Template talk:WikiProject Mathematics

Mathematics articles rated according to the Wikipedia 1.0 Assesment Scale.

Usage notes for this template

Use this template to rate mathematics articles by quality and importance. Include the following on the article's talk page.

Quality

{{Maths rating| class=FA}}

{{Maths rating| class=A}}

{{Maths rating| class=GA}}

{{Maths rating| class=Bplus}}

{{Maths rating| class=B}}

{{Maths rating| class=Start}}

{{Maths rating| class=Stub}}

Importance

{{Maths rating| class=B|importance=Top}}

{{Maths rating| class=B|importance=High}}

{{Maths rating| class=B|importance=Mid}}

{{Maths rating| class=B|importance=Low}}

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 for a sub project working on rating mathematics pages for the Wikipedia stable version.

Grading scheme

The above quality labels refer to the WikiPedia 1.0 {{Grading scheme}} together with the additional Bplus class for mathematics articles. Their meaning is summarized in the following table:

Main pageDiscussionContentAssessmentParticipantsResources

Mathematics articles by quality and importance
Quality	Importance
	Top	High	Mid	Low	NA	???	Total
FA	9	4	12	4		2	31
FL			2	1			3
FM					64		64
GA	15	21	56	85		9	186
B	126	266	539	418		50	1,399
C	52	555	1,024	1,316		640	3,587
Start		66	2,424	6,437		2,347	11,274
Stub			102	5,105		1,125	6,332
List	3	14	73	194	6	66	356
Draft				1	131		132
Category					1,727		1,727
Disambig			5	11	44		60
File					285		285
Portal					2		2
Project		1		25	26		52
Redirect		4	36	472	684		1,196
Template					1,013		1,013
NA					1		1
Assessed	205	931	4,273	14,069	3,983	4,239	27,700
Unassessed				16		486	502
Total	205	931	4,273	14,085	3,983	4,725	28,202
WikiWork factors (?)		ω = 113,279			Ω = 4.97

What is this all about? The aim of this sub-project is to assess mathematics articles for their quality and importance (or priority), and to classify them broadly by field. These ratings are intended to help the project track its progress, identify weak spots in its coverage, and highlight articles which could become Good Articles or Featured articles. They also link with the Wikipedia 1.0 project to produce a CD-ROM with the best of Wikipedia, and similar ratings are used by over 100 WikiProjects.

The table summarizes information about the articles that have been assigned ratings.

How to assess articles

Any article can be assessed for its mathematical content and anybody can assess an article simply by adding the {{maths rating}} tag to the article's talk page and filling in the class and importance and parameters (see below). These ratings can be modified by all editors, with disputes discussed on the article's talk page. The most important component of this assessment is the quality of the article, given by the class parameter. If this parameter is omitted, the {{maths rating}} tag will place the article in the unassessed category, which is a signal for other editors to grade its quality.

The quality criteria for articles in this project follow the WP 1.0 assessment. A log of new ratings and changes can be found at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Mathematics articles by quality log.

The {{maths rating}} template

To classify an article, place the template {{maths rating}} on the article's talk page. Anyone can add a maths rating or change an existing rating. The template can be used to assess the importance (or priority) and quality (or class grading) of the article using the importance and class parameters respectively. Specifying these parameters will place the article in the appropriate subcategory of Category:Mathematics articles by priority and Category:Mathematics articles by quality. There is also a field parameter to define the subject area of the article.

For full details please visit Template:Maths rating/doc.

Assessment summary and list of fields

Summary of {{maths rating}} importance, and class parameters
Importance: the importance (or priority) of the article/subject, regardless of its quality.		Class: the current quality of the article.
Top	Extremely important, even crucial, to its field, and very significant beyond it	FA	This is a featured article.
High	Contributes a substantial depth of knowledge with significant impact in other fields	A	Essentially complete, well written and referenced; possible featured article candidate.
Mid	Adds important further details within its field, with some impact beyond it	GA	This is a good article.
Low	Contributes more specific or less significant details, or is mainly of specialist interest	B	A decent article, but it needs further editing to extend coverage or accessibility
		C	Some cleanup or expansion needed.
		Start	Significant cleanup or expansion needed.
		Stub	Article has very little content, or is a stub.

Quality grading scheme

A more extensive description of the quality grading criteria is given in the table below. This is based on the WP 1.0 Assessment.

[edit table]

Quality	Criteria	Reader's experience	Examples
		Editor's experience
FA {{FA-Class}}	Reserved exclusively for articles that have received featured article status after peer review, and meet the current criteria for featured articles.	Definitive. Outstanding, thorough article; a great source for encyclopedic information.	Monty Hall problem (Oct 25, 2008) Leonhard Euler (Mar 2, 2007)
		No further editing is necessary unless new published information has come to light; but further improvements to the text are often possible.
A {{A-Class}}	Provides a well-written, reasonably clear and complete description of the topic, as described in "How to write a great article". It should be of a length suitable for the subject, with a well-written introduction and an appropriate series of headings to break up the content. It should have sufficient external literature references, from text-books or peer-reviewed papers, rather than websites. Should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. At the stage where it could at least be considered for featured article status; corresponds to the "Wikipedia 1.0" standard.	Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-mathematician would typically find nothing wanting. May miss a few relevant points.	Golden ratio (Oct 25, 2008) Albert Einstein (Oct 25, 2008) Manifold (Mar 2, 2007)
		Minor edits and adjustments would improve the article, particularly if brought to bear by a subject-matter expert. In particular, issues of breadth, completeness, and balance may need work. Peer-review would be helpful at this stage.
GA {{GA-Class}}	This class is for articles of at least B quality which have also passed through the good article nomination process and meet the good article standards. The article has all the positive elements of a B-class article, and may be regarded as a complete article. It is broad in its coverage, while staying focused on the topic; it is factually accurate, verifiable and neutral; and it is well presented, both in terms of grammar, and adherence to the main points in the Manual of Style. The article is well-referenced, and is illustrated, where appropriate, by an image or images which comply with copyright guidelines. Among mathematics articles these are some of the best. Note that the good article designation is not a requirement for A-Class. A-Class articles which meet good article standards should be considered for featured article status.	Useful to nearly all readers. A good treatment of the subject which attempts to be as accessible as possible, with a minimum of jargon. No obvious problems, gaps, excessive information. Has a more polished presentation, more illustrations (as appropriate), more detailed history, and more references that typical B-class.	Homotopy groups of spheres (Oct 25, 2008) Ordinal number (Mar 2, 2007) Znám's problem (Oct 25, 2008)
		Further editing will clearly be helpful, but not necessary for a good reader experience.
B {{B-Class}}	The article has several of the elements described in "start", and most of the material needed for a complete article; all major aspects of the subject are at least mentioned. Nonetheless, it has significant gaps or missing elements or references, needs substantial editing for English language usage and/or clarity, balance of content, or contains other policy problems such as some minor neutral point of view (NPOV) or no original research (NOR) concerns. With neutral point of view, a well-written B-class may correspond to the "Wikipedia 0.5" or "usable" standard.	Useful to most, but not all, readers. An interested reader flipping through the article may feel that they generally understood the topic. However, it may not be as accessible as it could be, or it may be inadequate for a serious student or researcher trying to use the material, who might have trouble or risk error using the article in derivative work.	Set (Mar 2, 2007) Limit (mathematics) (Mar 2, 2007) Vector space (Mar 2, 2007)
		Some editing is still needed, including filling in some gaps or correcting policy errors. Articles for which cleanup is needed will typically have this designation to start with. May be improved by input from experts to assess where coverage is still missing, and also by illustrations, historical background and further references. Consider peer review or nominating for good article status. If the article is not already fully wikified, now is the time.
C {{C-Class}}	The majority of the material needed of a complete article is included, but there are significant areas that are not yet covered. The article may be poorly organized or still include questionable or irrelevant material. Good general references have been provided, but citations for some aspects or individual facts may still be missing or unclear. The text is at least readable enough for someone to understand the material, though there may be serious conflicts with Manual of Style guidelines. Diagrams essential for understanding the text are included.	Useful to many readers. A reader would feel they generally understood the basics of the topic, but there are noticeable gaps in the material presented. There may be questionable or irrelevant material or the material may not be organized in a way that makes the subject easy to understand. Will be of little or no use to a serious student or researcher.	Right Angle (Mar 23, 2010) Ratio (Feb 23, 2010)
		Sections covering significant aspects of the subject may still need to be added. Existing material may be poorly organized, so gathering material into meaningful sections or ordering the material to make an effective presentation may be necessary.
Start {{Start-Class}}	The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas, and may lack a key element such as a standard infobox. For example an article on groups might cover the theory well, but be weak on history and motivation. Has at least one serious element of gathered materials, including any one of the following: a particularly useful picture or graphic multiple links that help explain or illustrate the topic a subheading that fully treats an element of the topic multiple subheadings that indicate material that could be added to complete the article	Useful to some, provides a moderate amount of information, but many readers will need to find additional sources of information. The article clearly needs to be expanded.	Hypergraph (Mar 2, 2007) Esther Szekeres (Mar 2, 2007) Theorem (Mar 2, 2007)
		Substantial/major editing is needed, most material for a complete article needs to be added. This article still needs to be completed, so an article cleanup tag is inappropriate at this stage.
Stub {{Stub-Class}}	The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work. It is usually very short, but can be of any length if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible.	Possibly useful to a mathematician who has no idea what the term meant. May be useless to a non-mathematician, or a reader only passingly familiar with the term. Ideally it is at least a brief, informed definition.	Selig Brodetsky (Mar 2, 2007) Parallel curve (Mar 2, 2007) Algebraic number theory (Mar 2, 2007)
		Any editing or additional material can be helpful.
Label	Criteria	Reader's experience	Examples
		Editor's experience

Priority scale

Assessing the priority or importance level of mathematics articles is not straightforward. It is discussed in more detail here. The following table adds a little more detail about priority levels for mathematics articles.

Article importance/priority rating scheme

Priority	Importance within field	Impact	Need for encyclopedia	Examples
Top	Article/subject is extremely important, even crucial, to its field	Widespread and very significant	An absolute "must-have" for any reasonable mathematical encyclopedia	Trigonometric function, Manifold, Special relativity
High	Article/subject contributes a substantial depth of knowledge	Significant impact in other fields	Very much needed, even vital	3-manifold, Linear combination, Poisson distribution
Mid	Article/subject adds important further details within its field	Some impact beyond field	Adds further depth, but not vital to encyclopedia	Homotopy groups of spheres, Second order logic, Generalized hypergeometric function
Low	Article/subject contributes more specific or less significant details	Mainly of specialist interest	Not at all essential, or can be covered adequately by other articles	Area of a disk, Abel transform, Companion matrix
(None)	Article/subject may be peripheral	May be too highly specialized	May not be relevant or may be too trivial in content to be needed	Comment: such articles are not relevant enough to the mathematics project to need a maths rating.

Articles to include

The prioritization of mathematics articles has been motivated by: articles highlighted in Mathematics; those linked from Portal:Mathematics#Topics in Mathematics; a selection of the most linked-to maths articles (see talk page); Wikipedia:Vital_articles#Mathematics; and anything else an editors felt should be included as important.

The lists of articles have split into subpages organised by mathematical field, and are linked via the navigation box at the top and bottom of this page. (The exceptions are the "Core" articles, detailed below.) The lists are not meant to be exhaustive or definitive and editors are encouraged to make additions.

Core Articles

See Mathematics Core Articles.

See also

• Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index discussion on automatic indexing.
• Wikipedia:Version 0.5 first step in the project, nominations now closed, 11 mathematics articles, 7 mathematicians
• Wikipedia:Featured articles - 13 articles , 2 on review
• Wikipedia:Good articles
• Wikipedia:Vital_articles#Mathematics
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Science and academia

Small parameter setting

The small setting is looking awkward on Talk:Srinivasa Ramanujan. Can someone please take a look? Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 21:55, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok, that should be sorted now. I also implemented better support for the "field" element, although it doesn't do much at present. (Unless no field is given, in which case it ends up in Category:Unassessed-field mathematics articles)Tompw 23:25, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. Thanks! -- Ganeshk (talk) 23:44, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I've now realised there are two versions (now identical)... one is at {{maths rating/Small}}, the other is what you get if you use {{maths rating}} with "small=yes". (Talk:Srinivasa Ramanujan uses the latter)... one shouydl clearly go. I personally think the sub-page should be a sophistictaed re-direct to the "small=yes" version, but putting something like this (without line breaks):

{{Maths rating|
 class={{{class}}}|
 importance={{{importance}}}|
 field={{{field}}}|
 vital={{{WikiProject Vital Articles}}}|
 comment={{{commment}}}|
 small=yes}}

(Does this include all parameters?) However, this does make formatting the small version trickier, but it is perfectly do-able (as is currently demostrated). Tompw 00:05, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

The sub-page one, {{maths rating/Small}} was created for demonstration purposes. No pages link to it. That should go. The consensus was to use the small=yes so that a single version can be maintained. -- Ganeshk (talk) 00:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Adding comments

Currently, there are two ways of adding comments. One is by the "comment" parameter; the other is by placing the comment in the "/Comments" subpage (capital C, plural) of the relevant talkpage. The main problem with this is that only comments at the sub-page are listed at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Mathematics articles by quality. The sub-page comments can also be transcluded at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0 (e.g. Algebra page).

So, I propose that if there is no comment on the sub-page (and thus it is empty), a link to it appears in the template. Any comments via the "comments" field should be migrated over to the sub-page.

Any comments? Tompw 17:15, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems reasonable enough. Requires slightly more work for adding the comment. --Salix alba (talk) 17:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

The "comment" or "comments" parameter is now deprecated. Geometry guy 12:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Hide the comment field

Could you please, please, please add the ability to hide the comments section like template:physics does (with hidden being the default)? Witness the disaster at Talk:String theory that can result if you don't. -- Fropuff 05:08, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

That example bordered on vandalism (I removed it with the comment that such material belong on the actual talk page)... what I could do is set things up so that if the comment field in the template have been used, the subpage commments don't get used. How does that sound? Tompw (talk) 13:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

That could work. Although some people might be confused as to why their comments don't appear (if they use the subpage field). In any case, it would be nice to hide the comments in the event they get somewhat long winded. I don't know how hard it is. The physics template looked rather complicated. I haven't had a chance to grok it. -- Fropuff 16:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible to impose a cut-off.... I'll spend some time in my sandbox and see what I can do. Tompw (talk) 20:58, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Style changes

I have made some stylistic changes to the math rating template in my sandbox. this page shows the new version, and the code is here. Unless there are serious objections, I'll migrate these over to the template itself.

It would be easy for me to add the "Comments hidden" option at the same time, if there is still desire for it. CMummert · talk 18:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I implemented the changes this morning. CMummert · talk 15:06, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

field=image and field=list

I think that we should add another field for images, or (better) make a different template for math images, since the rating doesn't work for them. In the same way, the rating system doesn't apply well to lists. CMummert · talk 15:06, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm half with you... lists have a quality and a field, but not really an importance; Images have a field, but not really an importance or a quality. So, I think it should be a case of having importance=list and importance=image as options. Further, this could (sort of) bedone with no changes to the template, due to the existence of {{Image-Class}} and {{List-Class}} (See examples below) Tompw (talk) 20:26, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

{{maths rating}} {{maths rating}}

I suppose that the alternate "importance" tags are good enough to allow for automated sorting of images and lists away from articles. If nobody objects, I would like to rewrite the instructions for the template to be more clear and to include some things like thee importances that are not documented. CMummert · talk 21:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds a good plan to me. (Btw, I've put in an edit request for {{Image-Class}} and {{List-Class}} to make the colours more distinct). Tompw (talk) 21:21, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Links and categories

I've made some minor changes to the template, so that the class and importance link to the relevant mathematics categories. I hope I did it right. I've also moved the category assignments to the <includeonly> part for clarity. I am still puzzled by the way the Class, and then the Field appear to be on a slightly higher level. Geometry guy 19:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I see the same behavior from the field cell, but I don't know what causes it. CMummert · talk 00:51, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I fixed it by removing the unicode carriage returns. I've no idea what they were for. I'll check out a few talk pages to make sure everything is okay now. Geometry guy 10:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Now comments do not seem to work in concert with vital articles. Anyone know what it wrong? Geometry guy 23:24, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

The wikitable syntax does not ignore whitespace, and the template was adding an extra newline in a poor location. I think I have fixed it now. Tracking down these errors is quite difficult; I plan to rewrite this template someday using HTML table syntax instead of wikitable syntax, which will make it much easier to debug. CMummert · talk 01:48, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, debugging this is a pain, as fixing one thing causes another to go wrong. The main problem is to introduce an extra newline if a test is true, but not if it is false. I've finally managed to do this using unicode newlines (I think this is the only way, because wiki-syntax seems to ignore whitespace after tags, pipes and links). I've tested almost every possible combination of conditions, and the template seems to be okay now. Geometry guy 12:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Recent updates

There have been a few changes to this template recently.

• The term "importance" has been partially replaced by "priority". The intention is essentially that "importance" should correspond to "quality", and "priority" should correspond to "class", but the match is not yet exact.
• Bplus has been enhanced and so is now folded in with GA for WP 1.0, not B.
• There is a show/hide facility for comments. Since there is only one /Comments page, it has to be shared by all WikiProjects, and for some articles it can become quite long. Some editors have complained that this makes the ratings templates too long.
• A remark has been added to clarify that all editors should feel free to update ratings which are inaccurate.

I hope these changes are helpful. Geometry guy 00:32, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Template basing-off question

How do you make it so that the inclusion of the template automatically takes care of putting in the appropriate category? (I ask because at WP:NUM we tried basing Template:Numbers rating off this template and the importance categories are completely empty despite template inclusion, e.g., Talk:10 (number)). PrimeFan 22:42, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at the end of this template

{{#switch:{{#if:{{{priority|}}}|{{{priority}}}|{{{importance}}}}}
 |Top|top=[[Category:Top-Priority mathematics articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |High|high=[[Category:High-Priority mathematics articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Mid|mid=[[Category:Mid-Priority mathematics articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Low|low=[[Category:Low-Priority mathematics articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |NA|na=
 |[[Category:Unassessed importance mathematics articles|{{PAGENAME}}]][[Category:Unassessed mathematics articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
}}

there is similar code for class as well. The importance parapeter is are used twice, once to display in the message box and one to place it in the appropriate category. --Salix alba (talk) 22:56, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

frequentlyviewed=?

I noticed that Talk:Quasiperfect number‎ recently acquired this template with the designation "frequentlyviewed=no", and the included box now shows "One of the 500 most frequently viewed mathematics articles."

Please can someone document how this parameter should be used? Hv (talk) 14:38, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I can add that. The short story is: it shouldn't be added by individual editors, it will be added by a bot based on a list of article hitcounts. But the template code here should be fixed so that if they do put "frequentlyviewed=no", nothing will happen. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:41, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Adding rating to templates

I added the math rating template to a template (Template_talk:Groups) and set the "class" to "Template", and the "importance" to "NA" as described in the instructions for the Maths rating template, but I don't think it worked properly. Specifically, it added the template to Unassessed quality mathematics articles, and Unassessed importance mathematics articles. Did I do something wrong, or should something be fixed? RobHar (talk) 00:24, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The Math project doesn't use this template on anything except articles. This is different than some other projects. You can use {{maths banner}} on templates if you like, or just not tag them at all. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:10, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I see. Then shouldn't the description of this template not refer to this? And is there a specific reason not to use it? RobHar (talk) 04:07, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the documentation error, I fixed that. The only purpose of the template is to track articles for WP 1.0, which is why it hasn't ever supported the non-article "class" ratings. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:32, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

There may be an influx of math templates, so that it might be useful to have the template categories. On the other hand, I think those templates will have categories that indicate their relation to mathematics clearly enough. Do we have a nicely laid out category tree for math? The categorytree tag doesn't quite work out because of all of the directed cycles in our "tree" and the extremely un-balanced nature of the tree. JackSchmidt (talk) 14:17, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The better way to deal with templates would be to add a category, such as Category:Mathematics article templates, directly to the templates. The talk page tag tends to be somewhat redundant, because it requires the template creator to make both a template and a talk page.

I haven't looked at the entire math category tree, but I have been through Category:Mathematical logic in detail. In general, I don't see the benefit of tagging a category as related to mathematics. What purpose does that serve? — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:27, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I think we agree. Category:Mathematics article templates sounds like a good idea. I wasn't trying to suggest tagging categories, but rather was asking if we actually know what categories we have, somewhat like List of mathematics articles. I think List of mathematics categories omits quite a few categories (especially non-article categories) and is alphabetical, rather than hierarchical. JackSchmidt (talk) 15:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Just in case you didn't men tagging in some technical sense, but just meant you didn't see the point of gathering the mathematics categories together: this is just a fundamental principle in cataloging. You cannot expect good categorization if your catalogers do not have easy, hierarchical access to the tree. Having some sort of inventory of what we have is a first step. For instance, see the stub sorting project and its nice gathering and maintenance of its categories and templates. JackSchmidt (talk) 15:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think that a hierarchical list of all mathematics related categories would be a great thing to have. When I use the word "tag" I am referring only to the use of a template on corresponding the category_talk: page. We could gather categories by directly adding them to something like Category:Wikipedia mathematics related categories. That's a more direct way to go. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:21, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

What happened to the "field" parameter?

The new template doesn't seem to do anything with the "field" parameter. Is this a bug? --Trovatore (talk) 02:16, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

It looks like the field shows up if you click on the "show" more information. I don't like it... RobHar (talk) 03:49, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Some problems

Hi. The template currently shows articles rated B+ as being Good articles (e.g. Talk:Pell_number). Also, on the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0/Number_theory page, two of the entries are messed up (Hilbert–Pólya conjecture, and Practical number). I don't know if this is related to the recent changes to this template, but perhaps someone here knows how to fix this. Thanks. RobHar (talk) 05:42, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

"Comments" field

Should the "comments" field still be part of this template? It is clearly obsolete (regular talk pages are now used for discussions of math articles) and pretty confusing. Nsk92 (talk) 15:00, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

No, comments are not obsolete. I believe they are used by a large number of projects. A lot of articles have comments; Category:Mathematics articles with no comments contains the ones which don't. Martin 15:48, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

There are two methods of comments which have been used, inline comments which were specified as a template parameter and /Comment sub pages. A couple of days ago I removed the inline comments code from the template as this has been deprecated for some time and no articles use them. The template still checks for sub pages which are used quite a bit. --Salix (talk): 17:36, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Salix alba. Ideally every article talk using this template should have a rating and a /Comments subpage. The maths project doesn't use its project templates simply to say its within our scope, since we have List of mathematics articles, which does that more effectively using a bot. The reason we use /Comments subpages is so that the comments can be listed elsewhere. It is depressing to see that Category:Mathematics articles with no comments now contains 2,382 articles. At the end of June 2007, after some efforts by Cronholm and myself, it was empty! Geometry guy 19:13, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

It's not depressing. It means that we have at least 2382 more mathematics articles since June 2007 :D Martin 19:19, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the positive spin, but that isn't the right statistic. Actually we have about 3300 more mathematics articles since end June 2007. I'm not completely sure when or if the no comments category was cleared, but there were between 2400-2800 rated articles at the time (June-July 2007), which means that most of the new ratings (there are currently 5237) are not signed or dated. It would be nice (albeit very time consuming, even with AWB) to check, sign and date them. Geometry guy 20:35, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I have to say that I don't understand the need for "comments" subpages in the first place. There is a talk page for every article in Wikipedia and that is where all comments on the article really belong. The "comments" subpage feature seems to me to be an unnecessary way of forking the regular "talk" discussion process. I think most users are not aware of the existence of the "comments" subpages and would rarely look there if at all. If someone does say something interesting and meaningful there, chances are it will not be looked at by anyone for a long time, if ever. So why have them? Nsk92 (talk) 21:14, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps they are misnamed. They are for explanations about the rating (or perhaps only a signature and date) added by the person who last rated the article. For their use, see e.g., WP:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Geometry/Mid. Geometry guy 21:32, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I completely misunderstood their purpose. Maybe one could modify the math rating template a bit to make this point more clear. Right now the template says "Please also add comments to suggest improvements to the article". There are probably many people who assign ratings to math articles who do not realize that they are supposed to leave a note in the "comments" subpage when assigning a rating. Nsk92 (talk) 21:52, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment on my talk page, and I agree that we need to clarify this. However, comments on the rating do often contain suggestions (perhaps implicitly) on how to improve the rating. Also the commenter need not be the original assessor. Can we find a form of words which handles this? First try: "Please add comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the article, as reflected in the rating". Geometry guy 21:04, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Generally sounds good, but I'd like to see a greater emphasis on the rating/assessment part of the template message. (In fact, I think it is a really good idea to keep track of who assigngs ratings, when, and if possible why. This information is often hard to fish out from the history logs of talk pages, so the comments subpages are useful tools for collecting such information). As a second try how about this (maybe too long, but still): "Please add comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the article, particularly when assigning a rating to it". Nsk92 (talk) 21:32, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Meta Banner

Now that the {{WPBannerMeta}} supports custom quality classes (and so can handle the Bplus class used in mathematics) I am proposing that we convert this banner. The advantages would be the flexibility and ease of adding functionality to the banner in the future, and the reduction in maintenance generally. It would also make it easier to change the assessment schemes in the future (for example there are currently discussions about whether or not C-class should be used). I have temporarily hijacked Template:WikiProject Mathematics to use it as a trial. The following pages currently contain both so that they may be compared:

• Talk:Function composition
• Talk:Antiholomorphic function
• Talk:Fourier series

I took people's comments into account and took the field out of the collapsed part of the banner. I am not sure what the conclusion was to the discussion above about the comments? Waiting for your thoughts. Martin 15:49, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I've taken a look, and I still don't find the case for change compelling. The proposed replacement is nearly twice as large, the "rated" links don't work, and the links to WP1.0 scales are redundant. It also isn't particularly attractive, especially with the huge square root x. Geometry guy 18:24, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm having another try at this. I have taken your points into consideration. Changes include:

• Links to the generic WP1.0 scales have been removed. Now there is just the link to the project specific assessment scales.
• Image size reduced.
• If there is more than one "note" displayed, then they are automatically collapsed to keep the size down. (See the examples on /testcases.)

There are also all the other features of using the meta banner, e.g.

• Detection and tracking in case someone accidentically substitutes ({{subst:maths rating}}) the banner.
• Automatic detection and warning in case someone puts it on a non-talk page.
• Display of the field and priority in the nested version (see /testcases again for example).
• Proper support for category suppression, so that banners can be used as examples without placing pages in inappropriate categories.

... and lots more. Let me know what you think! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:49, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Well its improved, but still not as compact as the current one for most articles. Unfortunately, another reason has come to light for not adopting it: centralization. I visited Template talk:WPBannerMeta recently, as was alarmed to find a template talk page being used so actively for such wide-ranging discussion. We do not need more centralization and centrally imposed structures. Hence I favor keeping an independent maths rating template in the foreseeable future. Individual advantages of the WPBannerMeta code can of course be incorporated here as needed. Geometry guy 19:59, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I have to say that I disagree. There have been huge improvements to WikiProject banners which would not have been possible without this degree of centralisation. Yes of course there are discussions on Template talk:WPBannerMeta about further improving the code, but any major proposals are advertised in other places as well, such as WT:COUNCIL. If this concern is about a perceived loss of control over the project's banner then that is understandable but I don't think, ultimately, that it is borne out by the experience of projects which have converted. What is your problem with centralisation, exactly? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:46, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Centralization which facilitates is helpful and I am glad it has led to ideas which improve banners. Centralization which dictates or constrains the way WikiProjects operate is not helpful. Most editors "on the ground" are not interested in policy discussions; WT:COUNCIL is not widely watchlisted, and the Village Pump has a very poor signal to noise ratio. Editors who are interested in these issues have an obligation to consider the effects on those who aren't. At the moment the discussion at the Village Pump on comments subpages predominantly involves editors from WPBannerMeta. The proposal would have a significant impact on this project, which uses comments subpages extensively, transcluding them in multiple places.

But we can agree to disagree. Geometry guy 19:11, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Adding C-Class

I'd like to update the template to properly sort C-class articles into the the correct category. It looks like what needs to be done is to change

|C|c|Start|start=[[Category:Start-Class mathematics articles]]

to

|C|c=[[Category:C-Class mathematics articles]]
|Start|start=[[Category:Start-Class mathematics articles]]

Are there potential problems with this?--RDBury (talk) 23:10, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

There shouldn't be. The main issues are:

• I need to update VeblenBot, which isn't too hard
• It will take some time for the ratings that are already C-class but categorized as Start-class to fix themselves. The job queue is relatively slow these days.

— Carl (CBM · talk) 23:26, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I updated VeblenBot for C-Class this afternoon after the template was changed. There are 68 articles in the category right now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:29, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Updating frequentlyviewed (2009 is old)

The list of frequently viewed articles from 2009 is now outdated and wrong in at least 10% of the top 20. How can it be updated? Is there a script? twilsonb (talk) 14:13, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I have updated the talk page tags since then. The way I made the list was to get two sets of data: a hitcount for all articles on enwiki, and a list of mathematics articles. Then I just joined them to make a list of the most viewed math articles. I can do it again in a few weeks (it's not hard, I just need to recalculate the hitcount data at some point, which requires running some scripts on toolserver). — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:41, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Suggested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved Mike Cline (talk) 14:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

---

Template:Maths rating → Template:WikiProject Mathematics – As far as I'm aware, this is the only WikiProject Banner not named "Template:WikiProject X" and Template:WikiProject Mathematics presently is just boilerplate text saying to not use it and use this instead. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:14, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

There is a reason for this. Unlike some other projects, we do not want editors to simply paste this template on every math-related article. We already have a List of mathematics articles that does not require any talk page tags. The only point of this template is to store assessment information for articles. The point of the name is to emphasize this. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:55, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't the template achieve the same goal regardless of its name? The argument could be made that Template:WikiProject Mathematics is a name that is more consistent with the rest of Wikipedia. Furthermore, the template also has as function to identify the Wikiproject, rating and status of an article from its talk page, correct? In that respect, Template:WikiProject Mathematics might better cover the entire use of the template. Since, as you say, it has no effect on the list of mathematics articles, that list could keep being maintained without further problems. Mythio (talk) 19:25, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment Mathsrating is not a standard WPP banner, but I think WPMATH should have a separate WPP banner that uses WPBANNERMETA for tagging of organizational topics... (like categories and redirects) while mathsrating is left for strictly articles... 70.24.251.71 (talk) 05:33, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment I thought it was up to projects whether they put on such templates or not. So why should anybody else be bothered what the Maths project does with something like this? Dmcq (talk) 09:27, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Mathematics does put up templates, just like (most) others? Mythio (talk) 10:43, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by that but any editors who are interested in mathematics and the maths project can put in or remove the templates. No one else should normally be interested in them or touch them. So if an article is about both biology and maths a biology project might stick in a template for them and the maths project one relating to the maths project. If a person comes along who is not interested in either they shouldn't touch either template. Dmcq (talk) 13:36, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I thought your comment meant that projects decide themselves whether to use templates or not and that nobody could be bothered by whether the math project does it or not. This is however not the discussion, since the math project already uses templates, it's just the name of the template thats discussed here. Sorry if I misunderstood you :-) Looking also at the comment below, I guess its more an issue of "Consistency between projects" on one hand and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" on the other. Myself I'm a big fan of consistency, but I'm new and don't know how Wikipedia views these kinds of issues :-) Mythio (talk) 18:59, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment. It's not used as a project banner, but as a ratings template. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Also I don't understand what problem the proposed move was supposed to fix. Surely "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:51, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: The math project is somewhat unusual in that it has a large number of articles compared to the number of active editors. So there many articles which some under the project with no banner and this is unlikely to change any time soon. Also, the math project's rating system is somewhat idiosyncratic. (The template:maths banner template is used on those rare occasions when a banner is needed but a rating isn't appropriate.) So having a non-standard name and not using WPBANNERMETA is justifiable. Arguing for conformity is unlikely to work with mathies anyway; conformists rarely find a subject as unpopular as mathematics appealing. There are problems though, for instance the math project uses custom bots to maintain lists of articles and its current activity page, and this means additional maintenance effort and delays in fixing problems when they arise. It also means that global efforts such as Wikipedia 1.0 may not be able to find articles for the math project as easily as they do for other projects. Eventually the advantages of using common tools and standards may outweigh the resistance to changing for the sake of being like everyone else, but that doesn't seem to be the case at the moment.--RDBury (talk) 19:41, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Featured on portal

Currently, if the portal field is not set then the template will still add it to Category:Featured articles on Mathematics Portal, so that nearly every rated math article is in that category. It appears that changing

#if:{{{portal}}}

to

#if:{{{portal|}}}

in the code should resolve this. At present the issue can be resolved for a given article by adding |portal= with no value given where the template is used. But if nobody has any problems with it, I'll just change the template. Nat2 (talk) 16:41, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds like a good fix. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:34, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I implemented it yesterday without incident. Nat2 (talk) 21:48, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

And style changes

I thought it might be good to add a message for if the portal field was set to Y, so I did that and some formatting changes at my sandbox. The major changes are:

• |portal=Y now displays a message as well as adding a category
• |category=no now prevents the template from adding any categories (for sandboxes, testcases, or demonstrations)
• The header used in {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} now has a priority/importance message as well as a class one
• I updated the documentation here

I tested it a lot in another sandbox, and I think it looks better. However, the documentation about the |frequentlyviewed= parameter seemed incorrect; I don't know which bot maintains it or by what list. In addition, someone earlier mentioned changing the wikitable syntax to HTML form. I didn't do this, but I think it would be a good idea because the issues involving newlines and whitespace cause erratic and hard to trace errors. I could if others think it is a good idea.

Please respond with comments, errors you found, or suggestions. Nat2 (talk) 17:44, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

So I started converting the tables. The outer one went fine, but the inner one is currently broken. I'll either fix it or change it back as soon as I can. Nat2 (talk) 00:00, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I handle the "frequentlyviewed" parameter, using VeblenBot but only running it occasionally. It takes a lot of manual work to prepare the list from the hitcount data. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:04, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I've updated the documentation. I think everything is fixed now, but the nature of a template that must be linked to means we need at least two small pipe-style tables (containing one cell each) nested in the inner table. The syntax there is hard to read because indentation is more or less impossible, but improved everywhere else with the new tables. Nat2 (talk) 04:05, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Now I've moved my version over. Nat2 (talk) 20:55, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Chaos theory?

Why is there no chaos theory as a variable for the "field" setting? It’s a branch of (applied) mathematics is it not? Maschen (talk) 16:40, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

The "fields" are intentionally very broad, so that there will be a lot of articles in each field. Otherwise, we would have lots of tiny fields with only a few articles each, at which point we might as well just use the categories that are already on the articles. For example there is only one field for all of abstract algebra, and only one field for all of number theory, even though these could be subdivided into much smaller pieces.

Chaos theory is typically studied as part of dynamical systems, which can be either in applied mathematics or in mathematical analysis depending on whether the work being done is applied or pure. So I would use either applied mathematics or mathematical analysis, on a case by case basis. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:11, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I know it’s part of applied mathematics but that seems a bit too broad. Anyway it doesn't matter intensley, just asking, thanks for your response. Maschen (talk) 00:22, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Dab class

From Talk:Rotation group (disambiguation), can anyone from the maths project explain why there's a mathdab template, but no dab class in the maths rating template? I left the class blank (as it's not a list). Widefox; talk 16:04, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Change to manage categories

Can we change this template so that categories in the scope of wikiproject mathematics can be categorized appropriately (under Category:Category-Class_mathematics_articles? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:02, 21 March 2014 (UTC)