User talk:David Eppstein

Hi, and welcome to my User Talk page! For new discussions, I prefer you add your comments at the very bottom and use a section heading (e.g., by using the "New section" tab at the top of this page). I will respond on this page unless specifically requested otherwise. For discussions concerning specific Wikipedia articles, please include a link to the article, and also a link to any specific edits you wish to discuss. (You can find links for edits by using the "compare selected revisions" button on the history tab for any article.)

Question on Dvoretzky's theorem

Hello, I left a question at Talk:Dvoretzky's_theorem#Question, maybe you can take a look? Cheers, AxelBoldt (talk) 03:14, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Happy New Year, David Eppstein!

Happy New Year!

David Eppstein,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Donner60 (talk) 07:04, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Nevnihal erdoğan

Dear David,

I had set up the wiki page for Nevnihal Erdoğan, a published scholar in Turkey, and added the relevant source links as was advised by another Wikipedia editor. Could you please fill me in on why it was deleted anyways and what I can do about it.

Regards,

Emre — Preceding unsigned comment added by Emrekaracaoglu (talk • contribs) 17:23, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

All articles here about living people must have references — published sources by other people, about the subject, that can be used to verify the claims made in the article. Your article on Nevnihal Erdoğan had a listing of publications by the subject, but no references about the subject. It was deleted through the WP:BLPPROD process, which placed a prominent notice on the article itself and gave you a week to fix the problem by adding references. At the same time, a notice of all this was left on your talk page. After the week expired with no improvement (indeed no changes) to the article, I deleted it. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:32, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

David Moon

Hi, I saw you added a few cites and new, useful text to the entry. Are there any other references out there? For example, its not clear to me that he's even born or lives in the US, as none of the citations state as much. Right now it looks like there are two journal articles, one listserv email, one webpage about a tangentially related story, and one acknowledgement in a book. Or is there more? Has there been enough written about him to establish an even approximate DOB? Thanks. Bangabandhu (talk) 04:56, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I found an even better source with a lot more about his accomplishments. But as for names of who he dated, favorite bands, or other celebrity-like personal detail: not so far. I commented out the nationality in the infobox, since as you say it is unsourced. (There is also already a commented-out birthdate there, which looks too early to be right but is not impossible.) —David Eppstein (talk) 06:40, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Are you suggesting date and place of birth is trivia? It just shows how little is reported about him. While its great that the article has more citations, I'd be surprised if any editor could have written that article from the content of the references alone - especially without using archived listserv email. Is that really a RS? Bangabandhu (talk) 16:43, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

He's known for his accomplishments in software development, not for the circumstances of his birth. Those are now reliably sourced to Steele and Gabriel. The user group message is less clearly reliable but adds some important factual detail (the Symbolics Fellow title and date of departure from Symbolics) which I think should be uncontroversial enough to use such a source. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:42, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I understand that but it still seems thinly sourced. From the talk page, it looks like there's a lot of confusion about his identity. I'm going to rename the page David A. Moon (which is how he's credited in the journal articles) and make David Moon a disambiguation page. Bangabandhu (talk) 21:32, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I have no problem with that change. A dab is needed anyway, to list David Moon (historian) along with DAM and the politician, so you're saved from WP:TWODABS. It could also list David Moon, director of Demand Progress, David Moon from the cast of Impractical Jokers UK , and David Moon, one of the minor characters on Frasier. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:33, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure David Moon the politician is David Moon the Demand Progress director. How did you find all those names? Just a Google search? Or some other tool? I made the change, maybe you can add those names. Bangabandhu (talk) 22:16, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I'll add them. Just a Google search. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:17, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

@Bangabandhu: for future reference, do not ever move articles by copying and pasting into the move target, the way you did. If you can't just do the move directly yourself, request that an administrator perform the move; see WP:MOVE for details. The way you did it left all the edit history for the computer-programmer Moon in the wrong place. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:45, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for fixing and letting me know. Bangabandhu (talk)

DYK for Moon Duchin

On 10 January 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Moon Duchin, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that mathematician Moon Duchin was inspired to break gender barriers in mathematics by a book on baseball player Jackie Robinson's struggles against racism? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Moon Duchin. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Moon Duchin), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:01, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

DYK for Furstenberg–Sárközy theorem

On 11 January 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Furstenberg–Sárközy theorem, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the Furstenberg–Sárközy theorem shows that the first player in the game of subtract a square can win from most positions? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Furstenberg–Sárközy theorem. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Furstenberg–Sárközy theorem), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:01, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Clique problem

The article Clique problem you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Clique problem for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Spinningspark -- Spinningspark (talk) 14:21, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

FYI

[1]. Is this what is considered to be "an improvement" nowadays? Cassianto^Talk 21:36, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

At least that one's not drawing disinformation from who-knows-where on Wikidata, but I agree that it still fails WP:DIB. I assume you saw my experiment on Talk:Marion Parris Smith. This falls into the same category: making the article longer, but not more informative, by repeating the information on its first line for multiple lines worth of screen real estate. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:20, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I did. And I agree, the article is all the more worse for including the "info"box here. This user is problematic, something that JamesBWatson seems to be ignoring. Cassianto^Talk 22:47, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Talk:Nearest-neighbor chain algorithm/GA1

David Eppstein, I posted a note to the reviewer's page a few days ago, notifying them that if they didn't respond within seven days, their review could be closed and the nomination placed back in the reviewing pool. Is this what you would want me to do? Given what was posted to the review so far, and the contradiction of MOS:LEAD, I think this is probably the best course of action.

Absent an objection from you, I plan to close the review when the seven days are up. It seems unlikely that there will be a response before then. Thanks for your patience. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:07, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, please, a fresh review seems best. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:02, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I've just closed the review, and this will be available for a new reviewer to take on. I hope a new one shows up soon, and is someone who knows what they're doing. Best of luck. BlueMoonset (talk) 23:17, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! —David Eppstein (talk) 01:18, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Categorising Antimatroid

Hi David!

Thanks for your edit, reverting my addition of three categories to Antimatroid:

Latest revision as of 18:12, 18 January 2017 (edit) (undo) (thank) David Eppstein (talk | contribs) (Undid revision 760650165 by Yahya Abdal-Aziz (talk) formal languages are mathematics, not linguistics)

Yes, I certainly first encountered formal languages in mathematical logic, about 50 years ago. Yet the terminology was always suggestive, and we now find references such as the following one from the article:

• Merchant, Nazarre; Riggle, Jason (2016), "OT grammars, beyond partial orders: ERC sets and antimatroids", Nat Lang Linguist Theory, 34: 241, doi:10.1007/s11049-015-9297-5 .

Optimality Theory (particularly in phonology but also in other disciplines) within linguistics is now at least a quarter-century old (Prince and Smolensky published several relevant works 1991-93), and its dependence on mathematical techniques such as those of order theory continues to increase. The Merchant and Riggle 2016 reference above specifically connects the categories "Linguistics", "Grammar" and "Phonology" to antimatroids, which belong to the category "Matroid theory". So I remain puzzled that you think those categories don't also contain antimatroids.

If you'd objected instead that I added too many categories, including super-categories, I'd have to confess I haven't explored the local region of the category tree very thoroughly, so you could be right. (I also think that WP categorisation has a very ad hoc feel, that maybe, like Topsy, "just growed", and that a disciplined approach to remedying WP categories would be a worthwhile project. But that's another discussion entirely.) yoyo (talk) 13:50, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Antimatroids definitely do not belong to the category "Matroid theory", either — antimatroids and matroids are two different kinds of mathematical object. If there are applications of antimatroid theory in linguistics, I'd definitely be interested in seeing them added to the applications section of the antimatroid article. But as it is now, there is no linguistics in the article — its use of formal languages is merely to collect orderings of things, not to be any kind of model for any natural language phenomenon. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:00, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Jacob Barnett

The article is being mostly edited by a near-SPA 67.14.236.50 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) who seems rather insistent on the content being presented in a specific manner. Per {{coi}} - Use this tag to alert readers that the article may be biased by a conflict of interest. Do you disagree? Please wp:ping. Cheers Jim1138 (talk) 20:37, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

It's being edited by several editors on a long term basis. Do you have any evidence that the IP has any actual COI? The editor most interested in presenting the subject positively is not that one, but Viewfinder, by the way. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:10, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Your comment

Hi David, I replied to your comment on my talk page. I've been away from Wikipedia for a while; my apologies that I'm not up to date with all conventions. IMirjamI (talk) 14:59, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter - February 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.

Administrator changes

NinjaRobotPirate • Schwede66 • K6ka • Ealdgyth • Ferret • Cyberpower678 • Mz7 • Primefac • Dodger67

Briangotts • JeremyA • BU Rob13

Guideline and policy news

• A discussion to workshop proposals to amend the administrator inactivity policy at Wikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
• Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2016 closed with no consensus for implementing Pending changes level 2 with new criteria for use.
• Following an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.

Technical news

• When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
• Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
• The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee released a response to the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on paid editing and outing.

Obituaries

• JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.

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Discuss this newsletter • Subscribe • Archive

13:38, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

DYK for Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita

On 6 February 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Pasang Lhamu Sherpa, one of the first Nepali women to climb K2, was named after the first Nepali woman to climb Everest? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

— Maile (talk) 00:24, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

hi, r.e. interaction vertex vertex (physics) etc

I'm just trying to clarify all the jargon here ... in several articles I saw the phrase interaction vertex, in the context of colliders and feynman diagrams. My question is are these things really synonymous, or are these places talking about a vertex in a *diagram*, distinct from a vertex *in space*?

I figure an article vertex (feynman diagram) stating "In a feynman diagram a vertex is..." is overkill, so I'm looking for ways to setup a redirect. (Its so nice with the hover cards feature though, being able to just slide the cursor around and get clarification of what things really mean.)

note:- vertex (physics) redirects to interaction point interaction vertex redirects to something describing the point in a diagram.

Fmadd (talk) 18:19, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Dual polyhedra

David, we seem to have a profound disagreement here, so I have started a discussion here. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 21:27, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

RJ Mathar

Not to mention [2] self promotion. Most of RJ Mathar's edits is to insert his own stuff in articles (see [3]). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:54, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

It's difficult for me to complain about inserting self-citations, since I've done a fair amount of that myself. But they're a small fraction of my edits and when I do, I clearly mark it in my edit summaries (example) and abide by 0RR. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:13, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but a difference here is that you're not on a campaign to only add your own work. I've cited myself too (see bouncing ball, Georgallas & Landry 2016), but again that was declared (asked for review at WT:PHYS) and I wouldn't go to war if people felt the reference was not germane and legit. Not something Mathar does. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:35, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Etiquette

David, I would be grateful if you could avoid personal attacks or SHOUTING in edit comments, avoid reverting cleanup tags, respect WP:BRD and generally conform to WP:WIKIQUETTE and WP:AVOIDEDITWAR. I would hate this to escalate to WP:AN/EW but your determination to edit ahead of discussion is becoming unacceptable. Thank you. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:32, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Whatever. Let me know when you start taking other readers' disagreements with your point of view seriously rather than automatically assuming they're more ignorant than you, and when you stop using tea as a substitute for "go away and let me keep editing the article the way I want to". —David Eppstein (talk) 18:36, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:26, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Tetchy

It's amazing it took you as long to get there as it did. Oy vey. --JBL (talk) 16:38, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Polyhedron

If you wish to remove properly-cited and relevant content from the polyhedron article, you need to discuss it at Talk:Polyhedron#Proper_citations and not get into a tag-team edit war. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:53, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

"tag-team edit war" is another phrase for a consensus that runs against you. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:17, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

You forgot to say "cheers". EEng 18:55, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Good point. But at this stage, doing so would probably (correctly) be interpreted as mocking, and therefore uncivil. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:02, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Hey, you want a change of pace? Having no idea whatsoever what your inclination might be, perhaps you could comment at Talk:Grigori_Rasputin#.21votes_on_reversion. EEng 19:21, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Notice of Edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you.

Steelpillow, you forgot to say "Cheers" this time. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:52, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

"...where he had to apologize" oh em gee. If this is still going on Monday, I'll try to find time to file a new ANI case. [Later edit: never mind, Steelpillow has been blocked, hopefully things will proceed more sensibly now.] --JBL (talk) 22:24, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I laughed at that too. EEng 22:30, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

It's not often you see such a one-sided polyhedron dispute. EEng 22:35, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Curiously, the one-sided polyhedra are not really part of this dispute. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:03, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm shame-faced at the realization I didn't know such things actually exist. EEng 23:42, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Stevo

You're INVOLVED, but what do you think about my asking at AIV for semiprotection? I think at think point it's well past a content dispute and just plain vandalism. EEng 20:13, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Involved is the reason I haven't already done it myself. I agree it would be helpful. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:26, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Requested at WP:RPP. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:53, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, I made the same request and it was declined. Then Mr. Admin Eppstein comes along the same day and makes the same request and lickety-split it's done. Harrumph! EEng 23:32, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

I asked for indef and they only gave me a year, though. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:12, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Review

Hi

I want to know at the actions of this user are a Canvassing

this and [4]

thank you Modern Sciences (talk) 23:12, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Asking an admin and another experienced editor to pay attention to an ANI thread seems (1) unnecessary, as lots of people pay attention to that board, and (2) mostly harmless. I don't see a lot of reason for Boaqua to have expected any specific action from those editors, and the thread did not yet have any proposals that needed weight thrown behind them. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:24, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

This user is want to admins block me!!. / He has short time edition history (less than 250) and I guess this user is spare account and is it possible to make request for Sockpuppet investigations for this user. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Modern Sciences (talk • contribs)

Review

Hi Dear Admin.

this is History of some of the disruptive editing or user Boaqua and unfortunately, never receive any warning from Admins. please review them.Modern Sciences (talk) 00:27, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Rep-tile patterns and original research

|

I understand the Wikipedia rule on original research, but isn't there room for discretion on the part of editors? In history, sociology, and so on, it's difficult to know when something new is valid. But in mathematics some new results can be clearly valid to proper mathematicians (like you, but not me). In any case, can you recommend anywhere that accepts new results from amateurs so that I can get a proper reference for inclusion in the Rep-tile article? MagistraMundi (talk) 09:45, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

DYK for Vojtěch Jarník

On 24 February 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Vojtěch Jarník, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that although mathematician Vojtěch Jarník is known to computer scientists for his minimum spanning tree algorithm, his main work was in number theory? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Vojtěch Jarník. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Vojtěch Jarník), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Mifter (talk) 00:02, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Talk:Jacob Barnett

I didn't ask you to be critical of me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:197:4400:C1A0:B1:70F0:135D:4144 (talk) 04:37, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

If repeatedly pushing ridiculous and false claims here is not asking for criticism, I don't know what is. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:12, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Well maybe you should know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:197:4400:C1A0:B1:70F0:135D:4144 (talk) 05:31, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Nearest-neighbor chain algorithm

The article Nearest-neighbor chain algorithm you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Nearest-neighbor chain algorithm for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Tessaract2 -- Tessaract2 (talk) 16:01, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

On the alleged Santanen algorithm

Greetings.

The article on an alleged Santanen algorithm is marked as needing attention from an expert in Mathematics (more precisely, Computer Science). I presume I qualify for that, given that I've been teaching the subject and doing research on algorithms at two universities for well over a decade.

That article does not merely fail to meet notability guidelines, it is outright fake: there is no such algorithm (and apparently no such person as its author either), the contents are clearly meant as a prank or practical joke, and references are misrepresented (they link to unrelated work by entirely different people) and irrelevant to the subject. At first sight the text seemed a heavily vandalized article on the packing problem, but it's really devoid of useful (if any) content.

I wonder why it hasn't been deleted yet; on the contrary, deletion marks have been edited out (first by the presumed article author with a meaningless explanation, now by yourself).