for algebra, and the complex analysis point of view on these objects is covered by Riemann surface. I don't see how the split would affect the argument, and of the 190 articles, only about 100 are clearly differential geometry: this is quite a tricky interface to separate. Geometry guy 17:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

You're right with the Elliptic curves article. During that exchange I was somehow under the impression that number theory does not have its own "field" either but is currently under algebra. Which is of course not true. Thus even less reason to classify that article under algebra. But back to the topic here: what I'm arguing for is that if we decide to split topology from the current geometry and topology, let's split AG as a separate fied at the same time. The latter are of course connected, but then again so are both to (algebraic) topoogy, and at least I'm not able to argue for any of the links being stronger than the two others. Stca74 19:23, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Using categories instead of fields

Would it be possible to use categories (which articles already have) instead of making editors choose one field for an article? It would not be particularly difficult to determine which articles are in (subcategories of subcategories of) particular "master" categories. That would make it possible to automatically sort the article into several "fields" and would let us get rid of the field= parameter entirely. That seems better than adding field2= and field3= parameters. Another benefit would be that unrated articles would be automatically detected. CMummert · talk 00:13, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Some impressions

I have gone over a substantial number of articles in Algebra and Geometry and Topology fields. This is likely to be a contentious issue, but let me say straight away that I have changed quite a few importance ratings, mostly, downrated (explanation below). Here is a rather haphazard list of my impressions from the rating project.

• Vast majority of articles have been filed under the correct field, but there were some (rather obvious) exceptions. I did come across a group of articles which seemed to defy the current classifications scheme, such as Nondeterministic finite state machine, currently under algebra, but in fact, belonging to computer science. Should this be a separate field?

  This issue also caused me some problems. In a sense this material is algebra in the most naive sense of manipulating symbols. However, it is also natural to rate it in the context of discrete mathematics articles. Another case is automatic group: discrete, or algebra? I'm not at all convinced I made the right choice! Geometry guy 20:21, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• In practice, the category system is not easy to use to gauge the importance, or provide the context. The depths of subcategories vary widely, although the case could be made that this only makes difference for rather unimportant articles. At any rate, I've become convinced that for undeveloped (stub and start class) articles, expertise in the subject is crucial to determine the importance.
• Overall, the importance ratings are inflated, in my opinion. Keeping in mind that one of the main purposes of the rating project is to facilitate the editing, and especially, identifying the 'weak links', this is not terribly important for articles in B-class and above, since they have already received a lot of expert attention. But it may nonetheless be a problem, since there are hundreds of start and stub class articles purporting to be high importance, which ones to edit first?
• Another thing to keep in mind is that the comments are a lot more valuable than the ratings. Thus it may be preferable for experts (and amateurs:-) to spend a bit more time analyzing the articles and reviewing than trying to rate as many articles as possible. There is absolutely no question that the meaningful improvement cannot keep up with the rating process, we simply do not have enough resources.
• This may be worth a separate discussion, but one thing which emerged from looking over a large number of articles is the definite trend to expand articles beyond reasonable length. The rating system has a potential to exacerbate this problem. Some articles on possibly important subjects, but not top level, are reasonably complete; yet they were put into start, or in some cases, even stub class. In my opinion, in most cases it would be unhelpful to expand them further. Yet, somehow I sense a pressure to bring the articles to higher class, which would translate into expansion or inclusion of related material that is already covered elsewhere (and may not belong to the article in question if it is focused enough). I'd be curious to know what other people think about this.
• And, need I point this out, the rating process (especially, importance) tends to be highly subjective, and examples of inconsistencies abound. I was trying to correct them to the best of my abilities, but I apologize in advance to those of you who might feel like your favorite topic got a short shrift! As Cronholm144 writes in comment pages,

Please mail your all complaints to the following P.O. box -- ...I'm kidding! Please add useful comments here. Note: these ratings are not set in stone, please change them as the article progresses.

Arcfrk 12:49, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with the view that the quality assessment can have an unintended impact on articles, perhaps in particular in maths. It is interesting that the the WP:FACR do not require that even a featured article be necessarily very long. Instead, appropriate length and focus are called for. Still in practice short but otherwise adequate articles do not appear to be even proposed for GA or FA. This suggests that the application of the criteria is being skewed towards too heavy demands. Stca74 13:04, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

(I hadn't seen Stca74's comment)I sense the pressure to bring articles to higher classes as well. I have been responsible for rating a fair number of reasonably complete articles within their respective fields as start class, simply because of their relative length and completeness pales in comparison to the typical B-class articles. This issue has been discussed in the WP 1.0 discussion page if I remember correctly. They proposed that instead of stub, start,..., FA. They (well, someone at their talk page) introduce the idea of completeness of the coverage of the topic as a rating level, there are problems with this system, but it is the most reasonable answer to the problem of completed articles becoming perpetually start class. However the unfortunate consequence of a change of this type would be the necessity to reevaluate a large number of articles...sigh. --Cronholm144 13:08, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we need something like "B+ (mini)", "B (mini)", "Start (mini)" would be appropriate ratings for articles which are substantially all that is needed, and wholly adequate, yet only a few paragraphs long. Jheald 23:44, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I changed that humourous comment(cited by Arcfrk) into two different "templates." I find the lack of references the most common flaw in most math articles #1. If I don't have anything interesting to say #2. If there are other problems I just type something to that effect.

• needs refs, try finding some [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/References|here]].--~~~~

'''Note:''' These ratings are not set in stone, please change them as the article progresses.

• Please add useful comments here--~~~~

'''Note:''' These ratings are not set in stone, please change them as the article progresses.

I have adjusted the maths ratings template so that it includes part of this last line. For technical reasons (aka the "pre-expand include limit") the total number of kilobytes of comments needs to be controlled, and so boilerplate comments are best absorbed into the template. Feel free to edit my version of this comment at Template:Maths rating. Geometry guy 22:15, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I noticed and have gone through and edited myself to reflect this change. I am about through the start and stub class articles--Cronholm144 22:20, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I had thought previously that quality (class) gradings were more straightforward than importance ratings, but a number of issues have come up, and it indeed seems to merit separate discussion, as User:Arcfrk suggests. I agree that the system at present can encourage the expansion of articles for which expansion is either undesirable, not needed, or a low priority. I also agree that a case can be made for promoting some short Stub/Start class articles to Start/B. However, I would caution against the idea of grading a short but "reasonably complete" article too highly. In my view, it is our conception of the meaning of the class grading that needs tweaking. Such a short article should certainly hope for a B or Bplus class grading, but we need to provide space and encouragement for an article to achieve its potential.

It is surprising how much one can do to improve an article. I recently participated in the FAC for Equipartition theorem. There is no reason why this subject in particular needs such a detailed treatment, cf. Virial theorem, which hasn't had the same attention (currently rated Start by Physics, but I think it is B). To me, this illustrates what can be done to lift a short B-class article to FA, and also the fact that a B-class article can be totally respectable.

I think a lot of the problem is the wording of the class descriptors. These tend to assume that an article starts off with an ill-informed description, and is gradually improved as more expertise is brought to bear. This isn't what actually happens for many of our articles. Instead they start as a technically correct definition, which is improved to a technically solid article by expert editors. However, these articles are incomprehensible to most readers, as well as being imperfectly presented or badly sourced. But the class descriptors don't pick this out: they should be encouraging us to maximise the accessibility of our articles.

I suspect this underlies some of our problems with Good Article review, because a technically excellent B article has a big leap to make to satisfy the GA crowd. I think instead we need to encourage the improvement of technically good (i.e., "reasonable complete") articles (with examples, explanations, references) in a step-by-step process, and this applies equally to articles which are short or long. I therefore think we should adapt the descriptions of the classes to our needs, rather than create new classes for short articles. Geometry guy 23:05, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

disastrous article

The article titled additional logarithm topics bears certain resemblances to New Orleans three days after Katrina. Probablly some of its material should get merged into existing articles or perhaps new articles on disparate topics. Michael Hardy 21:07, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that's too generous. All the "derivations" are textbook stuff that doesn't belong here at all (I'm not saying that proofs don't belong here; I'm just saying that the theorems proved on that page are not given in any context other than that of an indiscriminate, textbook-like list, and so don't contribute to acceptable content). The "using logarithms" section is really just some competition problems that constitutes a "how-to" guide, and so should go. The continued fractions bit at the end is just an explication of a well-known algorithm for computing continued fractions that is actually given on the page for that topic. This article looks like it was written by a high-school junior taking precalculus. Ryan Reich 21:39, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I've proposed the article for deletion. If anyone disagrees, feel free to remove the deletion template. Ed H | talk 01:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, now we can forget about that disaster. Ed H | talk 02:51, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Bertrand Russell GA/R

I have nominated Bertrand Russell for WP:GA/R due to inadequate referencing. I hope the article gets the attention it deserves during this process to retain its quality rating. Please see discussions at Wikipedia:Good_article_review#Bertrand_Russell. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 16:54, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

The review was speedily closed to delist. CMummert · talk 12:42, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

A speedy delist. That's a new one, isn't it? The usual result of nominating a math-related article for GA/R is argumentation and then delist. But I suppose it's wise of them to skip the usual bickering with folk from here and go ahead to the delisting. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 13:15, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I applaud the new procedures. They save time and trouble for everyone. -- Dominus 13:51, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

However, I would suggest a change of name to Wikipedia:Articles with footnotes, since the evident criteria of the project have nothing to do with the quality of the articles. This is of course partly tongue in cheek; but if there is any support here, I will go through with it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I have noticed that there is some serious animosity here towards the standards people, along the lines that they insist on irrelevant, perhaps ignorant, and superficial changes to otherwise good articles and refuse to recognize the quality of articles whose referencing does not satisfy their arbitrary but inflexible requirements. I share this frustration regarding good mathematics articles that can never achieve Good status because the needs of mathematics differ from the needs of other, more empirical subjects where frequent, inline referencing is the only means of assessing veracity. However, Bertrand Russell is a biography, and it makes purely factual (as opposed to logical) claims that really should be justified by some reliable source, and in this article, they are not. The same is true of Georg Cantor, mentioned down the page here. Mathematical biographies are not "mathematics", referencing-wise. Just including a (however laudably-complete) list of bibliographic sources is not good enough, since how am I, the reader, to find a particular fact in any of them without any guidance? (See also the video, now on YouTube, of Serre on how not to write mathematics, regarding "citing the collected works of Euler"). Even in mathematics articles, any surprising claim should be cited in one of the sources (a deep theorem, for example); since truth is stranger than fiction, in biographies, all claims are surprising :) Ryan Reich 01:38, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The gruff way in which these presumably well-meaning people throw their weight around does not help to reduce that animosity, such as speedily delisting an article before even anyone had a chance to realize it had been put up for review. And what can we say about this singularly unhelpful and brusque brush-off in response to a request for clarification about a requirement for a "solid rewrite", since, as far as the WikiProject Mathematics is concerned, it is an A-class article. The response was, literally and in its totality: "If this is the case then the Maths Project needs to reconsider its rating since that is a wholly inaccurate assessment."  --Lambiam^Talk 17:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

And there is one major modern biography of Cantor: the one by Dauben (Aczel is a popularization; most of the other book-length works are either dated, or deal with the mathematics.) I would assume, without further checking, that any statement not purely mathematical and not otherwise sourced claims to refer to Dauben, who has an index. Evaluating that claim would involve reading the article alongside Dauben, which I have not done; and which Bad Articles haven't done either..

It would require doing so even if every reference to Dauben were duly footnoted, with almost as much work.

I suppose we should be grateful that juvenile and incompetent editors are engaged in this frivolity, and not doing wider harm to the encyclopedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:23, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Re Lambiam's comment: Cantor was one of the articles that was rated A-class before the very new A-class review, so it would have been conceivable that the process wasn't right. I thought that must have been the case until I noticed that the article is also rated A-class by three other wikiprojects including Biography. Nevertheless, the reviewers are probably correct that the article doesn't satisfy WP:WIAGA. People outside this project also grumble about the state of the GA process, but I haven't seen serious discussion towards reworking it from the ground up, which I think is what will be required. CMummert · talk 23:47, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that there exists a powerful feeling within this project is that the GA process is broken and should be ignored, and the in-house ratings of Bplus and A replace it. I have even heard a person here say that they would rather have an article stay start class forever than be reviewed by the GA process. I am actually a fan of the GA process in general and I have participated in listing GA articles in the past, but the process cannot be applied in the same way to mathematics articles. I agree that there should be a discussion of the compatibility of Maths articles and the GA process here, if only to be able to present a united front in the future.

Regarding the Bertrand Russell delist, the article, which has a tag that "consensus was reached" for its delisting, was only a candidate for delist for one hour and nineteen minutes. This does not seem appropriate even for a "speedy" delist. I will end this post with the title of the announcement that Calculus was no-longer a GA class ariticle, "Obscure article Removed Status of Good Article" You can see it in its original context here. I think that this kind of thing illustrates why some of us here are jaded. --Cronholm144 02:49, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I have recommended that GA be moved, at Wikipedia_talk:Good_articles#Requested_move. If it is, I would be content to ignore it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:50, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Georg Cantor Good article review

Georg Cantor has been put on Good article review, I suppose, as a punishment for emphasizing his maths over his (non)-Jewishness. Feel free to comment. Arcfrk 07:31, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

No, I recognize the name of the nominator; this is simply more footnote-worship. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:06, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

If you have any problems as regards myself PMAnderson please take it to WP:ANI. If you do not, and continue to make remarks on other talk pages as regards myself, I will not hesitate in reporting you there for baiting me. We both disagree on the level of citationing an article needs, so let's leave it at that. LuciferMorgan 22:44, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I am pleased to come back from ANI bearing news that this threat seems to have been retracted. I admit I do not share LuciferMorgan's simple and unjustified faith in what citation can accomplish; but we also disagree on whether "citationing" is an English participle. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:53, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

External link at Mathematician

I appear to be in conflict with a user who in this edit removed a link I had just added to the article Mathematician. The edit summary is: careercornerstone.org advert link, not a good quality link for this article. This user wrote to me on their talk page: "And yes I am very unflexible about this. When I clean up a mass spamming I expect it to stay cleaned up."

I don't want to get into a revert war, which this would clearly become. I'd appreciate it if some of you could give an independent judgement whether and to what extent this link is (in)appropriate.  --Lambiam^Talk 16:29, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I just saw that the AMS has several links to this organization on its website: [1], [2], and [3] (the last two having the very same link that was removed from the external links section at Mathematician). 17:08, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it would help to explain that you are not connected with Career Corner, or that you do not intend to mass include the link. I would have some doubts about the link: it is a commercial link, and it offers career advice. Skimming suggests that it is sound; but career advisor is one of the things WP is not. Perhaps wait a week, and then add the first AMS link above (the other two are linkfarms)? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:35, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The organization behind the link is not commercial. It also has good information and seems more informative than the AMS link. The potential problem is that I'd guess there are quite a lot of similar sites and that the addition of one link will lead to many others. So, the question is: Is this one particularly good?

Yes, the user that removed the link is inflexible about it, but in my experience also susceptible to reasoning. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:01, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Jitse, I take that as a compliment! (: The story with careercornerstone.org is that it was part of a mass spamming. I only have a problem with that particular link and I am sure that there are plenty of other Mathematician career links it could be replaced with. Even a commercial link would be fine by me. (Requestion 20:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC))

Since I'm visiting this math project I would like to bring up a relevant topic; The mathematics of Wikipedia mass spammings. I'm a spam fighter, I see a lot of Wikipedia spam, and I've noticed something interesting that happens during mass spammings. It doesn't make a difference how blatant or how heinous a mass spamming is. There will always be regular editors who WP:AGF and want to keep the spam. It's a constant and that number works out to be about 3%. So imagine a case where an external link is added to thousands of Wikipedia articles. Most of the spam will get deleted but some will stick and unfortunately the pro-spammers have figured out that this is a successful strategy. I can extrapolate and see an end game where all Wikipedia is consumed by this spam. I see some game theory and some statistics at work here, am I missing any related or important fields? Also from a mathematics perspective is there any advice that you can give me to help deal with this growing problem? (Requestion 20:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC))

What makes a link "spam"? Is it a property of the link, or of the process and external to any intrinsic qualities of the link and is the removal a punitive measure for misbehaviour? Would the AMS put spam links on their own pages, not once but repeatedly? The web site seems pretty good to me (at least in the areas for which I can judge this, which includes mathematics). This may be because they don't need to worry about generating money and are actively supported by many of the leading professional societies (such as the AMS). It also helps that they focus on a limited range of academic disciplines: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Computing, and Medicine. As mathematicians we tend to gripe that young people have completely wrong ideas what it means to be a mathematician; well, this website does a decent job of giving the right idea. If other equally good career centre websites exist, I'm not aware of it, and I don't expect a deluge if we open the gates.  --Lambiam^Talk 21:18, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

What is the nature of link spam? That's a complicated question. It's part property, causality, contiguity, and personal identity. Every spamming is different and no one rule applies globally. The intent of removal is more preventive than it is punitive. In fact the whole purpose of the escalating {{spam}} tags and the blacklist is to make the spam stop. Unfortunately spam usually returns and sometimes it even grows as is happening in the Mathematician article. Rewarding it is definitely the wrong course of action. I don't know anything about the AMS links you mention and I have no opinion of them. (Requestion 05:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC))

American Mathematical Society--Cronholm144 06:03, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

What about this rule: if an editor in good standing adds a link, based on their judgement that the link enhances the value of the article, then the mere fact that that link has been used in other edits deemed spamming is not sufficient cause by itself to warrant reversion. Does that sound reasonable?  --Lambiam^Talk 10:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Why would you want to reward spamming behavior like that? Look at this as a complex interconnected dynamical system and think about how a reward plays into the game theory aspects at work. Besides, adding previously deleted spam links just isn't a good idea. Do you really want to fight over a spam link that a different editor in good standing wants to delete? (Requestion 18:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC))

Think of it this way: why would you let spammers control your criteria for what is or is not a good link? Wouldn't it be better to make that determination by judgments of knowledgeable editors, rather than by whether or not some spammer has decided to spam that link? And how do you know, in each case, that the persons responsible for creating the spam are the same as the ones rewarded by the existence of a link? —David Eppstein 18:55, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

It's how WP works, anyway: different opinions in tension. There is a spam blacklist for links. If a link is not blacklisted, adding it is up for grabs. Charles Matthews 18:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Requisition, if there is a non-spam link that contains the same information, by all means replace it. If not, I would hate to remove a useful link just because someone decided to spam it.--Cronholm144 19:34, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

The link wasn't there before they spammed it. (Requestion 19:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC))

I understand. I never meant to imply anything to the contrary, but the link is appropriate for the article--Cronholm144 20:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Fact: spamming works. And consequently it blights our lives. On an individual level, it means we need to use spam filters for our emails (and check their content regularly), while for Wikipedia it means we need to have bots which systematically remove spam, and dedicated users like Requestion who patrol pages for spamming. It is a pain.

But it is worth asking why spam works. In emails, it works because for every 10000 users for whom the spam is an irritation and a violation, there may be one for whom it is just what they were looking for. The same principle applies to Wikipedia. Sometimes a spammer's link is a useful addition to an article. Requestion suggests a figure of 3% for spam links which some other editor accepts. This is surely higher than Wikipedia can tolerate and we should definitely try to bring it down (one editor's acceptance is not enough unless well argued, as it seems to be in this case). However, denying the reason that spam works will have little or no effect in reducing it. Just because a link was not there before it was spammed does not mean it is not a useful link. I hope that in more than 97% of the cases (99.9% might be more appropriate!) the spam link is removed permenantly, but that is not the same as saying that all cleaned up spam links stay cleaned up. Yes, the spammer gets a reward for spamming even if 0.1% of their links survive, but this is not a zero-sum game: as long as knowledgeable and impartial editors decide which 0.1% survives, Wikipedia can benefit too. This is no comfort for the spam fighters, I know, but putting our hands on our eyes and saying "see no evil" does nothing to reduce the evil in the world. Geometry guy 21:13, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you User:Geometry guy for your analysis. The 3% value I mentioned is my "spam deletion challenge rate" which is how often I get into time consuming arguments about deleted spam. The amount of raw spam that sneaks its way into articles is far higher. (Requestion 14:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC))

I previously wrote a long explanation of the origin of the term "spam", but then deleted it figuring everyone knew. But now it seems people are confusing the different notions of spam, so let me write it again. Spam, in one of its early forms, referred to unsolicited bulk emails (and subsequently other forms of messaging, such as postings to Usenet and instant messages). The key is here "unsolicited" and "bulk". You may get an unsolicited message, but it is not spam if it is not bulk. If one is subscribed to a mailing list, one will get bulk messages, but it cannot be called unsolicited.

What is spam on Wikipedia? "Unsolicited" cannot play a role in the definition, as everyone is invited to contribute to the "the free encyclopedia anyone can edit". By the very nature of Wikipedia, nobody is required to consent with an explicit permission before a link is added to Wikipedia. Rather Wikipedia "spam" only refers to the "bulk" criterion. As mentioned previously, some of us get bulk messages everyday, from various mailing lists. They may not be useful or interesting to us most of the time. But that is how it works; it is the very nature of the medium.

Now let me comment on the "winning" by spammers. We may curse the minority of people that like to get emails about "V I 4 G R 4", shake our heads, and say "the spammers won", but what about a Wikipedia contributor, the majority of whose contributions may be useless or detrimental to Wikipedia? If a few of these contributions are of great value to Wikipedia, and we keep them in Wikipedia, did this contributor "win"? What would happen if we decided to go through Wikipedia, deleting content by figuring out if the majority of contributions by one person are useless? Supposing most of Wikipedia would still be intact (as we can expect) after such an action, was this really a good thing to do? That's what is really the topic under discussion. Let's not confuse it with misleading analogies (cf apples and oranges) perpetuated by usage of similar terminology.

Ultimately, to echo Charles Matthews, unless it's on the spam blacklist, by the nature of Wikipedia, the link is up for discussion. If consensus says keep the link, keep the link. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 16:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

How many internal links to "mathematics"?

The number of Wikipedia pages linking to mathematics exceeds 10,000 (ten thousand) and I stopped counting at that point.

• Is there a quick way to count them?
• Does that page hold the record, i.e. is it the one with the largest number of such links? (So I suspect.)

Michael Hardy 01:37, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive 25#Most linked to math articles. You could ask Mathbot (i.e. Oleg) for an update of User:Mathbot/Most linked math articles, if you need current information. JRSpriggs 05:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

The list is at User:Mathbot/Most_linked_math_articles: I believe this list only counts mathematics articles linking to a given mathematics article. For example, there are about 5500 mathematics articles linking to mathematics (and this is number one by a huge margin). The list is fairly up-to-date, except that since then Cronholm and I have been down the list to about the 800th most linked article adding maths ratings.

Regarding the first question, links to an article can be counted by loading the "What links here" list into AutoWikiBrowser and filtering out the links which are not in the main space. Geometry guy 10:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I count 13642 links; discarding redirect pages, talk pages, and pages in other namespaces, I count 10462 articles linking directly or via a redirect to Mathematics.  --Lambiam^Talk 10:19, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

There is no quick way to count links using the web interface, but there are some programming APIs that can be used. The record for most links used to belong to United States. Right now that article has 301,386 links (counted using m:query.php which I learned has serious performance problems with this sort of query). CMummert · talk 22:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Iteratively Re-weighted Least Squares

Hello to everybody at the Math Wikiproject. While evaluating articles to be created at WP:AFC, I encountered this Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Today#Iteratively_Re-weighted_Least_Squares. I am not too good with things math related so can someone here who is more knowledgeable review the submission to see if it is worthy of an article? Thanks for helping. -- _Hdt83 ^Chat 06:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

It was created by Salix alba and subsequently edited by Lambiam and myself. In case anyone else here cares to view the results, they are now at iteratively re-weighted least squares. —David Eppstein 19:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

no definition or discussion of "strong"

Hi... hey, if I had a dollar for every instance of the word "strong" in mathematics articles, I'm sure I could buy a tiny microwave from Walmart... but there doesn't seem to be any section of any article that defines/discusses "strong" (I'm told it means "result A is stronger than result B if B can immediately be deduced from A"). This is definitely strongly needed.. need something to wikilink the word "strong" to. I really appreciate your help. Ling.Nut 06:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

PS I bet it would be a small, wikilinkable subsection of a larger, more general article.. but I have no idea what article that would be... thanksLing.Nut 06:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

You mean like a fortiori? —David Eppstein 06:46, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes I do, in fact. But the link goes to the top of a table... and it's impossible to tell which entry is meant.. say for example "blah blah blah found an even [[a fortiori|stronger]] proof that..." Is there any way to.. umm.. write an article for the term? Or write three sentences to stick in another article? Thanks! Ling.Nut 06:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe wikt:a fortiori is more satisfactory? —David Eppstein 07:00, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

(undent) Well, yeah, sort of. I was really hoping for a very brief discussion of how the term is used in mathematics. But for now, 'tis enough, 'twill serve, and all that... thanks!!! Oh if you ever do write such an article please drop a line to my talk. But I'll use wikt for now. thanks again. Ling.Nut 07:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Would it be satisfactory to include it at the list of words in Mathematical jargon?  --Lambiam^Talk 12:58, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I've added it there. Ryan Reich 21:44, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Citations for definitions of basic mathematical concepts

At WikiProject Chemistry, we have recently established a workgroup to improve linking to the many (6540...) definitions contained in the IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology. However, we have noticed that one or two of these definitions are not really chemical terminology at all, but mathematical concepts, e.g. bimodal distribution, probability. The chemical usage of these terms is no different from the usage in other sciences, so it would seem misleading to cite a specifically "chemical" reference for the definition. What would you suggest as a good reference for mathematical definiions? Encyclopedia of Mathematics? Thanks for any advice! Physchim62 (talk) 10:16, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it applies, but there is Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines#Summary style. In brief, you don't always need to give a citation above and beyond the main article you link to. Bimodal distribution and probability seem to be two cases where no citation should be needed. Wikipedia already has those articles, so a wikilink should be enough (IMO). Of course, Wikipedia doesn't have mathematics articles on everything, even everything which could conceivably be interesting to a chemist. For more exotic definitions, you probably won't find them in the Springer Encyclopedia either. Silly rabbit 12:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

If a mathematical concept is not specific to a branch of science but important enough for a definition of it to be included in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology, then we probably should have an article on it. Should you encounter such concepts that can't be wikilinked to for lack of an article, please let us know.  --Lambiam^Talk 13:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

A point well worth making! Silly rabbit 13:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

No problem with that! I've done a quick (and necessarily incomplete) check and and I haven't found any redlinks on mathematical terms. The problems are:

• Referencing: I don't think that "summary style" guidelines apply to these articles in the sense that Silly rabbit describes. Bimodal distribution has a well-defined, technical meaning, and we should reference that meaning if we can (IMHO). See chemical reaction, for example.
• Imaginary unit: I just found this one on my quick check. Chemists (and physicists, I believe) are supposed to use upright type for i, as it is not a measurable quantity. In effect, it might be the same rule which requires upright type for (capital) Σ and Π as operators in equations, although chemists often use italics for other operators, e.g. H for the hamiltonian operator, C_n for the n-fold rotation operator (quick redlink warning!).

Thanks for your comments, Physchim62 (talk) 13:29, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Our article on the bimodal distribution most certainly needs a reference; I think that Silly rabbit misunderstood you. I am not so fond of using another encyclopaedia as a reference, but it's better than none at all. Apart from that, the Springer Encyclopaedia of Mathematics is reliable in my experience. I had a look at your workgroup page and I saw that I don't need to warn you that you need to actually check the article against the reference. Finally, using upright or italics for i is the mathematical equivalent of the British/American English conflict in Wikipedia: lots of discussion, no agreement, in the end we agreed to disagree. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:08, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I took the following list of redlinks from a seperate database, that of the "Green Book", but if interested editors would like to create the necessary articles or redirects (probably mostly redirects), obviously this would help clueless chemists! Physchim62 (talk) 13:57, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

• fundamental translation vector
• n-fold rotation operator

-> Rotational_symmetry#n-fold_rotational_symmetry -- Jheald 00:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• base of natural logaritms
• identity symmetry operator

-> identity function -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• space-fixed inversion

ie ? reflection in a line, plane, or hypersurface -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• inversion operator

-> inversion in a point -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• rotation-reflection operator

-> improper rotation -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• displacement vector

-> displacement (vector) Needs cleanup -- Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

-> or possibly "displacement vector" as a common name for "electric field times dielectric constant". See Electric displacement field and also displacement current, which I think is what happens when you put a dielectric into a capacitor, or something like that.linas 04:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• product sign
• summation sign
• plane angle

I filled in a couple, but it is not clear precisely what the remainder refer to, since no articles link to them, so I can't see how they are used in context. Geometry guy 15:59, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Above, "base of natural logaritms" should be "base of natural logarithms". Some occur in the Gold Book list (for example plane angle, although without definition). The Green Book mentioned above gives some context; for example "fundamental translation vector" is used in the context of crystal lattices and undoubtedly means the translation vectors that generate the edges of the parallelepiped that is the fundamental region of the lattice.  --Lambiam^Talk 22:11, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

These mostly look like symmetry operators related to crystallographic groups, heavily used particularly in quantum chemistry, to discuss the symmetry groups of molecules (see: Molecular symmetry), and hence of molcular orbitals for quantum mechanical electrons (and also perturbations of them). See also Euclidean group, Point group, Point groups in two dimensions, Point groups in three dimensions, Crystallographic point group, Plane symmetry for WP articles in this area. Jheald 00:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

There seem to be several articles dealing with the same point symmetries and symmetry point groups here. Scope for consolidation/cross referencing ? Jheald 00:49, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Agree. The (remaining) operators are used in the discussion of molecular symmetry, which has a fairly wide range of uses in chemistry. Fundamental translation vector is undoubted related to translation (geometry), although I'm not 100% sure what is "fundamental" about it: it may simply be a synonym for unit cell vector (crystallographic usage), I shall try to check. Physchim62 (talk) 09:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I filled in three more of the redlinks. Can someone finish off? Geometry guy 18:04, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Problem of points

A relatively recent addition, but in a desperate state. It is pretty hard even to work out what it is about. Has anyone heard of this problem? If so, can you elucidate? Geometry guy 16:26, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I've heard of it at some time or another. It's a fairly significant historical problem in probability theory. It has something to do with the fair division of a number of stakes in a game of chance given the number of points scored among multiple players (or something along these lines). It is, if I recall correctly, the European origin of Pascal's triangle. Silly rabbit 16:37, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. This appears to be consistent with the contents of the article! Geometry guy 20:32, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem is notable and famous, but I have never heard it referred to by that name. Blaise Pascal briefly mentions it, without giving it any name. de Méré's problem seems to be a different problem. –Henning Makholm 20:58, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

(I must admit, however, that Google finds a number of non-Wikipedia uses of the "problem of points" name –Henning Makholm 21:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC))

If I understand the article and the history correctly, de Méré's problem is unrelated, but Pascal (and Fermat) worked on a different problem, also posted by the Chevalier de Méré, which is a special case of the problem of points. de Méré asked Pascal to consider a game in which the players threw dice, scoring one point for each successful roll, until one player had accumulated six points and so won the game and the pot. Suppose the players must abandon the game when the score is five to four. How should they split the pot? de Méré said they should split it 3-1, but his associate said that they should split it some other way, maybe 5-4, or 2-1, or something. Pascal and Fermat agreed that 3-1 was correct.

In any case, I do believe that the problem is historically significant. -- Dominus 21:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks all: any chance someone could transfer these clarifications to the article? It doesn seem to be an important one, and I'm kind of busy right now. Geometry guy 21:50, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I have rewritten Problem of points and think it to be in decent shape now. However the somewhat related article Chevalier de Méré is in need of somebody's loving attention. The current article, translated from French, tells an improbable story that de Méré managed to bankrupt himself by betting even odds on being able to throw at least one six in four throws of one fair die, and complained to Pascal that he had expected a 4*1/6 chance of winning. However, one easily computes that de Méré would actually have a few percent's advantage on such a bet, not likely to bankrupt him unless he bet his entire fortune on a single game. My sources agree that what de Méré actually asked of Pascal was an explanation of why the known better-than-even chances for throwing one six in four does not scale to better-than-even chances of throwing one double-six in twenty-four throws of two dice each. However even here the disadvantage is less than a percent, not likely to drive a non-idiotic gambler into immediate bankruptcy.

I might take a stab at this myself, but my available sources are very sparse with actual biographical information about de Méré. Anybody got something better? –Henning Makholm 22:08, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

.. on further investigation, the nonsense story about wrong odds and bankruptcy was not part of the original article that was translated from French, but was inserted later by a vandalism-only account. I have deleted it now. Some work to put reliable content in its stead still remains. –Henning Makholm 00:43, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

According to this article in French, which appeared in the Gazette des Mathématiciens, a periodical published by the Société Mathématique de France, the problem posed to Pascal was this: "how often must one throw two dice to have a priori at least a one on two chance of obtaining a double six? is it 24 or 25?" This sounds quite plausible to me; the chevalier de Méré must have known that 23 was too little and 25 sufficient.^{but see below!} I don't know if the periodical counts as reviewed, but their website states that submitted articles will be examined by the editorial board before being accepted.

Here are some bits and pieces I found:

• French writer (1607-1684). After studies with the Jesuits of Poitiers, he conquered Paris where he made himself well known in sophisticated society, and established ties of friendship with Guez de Balzac and the Duchess of Lesdiguières.[4]
• He was born in Boueux near Angoulême and was, supposedly, the first instructor of Françoise d'Aubigné.[5]
• He is responsible for quite a few aphorisms, such as: Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

 --Lambiam^Talk 00:58, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

P.S. While plausible, the formulation of the SMF article is not actually supported by the text of the letter that Pascal sent to Fermat.[6] He writes that the man − although of great wit, not a mathematician, a grave defect − complained that "... If one undertakes to make a six with one die, one is in the advantage to undertake it in 4 ... If one undertakes to make [double six] with two dice, one is in the disadvantage to undertake it in 24. And yet, 24 is to 36 ... as 4 is to 6 ...". 01:19, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Rn

What is the convention regarding the use of $\mathbb {R} ^{n}$ versus Rⁿ? Jhausauer 20:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

See /Archive5#question about formatting of standard symbols (I didn't find a more recent discussion). The project tends not to be prescriptive, but there seems to be a preference for bold inline html, and blackboard bold math in display. Geometry guy 20:31, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

There's another possibility: ℝⁿ (type ℝ or copy-and-paste the unicode). It should look more like the math version, but may work less well for people who don't have big unicode font sets installed. —David Eppstein 21:17, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

ℝ? Doesn't seem to work for me. Silly rabbit 21:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't look carefully enough at my source. ℝ should work in MathML but is unavailable in HTML. Another way of typing the same thing, that does work in HTML: ℝ. —David Eppstein 21:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

This may depend on your OS, browser, monobook.js, installed fonts, and the house Uranus is in, but for me ℝⁿ isn't very legible. ℝⁿ, with the font size one up, is almost twice as tall and quite legible, although the subscript is a bit too low.  --Lambiam^Talk 22:23, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

This is mentioned in the mathematics style manual. We use "'''R'''" inline and "\R" (or equivalent) in displayed TeX equations. --KSmrq^T 05:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Archives of this page

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive Index is currently broken. I have fixed the most obvious break, which is that, after number 20, archive titles have a space before the number.

However, more seriously, the complete archive takes many seconds to load and now breaks the infamous pre-expand include limit. (What? Never heard of that? Take a look at Wikipedia:Template limits: this is useful knowledge, since it affects quite a few of our activities.) I propose that the complete archive should be replaced by a pre-2006 archive, and that the years (2006 and 2007) in the table should link to a page listing all the archives for the given year. This would not break the pre-expand include limit. I would just do it, but thought that other editors might like to know that something went wrong. Geometry guy 22:06, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I've now implemented this. Geometry guy 00:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of that. I have never tried looking at the entire archive. CMummert · talk 05:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Help with article in "unconventional computation"

The article Non Universality in Computation has come to my attention. While the papers by Selim Akl that it cites don't appear to be completely incorrect, they are not actually reflective of classical computability theory because they place restrictions on the models of computation that are not permitted in the standard theory of computability. In particular, the papers assume some sort of time scale such that "computers" must complete calculations in a certain number of steps, which is incompatible with the standard definitions.

So while the articles are not completely incorrect, some of the claims that Akl makes are not correct, or overstated at least, and these claims are repeated in the WP article. The claims were also added to the Turing machine article, but someone else removed them.

I think that there is a place on WP for this information, once it has been rephrased to use standard terminology. But the article as it stands is likely to leave readers with false impressions.

I have asked the author of the WP article, User:Ewakened, to comment here, and I would appreciate hearing other opinions on the matter. CMummert · talk 23:12, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Good articles

Problems with Good article review have generated much discussion recently (see e.g. Wikipedia talk:Good articles) and I have been attempting to encourage the GA process to reform. There are many ways in which it could be reformed, from name changes to clarity over criteria, to more lightweight procedures. Please read the discussions and comment. My current feeling is that if reform is not forthcoming, we should withdraw our support for WP:GA, and encourage the rest of Wikipedia 1.0 (in which we are a leading project) to do likewise: at present, the GA process does not fit into any coherent assessment scheme, since it concentrates too much on citation issues rather than overall article quality. Geometry guy 00:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe Good article review should rename themselves to Wikipedia:WikiProject Article Style and Form; that way, they could rate and rank articles as they wish, lessening the insult to those who write articles with A-class content and B-class style. linas 05:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I have attempted to insert a caveat at Template:Grading scheme and have been continually reverted by one Revert Warrior, despite the evidence of our long conversation that there is no agreement where GA fits in that scale, or that it should. See Template_talk:Grading_scheme#Good_Articles. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:20, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I suspect it is unlikely that such a caveat will be widely accepted across Wikipedia, since in non-scientific areas, GA seems to work somewhat better than it does for us. However, we could certainly add such a caveat to our own table (although I would be against making it strongly-worded, or open to criticism as a political statement). I also hesitate, for the time being, to propose removing GA from our grading scheme (I think there may well be maths editors who like to have it there, and value the green cross seal of approval from outside of the project).

However, I would like to propose a more cosmetic change: merging the B+ and GA ratings. This would amount to the following: replace the horrible lime green colour of B+ by the darker green of GA; ask VeblenBot nicely to count and list B+ and GA articles together; and adjust some of the wording in our grading scheme to reflect the merger.

It might also be worthwhile making the B+ grading more robust, and ensuring that B+ articles are properly sourced, but according to the standards of this project, not the inline citation police. In that way GA becomes "B+ with added footnotes". Comments? Geometry guy 17:04, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Neighbourhood (mathematics)

There is a discussion at Talk:Neighbourhood (mathematics)#Which comes first: neighborhood of a point or of a set?, and a few more mathematicians in that neighbourhood would be appreciated. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:38, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Article assessment

In a discussion elsewhere, I presented criteria by which I personally judge an article:

---

I would ask of an article:

1. Is it correct?
2. Is it reasonably complete and balanced?
3. Is it clear?
4. Is it compelling?
5. Is it reasonably accessible, given the topic?
6. Is it written grammatically, with correct spelling, and with good typesetting?
7. Is it appropriately illustrated, if applicable?
8. Is it well linked?
9. Is it helpful in providing references and additional resources?

These kinds of questions will be familiar to anyone who has written and reviewed for a journal.

---

The criteria are ordered roughly according to importance, and attempt to be roughly independent. Presented here for your consideration, and possible comment.

I believe I would find it more helpful to have articles given explicit ratings (yes/no/partial would suffice) against each criterion: I could assign ratings more easily, and target improvements better. Also, it would help us edit to explicit shared standards. Might this go in WP:MSM or WP:WPMER? --KSmrq^T 08:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a well thought out list of criteria for the Mathematics project articles. I have a couple of small grumbles: no.4 seems too high on importance scale (if needed at all for mathematics articles); no.6 is a classical Liar paradox type of sentence (better: is it grammatically correct? or is the grammar correct?). I would also separate the grammar and typesetting, and add another item, my Achilles' heel, is it written in idiomatically correct English? Would it be possible to make a template with these or similar criteria, and add it to subpages of the mathematics articles being rated, much in the same way as 'Comment' subpages were implemented? Arcfrk 08:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Also, in view of earlier discussion about length and completeness, one might add Is it focused? to the top of the list. Arcfrk 08:48, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that an important point is the overall structure. Does the article naturally flow from the start to the end, or does it jump all over the place? I feel that this is related to KSmrq's compelling (though I'm not sure what KSmrq means) and Arcfrk's focused, so perhaps these should all be combined in one point.

Considering the comments I made when rating articles, I think that I use these criteria implicitly (after all, they're pretty natural criteria, though it's not so easy to formulate them). Many articles failed point 2 (completeness). I can see why making it explicit would be helpful, but it's also more work. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 19:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Set theory category

Should Category:Set theory be a subcategory of Category:Mathematical logic? It seems to be regarded as a subfield by modern set theorists, but I'm not sure if this is the right criterion for populating categories with subcategories, and wonder if it would not be more helpful to have separate categories with many common subcategories. I've been discussing this with Trovatore, but I think a wider discussion is needed. Geometry guy 13:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

But perhaps also a subcat of general topology, which is historically what it set out to be? linas 13:34, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Since there is no requirement that the category graph has to be a tree, the set theory category can be put into several parent categories. Personally, as a logician, I would find it very surprising if it were not in the mathematical logic category.

I think the difficulty is that there are two different meanings of "mathematical logic" in use. To researchers, it means essentially "recursion theory, proof theory, set theory, and model theory". To nonlogicians, it means something like "the logical methods used in mathematics, and the study of those logical methods." It's natural enough for nonlogicians with this viewpoint to think set theory, which has a subject of its own like algebra does, is not part of "mathematical logic" and that the logicians are trying to claim it somehow, but that isn't the historical development.

I disgree with Linas' comment - from my viewpoint the development of set theory was either contemporary with or (more likely) predated that of general topology by a few years. It is true that the phrase "set theory" had a very broad meaning in the early 20th century, but the content of topology has never included things such as models of set theory. CMummert · talk 14:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I also disagree with Linas's comment. However, I'm not convinced that it is sensible to structure the category based on the logician's viewpoint (see below, and also the comments I made on Trovatore's talk page, linked above). I understand that there is a huge overlap, and it is perfectly reasonable to regard set theory as a subfield of mathematical logic: I am not complaining that logicians are trying to "claim" set theory, only suggesting that this might not be the best way to structure the category. As for the historical development, was Cantor's set theory really part of mathematical logic? Additionally, a large part of set theory, indeed the part familiar to most readers (Category:Basic concepts in set theory), doesn't have much to do with mathematical logic at all. Geometry guy 14:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with having Category:Set theory as a subcategory of Category:Mathematical logic in addition to possibly other categories. After all, the category system operates as a tool for browsing topics, and for such a purpose it does not need to be a tree — a more general directed graph should work fine (prefereably without loops...). A related question that may have been discussed before is whether the maths article classification system should follow the AMS scheme [7]. It is well established and works fairly alright. And by the way, as the habit of having multiple secondary classifications for most articles and books shows, binning of maths topics in a perfectly clean way is quite difficult. Stca74 14:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, the category graph is not a tree, and there is no reason for it to be. In fact it is rather a long way from being a tree. The concern I have is that if specialist fields express their broadest scope in the category system, then everything will end up being a subcategory of everything else, and the category system will be useless. It seems to me that set theory is so basic, that it should be directly a subcategory of Category:Mathematics. However, in the AMS scheme, it is a subcategory of Category:Mathematical logic and foundations, and that would be an alternative way to proceed. Geometry guy 14:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

AMS classification has different aims from WP categorisation. I'm happy with the current position: almost all of the articles within Category:Set theory are logical in interest. There is Category:Descriptive set theory, which in the old days (pre-1920 say) would have been co-extensive with Category:General topology ('sets of points'); but again almost all the content is logic. It has Category:Sets of real numbers in it, e.g. for Cantor set, which is a subcategory also of Category:Real numbers. There might be room for more connections made with Category:Discrete mathematics. Otherwise it all seems fine. Charles Matthews 15:07, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't necessarily be against renaming category:mathematical logic to category:mathematical logic and foundations. I kind of think the top-level subcats of category:mathematics should be fewer. The standard division I'm used to has four subfields, namely algebra, analysis, geometry/topology, and logic/foundations. I think that might be a decent place to start, although I have to admit that I don't know where to put number theory in that scheme. --Trovatore 18:31, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I also think it might be worth reproducing here a point I made on my talk page: mathematical logic, as the term is used today, doesn't really have much to do with logic in the sense of "the science of making valid inferences". It's entrenched historical terminology (perhaps the only truly enduring legacy of the discredited Russell–Frege logicist school), and it no longer really matters much whether it makes sense or not in terms of its component words. I think maybe this confusion explains how G-guy can say that the topics in the "basic concepts in set theory" cat don't have much to do with mathematical logic, when to my eye they obviously do. --Trovatore 18:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

In related news, I have spent a while cleaning up Category:Mathematical logic by subcategorizing a lot of articles. I have also nominated Category:Computation for deletion here. That only sounds odd until you actually look at the category. CMummert · talk 18:50, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

The renaming is definitely one way forward. I agree with Charles, however, that WP categorisation has different aims than traditional or modern mathematics subject classification, and we shouldn't confuse the two. The current top-level subcats of Category:Mathematics are

arithmetic, algebra, mathematical analysis, geometry, number theory, topology, category theory, mathematical logic, discrete mathematics, applied mathematics, mathematical physics, probability and statistics, functions and mappings, numbers, sequences and equations

and several subcategories that are not related to topics in math. Some of these categories reflect what is important to WP readers, rather than mathematicians, and I think it should stay that way. It would then seem natural to include set theory in this top level for the same reason. It is the eye of the reader, not the mathematical logician which matters.

Alternatively Category:Mathematical logic and foundations could be refined into Category:Mathematical logic and Category:Mathematics foundations with set theory as a subcat of both. The two terms are closely related but have a different emphasis (rather like geometry and topology). For instance, Trovatore has suggested that Category:Category theory should be a subcategory of Category:Mathematical logic. I would be uncomfortable with that, as only a small part of category theory (e.g. topos theory) is mathematical logic. On the other hand, it fits comfortably as a subcategory of Category:Mathematics foundations. Geometry guy 19:17, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I would be strongly against distinguishing "math logic" from "foundations". In practice the terms are synonymous. Which term a person chooses to use sometimes tells you a bit about his philosophical views (though not in any reliable way); it tells you virtually nothing about the content he's discussing. I think all of category theory is math logic; see my remarks above about "math logic" not having much in particular to do with "logic" in the broader sense. --Trovatore 20:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

They may be synonymous to the experts, but they aren't to non-experts. One can declare an equality math logic = foundations, but this does not address the fact that these concepts convey different meanings to the general reader (even the general mathematician). In particular, I fail to see how the really important modern subject of higher category theory can be called mathematical logic. Similarly, regarding homological algebra and universal algebra as part of mathematical logic seems odd, whereas it does not seem so unreasonable to regard them as part of foundations (as well as algebraic topology and algebra respectively), because these ideas are used in many branches of mathematics. Geometry guy 22:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't really know much about "higher" category theory, so I couldn't say. The basic arrow-chasing that appears in, say, Lang's Algebra, seems to me clearly to have the character of mathematical logic. But if categorists don't think so, I'm happy to defer to them on that point. (Are there any categorists in the project? I don't know of any.)

That would make Category:Homological algebra a subcategory of mathematical logic as well. Just because X "has the character of" Y does not mean X should be a subcat of Y. Geometry guy 10:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

G-guy, please do not respond in-line to something in the middle of a comment; you lose attribution and sometimes break the flow of someone else's argument. Homological algebra does not strike me as having the character of mathematical logic. Category theory in general does. But I won't press the point on category theory, because I really haven't usually seen it classified as math logic. --Trovatore 16:34, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Apologies — I had just returned from some discussions where this was the norm rather than the exception, and had no intention to cause any annoyance or break up the flow. I hope in this case the indentation makes the attribution clear at least. Apologies again, Geometry guy 17:33, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we should be using the standard terminology of the field, whether it's intuitive or not. I'm the first to say that calling these fields "logic" is based on a historical error, but I don't much care; it's a typical fact about language that errors eventually become correct if they're used enough. "Foundations" has its own baggage -- first, it suggests you believe in foundationalism, which you might not, and when it is used distinctively based on content, it often connotes foundational philosophy, which does not seem to be what we're talking about. And there isn't, to my knowledge, any third choice to describe these fields that seem to have a common character.

So as I say, I'm OK with renaming the cat to category:mathematical logic and foundations, but I would oppose any proposal to break that down into "logic" and "foundations" subcats. --Trovatore 01:17, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I just wanted to clarify that my suggesion was not to introduce two subcategories of Category:Mathematical logic and foundations, but to replace this by two subcategories of Category:mathematics which could lead the reader into foundations/math logic issues in two different ways. However, if this does not find any support here, I have no intention to pursue it. I'm just trying to raise the issue. Geometry guy 18:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion on Trovatore's talk page prompted me to read Wikipedia's guidelines on categories, namely WP:CAT. Particularly interesting is the very first one, which states:

1. Categories are mainly used to browse through similar articles. Make decisions about the structure of categories and subcategories that make it easy for users to browse through similar articles.

From the discussion so far (with the exception of the comment of User:Charles Matthews) it would seem that this guideline instead states:

1. Categories are mainly used to organize the hierarchy of knowledge. Make decisions about the structure of categories and subcategories in accordance with the general practice of experts in the field.

It doesn't say that! Geometry guy 10:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, at the very least, I think our categorizations should not be at cross purposes with the standard terminology of the field. That would be endlessly disruptive, as authors applied categories to articles in standard ways, and as knowledgable readers were led astray.

Distinguishing "math logic" from "foundations of math" just isn't going to work; there is no standard distinction between them (except, again, insofar as "foundations" means "philosophy", which isn't what you want) and the categories will be endlessly muddled. --Trovatore 16:34, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree: if WP categorization is at cross purposes to established hierarchies, it will confuse both readers and editors. Geometry guy 17:33, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, this is turning into a general discussion, it seems. Category:Categorical logic should be a subcategory of both Category:Category theory and Category:Mathematical logic. There are good reasons why we can't intersect categories; do this instead. I see no point in Category:Mathematical logic and foundations: verbose and probably hendiadys. I think few top-level subcategories in Category:Mathematics is not going to be helpful. Charles Matthews 21:12, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Charles, I learned a new word :-). Yes, hendiadys is exactly right. I don't see that as a fatal problem, though, if it makes people happier to use the lengthier name. But my personal preference is for the shorter name, partly because the longer one would provide a constant temptation to break it into "logic" and "foundations" subcats. --Trovatore 21:24, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Re Charles' comment: yes Category:Categorical logic (and also Category:Topos theory) are, and should be, subcats both of mathematical logic and category theory.

I have a proposal to make, which I should have thought of and tried out sooner: make Category:Set theory a subcat of both Category:Mathematics and Category:Mathematical logic. This is justified because:

1. it is a branch of mathematical logic, particularly in expert usuage;
2. like Category:Functions and mappings it concerns a broad and basic topic in mathematics for the general reader, and deserves to appear at the top-level, along with categories such as Category:Arithmetic and Category:Topology.

How does that sound? Geometry guy 10:30, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

This appears to be uncontentious, so I will go ahead. Geometry guy 18:02, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

BibTex for Wikipedia?

It often happens to me that I want to include a reference to, say, Hartshorne's book "Algebraic Geometry". It is somewhat annoying to always look for it at some page where the reference already is. Is this only a problem / issue of mine or do also other people wish there would be a BibTex-like system on Wikipedia? In the simplest case it would be a page including references to (at least) major math books. It might look like

Robin Hartshorne (1997). Algebraic Geometry. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-90244-9.	{{cite book | author = [[Robin Hartshorne]] | year = 1997 | title = [[Hartshorne%27s_Algebraic_Geometry|Algebraic Geometry]] | publisher = [[Springer Science+Business Media|Springer-Verlag]] | id = ISBN 0-387-90244-9 }}

Jakob.scholbach 17:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

PS. Of course, much more helpful would be a mechanism generating the above reference by something like {{cite book | id = Hartshorne_AG }} . Jakob.scholbach 17:47, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

If you have the ISBN, you can use the Wikipedia template filling tool referenced at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Reference resources#Citation templates. For ISBN 0-387-90244-9 it produces {{cite book |author=Robin Hartshorne |title=Algebraic geometry |publisher=Springer-Verlag |location=Berlin |year=1977 |pages= |isbn=0-387-90244-9 |oclc= |doi=}}, which displays as:

Robin Hartshorne (1977). Algebraic geometry. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-90244-9.

 --Lambiam^Talk 20:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

If Wikipedia as a whole does not keep a database, at least WikiProject Mathematics could. (I note with interest that another — more focused — wiki has adopted a scheme of giving each citation its own page.) It would be very nice to have a list, for several reasons.

1. citation data would be easier to find
2. corrections and additions could benefit everyone
3. conventions and standards might be easier

I have proposed this in the past, but encountered an apparent lack of enthusiasm. Also, what is involved in creating and maintaining the data, can we do better than cut-and-paste to use it, and who will do the work? --KSmrq^T 04:09, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

It is not hard to parse all the math articles and extract all citations in a list. I don't know if it is worth the trouble though, the Wikipedia template filling tool mentioned above does a decent job I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:12, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

The template filling tool is nice to have in our arsenal, but is rather limited. First, it requires an ISBN for a book, and does not accept ISBN-13. So I tried it on a real example, ISBN 0-875-48170-1, and got the following

{{cite book
|author=David Eugene Smith, Yoshio Mikami, 
|title=History of Japanese Mathematics
|publisher=Open Court Publishing Co ,U.S
|location=
|year=
|pages=
|isbn=0-875-48170-1
|oclc=
|doi=
}}

• David Eugene Smith, Yoshio Mikami,. History of Japanese Mathematics. Open Court Publishing Co ,U.S. ISBN 0-875-48170-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

I deliberately used an improperly hyphenated ISBN (it should be ISBN 0-87548-170-1), and got the same back. The citation I had actually used in the article splits the two authors, splits first and last names for both, links the first author, provides a URL to an on-line copy of the work, links the publisher, provides a correctly hyphenated ISBN-13, and supports automatic linking from a Harvard-style reference in the text.

{{citation
| last1=Smith
| first1=David Eugene
| author1-link=David Eugene Smith
| last2=Mikami
| first2=Yoshio
| pages=pp. 130–132
| title=A history of Japanese mathematics
| place=Chicago
| publisher=[[Open Court Publishing Company|Open Court Publishing]]
| year=1914
| ISBN=978-0-87548-170-8
| url=http://www.archive.org/details/historyofjapanes00smituoft
}}

• Smith, David Eugene; Mikami, Yoshio (1914), A history of Japanese mathematics, Chicago: Open Court Publishing, pp. pp. 130–132, ISBN 978-0-87548-170-8 {{citation}}: |pages= has extra text (help)

There is a substantial difference in favor of the latter. And how am I supposed to come up with the following (from the same article)?

{{citation
 | last =Laczkovich
 | first =Miklós
 | author-link =Miklós Laczkovich
 | title =Equidecomposability and discrepancy: A solution to Tarski's circle squaring problem
 | journal =Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik ([[Crelle's Journal|Crelle’s Journal]])
 | volume =404
 | pages =77–117
 | year =1990
 | url= http://dz-srv1.sub.uni-goettingen.de/sub/digbib/loader?ht=VIEW&did=D262326
 | id ={{ISSN|0075-4102}}<!--MR 91b:51034-->
}}

• Laczkovich, Miklós (1990), "Equidecomposability and discrepancy: A solution to Tarski's circle squaring problem", Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik (Crelle’s Journal), 404: 77–117, ISSN 0075-4102

No ISBN applies, and I have no ID number; and even if I did, the tool will not provide that marvelous URL. --KSmrq^T 05:26, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I think it could be useful. I have a file with half a dozen of references I use quite often. Something similar is at User:Shotwell/Standard references. I'm not so sure whether it's worth the effort for journal articles, but who knows. We can always set something up and see whether people will use it. It would be nice if we could use it in a more intelligent way than copy-paste, but I'm not sure that's possible. I would however be against extracting all the citations from articles; by doing it by hand we have some quality control. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:37, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Bear in mind that each editor should cite the particular version of a source they used: so if you have a different edition of a book from another editor, you should use a citation for that edition (with the ISBN from your copy of the book) rather than just reusing the other editor's citation unmodified. This is less of an issue for journal articles (in that fewer have such multiple versions), but citations of those are also likely to be less widely reused.

Another question with reusable citations: when should links to authors (or journals, etc.) be included in them? Policy on links would suggest that a particular author should be linked just once in the references for an article; reuse would suggest that the citation shouldn't depend on the article it's being used in, so all or none (with a given author) should link to the author. Joseph Myers 18:36, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

So, I understand that there is some interest in a Wikiproject-wide list of references. I'm willing to put some effort into it, but I don't know the inner mechanisms of Wikipedia. Is it possible to create and maintain etc. a database inside Wikipedia? Otherwise I would volunteer to set up some reference database outside WP which can be edited by everybody. A mere list of references is a nice thing, but is still kind of a hassle to manually look for the item one needs, especially when the lists grows bigger and bigger as everybody adds his favourite references. It is probably also unefficient because everytime the whole list has to be saved when someone adds a new entry. The advantage, pointed out by KMSrq, of including an URL is definitely something we should not miss, because giving an URL is (at least for me personally) practically more important than the volume no. and the journal's name, at least until one is actually writing a paper and needs the paper-reference, but then good old BibTex does the job anyway. Besides the URL of the paper or book (if there is one) it would also be nice to allow the URL of a review, for example like on MathScinet. Concerning Joseph's remarks: different editions of a book are no particular problem, I guess, they should just be listed as different database entries. Whether to give a wikilink to the author's page or not might be decided by the user by checking or unchecking some checkbox "wikilink the author(s)" etc. Jakob.scholbach 17:30, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Multivariable calculus

Multivariable calculus is in need of some serious expansion. I started to make some changes. Please review my work and expand/correct it. Jhausauer 21:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Normal set

I've prodded normal set, which I don't think is terminology with any particular currency, but if anyone here knows of it being used, please weigh in. --Trovatore 21:30, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

David Eppstein for admin

I nominated one of us, David Eppstein, for administrator. If you are familiar with David's work, you are welcome to voice your opinion at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/David Eppstein. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:39, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Why is it called biproduct?

Please see "Why is it called biproduct?" section in Talk:Biproduct. --Acepectif 20:31, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Because it's both a product (category theory) and a coproduct. Silly rabbit 20:46, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

It's a dessert topping and a floor wax? Jheald 06:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Topologists, help wanted at neighbourhood (mathematics)

Sorry to bring this up again, but two of us disagree rather strongly on whether one should define first the neighbourhood of a point, or the neighbourhood of a set, with no compromise in sight.

While the issue may be trivial, the concept of neighbourhood is important enough in mathematics, that perhaps more people should get involved. The discussion is at Talk:Neighbourhood (mathematics)#Which comes first: neighborhood of a point or of a set?. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:46, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

New month, new collaboration

Hey everyone, It's June first and you know what that means... A new Mathematics Collaboration of the Month! The victor, by an overwhelming margin of 3 votes, is Integral. Everyone here should be able to contribute on this one (no excuses this time!). With a little polish and elbow grease, this article will be at A class in no time at all. See you there--Cronholm144 06:21, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I am not in the habit of participating in these events; few are. However, I'd like to put in a special request for "integral". If this esteemed assemblage of editors could just briefly stop by the page and skim it (it's quite short), then leave feeling embarrassed at the poor state of such a key article, that would be progress. If you feel like a minor edit, or perhaps an observation on the talk page, that would be better still.

Unlike Cronholm144, I've been around long enough to know that topics like this (as described below) are a huge challenge. It is a gateway topic, visible to far more readers than an expert topic like Poincaré duality. It is one of the deepest topics in mathematics, with massive amounts of material to tap. Many editors will have encountered integrals in a simplistic way, and think they know more than they really do. And the topic can be introduced and organized in many ways, with each editor drawing on different taste and training. It scares me.

That said, integral is so weak that even a little effort could make a visible difference.

So, please, take a few minutes of your time and have a look, and perhaps give it a nudge towards improvement. Thanks. --KSmrq^T 07:03, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to reiterate my suggestions for facilitating the collaboration by proceeding in phases:

• Phase 1 is like a peer review, in which we identify what the problems with the current version are.
• Phase 2 is a discussion phase in which we reach consensus on the target: what are (and what are not) problems and what to do about them.
• Phase 3 is implementing this.

 --Lambiam^Talk 08:21, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Orphan talk page

Why does Template talk:Numerical algorithms exist when its template does not? JRSpriggs 08:18, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Admin error! I have fixed it. There is an archived discussion concerning the former template here. Physchim62 (talk) 08:55, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot to delete it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:39, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

JRSpriggs probably knows about this already, but for those who don't: you can use {{db-talk}} to tag a talk page whose main article is deleted, to have the talk page deleted as well. There is a list of these templates at Template:Deletiontools. CMummert · talk 16:31, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to Physchim62 for fixing the problem. Thanks to CMummert for the pointer to Deletiontools; I was not aware of it. However, I probably would not have used the "db-talk" template in this case because I had forgotten that the template was deleted (not paying enough attention); so I did not know why the talk page was there without a template. I do not necessarily think that leaving the talk page for a little while after the article is gone is a bad idea, but there should be some indication on it of what happened to the article and that the talk page will be deleted eventually. JRSpriggs 07:22, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

There's always admin discretion to leave a talk page when the main article has been deleted, but usually such situations are simple errors (admins are only human, after all!). Thanks for bringing it to people's attention. Physchim62 (talk) 12:50, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

ratings

User:Geometry guy is perhaps the most prolific assigner of "ratings" on math article talk pages. He ranke deformation theory as of "mid" importance and degrees of freedom (statistics) as low.

Is there some standard according to which that is not idiotic? (I'd have said "low" for the former and "high" for the latter. And "high" for any other topic that, like this one, is covered every statistics course from kindergarten through Ph.D.-level.)

Has anyone attempted to codify standards for these ratings? Michael Hardy 22:35, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Assessment it says "low" means "Subject is peripheral knowledge, possibly trivial." By that standard, ranking degrees of freedom (statistics) as "low" is profoundly illiterate. Nothing kinder can be said about it. Michael Hardy 22:38, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I have occasionally come across ratings I didn't agree with, and adjusted them accordingly. For example (if I recall correctly), measure theory and harmonic analysis were also low. Real analysis and complex analysis were mid (should have been top). And so on. It might do to cruise through the ratings from time to time and see if there are any eyesores. I think that, rather than a codified standard, it seems to be a free-for-all in which the ratings reach a sort of equilibrium value. During some discussion, unrelated to the present one, G.Guy brought up an analogy with simulated annealing, which seems to be apt for the rating system as a whole.

By the way, I have been assigned the task of putting together an FAQ on the subject of ratings. So far, I've completely procrastinated, but now might be a good time to get it up and running. Silly rabbit 22:44, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, here's a counterexample, Michael. I'm going to say something kinder about it. Geometry guy is working very hard to provide a summary page where the rest of us can consult ratings vs. importance, grouped by broad subject areas. I think he's doing a great job, that everybody is human, that mistakes are inevitable, and that we will foster a better spirit of community by helping each other out than by spewing venom on this talk page.

At least I think that's a counterexample. I might be wrong, though – I've been characterized as a troglodyte in this venue before today, and I suppose it may happen again.  ;^> DavidCBryant 22:55, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Hello all, thank you for your comments. I am attempting to do two things simultaneously right now. The first is to make up for the patchy coverage of the maths rating scheme by attaching maths ratings to approximately 1/3 of the 15000 articles in the List of mathematics articles. The second is to try and refine and understand what importance ratings are for, and how to assess them. These two processes feed into each other.

Importance ratings are always going to be subjective and will fluctuate, but the goal of the second task is to reduce this subjectivity and fluctuation. In the meantime, however, the first task is flawed in many ways: first, I (and others who join me in this effort) will make subjective judgements; second, we will make mistakes; third, the criteria on which these judgements are made have not yet been fully elucidated. I can only ask others to have patience, and also bear in mind that this is a wiki: anyone can fix or update a maths rating. I am saddened by how the harder I work, the more complaints I receive on my talk page. No one needs to complain: just fix the rating.

Importance seems to cause more trouble than anything else. I am beginning to wonder if it should be renamed "priority" (which is the term used by some other WikiProjects): it is not about how important a subject is, but how high a priority it is for us to have a good article on the subject (in the context of related articles.) This does not mean that there will be fewer mistakes, only (I hope) that editors will be less upset by them. Anyway, I think that the word "priority" should at least be mentioned much more in our assessment pages. Recent experiences only serve to reinforce my opinion that the terms "peripheral" and "trivial" should be eliminated as soon as possible from the summary of the low-priority rating. (These words are not actually part of the WP 1.0 scheme, which uses the term "specialist" instead, although this is problematic as well.) I will try to fix this tomorrow.

In the meantime, bear in mind that there is a lower importance rating than "low": unrated. If you know an article which has not been rated which you think should be, please rate it. So far, I have got as far as Dei, so if your favourite article comes before this in the alphabet, don't come to my talk page to complain: assess it! Best wishes to all... Geometry guy 00:09, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with DavidCBryant that Geometry guy is making substantial contributions. When I was saying nothing kinder could be said I was speaking ONLY of that one rating of that one article.

I suspect Geometry guy is seriously confused about the content of statistics, and maybe also about its importance. Michael Hardy 00:37, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Sadly very few statistics articles have been given maths ratings so far: the subject really needs a champion to go through and assess them. The maths ratings project has been active for quite some time now (at least six months), but even a month ago, there were only 29 assessed probability and statistics articles; now there are 147. This five-fold increase is largely a result of my efforts: I hope this shows I am aware of the importance of statistics, even if I am confused by its content!

As I mentioned above, there is a lower importance/priority rating than "low", which is "unrated" (the bottom 2/3rds, in my view). I've had to skip over many stats articles for lack of expertise: if I were a statistician, I would be more up-in-arms for the stats article that remain unrated than for the ones whose rating is wrong. The ones to which I have added a rating are the ones I thought desperately needed to be put "on the map" for others to rate more accurately.

Anyway, in case it is any reassurance, most of the articles I am skipping over right now, with no rating, are obscure irregular polygons (sometimes in five dimensional space!). You wouldn't believe just how much of this kind of stuff there is! Geometry guy 01:05, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I strongly believe that comments above involving the word 'idiotic' should be retracted. I would like to express support and highly praise Geometry guy for undertaking an incredibly difficult task of rating broad swaths of articles (literally, thousands). In addition to that, he and others have written rather extensively on the criteria used in ratings on this talk page, although some of the discussion is now archived. It was no sneaky action on his part, as one might erroneously infer from Michael Hardy's comment in the beginning. The unfortunate part is that we did not reach a consensus on what terms should be used for rating importance, and did not establish the clear criteria to be used (of course, individual application of any criteria will always remain subjective). In my opinion, this happened not because of any deep disagreement (indeed, most of the proposals were very close), but due to the general lack of interest to codifying the results of the discussion. As a consequence, there are now multiple attempts to adjust the ratings based on a whole slew of criteria, from the discredited and obsolete four levels to multiple interpretations of the alternative schemes that were discussed, and additionally, the adjustments that are not based on anything save highly opinionated personal choices. I feel that it's TOP PRIORITY to establish at least a draft of reasonable rating scheme that can be used as a reference.

Mid for Deformation theory is correct, in my opinion. I am not a statistitian, but in my classes from kindergarten through the university level, degrees of freedom (statistics) did not establish notability on a par with Euclidean geometry, Fractal, or Riemann sphere, to quote the first three high importance rated articles in the field of geometry. The article itself does not make for an easy determination of the importance (regardless of how you might define importance). As I have pointed out earlier in a discussion of ratings, it is difficult to rate undeveloped (start/stub class) or messy aricles in context and especially for a non-expert. Subjective judgements and even mistakes are inevitable, and we would all benefit from restraint in descriptions of others' contributions, be they posted on this page, talk pages, or as summary of edits. In this I wholeheartedly agree with DavidCBryant's comment above.

Let me repeat some earlier remarks that we should keep in mind one of the main goals of the rating enterprise: to facilitate improvement of mathematics part of Wikipedia, by identifying the key areas needing improvement and matching limited editing resources with a multitude of articles that compete for our attention. It is emphatically not an endorsement of the absolute importance of the subject of the article for mathematics as a whole, or our beloved special area! Having said this, I'd like to point out the fairly broad agreement in previous discussions that only a few articles be rated top importance and relative limited numbered high importance. I mention this, because Silly rabbit has increased importance ratings in many cases that were a lot less compelling than Real analysis, creating an impression that any important topic he would like to put into top and high classes. Hopefully, the newest Geometry guy's thoughts on the rating scheme can serve as a basis of a good rating scheme that we can all agree upon. Arcfrk 01:19, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Has there been some discussion on my recent upgrades that I was unaware of Arcfrk? The only case anyone bothered to bring to my attention was image (mathematics), which I promptly downrated from high to mid, favoring the isomorphism theorem for high instead. This, I hope, is significant enough that we can all agree belongs in high. Similar upgrades to asymptotic analysis, character theory, representation theory. I didn't think these would be at all controversial, but since it's clear you don't want other editors adjusting the ratings, I'll refrain. I'll just revert my ratings and let someone else handle it. BTW: Maybe you could write the FAQ, too. Silly rabbit 01:50, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I am grateful to all for both supportive and critical comments. I would emphasise that anyone can adjust ratings. It can be a thankless task sometimes, but please don't be discouraged by disagreement! I have been trying to build on the discussions held here previously to improve the importance page and hence provide better guidance for these ratings, but it is still work in progress. I am acutely aware that this is a high priority, and I will try and push it forward later today. Geometry guy 02:13, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I expect the importance of an article to be highly correlated with the number of articles linking to it (not counting "List of ..." articles and redirect or disambiguation pages). For Deformation theory I count 17 linking articles, and for Degrees of freedom (statistics) 41. Is it possible to collect this information automatically, for a sanity check of already rated articles and also for checking if some important articles failed to get an importance rating?  --Lambiam^Talk 08:39, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I see such a list exists already: User:Mathbot/Most linked math articles.  --Lambiam^Talk 08:44, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

One of the approaches taken by Cronholm and me for adding maths ratings (following Oleg's suggestion) is to go down this list from the top. However, the correlation of this statistic with importance/priority is not entirely reliable for several reasons. First it tends to overrate articles of a more general rather than specialist nature. Second, it can be inflated by links between similar articles: see for instance the articles on polyhedra and tilings. Third it tends to underrate articles in poorly developed areas of the maths project, which are often the areas which most need our support and further development.

Furthermore, I strongly believe that articles should be assessed in the context of related articles. It doesn't make a lot of sense to compare Deformation theory and Degrees of freedom (statistics). The former seems firmly Mid to me, in comparison with related articles. I clearly slipped up rating the latter as Low, as it is certainly in the Mid-High range, not because it is "more important than deformation theory", but in the context of other statistics topics. Geometry guy 13:42, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

One difficulty with statistics is that coverage is feeble by comparison to most math topics. One can readily imagine 30 or 40 articles in a list of topics related to degrees of freedom in statistics, but they're not there. Similarly analysis of variance is a vast topic on which one could write several thick volumes, but the article is pretty stubby. Michael Hardy 01:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Zero

I have been going through the Z articles, and I have found quite a few stubs in the zero section, Zero_ideal, Zero_set, Zero_tensor, Zerosumfree_monoid, Zero_matrix, Zero_module, Zero_order. Is there any way we can unify these articles in a meaningful way. As it stands I don't see these articles growing all that much. Perhaps we could create something along the lines of the List of prime numbers article. Maybe "List of mathematics terms that include zero".--Cronholm144 05:50, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I will take the silence as a "go for it C" and create something in my sandbox :) --Cronholm144 18:15, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Zero set clearly has potential to be expanded into a solid article; Zero order may have as well, and I would give Zerosumfree monoid the chance to flourish or perish on its own merits (a redirect might be more appropriate). The other four articles are all zero elements/objects in one way or another, and there isn't much one can say about them individually. There may indeed be scope here for a list, or other unifying article, on such zero objects: in which case, "go for it C"!

Done List_of_zero_terms with redirects in place. I didn't redirect Zero matirx, just relisted it. Now all of the horribly weak stubs can grow together in one place. Feel free to move the page to a better name, just be sure to warn me so I can reset the redirects to the appropriate locations--Cronholm144 18:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

GA and math ratings

The discussions on Wikipedia talk:Good articles aimed at reforming the GA system seem to be going nowhere. Would there be support here for removing GA as one of the visible article quality classes on the maths rating template? The GA rating doesn't seem to have much to do with how we view the quality of math articles, and doesn't really fit into a linear scale with the other stub-start-b-a classes. Removing it from the scale would free us to assign GA articles "start" class if we feel they deserve it (for instance, Geometry Guy's "start" rating of Klee's measure problem, which I fully agree with), and it would avoid confusion about how GA and our own A-class rating system are supposed to interact. In any case if this change is made the GA status would still be visible in the separate GA banner on the talk page. —David Eppstein 20:21, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I made a proposal about this above, but it is probably worth repeating it here. Basically, I proposed a less substantial change, because I think there may well be maths editors who like to have GA in the scheme, and I don't think it is necessary to remove it, only to clarify its meaning.

What I propose is a merger of B+ with GA. This would amount to the following: replace the horrible lime green colour of B+ by the darker green of GA; ask VeblenBot nicely to count and list B+ and GA articles together; and adjust some of the wording in our grading scheme to reflect the merger. In particular, an article can only be rated GA in our scheme if it is both B+ quality by our standards, and also a good article. (In particular, my rating of Klee's measure problem as Start class is entirely compatible with such a system.) Further, we can emphasise that achieving GA status has nothing to do with progression from B+ to A.

As I mentioned above, we might also want to make our B+ grading more robust, so that GA becomes, effectively, "B+ with added footnotes". Geometry guy 20:42, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Given what I have seen of GA and its talk page, I agree with David Eppstein that needed reform seems unlikely anytime soon. That doesn't mean we must go stripping GA tags from articles, but it does mean we should eliminate GA from our ratings. As I have suggested repeatedly, to deafening silence, in principle tags like GA could be akin to barnstars, in that any group could tag articles by any criterion they prefer. (We could have "good use of subtle humor", for example.) Such tags should be orthogonal to our system, not part of it. --KSmrq^T 00:28, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Geometry guy's merger proposal seems to rest on the assumption that some maths editors may prefer to retain the GA rating in our scheme. Being rather fond of the Polder Model, I'd prefer the merger proposal if such editors indeed exist. If not, then it's better to eliminate the GA rating (and also the section on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics). So, could the people in favour of having GA in our scheme come forward? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:02, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

In the current climate, I think it is rather unlikely that regulars here (G-guy included) will have a good word to say about the GA process! So I was thinking more about "the editor in the street".

However, my proposal doesn't rest on this assumption. There are other reasons why eliminating GA entirely from the scale might not be the best way forward.

• Most of Wikipedia 1.0 uses GA, and retaining it will help ensure compatibility, and enable us to argue that our B+ is equivalent to WP 1.0 GA, and not to WP 1.0 B.
• It is usually wiser to proceed slowly: we introduced B+; now let us make it a valid replacement for GA; then, later, we can consider whether we want to remove GA altogether from the scheme.
• (Closely related.) For all our misgivings about GA, and recent events, we need to be able to hold our heads high in future discussions. A too-strong knee-jerk response could marginalise us, whereas a more measured response might convince some other WikiProjects of the merits of our approach.

On the other hand, forgetting the wiki-politics, there is essentially no difference between my proposal and removing GA from our scheme. The only difference is that B+ quality articles which are also good articles will be permitted to use the letters GA instead of B+ in their quality grading. I emphasise that good articles which do not meet our B+ standards would not be so entitled, and that good article status would be even more irrelevant for progress to A Class than it is now. Geometry guy 18:59, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd be very reluctant to merge B+ and GA. One reason is the political, we are in danger of isolating ourselves from the greater mass of wikipedia who do acknowledge GA. A situation where the maths pages become a law unto themselves could be very disruptive in the long term.

When I first though up B+, it was intended to be a little short of GA, generally well written articles which failed in one respect, often a lack of history or illustrations. The idea was that it could be used as a holding ground for articles that could be put forward to GA.

I've now put Klee's measure problem of WP:GA/R as I think it fails 3a of WP:WIAGA, lacking in illustrations, context of related problems, also the claimed use in computer graphics could do with a citation. --Salix alba (talk) 21:27, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Cofactor expansion

After viewing the Determinant article I was surprised to see that cofactor expansion (obviously one method for determining the determinant of a square matrix) doesn't have an article nor does it even serve as a redirect. I thought that I should bring it to the attention of the Wikiproject.--Jersey Devil 20:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I guess I'll eat the bullet on this one. I'll create the stub tonight.--Cronholm144 07:34, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

P.S. In my sandbox, I hate to put unfinished work onto the mainspace.

I'm puzzled; is there something we want to say about cofactor expansion that does not belong in the determinant article? --KSmrq^T 11:26, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Me too ;) Is this really the same KSmrq who recently said to me "For those of us using popups, articles with definitions — even brief ones — are appreciated." ? :) Geometry guy 13:58, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and I'm being consistent. For a definition only relevant in one place, it's better to include the definition in that article. For an extreme example, look at eigenvalue and eigenvector. --KSmrq^T 18:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

A redirect #REDIRECT [[Determinant]] ought to have been fine here. The problem is that the Determinant article uses the term, but fails to explain it; and neither does our article Minor (linear algebra), which defines "cofactor" but not "cofactor expansion". The article in statu nascendi at User:Cronholm144/Cofactor expansion should perhaps more properly be called "Cofactor (mathematics)" and could, in finished form, replace the current redirect page of that name (now redirecting to Minor (linear algebra)), with Cofactor expansion being a redirect to Cofactor (mathematics). However, I wonder if it is not better to merge the sandbox article into the existing Minor (linear algebra) article.  --Lambiam^Talk 14:18, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Midway through the writing I realized the same thing and changed my article's focus to the general cofactor. I am still writing. I think I will withhold my own judgment on the merge (which is valid, but the articles have different aims at the moment) until I finish. --Cronholm144 14:40, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Is the Cofactor expansion not the same thing as the Laplace expansion ? Jheald 15:29, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

It certainly appears to be doesn't it. :) It certainly looks like there are going to be an interesting set of mergers once I get done. As it stands now I think the redirect for C exp. should definitely go to L exp.--Cronholm144 15:49, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, considering none of us thought to look for it under Laplace expansion, maybe the redirect would be better Laplace exp -> Cofactor exp. But yes, it looks like this whole group of articles could use some merging/refactoring, so it's a good thing you're on the case. Jheald 16:02, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

And we did not read through to the end, because Laplace expansion is mentioned there, and explained as well. It is stated to be efficient for small n. All methods are efficient for small n, but isn't it rather very inefficient for large n? Or is there some clever trick to obtain the cofactor expansion in substantially fewer than n! operations?  --Lambiam^Talk 16:38, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

If you read even further down, at Determinant#Algorithmic implementation, you'll learn the answer ;) However, I think that it doesn't happen that often in practice that you want to compute the determinant of a large matrix. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 19:15, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I know that the "obvious" way of using Laplace expansion to compute determinants, computing the determinants of the minors recursively with the same method, requires on the order of n! steps (obviously). I also know that there are more efficient methods that do not use Laplace expansion. Using the "naive" method of Laplace expansion, in total floor((e−1)n!) times a determinant is computed, one for the whole matrix, the others for minors, minors of minors, and so on. However, there are only 4ⁿ square sub-matrices, a number that is soon dwarfed by n! as n grows, so an awful lot of these minors get their determinants recomputed quite often. My question was, in essence, whether some clever way (other than dumb memoization) is known for organizing the computations in such a way that these recomputations are avoided. This question, which is not answered in the article, is more theoretical than practical; but, presumably, the same method could then be used for speeding up the computation of permanents.  --Lambiam^Talk 20:16, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Have any of you heard of Lewis Carroll's method of matrix condensation? It was a rather interesting read, but I believe it partially bypassed the problems presented by large n, but I can't quite remember. aha! found it mid-write mathworld. The original article is available in JSTOR's catalouge, only six pages and a delightful read. --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 20:36, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

It's discussed in Volume 2 of The Art of Computer Programming. I can look it up if you don't have a copy handy. Silly rabbit 20:19, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Oops... I think it must be in one of the new installments. Here is Knuth's paper on it. Silly rabbit 20:29, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, you beat me to it (edit conflict) BTW since I am on an algebra writing kick... How does Methods for computing determinants sound?--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 20:36, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

There's also a related technique, due to Edgar Bareis (?), using Sylvester's identity. I believe this is optimal for large n. Silly rabbit 20:21, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

..and modular methods for integer determinants using the Chinese remainder theorem, implemented for instance in Victor Shoup's Number Theory Library. Which, I think, work better particularly in parallel processing environments. Yes, a new article seems to be called for. Silly rabbit 20:43, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I am surprised that no one mentioned Gaussian elimination (and related methods, such as QR decomposition) yet! Surely, these are more efficient than any expansion tricks, giving O(n³) complexity for computing the n by n determinant straight away. As far as I can remember, nothing like that exists for computation of permanents. This provides a philosophical 'explanation' why cofactor expansion, condensation, etc that apply equally to determinants and permanents cannot be (even close to) optimal in the determinant case.

Concerning Lewis Carrol method: besides in-house Dodgson condensation, see Bressoud's book referenced in Alternating sign matrix. Arcfrk 01:07, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Importance ratings progress

I thought I would start a new section on this, so that the old ones can be archived. Today I have done some of the things I promised to do.

• I have made some progress on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance. I have not yet summarized/developed the discussions here on context, but I have come up with a table of priority/importance descriptors, which I hope will prove to be more helpful than the general descriptors of WP 1.0.
• I have removed our own "peripheral/trivial" description for low importance articles and replaced it (temporarily) with the WP 1.0 "specialist" description. Untimately, I think we should replace all of the WP 1.0 descriptors by our own ones, because the former have many flaws. I intend to feed these thoughts back to the WP 1.0 project.
• I have added an additional row to the priority ratings to emphasise that there is a lower rating than low, namely "unrated". This is where the terms "peripheral" and/or "trivial" may apply, although not always. Sometimes an article could be not sufficiently relevant, or might be too specialized or technical, for it to be worth rating within this project.
• I have threaded the word "priority" a little bit more into the whole system in order to clarify the point, which User:Arcfrk articulated previously, that "importance" ratings are about how important it is for this project to have a good article on a subject, rather than an endorsement of the absolute importance of the subject. In particular, just as quality gradings use terms such as "A-Class", it may be more helpful to use terms like "Top-priority" for importance ratings. Geometry guy 22:50, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Erm, I guess I should have said explicitly: please start making comments on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance, either here, or on the talk page. Geometry guy 23:42, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes I agree priority is a nicer word. The description on importance linked above seems a good start. Nice to emphesis that its for editors, if it was for readers you could say thats its OR. --Salix alba (talk) 12:21, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I've now bitten the bullet, and drafted the "context" section. I added some information on the scope of the assessment project as well. Also, we didn't discuss articles about mathematicians: I raised the issue before, but no one commented on it. Anyway, I have proposed that we don't make substantial use of the WikiProject Biography scheme, since I believe it is flawed, particularly in the mathematics context. Full details at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance. The latter page is now rather long and verbose, but I thought it would be better to do it that way while the guidelines are still being developed. Geometry guy 18:03, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Flagged revisions (stable versions)

There is a proposed policy at Wikipedia:Flagged revisions about stable versions. The idea is that some pages would be "flagged" and then the flagged version would be shown by default to users who aren't logged in. This has obvious implications for vandalism fighting and quality control.

This has been in development for years, but now the code is apparently finished modulo final approval. Although it is still not certain that flagged versions will be enabled on en.wikipedia.org, the proposal is an attempt to determine some community consensus on the issue. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:40, 3 June 2007 (UTC)