User talk:Oleg Alexandrov

Write a new message. I will reply on this page, under your post.

---

Archive: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

---

Most linked maths articles

This seems to be a useful and needed list: any chance you could ask your friend Mathbot to update it regularly (say once a week)? Geometry guy 20:44, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll have it updated every day from now (although the effect will be felt every other day, since mathbot uses the result of WP 1.0 bot which runs every other day.

Now, when the bot updates this list, it will only update the column marking the entries which have not yet been rated. I guess this is what primarily you find useful. That is to say, it will not update the number of times an article is linked from other math articles, for that I need to download all the 15K math articles, and I am not sure if it is worth doing that every week. If you need this info updated too, let me know. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:22, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

That is what interests me, yes, but I'm not sure about other users. How about updating the big picture once a month? Geometry guy 23:26, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to remember. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:47, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Partial derivative

Oleg, I unknowingly reversed your reversal of the notation for partial derivatives. It is my understanding that the subscript closest to the function name is the first derivative taken. For example, in $f_{xy}$ you first differentiate wrt x and then wrt y. Perhaps we should open this up to discussion? Jhausauer 21:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I am actually not sure how this goes, I have always thought that the order is the same as with the fraction notation. The best thing to do would be getting some references. Do you know of any book where this is discussed? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:57, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't have any textbooks with me but check Elementary Calculus by Keisler, an online textbook. He uses the notation I described. Jhausauer 17:05, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Oleg, I agree with you -- the order should match the partial notation. See the Hessian matrix article for the proper notation. Additionally, note that if second derviatives are all continuous, then $f_{xy}=f_{yx}$. Most likely the original reference that inspired the reversed notation was assuming such a function. The person using the reference was definitely confused by this and assumed that, for some reason, the notation should be reversed. Nevertheless, you are correct and you should put your change back to the article. --TedPavlic 13:47, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

The more I think about it, the more I think I am right here. Check HMC Calculus tutorial for another source. Jhausauer 15:35, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll try to look up some references through google books, I'll let you know if I find anything. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:43, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Check page 763 of James Stewart's Calculus: Concepts and Connections. Stewart is a very popular book in freshman and sophomore calculus courses. Also check http://www.mth.uct.ac.za/omei/a-calculus/chap2/node1.html. Jhausauer 15:52, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Pictures

Hey Oleg, I saw your nice additions to neighbourhood. Could you do something similar for Codomain and Image (mathematics). I added my weak attempt to their respective talk pages, but it is not nearly article quality. If you don't have time I completely understand. Also, what is the name of the software you use to create those images, I would like to become a math wikifairy if I can. Thanks --Cronholm144 03:21, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I should read before I speak... inkscape, thanks muchly!--Cronholm144 03:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Such pictures should be really easy to do in Inkscape. If you want, you could take the SVG source of my pictures, paste it in a file which can be open from Inkscape, and go from there. If you need help, or if you want me to take a look or tweak the finished pictures, let me know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:30, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, you could maybe adapt Image:Multivalued function.svg to your needs. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll work with both, thanks for the help. :)--Cronholm144 03:38, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

so much better

Here's number one, but you can see the problem. The text doesn't render(at least for me). I released it under GFDL so I think you can edit it. I also put jpeg version on the Image (mathematics) talk page. Cheers and thanks for the pointers.--Cronholm144 05:34, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Inkscape has the option to use "flowed text", which is in the draft SVG 1.2 standard, but not in the current SVG 1.1 standard. Convert all your flowed text using the Text menu option "Convert to text". Then consider what fonts to use; your choices are listed here. --KSmrq^T 06:40, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks so much, I'll do so now :) --Cronholm144 09:39, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! If fonts render poorly, you could export it to PNG (not jpeg), and then use that one in Wikipedia pages. But also include the SVG code below the picture, so that others can modify it.

There is one thing I'd like to notice though. The text size is way too small, it cannot be seen in the thumb. When you make a picture, I think it is good if you zoom out every now and then, so that you see it exactly as it appears in a thumbnail. I'd suggest you make the fonts bigger.

Also, to enter letters like φ, you can just copy them from somewhere (say Wikipedia) into inkscape. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:51, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

The default thumbnail size is 180 pixels wide (though accounts can choose a different default in their preferences under "Files"), so you might want to test against that. Some images won't be legible that small, and it may be desirable to force a bigger thumbnail. However, we want to be kind to readers with smaller screens and/or lower bandwidth. In the same spirit, try viewing your image in gray to see brightness contrast, the most important aspect of color choice for readability. (Or try ColorBrewer to select a color scheme.) --KSmrq^T 00:16, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Adminship

Ok, I've filled in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/David Eppstein. If you have any feedback for me, something you think should be changed in my answers before it gets submitted, please let me know; otherwise, you can go ahead and submit it. I'm going to be traveling next week, though, so if my active participation in the debate would be required it might be better to wait until the following week. —David Eppstein 07:45, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

All looks good. Perhaps the third part of your answer to question 1 could be made more clear, just to make sure people understand that you won't threaten vandals with a block right away, but only in situations that that person is not willing to stop, or something like that. But that's my perspective only. And then, you need to sign the acceptance and change the datestamp to a week from that.

Now, about traveling. Will you travel from Monday? If so, that leaves us with four-five days till then, and that period should be enough to answer any questions that may arise I think if we go ahead and transclude the nomination. But it is up to you when you want it on and when you are ready.

Lastly, it is you who should transclude it to WP:RfA, whenever you decide; my job was done when I wrote the nomination. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:47, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm leaving late Sunday night. Ok, will do. —David Eppstein 15:54, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Bureaucrat chat is open on Gracenotes's RfA

Using Danny's RfA as something to compare with is probably not a good idea. That one introduced the inovative idea of bureaucrat chat (thanks to Taxman), but overall could have been handled much better I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely, which is why I didn't use Danny's RfA as the example above. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 16:39, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Missing science topics

I've started to remove links to existing articles at Wikipedia:Missing science topics before I noticed that it used to be done by Mathbot some time ago. There are plenty of blue links at math topics so I was wondering if the bot is going to go through these lists again? Jogers (talk) 18:25, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

It's been a year already indeed. Thanks for the reminder, I'll run the bot soon. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:02, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Secondary measure

Thanks for your welcome message and for the good format you have done on the article. I am a french teacher beginning on the english wikipedia and my syntax is not very sure. So thanks again for all your work. Have a good day. ENRGO 10:43, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Areas of Interest

Oleg,

Thanks for your kind message regarding my first post (Differential Equation -- 20th Century Uses). I am a lecturer at Northeastern University in Boston in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies and at Endicott College (communication). I hope to make some useful contributions to Wikipedia regarding mathematics, computers, robotics, information theory, telecommunications and intelligent agents, which are my areas of interest.

Best wishes,

Andrew Spano

Deleted neighborhood

Hi Oleg. In your last edit summary for Neighborhood (mathematics), you asked about deleted neighborhoods. I have heard this term before, and a quick Google Books search confirms that there are references for this usage. (It seems to be more common in complex analysis than in topology, though.) VectorPosse 18:19, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi VP. I should have checked, of course. :) Thanks! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:38, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

limsup and liminf

I have responded to your threats about the infimum limits and supremum limits. I made the trivial change that you requested and responded to your concerns in the discussion. Please review. I hope this is to your satisfaction. --TedPavlic 13:42, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I replied at Talk:Limit superior and limit inferior#Recent shape of this article also. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:20, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Style

Oops -- sorry. I'll try to remember to be more formal; thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nbarth (talk • contribs)

Problems with query.php affecting WP 1.0 bot

I am having problems with query.php. For example I can't load the contents of 'Category:Stub-Class mathematics articles'. I get the error pi_badpageids, which is interesting because I can't find that string anywhere in the source. Have you run into this with WP 1.0 bot? — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:24, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I verified with [1] that this affects WP 1.0 bot as well - it says it fails to fetch the second continuation of Category:Stub-Class mathematics articles until it gives up on the 10th attempt and moves on to the next continuation. If you find anything out, please let me know. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:40, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I will look into it, hopefully tomorrow. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:11, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I replied on your talk page. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:54, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Complete Metric Space

No, Oleg, I am afraid you are wrong, you have missed a subtle point. The way it is explained on the page, it says that the distance from one equivalence class to another is defined BECAUSE THE REAL NUMBERS ARE COMPLETE. But how can you use the completenesss of the real numbers to prove that the completion of the rationals is the real numbers? I certainly agree that once the real numbers are known to be complete, then one can use the more straightforward procedure to perform the completion of any other metric space. But you can NOT use the completeness of the real numbers in CONSTRUCTING the real numbers. This is why I made the remark about "avoiding circularity". The right way is to define the equivalence relation using the zero distance relation to put sequences in the equivalence class (and then, in the case of completing the rationals, strictly speaking, one should prove that the set of equivalence classes form a complete totally ordered field, which identifies with the real numbers). This is done with some care in Spivak's book for example. This is not a matter of style or taste, it is a matter of mathematical correctness and accuracy. What is in the reverted article is faulty. Messagetolove 16:57, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the article aspires to prove that the real numbers are the completion of the rationals. As Oleg explained in the edit summary, this article assumes at the outset that the real numbers have already been defined and proven to be the completion of rationals, and continues to use this to show that any other metric space can also be completed. It is agreed that a separate proof for reals is required somewhere, just not in this article. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:04, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

If that is the case, then it should be properly explained that the completeness of the real numbers is assumed from the outset, and the text "Cantor's construction of the real numbers is a special case of this; the real numbers are the completion of the rational numbers using the ordinary absolute value to measure distances." should be removed from the article, since this clearly implies that the construction described for a general metric space,which, as described, makes use of the completeness of the reals, is the same construction as used to complete the rationals (or anything else not already complete) to the reals, which could not make a priori use of the completeness of the reals. Furthermore, the explanation in the Edit Summary makes the incorrect comment that if we do not already assume the completeness of the reals, we could complete them by the procedure outlined for a general metric space. This is circular reasoning for the reasons I have explained already, as the completion process in the article uses the completeness of the reals. I really do not care greatly about my own text being reverted- I think my record shows that when my text has been reverted in the past ( a rare occurence to date) I have explained why the text was as it was, and not blindly reverted it back. But I do care that the text remaining on the page is incorrect.

Messagetolove 19:39, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Post script: sorry, it wasn't in the edit summary that Oleg said that about completing the reals if they weren't already complete, it was on my talk page.

Messagetolove 19:56, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Continued at User talk:Messagetolove. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:22, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Importance vs priority

See User talk:CBM#Importance vs priority. Any comments? (I guess this is not an issue for the WP 1.0 bot, but it doesn't do any harm to make sure ;) Geometry guy 17:28, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I commented there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:53, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Carl and I have now implemented the changeover from importance to priority. I noticed a possible effect on WP 1.0 bot: will it automatically fix the links at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Mathematics articles by quality statistics? It isn't very important because I've turned the old pages into redirects, but it's nice to tidy up sometimes... Geometry guy 20:50, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi G-guy. It appears that the statistics table above survived fine the transition (diff).

Nice. I reckon that whoever programmed the code for WP 1.0 bot must be a clever guy :) By the way, I notice that Bplus gets folded in with B currently. Any chance it could be folded in with GA, or listed separately? Geometry guy 02:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I can't do that. The bot does not recognize the B+ class. I think now B+ gets folded with B because each B+ article is automatically B (per some code in the math template I guess) -- Carl should know about this. If you want each B+ to be folded with GA, one should modify that template (again, ask Carl, I think either he or Salix alba came up with the B+ class and whom it should be folded with).

The reason the bot does not recognize B+ is because that's a math specific grade, and as a matter of principle I try to keep the bot free of any project specific ratings (I'd go mad try to please all customizations of the hundreds of projects :) Any math-specific bot work could be addressed to Carl's bot, if he's willing to do it. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:23, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer: it is a category thing. I've now folded B+ in with GA instead. (I know the maths rating template pretty well now!) Geometry guy 02:38, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

By the way, thank you for your help in answering questions about my bots (or about my silly mistakes about them). A few times I noticed that before I got to a post you replied there before me, and you gave great answers. Thanks! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:50, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'm sure you have explained 100 times how Mathbot finds math articles! It isn't rocket science really, once you realise that bots have access to all the same data (backlinks, categories etc.) as any other editor, but can process it faster. Yet many users are baffled and amazed by the bots' god-like powers. Good programming again, I reckon :) Geometry guy 02:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Mathbot on AfDs

Mathbot is insisting that this AfD discussion is still open when it's been closed. You may want to review and see what assumption is tripping it up; at a guess, it may be because <!--Template:Afd top is lacking the closing -->, but naturally I have no idea how it determines that a discussion has been closed.

Cheers, and thanks for the good work on the bot! It's invaluable. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 22:42, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

This edit by KrakatoaKatie fixed things. The bot expected the heading below AfD top. Thanks for the note. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:28, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

My RfA ...

Hi. Thanks for supporting my request for adminship and for your expression of confidence in me. The RfA was successful and I am now an admin. If I can ever be of help, please let me know. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 05:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Dual cones

Hi Oleg, I must admit that you have surprised me by removing 'merge' tag in Dual cone, while stating your point of view in the summary of the edit. I think it was rather dismissive on your part, quite contrary to my impression of you as a Wikipedian with fine understanding of Wikiquette. I've looked at talk pages for both articles, and this issue has not been discussed, but perhaps, it should be. This is what tags are used for, or at least so I thought. Arcfrk 01:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I did not mean to appear inconsiderate. To start, the person putting in the tag should attempt to explain why the articles should be merged. Also, I looked carefully at both articles, and I did not see a good reason to merge them, rather the opposite. So, I explained my reason for why they should not be merged, and removed the tag.

So, let's start from the beginning, why should the articles be merged? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:27, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

No problem! I guessed it was a misunderstanding, and I didn't realize that the 'merge' tag must be accompanied by an explanation (I see a lot of tags without explanations). But first a procedural issue, let us restore the tag and carry out the discussion at the talk page of the article, so that it may be viewed by other interested parties, OK? Arcfrk 02:36, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The merge tag doesn't have to be absolutely necessarily accompanied by an explanation, but without it, well, how can one start a discussion. OK, I restored the tag, I'd appreciate if you explain on the talk page why the articles should be merged. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:39, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

One-to-one

Thanks for your message on my talk page. I agree with your suggestion, and have just moved the page to One-to-one (disambiguation). --Edcolins 15:39, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. Thank you for moving the page and expanding it too. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. Cheers. --Edcolins 16:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Need your advice...

Dear Oleg.

I was roaming Wikipedia when I stumbled across the article for Stephen Hawking (the cosmologist). Someone had edited it and wrote (and I quote): "Stephen Cripple legs Hawking... is a British top class athlete and winner of the 2004 Olympics."

I was utterly disgusted to see something so offensive especially on Wikipedia. I have full conviction that this is not representative of the organisation at all, and I think it is very likely that there are some rogues roaming.

I would like to make a request to the relevant authorities that whoever made this change should be banned. (1. I am surprised it was not altered until I saw it; and 2. I have consequently changed the article to how it was before using a cached link from Google.)

How do I go about this?

Thanks in advance.

PS I have a print-screen image of the page with the rude comments on, as proof of my claims. If you want, I can post it up, but I'm unsure how to attach (I'm a newbie user).

Natural Philosopher 14:11, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I understand your feelings.

First, about reverting. Using a cached link from google is not the best option, that may be outdated. Instead, you should click on the "history" tab, and select the last best version, and revert to it.

About banning the user in question. Well, you can't do that only for one or a few edits. You could go and write on his talk page. If the user shows a persistent pattern for a long while, then he could be banned.

That's the reality of Wikipedia, anybody can edit. All I can say is that on the whole, many more good things get added than bad, and the bad things usually get reverted after a while. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:03, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

_____________________

Thanks for your comments.

I have checked that the article has been restored to the latest correct edit using the History tab (I didn't know about that before).

I also now know the username of the member who did this. However, he does not have a user page. Is there any way that I put his name on a warning list or something like that?

Thank you.

Natural Philosopher 15:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

You can put the warning on his talk page. I already wrote one, but you can add to it.

There is no warning list, although for persistent vandals see Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:26, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

___________________

Many thanks for your advice and assistance in this matter, Oleg.

Natural Philosopher 21:14, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup templates

Just to let you know that most cleanup templates, like "merge", "fact", "cleanup" etc., are best not "subst"ed. See WP:SUBST for more details. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 17:10 9 June 2007 (GMT).

Hi Rich. Can you tell me what specific edit are you referring to? I am not aware of subst'ing such things.

And I have a note to you too. One should not use the minor edit button for non-minor edits, like talk page edits. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:14, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

<grin> Sorry about the "minor". Here's the edit in question. Rich Farmbrough, 17:55 9 June 2007 (GMT).

Yeah, right, I forgot about that one. Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:22, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot running slow?

Hi... I wasn't sure if you already knew it or not, but WP 1.0 bot hasn't touched the assessments for WikiProject Louisville or WikiProject Kentucky (and possibly other projects) for six days. I hope the bot is doing ok. Thanks! Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 19:31, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Today it is running. There were a few glitches. Usually the page WT:1.0/I is a good place where to check for what is going on. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:05, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the info (and for a great bot). I'll watch that page from now on. Cheers! Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 23:36, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Not slow, stopped - again. It was restarted but only got so far before stopping. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 10:24, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Unicode & browsers

Sorry about that, Oleg. I didn't realize my console setup would screw around with unicode when I edited something else on Wikipedia. I'll have to be more circumspect from now on. Thanx for the heads-up.

Pazouzou 19:36, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your Help

Dear Oleg

Thanks muchly for your help with "Product Integral" plus your suggestions. There is so much in Wikipedia that I was feeling a bit lost.

I was hoping to contribute something on "dx-less integrals" (you'll have to look then up at www.geocities.com/multigrals2000 and download the appropriate word doc) and the "fair bet paradox" but I'm wondering if it might "be sailing too close to the breeze". Will concentrate on adding to Product Integral for now.

Again, thanks for your help

Daryl Williams 04:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

P.S: Liked your webpage as well.

P.P.S: Could wiki-mathematicians possibly help with dx-less integrals? Everyone I've shown them to can't figure them out. Daryl Williams 04:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

ABout this last thing, you can try asking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:39, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Will do. Daryl Williams 23:30, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

normal vector field

Hi Oleg,

you added a picture of a normal vector field to vector field. Since the vectors are normal to the surface everywhere, the vector field is effectively a scalar field. It's a section of the trivial real line bundle. Since vector bundles have their own article, I don't think this picture is appropriate (or at least problematic) for the vector field article. Let's stick to tangent vector fields. What do you think? --MarSch 09:04, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Every nonvanishing vector field is a section of a line bundle, namely its span. Further, the line bundle is trivial, because the vector field provides a trivialization!

However, Oleg's example is not, strictly speaking, a vector field, but a vector field along a map (damn, another article needs to be written: see Pushforward (differential)#Pushforward of vector fields). This is a common abuse of language, though, especially when the map is an embedding, as it is here, so it probably should be explained. Geometry guy 11:10, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, I removed the picture, I agree that it is misleading there. I indeed confused a vector field with a section of a vector bundle. I added the picture at vector bundle, as an illustration of a section. If it is wrong there, or if the caption needs work, please let me know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:59, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: Pictures

There are two problems with my pictures:

1. shapes were drawn with Kig, then filled with The Gimp. To release them in SVG format, I should be able to fill them in inkscape, but this could be not really simple, depending on how badly Kig exports shapes in SVG
2. I can't find them on my PC. Maybe I just don't remember their names, but I could even have lost them last time I erroneously deleted all of my documents...

if I find anything I'll tell you

--Toobaz 14:54, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I see. That's why it is a good idea to release the source together with the pictures, so that they don't get lost. :) Thanks for your reply. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:00, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Log and statistics subpages

Could you modify the bot from using page names such as Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chess articles by quality statistics to using Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chess articles by quality/statistics? That would create handy back links to the statistics and log pages too. Currently the those pages do not link to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chess articles by quality which is, in my opinion, more essential than linking to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team which is what they do. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 15:21, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

That is a good idea, but perhaps a bit too late (I wish I thought about it earlier). It would require doing hundreds of moves to fix all the existing pages (in order to be consistent among them). You could try raising this at WT:1.0/I, but I am not sure if it is worth it given the amount of work needed to bring all the existing page in the same naming convention. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:26, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Conic sections and gravity in "Euclidean geomentry"

I corrected this section but you incorrectly labelled those corrections as wrong. Again: if v is less than escape velocity the object WILL BE IN AN ELIPTICAL ORBIT. You write "falls back to earth in a parabola" but miss the entire point. The only reason any object falls back to the earth is because it is not a point mass, otherwise any object would orbit. Satellites, for example, ARE IN ORBIT. Right? Can we agree? Guess what: their velocity is less than escape velocity, otherwise, by definition, they would not be in orbit. You think a satellite in orbit has a velocity equal to escape velocity. THEN HOW DO SATELLITES ORBIT AT DIFFERENT ALTITUDES? Answer: any velocity less than escape velocity is an elliptical orbit. Orbit is, by definition, a bounded energy system. If an object has a v equal to escape speed then it is no longer a bounded system and cannot be in orbit. If v is equal to escape speed then the object obeys a parabolic trajectory and escapes (duh) an infinite distance from the system. If v is greater than the escape speed than the object obeys a hyperbolic orbit.

Again:

1. if v is less than escape speed then elliptical orbit
2. if v = escape speed then parabolic trajectory
3. if v > escape speed then hyperbolic trajectory

I try to contribute to this site and a moron who doesn't understand basic physics (and yet is supposedly a grad student) over-writes it. That is frustrating. Please stick to editing things you have some basic knowledge of. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.34.95.124 (talk • contribs)

You are assuming you already are in orbit. I am talking about a person on earth, and throwing a stone in the air. The stone will come back to earh. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:47, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

You assert "The only reason any object falls back to the earth is because it is not a point mass, otherwise any object would orbit." It is a struggle to interpret this so that it is true. Let's do the experiment on the Moon to avoid atmosphere. A small metal sphere is a good approximation to a point mass, and we can toss it straight up and watch it fall straight down. We could call this a degenerate elliptical orbit, but the "orbit" intersects the Moon. Even if we also shrink the Moon to a small radius (but not to a black hole), the "orbit" intersects the surface. With a little horizontal velocity and such a small altitude that the acceleration of gravity is effectively constant, the path is best described as a parabola above a flat Lunar surface. With a large enough altitude, the path does trace out a non-degenerate ellipse, but can still intersect the surface again.

If we consider a comet and the Sun, your trichotomy of orbits more clearly applies. But if you want to try to apply this reasoning to tossing pebbles while standing on the surface of the Earth, you're going to have to be extremely clear and careful.

Oleg is both intelligent and well-educated, yet you did not write well enough for him. Do you suppose a more typical reader will fare better? --KSmrq^T 03:20, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, 24.34.95.124 (talk · contribs) is correct, but perhaps does not express himself clearly enough. The thing which would have to be a point mass is not the stone being thrown, but the Earth itself. The stone (ignoring: atmospheric friction, deviations from a spherical Earth, etc.) follows an elliptical path when it falls back to Earth. It just seems to be parabolic because the other focus is the center of the Earth which is so far away. JRSpriggs 09:42, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

This is correct. The point mass I was referring to is the earth itself. Again, if the earth were a point mass, any object with any velocity less than escape speed would be in an elliptical orbit. Because the earth is not a point mass, but has finite dimensions, paths that would otherwise be elliptical orbits collide with the body of the earth. This is irrelevant, however, because "conic sections and gravity" has to do with orbital dynamics, in which all these masses are defined to be point masses, not the kinematics of a person standing on the earth's surface. So, one more time: 1. if v < escape speed, the object will be in an elliptical orbit. 2. if v = escape speed, the object will have a parabolic trajectory and not return to the planet (i.e. IT IS NOT IN AN ORBIT). 3. if v > escape speed, the object will have a hyperbolic trajectory and not return, obviously. I have no problem with the fact that wikipedia is often wrong. The problem I have is when a physicist makes a correction to a section about physics and someone who obviously has never taken a basic introductory freshman physics course overwrites those corrections because of his own gross incompetence. In order for an object to be in an orbit it must have a negative energy--i.e., it must be a bound system. When v = escape speed the object is not bound and it CANNOT BE IN ORBIT. I can't believe these basic misunderstandings of such simple physics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.55.200.20 (talk • contribs) 14:11, 2007 June 15 (UTC)

I remember proving in a math class I taught that a body launched from Earth and under the influence of Newton's law (F=m*a) will follow a parabolic trajectory, assuming that the gravity is the same everywhere (so it does not depend on height, that's a reasonable assumption if you don't through the body too far). Any comments here? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:42, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

This came up at Vomit Comet, and eventually the discussion ended with the claim that "NASA calls it a parabola." Some common sense and constraints are needed; for example, our best theory today is not Newtonian gravity. If you're managing Gravity Probe B, that matters; if you're hitting golf balls on the Moon, it doesn't. Physics always adapts models to circumstances. --KSmrq^T 18:38, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Oleg, that is only true under a constant field, i.e., one that does not change in strength with altitude. The gravitational field, however, does change with distance, giving a potential energy that changes with 1/r. Thus, a man who throws a ball in the air only perceives a parabola because for this very small altitude change the field is roughly constant. It would, in fact, be an elliptical orbit if you took the earth to be a point mass, as you should, and accounted for the fact that the gravitational field is changing with altitude. This section is not about kinematics under fixed gravitational fields. It is about gravitational fields over very large distances (i.e., significantly greater than the size of a planet). This seems to be the source of confusion. You are looking at this in the wrong domain (a person on a planet rather than orbiting bodies). As I mentioned before, in order for a body to orbit it must have a bound energy--i.e., taking potential energy to be defined as 0 at infinite distance, and negative for anything less than infinite distance, the "negative energy" contributed by this potential energy must be greater in magnitude than the positive kinetic energy (1/2 m v^2). If they are equal in magnitude, thus giving a total energy of 0, then the system is no longer "bound" and the object proceeds in a parabolic trajectory. This occurs when v = v_escape. When total energy is actually positive (v > v_escape) the trajectory is hyperbolic. Only when total energy is negative (v < v_escape) is the system bound, and the shape is always elliptical in this condition. Again, in all of these cases, it is assumed that the distances are large enough for the gravitational field to be varying--i.e., the scale is large enough to allow 1/r to make a difference. For this purpose, planets are taken as point masses. --unsigned

This explanation is very appreciated of course. If you could write this in the Euclidean geometry article, and explain clearly what the assumptions are, so that there is no confusion, that would be very much appreciated. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:48, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I changed the article. But now, I am wondering whether I changed it enough. Perhaps it would be better to talk about comets orbiting around the Sun rather than stones thrown from the Earth.

Comment on explanation above: The reason that the orbit of the stone is an ellipse is not just that the distance from the center of the Earth changes, but also because the direction to the center changes (assuming the stone is moving horizontally). JRSpriggs 08:23, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

JRSpriggs, awesome job at Euclidean geometry. Also, the way you wrote things the article no longer contradicts itself; a while ago at one place in the article it was claimed that the trajectory was an ellipse, and somewhere below that was a parabola. I agree that talking about comets orbiting the sun would be a good idea as the whole thing with the Earth could still be confusing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:09, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I attempted to implement your suggestion, plus a few other ideas. But I now abandon it to its fate, as I'm trying to focus on integral for a bit longer.

Keep in mind that orbits of satellites and moons can be quite different from Keplerian ellipses. For tracking purposes, the Keplerian elements of satellites in Earth orbit are constantly updated, and between updates good tracking models incorporate the effects of atmospheric drag, the non-spherical shape of the Earth, and so on. Also note the two famous co-orbital Saturn moons Janus and Epimetheus; they swap orbits every four years! --KSmrq^T 20:57, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

KSmrq, thanks! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, KSmrq, you improved it a great deal over my version. Thanks. JRSpriggs 03:50, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Glad to contribute. But I wonder now if the two paragraphs discussing Galileo add anything essential; perhaps they are a distraction from the proper focus (!), Euclidean geometry. Ah well, one must resist the Siren lure of endless tinkering. :-) --KSmrq^T 19:01, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

CfD

You may wish to comment at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_June_14#Category:Good_articles_by_quality. Geometry guy 10:57, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

(belated) thanks. I replied there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:50, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot not running on WikiProject San Francisco Bay Area

Hi! I was told that you are in charge of this particular bot, so hopefully you can help me with a problem. I was assessing articles for the SFBA Project when I noticed that the statistics table wasn't updating. I found the log and saw that for some reason, the bot had stopped checking on June 4th. I'm quite new to the project and I'm not sure what could have caused it to stop. Any help would be appreciated. =] MissMJ 20:52, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi. This was the problem, removing Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments. I suggest you ask the person who did that edit. I now reverted it. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:33, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. =] MissMJ 18:52, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Military Operations of the Second Invasion of Iraq

I created a page with the above title and I think I chose the article title poorly and I would like to change it to say Military Operations of Iraq 2003 to current-Alphabetical - Kumioko

Hi Kumioko. I can do that, I am not sure I like the suggested title however. Perhaps you could visit Talk:Iraq War and ask there for an appropriate title of the Military Operations of the Second Invasion of Iraq page. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Correlate summation template cleanup

Hi Oleg, Do I need to do anything specific to clean up the article? Thanks/Brian Bwestwoo 14:44, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll reply on your talk page. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

A strange removal from the project list by Wp1.0 bot

In the Biography log, the page Lynne Arriale is listed as removed from the Biography project. But it still has the Bio banner on the talk page, and the only thing that happened to it was that someone added the listas clause to the WPBiography banner. The links to the talk page also indicate the page has been removed from the Bioproject, where that clearly is not the case. Something strange is going on here. Errabee 23:41, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

This is odd. And the article on this person does show up in the category, see here. Let's see if the bot puts it back when it runs next time, in a couple of days. Maybe it was a server glitch. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:37, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but it didn't put it back. And I've come across some more examples in the new log: Talk:Blair Underwood, Talk:Kevin Toney, Talk:Mansur ibn Ilyas, Talk:Mark Naftalin, Talk:Michael Omartian, Talk:Mohamed Boudjenane, Talk:Murray Waas, Talk:Stevie Jackson, Talk:Walter Bryan Emery and Talk:Zabdiel Boylston. This appears to be very widespread. Errabee 23:46, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

All the articles I saw which were removed happened to be reassessed yesterday or the day before, for example from stub class to start class. If the reassessment from say stub class to start class happened after the bot went through start and and before stub, the bot will naturally not encounter the articles anywhere, so will remove them.

If my guess is right, the bot should put them back, and with the updated assessment next time it goes through biography articles, which is in a day or two. Notice that the Lynne Arriale you mentioned earlier got put back in the meantime.

Such artifacts are bound to happen, and are nobody's fault. It just takes forever for the bot to go through the biography articles, and many changes to it happen in the meantime. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:50, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Texas A&M

Thanks so much for your help with the ampersand. The bot did what it was supposed to once, but i think it is having problems with "&" again. it still only updates texas a/ Thanks again for your help Oldag07 01:39, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I will now update Texas A&M by hand. It will take me a few more days until I fix the thing completely. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:47, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much again. We really appreciate your help. Oldag07 01:11, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

it is less important now, but yes, the bot is having problems with the "&" again. it was working earlier. it isn't that big of a deal anymore because i think we are at the mature phase of the project and we aren't rating/ adding much anymore. but for other projects, this might be something to look into again. thanks again for your help. Oldag07 20:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I have been distracted with other things these days and I did not get to fixing that completely. But now I did it. The instance of the bot currently running may still do an incorrect update, but from then on, Texas A&M will be updated correctly. Thank you for your patience. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:11, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I hate being one to bring up problems. This problem is minor, I just changed the link on our wikiproject, and things are OK. But, I guess pointing out a bug is good for everyone. The Texas A&M Articles by Quality page is correct, the changes page is correct, the Statistics page is working. The log continues to be updated without an "&". Where it should be Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Texas_A&M_articles_by_quality_log. Where bot is updating this log Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Texas_A instead. We definitely appreciate your help. again, no rush, I just gave a link to both pages on our wikiproject. Oldag07 03:31, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, the bot is fixed for sure now. I deleted those incorrect pages, and I believe they should not appear again. The reason it took so long was because I had to change to a very different framework for updating pages than before in order to deal with the & issue and others. But now it should be fixed, finally. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:11, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Oldag07 00:58, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is a Texas A&M exclusive wikiproject problem. This may have been mentioned earlier, but it seems like the bot isn't updating any logs on any project as of july 4th. It might because you changed the interface the updating pages. But it seems to be working like a charm on everything else. Quality and statistics. Your bot has already been useful for our project in planning for future articles, and catching mistakes that we have made. Oldag07 22:27, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

That was a silly bug, sorry about that. It is fixed now. Thanks for the report. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:47, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Most needed pictures

Hey Oleg, do you know what math articles would benefit most from illustration? I am on a drawing kick (along with about ten other things) and I would like to knock the most important/needed images out first. --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 15:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Your joke with adding the extra space was very amusing. :) Now, I don't know which articles need pictures. There was a page where people can request images, I forgot what the name was, but that has only few requests. I plan to go through User:Mathbot/Most linked math articles at some point and see which ones may need pictures. Or, on a different idea, more geometry inclined articles definitely need pictures. I can't think of anything else. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:09, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... I might do the same with mathbot's list. Although I have made a habit of remaking bad png pictures as svgs, and it seems that there is no end to the work in that arena (just type svg into commons and look at the articles needing replacement). I think I might also go through my books and see if they have any particularly good images that I can reproduce as svgs. That is, of course, if I have time. I need to finish grading E and I want to work on integral and I want to write articles on Hodge manifolds and the Poincaré-Birkhoff theorem... I think I might be spreading myself too thin. Anyway, let me know if you want me to doodle anything(assuming that you don't want to do it yourself) I find it a welcome distraction :) Cheers --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 15:25, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I LOVE doing pictures. So if I find one that needs to be done, you can bet I'll do it myself rather than tell you. :) Now, indeed, don't spread yourself too thin, converting from png to svg is low priority I think, unless those pictures are of poor quality. More important is I think writing and creating new stuff. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:27, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a gallery Oleg? A gallery would give me something to compete against :) and give you a place to show off some of your work. --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 15:41, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I have a gallery, it is accessible from my user page. Some of my more representative pictures are there. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:51, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I should have seen it earlier, but I was too distracted by the article about intelligent falling. :)--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 15:56, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

62 in you gallery(only some!?), 30 in mine (admittedly over half were crafted as png replacements, but never-mind that), (Ignoring the facts) I am halfway there! ;)--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 19:13, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I have more here (not counting png replacements) and some others I lost track of. I keep only the prettiest in the gallery. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:05, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

An article which would benefit from a picture is Girih tiles. JRSpriggs 07:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

My thanks to Cronholm for responding so quickly and adding two images to Girih tiles. Now if the tiles just had girih on them. (See the externally linked pdf files for example.) JRSpriggs 10:28, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Darn, I read that quasi-crystalline article about half a year ago and thought I didn't need to look... I will leave the old pic up for now while I make the new one.--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 13:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Nice! Cronholm note that there is an option in Inkscape, at "Object->Fill and stroke->"Stroke style", which allows one to round the corners of polygonal lines to that they don't protrude from the shapes. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I know about this feature, but I copied the style used in the published work. It works out once you start putting them together. BTW I don't know what happened with my grammar in that caption. I must have been staring at the screen too long. I am almost done with the final illustration and I think it looks pretty good. I think I am going to make three versions frame only, tiles only, and both to illustrate the structure. Cheers--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 15:39, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again. You have really got it now. You are amazing! JRSpriggs 08:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Long overdue recognition...

File:Saxo horn old.jpg

Alexandrov the great sage

...by the Wikipedian Knightly Order.

Wise sage Alexandrov the Great, you have long been a source of inspiration and good council to the members of the Wikipedian Knightly Order. Recognition of your contributions and status is long overdue. Your all-seeing, all-knowing eyes equip you with a great wisdom, and the Knightly Order welcomes you warmly into its ranks for your support of our mission. Geometry guy 20:27, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Heh, thanks. :) And thank you for wikifying the text properly, we're an encyclopedia, you know. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

The least I could do. Long may you continue to reign over your kingdom so wisely :) Geometry guy 21:43, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Request for edit summary

Dear Oleg, I received your request and, as requested, in the future I will write an edit summary. Thanks for explaining. I didn't do it before because I did not happen to notice the importance of edit summaries (I always prefer to see the "diff"). Paolo.dL 08:08, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Symplectic stuff

It seems I always turn to you for page moves! Symplectic topology clearly should be moved to Symplectic geometry, but the latter has a history of two or three changes of redirects, so I can't do it. Category:Symplectic topology should likewise be renamed to Category:Symplectic geometry, although here I don't know the procedures: I doubt further comment at WT:WPM will contradict this obvious rename, but I understand if you want to wait a bit. Geometry guy 22:51, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Gg. I did the move of the article. About the category, that should be handled through "categories for discussion" I believe (I also have little time for the moment for a category rename). Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:40, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

There appears to be no appetite at the round table for a CFD, so I have replaced most symplectic topology cats by symplectic geometry. I still think a cat move is slightly preferable to creating a new cat, but if you don't, then I will just do the latter. Geometry guy 20:22, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Coastlines

Hi Oleg. While doing some daily prep for my "math for poets" course at Ohio State, I just looked up Wikipedia's claim for the length of the Japanese coastline, at the "Geography of Japan" page. It reports a very precise figure: 29,751 kilometers. Of course you and I know this is totally bogus: the coastline of Japan isn't a curve, it doesn't have a length, and any reported figure implicitly depends on a choice of ruler length, i.e., on the scale below which you ignore any irregularities of the fractal. Just to further illustrate this point, Wikipedia and Brittanica (last time I checked) report that the coastline of Honshu is 5450 km and 10,084 km respectively. (On the other hand, there is a Wikipedia page "Coastline paradox.")

Obviously this sort of bogus statistic occurs repeatedly throughout the encyclopedia, without any understanding that it's meaningless. It seems hopeless for the mathematically inclined to root out this misunderstanding, and yet isn't it unsettling that an encyclopedia would contain this sort of thing? Ishboyfay 19:34, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia reflects the knowledge of the world at large. Perhaps more clarification is needed about ruler length, but there's not much else we can do I guess. You can try raising this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics if you want more opinions. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:57, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

See Fractal dimension. I do not know what the fractal dimension of coastline (or the Japanese coastline, in particular) is. But if one could determine it, it would be appropriate to use it in the figure for the "length" of the coastline. If the dimension were, say, 4/3, then a number like 900,000 km^(4/3) would be given (roughly 30,000^(4/3) assuming that km was the resolution). JRSpriggs 07:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

A coastline is not a rectifiable curve, but neither is it a fractal. Both are just models (and current ideas in theoretical physics do suggest an ultimate smallest length scale: the Planck length). If you want to give the Hausdorff dimension, then the number before it should be the Hausdorff measure. I suspect, however, that this might be a tiny bit OR! However, this is a wonderful example to take to WP:V and WP:A for those who contend that encyclopedic content is about truth rather than knowledge. Geometry guy 20:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't recognize the acronym OR. Ishboyfay 03:54, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

"OR" is short for "Original Research" which is a bugbear around here. See WP:OR. JRSpriggs 05:51, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

To be clear, Wikipedia convention uses the term "original research" in a strange and confusing way. For journal publication, only original research (in the usual sense) is accepted. For Wikipedia, the opposite is true, to avoid crank theories and other abuses. In other words, if you find a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem that will fit in the margin of a book, don't try to put it in a Wikipedia article until it has appeared in a reputable peer-reviewed journal. This restriction is in tension with the fact that most writing involves some originality, if only to avoid copyright violation. Keep in mind that Wikipedia aspires to be a reputable encyclopedia despite offering no assurance of expert review; hence policies like "no original research". Did I mention strange? Yep. --KSmrq^T 11:38, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Mănăstirea Căpriana

Hi, Oleg -- sure thing. I'll try to add to the article when I get a chance -- I didn't know about the monastery before, but I was struck by its beauty when I stumbled upon the stub you created. Better do some math first -- I've been spending too much time at WP lately! :) Turgidson 11:28, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

About your WP 1.0 bot

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		Such a great backlog work your bot does, very helpful tool for projects I'm working on Andersmusician $ 23:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

some WP bot issue

I noticed that Project stats chart at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Yu-Gi-Oh! articles by quality statistics show on the importance row "None" instead "Low", hope you fix this --Andersmusician $ 00:06, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the above. :) About the importance row, I think the bot just lists what is currently available. You may need to check if the articles are rated correctly and the categories are placed as they should be. If even after that the bot runs again and does not do things as you wish, then let me know. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

fixed alone, the problem was that cat:low impt Yu-gi-oh was empty at that time--Andersmusician VOTE 00:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

non-article stats

I wonder what would you think about making your bot to create an Project's article stats table but for non-article pages (example at category:Non-article Peru pages, discussion at Template_talk:Image-Class), thanks --Andersmusician VOTE 00:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

You could raise this at WT:1.0/I to see what people say. My own opinion is that such non-articles are besides the scope of the WP 1.0 project and as such, the bot should not list them. But if enough people think that's a good idea I can implement it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:30, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

You're right, not so necessary at all (except for the so-called lists), I don't wanna leave more tasks to these guys for now. thats all, thanks --Andersmusician VOTE 21:49, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

My recent RfB

Thank you so much for your participation in my recent RfB. Though it closed with 72% support (below the required 90%), I'm still quite pleased at the outpouring of support shown by a fair percentage of the community.

I'm currently tabulating and calculating all opposing and neutral arguments to help me better address the community's concerns about my abilities as a bureaucrat. If you'd like, you can follow my progress (and/or provide additional suggestions) at User:EVula/admin/RfB notes. Thanks again! EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot and linking dates

Could you please make WP 1.0 bot not to link the dates and year as section headers? Linking them makes all date/year article changes to show up in Special:Recentchangeslinked, cluttering the change list to the point where it is hard to see relevant changes. I've unlinked those manually, but I don't think that is a good idea in the long run. DLX 04:55, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Done. It will take a few days until the bot overwrites all those pages and the links are gone. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:44, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. Thank you for that - and for your good work with the bot. DLX 07:08, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot

Hi Oleg! I'm writing you about a bot you operate, WP 1.0 bot (talk · contribs). It keeps adding the following pages to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index:

• Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in Holland articles by quality
• Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in Holland articles by quality statistics
• Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in Holland articles by quality log
• Category:Football in Holland articles by quality

These have all been moved or are in the process of being moved, to replace Holland with the Netherlands. The pages containing "the Netherlands" are right below Holland in the Index. I've tried to remove the pages containing the word "Holland" in the title from the Index, but the bot keeps putting them back in. I don't know how the bot has been programmed, or whether this is temporary, but I just wanted to let you know about this. Aecis^Brievenbus 21:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Another thing is that the bot continues to add updates to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in Holland articles by quality log and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in Holland articles by quality statistics. Both pages are redirects, to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in the Netherlands articles by quality log and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in the Netherlands articles by quality statistics. Aecis^Brievenbus 21:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that is happening because the bot takes two days to run, so it takes a while to react to changes. I don't think the bot will update those pages again. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:32, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Mathbot

Curious about my edit summary usage, I tried to check and got a 403 Forbidden error. Ral315 » 08:36, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Now I don't get even that, I see only a "could not connect to server". I believe the problems are related to the toolserver. Here's a mirror of the tool [2]. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:45, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Format hellp

Thanks for your help in correcting my formatting. I'm learning. I have preposed a project to expand the logical connectives (proposal). Any input would be appreciated.

Be well, Gregbard 22:42, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Hey there!

Hey! It seems that your bot made some edits on the previous version of the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/R&B and Soul Music articles by quality statistics, can you fix it right now??

Regards Eduemoni^↑talk↓ 01:43, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Heh. :) You can use this tool to run the bot at any time. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:47, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

It didn't worked =/

Eduemoni^↑talk↓ 02:19, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

No, it was OP (operator problem) xD

Thanks for the help Eduemoni^↑talk↓ 02:21, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

But it doesn't work, the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/R&B_and_Soul_Music_articles_by_quality_statistics isn't modified when I run the bot. What is going on? Can you help me? Eduemoni^↑talk↓ 03:09, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, if no changes occurred, then the stats won't be modified. Can you be specific about what you want? If you just want empty columns in the stats table, the bot does not do that on principle, to keep the width of the table small. So, to see a given column, there's got to be at least one article in it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:13, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Anatomy articles by quality statistics

Hey there. First excellent thing you created. Second I have absolutely no idea how to make it up myself even though you gave instructions on one of the pages relating to wikipedia assessment. I was wondering if it was possible to give me some sort of instructions or maybe you can perhaps create it for me (as in get the bot to start making it and then it begins to do regular updates)? Sorry maybe the page I am looking at isn't the right one to look at to create a statistics table. It is for the anatomy wikiproject and only recently have I created a article by quality and article by importance category for the anatomy wikiproject so any help for Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Anatomy articles by quality statistics would be greatly appreciated :). Thanks heaps.petze 06:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi. The instructions are at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot. See if you have any problem following them. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:17, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have already done all of that... and that was the page I was looking at but wasn't sure. As there is a project template for anatomy, a few articles tagged with quality and importance assessment; Category:Anatomy articles by importance and Category:Anatomy articles by quality are in the Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments list.. But the thing is... I don't know how or where to access all that is offered as shown by the examples (such as the log or the graph or the summary tables of all the articles)... where do the pages appear? Is there a period that you have to wait before they appear? I did all of the above yesterday so I dunno if I did something completely wrong or I didn't wait long enough? Thanks in advance and sorry about the trouble petze 16:11, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Never mind!!!! Sorry for all of the above, I found it on the index page omg so stupid of me lol...Thanks anyway...petze 16:15, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Wave movie?

Hey. Since you seem to be the last logged user to write in Wave Equation, and you're an admin, I was curious if you could tell me if my proposal to add a video of a solution of a couple of wave equations is worthwhile for the article. Swap 08:12, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

The first one looks extremely nice. It would make an awesome addition to the page. But would it be possible to convert it to a gif, say 100KB in size (one could capture only one period of the oscillation, and then have the gif iterate). Then we could put it at the very top, and the movie would display when somebody visits the page. Otherwise I am not sure how to add it to the page while also making it noticeable. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, I hadn't thought of a gif. I'll get working on it. Btw, the solution isn't exactly periodic, as an expansion into the Bessel eigenfunctions will show. The actual period is irrational and very hard to nail unless your initial condition is a finite sum of eigenfunctions. The initial condition here was ${\frac {1-r^{2}}{2}}$ where $r$ is the distance of the initial condition from the centre.

Not having periodicity is a problem. Well, perhaps having only one oscillation could be good enough. Otherwise the gif can become too big. I hope you're willing to create the gif movie, would be a very nice addition to the page. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:22, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

FEM

Hi, I am glad you like it :-) Zureks 10:03, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Integral

Hi Oleg, I sincerely wish to be proved wrong, but given the recent events at Integral, we may have to brace for a nasty revert war involving a keen editor with misplaced enthusiasm. I cannot spare much time these days, not on item-by-item rebuttals anyway, but I do not like his groping-in-the-dark editing of the lead. I know, the article isn't finished yet … however, the lead is the first thing someone sees after googling integral and following the top link. Arcfrk 19:15, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to keep an eye on it. I knew the editor in question was problematic from a previous encounter. I hope such things won't discourage you from contributing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Editorial_Team investigation

At Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team#Update_did_not_occur you mentioned investigating the problem. Do you know how to conduct such an investigation.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 19:34, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

That is discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Work_via_Wikiprojects#LGBT_Log_page_not_updating.3F. It is a recent bug which I fixed in the meantime. The log is updating now. Thanks for noticing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Cross Product - M2L2FM Method

The xyzzy mnemonic is useful but the M2L2FM process simplifies the process even further.

M2L2FM becomes ML LF FM

ML = Middle coordinate (y) of first vector multiplied by the Last coordinate of the second vector(z).

LF = Last coordinate (z) of the first vector multiplied by the First coordinate of the second vector (x)

FM = First coordinate (x) of the first vector multiplied by the Middle coordinate of the second vector (y)

By simply mirroring all three sets of letters;

ML mirrored = LM

LF mirrored = FL

FM mirrored = MF

and placing them on the right hand side of the original sets;

ML LM LF FL FM MF

then placing minus signs between them creates all 3 cross product equations simultaneously;

(ML - LM) (LF - FL) (FM - MF)

which is the equivalent of

(a2b3 - a3b2) (a3b1 - a1b3) (a1b2 - a2b1)

in matrix notation or

(ByCz - BzCy) (BzCx - BxCz) (BxCy - ByCx)

in the xyzzy notation.

Perhaps the M2L2FM method is confusing to some people because it simultaneously generates all three cross product equations.

Most people, i.e. right handers, think in a linear/sequential fashion and can only extrapolate one equation at a time from the cross product using the xyzzy method while left handers like myself think in a parallel/lateral fashion and can visualize all three cross product equations simultaneously using the M2L2FM method.

I see. I still believe however that having this in the article is too much, one mnemonic should be enough, and I prefer the other one for reasons of simplicity. You may ask for more opinions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:44, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

WP 1.0 Bot question

Greetings! I found a curious incident of the bot not adding all newly tagged articles to the log while adding it to the articles by quality list. I was wondering if it was a common problem or if it's localized to a certain WikiProject. Specifically, I'm talking about WP:CPS and the following pages:

• Carnivorous plant articles by quality
• Carnivorous plant articles by quality log

Some of the new Stylidium pages I've created haven't been showing up in the log, but are in the list of articles by quality (specifically Stylidium sect. Biloba and others like that).

My concern is that if this is more widespread, then WikiProjects that have more activity might miss crucial article additions/moves/etc. I also watch the WP:PLANTS assessment log, and now I wonder how many articles the log has missed. Any ideas on this problem? Cheers, --Rkitko ^(talk) 18:07, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. The log was broken regretfully for a few days around that time due to a bug in my code. I fixed the bug. If this shows up again, please let me know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Need your advice

Hey Oleg, would you mind taking a look here and giving an opinion. I really screwed up.--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 05:42, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Replied there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:18, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Invite

Gregbard 06:38, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I guess my answer is ¬, meaning no. :) I don't know any logic and any edits I may have made at logic articles are style. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:18, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Integral

Hey Oleg, I give up, this needs an admin's touch. See my post here also. Cheers--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 12:32, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Are there provisions for banning a user based on disruptive behavior, other than 3RR? For example, for repeated reverting in the face of consensus? Arcfrk 16:08, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

CBM commented on this at WT:WPM. I agree with what he said. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:31, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Samuel Bruce McLaren not Samuel Bruce McClaren

Hi Oleg, Mathbot has Samuel Bruce McClaren as a redlink. I have created a redirect and article for the correct spelling: Samuel Bruce McLaren, — regards Diverman 12:53, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Cool, I removed the incorrect spelling. In the future, you can do just that, the bot won't object. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:40, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Most wanted redlinks

Hi. Any chance of an update to User:Mathbot/Most wanted redlinks? —David Eppstein 16:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I think you mean bluish-red links. :)--Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 17:00, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I am now downloading all the math articles to my computer. Tomorrow I'll run a query through them and update the list. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:31, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this! I can already see some obvious stuff to fix (e.g. the first thing I'll look at: the "Paul Erd&" links) or would have been if someone else hadn't been faster (or less distracted by Harry Potter reading). —David Eppstein 01:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome, I was just planning to write to you that I ran the bot, but I see you noticed already. The Erdos thing, that's a glitch in my bot, everything else should be OK. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:25, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Curl

Your new images look nice, but I worry leaving out the axes neglects an important point about the spatial dependence.--Loodog 16:08, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Replied on your talk, to keep all conversation in one place. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:03, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

WP 1.0 BOT and chess lists

• Hi! WPBOT updates this page [3] brilliantly. However I noticed that the count doesn't include lists, such as for instance List of chess world championship matches. Would it be possible for you to let the bot to count those as well, and add them to that table?

The bot does not include list-class by design, as that is not a rating, unlike stub-class, FA-class, etc. If you want this changed, you can raise the proposal at WT:1.0/I. If people think one more rating should be accepted, I can modify the bot code to that extent. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:13, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your replies. Maybe we should step away from having a list rating, which seems to be the simpler solution. Voorlandt 09:12, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

• Also, would it be possible to create a page with most wanted chess articles such as User:Mathbot/Most wanted redlinks for maths? Best Wishes Voorlandt 18:30, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I could, but it will not be very easy. In order to create the math list I have the bot download to my computer all articles about math, based on the very complete list of mathematics articles, and search through them. In order to do that for chess, there has to be a very complete list of chess articles to go through. Having that, what you request would be doable, but not trivial and time consuming; I could work on it if there is a strong feeling in the wiki chess community that this list could be useful. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:31, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Not sure about the high demand for this last one, since the chess project is relatively small. It is just that I am really curious about this. There is however a complete list of chess topics, which is a list of all articles in the category chess and all its subcategories (about 1850 articles). Once a specific subset of articles has been downloaded, do you have a bot that does all the rest automatically? From what you say, I gather that there is still a lot of manual work involved. If you don't fancy doing it, could you tell me in broad terms if it would be possible for me to do it (I have a beginners knowledge of Perl)? Best wishes Voorlandt 09:12, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I can give you my code and you can decide for yourself if you want to proceed with this (warning: it will be a few hours of work, but at the end of the day you may have learned how to write your own bot). The code is here. If you decide to work on it, you need to do the following:

1. Download the archive linked above, and unzip it. It will create two directories, one called "modules" for general purpose utilities, and another one called "mathlists" for math-related stuff (you need to adapt those for the chess pages, I'll describe that next).
2. Create a bot account. Go to modules/bin/wikipedia_login.pl and put in there a login and password.
3. Create a "list of chess categories", imitating the list of mathematics categories (the list does not need to be complete, you can add to it later)
4. Use the modules/bin/fetch_articles.pl code to create a list of chess articles by searching through the list of chess categories created right above (see the code at mathlists/update_mathematics.pl for an example on how to call the fetch_articles.pl routine)
5. Create a directory somewhere where you will download all the chess articles found in the previous step.
6. Visit modules/bin/read_from_write_to_disk.pl and write there the name of that directory (in the article_to_filename function in that file).
7. In the directory you chose above, create subdirectories for each upper case alphabetic letter and the digits from 0 to 9 (so, need to have the subdirectories 0, 1, ..., 9, A, B, ..., Z).
8. Run the script mathlists/download_articles.pl to download to your directory the body of all chess articles created earlier. The first argument of download_articles.pl is that list, the second argument is the list of articles which was downloaded (the bot adds to it as it does its work)
9. Run the code mathlists/redlinks/extract_all_links.pl to parse through the downloaded articles
10. Run the code mathlists/redlinks/rm_blue.pl to create lists of all chess redlinks a list of most wanted chess articles, which is what you want.

It goes without saying that all those codes need to be tweaked to work for chess rather than for math. So you need to read and modify each code to do what you want. Also, you need to specify the correct path to the "modules" directories you downloaded above in the "use lib" line of each script you run.

As I told you above, it could be some work to adapt the scripts to the chess, but if you wish it done, now you can. If you have questions, let me know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:56, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much. I managed User:Voorbot/Most_wanted_redlinks! I spend an hour fixing a bug I accidentally introduced, but your instructions were very clear. For everyone else giving this a shot under windows, it doesn't know about $ENV{HOME}, so simply delete that. Btw, the code is really impressive, well commented an robust. I also very much like the way you handle the html encode - UTF - ascii conversion. Using text editors in the past gave me headaches (East-Europe excels at chess and there a lot of fancy names :) Thanks again! Voorlandt 14:33, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I am glad it worked. Apparently it took you less time to figure things out than I thought it would. I'll remember about $ENV{HOME} not being defined on Windows. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:47, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Using "the"

Hi, Oleg!

This is no big deal, but I noticed this edit summary. Sorry, but "The integral" is idiomatic in this context.

There's no easy way to explain when "the" is necessary, and when it can (or should) be omitted. Silly Rabbit's comment (next edit) about grammar is inaccurate – this is really a matter of English idiom, and not a matter of grammar, strictly speaking.

Just thought you might want to know ... ;^> DavidCBryant 17:33, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I see, thanks. So is "the" necessary or not in that case? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:35, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not exactly "necessary", but it is idiomatic. If someone says "The integral is a core concept in mathematics" I accept the statement as ordinary and unexceptional. If someone says "Integral is a core concept in mathematics" I think to myself "this guy must be Russian or something, because he doesn't know when to stick in the word 'the'."

This is a particularly odd case. I guess the best way to describe it is to say that since the word "integral" can be either an adjective or a noun, native English speakers want the extra clue provided by "the" to identify that word clearly as a noun in this particular situation. DavidCBryant 11:19, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:14, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

New project need to make sure it is set up properly for assesment?

Hi I am trying to get the Serial Killer Task Force (a task force of the Criminal Biography WikiProject ) assessment table to automatically update. I think it is set up right, I just used the Criminal Biography WikiProject as a guide. Could you please just take a look at everything and make sure it is set up to perform properly. Thank you so much, Jmm6f488 21:32, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

All is well. I went to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot and ran the bot from the link mentioned there. The bot created Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Serial killer-related articles by quality. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:14, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so very much!!! Jmm6f488 03:40, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again for all the help! I just have one final question. Is there any thing else I need to do or does the bot automatically update the assessment table every couple of days? Jmm6f488 17:28, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

The bot should update it automatically every three days. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:32, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Re: Style guidelines

Sorry, I'll try and follow them in future. Eraserhead1 10:48, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder about the edit summary box.

Well, I'm not conspicuously using the edit summary box. I didn't exactly pay you message much heed when I got it, but the idea stuck in my brain and now I realize it's probably a good idea to write a quick message, whether I think it's important at the time or not. Just wanted to let you know I'm a convert. Rhetth 02:02, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Cool, the church of the Holy Edit Summary has one more convert. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Re: Style

Hi... and thanks for making the modifications. Yesterday I was in a hurry, but while explaining topological space to a friend I thought some simple examples would help so I put one in the Wikipedia. I generally am very particular about styles myself... but I figured I will just put the gist of one example and run... so that other volunteers may modify it, and also put more examples.

Thanks again, Arnab

Please stop

Background for the discussion below. An article that appeared on Slashdot claimed that User:SlimVirgin was a secret agent. A dumb store for sure. Some people starting mentioning this story on Wikipedia, and then, a few Wikipedians started deleting all discussions on Wikipedia community pages regarding this, with the motivation that this is a personal attack against said user. It went that far that even complaints that such deletions may not be appropriate got deleted too. That is going too far in my view, this is censorship. Apparently the censors succeeded however,, as on-wiki discussion of this stopped. It is going on the Wikipedia mailing list though, see the "Slashdot" and "censorship" threads here. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:54, 29 July 2007 (UTC).

This story is IMO a load of bollocks with no evidence offered other than that she knows her way around the internet. This is pure conspiracy theory rubbish with no more credibility than the idea that W. Bush orderd 9/11, SqueakBox 21:58, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I agree with that. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:03, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

The benefit to Wikipedia of discussing this weighed against the downside of causing distress to a fellow editor is very questionable. Please stop. It's also against policy to participate in harassment and outing attempts. ElinorD (talk) 15:39, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh dear. It is not about causing distress to a fellow editor, to whom one can't add anymore. It is about Wikipedians purging completely things they don't like. That's not the way to go. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:41, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Are you really saying that if someone is distressed, then giving a few extra kicks to that person won't add to the distress? Or are you saying that it doesn't really matter if you cause misery to another human being? ElinorD (talk) 15:43, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Look, your intention is understandable. Your actions are not. To protect the feelings of an editor is noble. To ruthlessly purge or minimize any attempts at discussion, taking advantage the fact that Wikipedia content is editable, is self-censorship. Unfortunately that's the knee jerk reaction on Wikipedia when something is happening which Wikipedians don't agree with. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:47, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

It isn't an admin matter anyway. If you have to question it, why not on Jimbo's talkpage? He is involved on the site in question and has commented there (the site in question). LessHeard vanU 15:46, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

That does not excuse cutting out the discussion. I doubt it would survive on Jimbo's talk page either. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:47, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

If what you read on some external site makes you think that the editor in question has engaged in misconduct which needs to be investigated, I suggest a private email to Jimbo and/or the ArbCom. If you don't think that, I suggest not doing what the stalkers and harassers want you to do. ElinorD (talk) 15:50, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

There is no misconduct going on, and talking about stalking is just a way to distract from the issue. The issue is that Wikipedia is censoring itself to the extreme, and that can't be a good thing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:09, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

It may not survive, true, but you knew that when posting on AN/I (which is not an appropriate venue IMO) but it would give an indication on how such comments are regarded in the wider community (and by Jimbo). LessHeard vanU 15:56, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Said post shouldnt survive anywhere on wikipedia as it links to off site pages that attack another editor, which isnt acceptable. I fully endorse Elinor's actions, SqueakBox 00:32, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

My post did not contain any links to anywhere. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:35, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Okay but it still advertised what was going on with a serious off site attack on a wikipedian right now. I also agree that if you are going to bring this anywhere it should be via emails etc, ie off site and off the visible internet. BTW I have myself been policing this issue and so am involved, hence my comment to you here, SqueakBox 00:40, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

The thing is on Slashdot, of all places. Can't get much more visible than that already. I did not make any links, if you wish there can be even no mention of Slashdot in the post. The point I am trying to make is that one can't just purge Wikipedia posts of any thing mentioning "SlimVirgin" and "news". This is totalitarian control of Wikipedia information under the guise of "protection" for editors. There should be a sane way to discuss such issues on Wikipedia. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:46, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

And that place is behind the scenes. It's the attack not the fact of an editor being in the news. And unlike Essjay its just a lot of gossip, and it certainly doesnt bear on this user's work here, SqueakBox 00:49, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

There is no way to do any community discussion behind the scenes. Either things happen on Wikipedia, or on the mailing list, but either way in the open. Again, this is pure and total censorship, and very much unjustified in this case. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:53, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I believe that you may argue that the site is not a reliable source (which I would agree with) and cannot be used in article space, but for the purposes of bringing the matter to the attention of the community...? My point is that AN or AN/I was not an appropriate forum, and that time spent discussing the content of off-wiki sites detracts from the prime purpose of writing an encyclopedia. If there is an established COI, or any other legitimate area of concern, substantiated by an off-wiki site then (and only then) should the appropriate wiki processes be activated. I do not believe that anything has been established, but I certainly support Oleg Alexandrov's advocacy of transparancy should it become so. LessHeard vanU 11:17, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

All these excuses as "protecting the feelings of an editor already in distress" and your new one, "it would distract us from writing an encyclopedia" can't be a sufficient reason to cut off any debate and censor information. Totalitarian governments come up with even better reason as to why certain information should be supressed, and you know the results in the long run. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:42, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

How is the fact that this is just off-site unsourced gossip by someone with a stated grudge just an excuse? SqueakBox 17:18, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I am being consistent. I stated at AN/I that that was an inappropriate venue and suggested Jimbo's talkpage as an alternative. I also commented there that any discussion would ultimately work against writing an encyclopedia, since we cannot determine what happens off wiki. When I attempted to post this I found myself conflicted with ElinorD, so I copied back your original text and my response and saved it - and then self reverted. For the record I do not agree with ElinorD's reasons, which is why I placed my answer in the edit history, but reverted on the basis of my own position. LessHeard vanU 18:51, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

It cetainly does bear on her work here in regards to WP:COI, a hammer she herself has taken to wielding against those she has editing disputes (see User:Sparkzilla) among other things. Piperdown 00:54, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely not, this is offsite unproven gossip and we dont react to that. This is not Essjay. If you have issues re Sparkzilla you can bring them up in the appropriate place without mentioning this alleged stuff, SqueakBox 00:59, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Trying to censor all discussion about this simply makes a bad situation worse and is precisely what the attackers of Wikipedia want us to do. Paul August ☎ 18:39, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

So what are you suggesting? That we have a discussion about a bit of unproven off site gossip about one of our users? And to what end? There is simply nothing to discuss, SqueakBox 18:40, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm suggesting that we be mindful of the consequences of our actions, however unintended. Trying to suppress discussion is only giving ammunition to our detractors. If you think that there is nothing to discuss then don't participate in any discussion. But don't try to prevent other editors from doing so — even if it would be better that they didn't discuss it either. As a matter of tactics, it simply doesn't work. Paul August ☎ 18:59, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Well given there is no relevance these are nothing more than bringing up off site personal attacks towards this user which is clearly contrary to our no attack policies, so all I am doing is enforcing our policies. This user has the right to edit here without these unsourced bits of gossip about her being discussed on AN/I or any public wikipedia page (eg Jimbo's talk page is equally public), so its not about me not wanting to discuss or indeed what i feel at all, SqueakBox 19:04, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

But you are deleting even discussions about the conduct of people around the news and commentary on the actions of overzealous censorship. This is not gossiping anymore. As a rule, content should not be removed from talk pages unless there is an extremely good reason for doing so. You may have had a point about deleting links to attack page and prohibiting gossip, but you are going so far in your deletion that you are making more harm than the harm you are trying to suppress. Perhaps you should let this go. More deletion and less talk is not going to solve anything. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:55, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Well if its not been me its been somebody else (including edit conflicts where somebody has beaten me to it) and I disagree that deleting is doing more harm than good and know the person being spoken about doesnt want this tittle tattle gossip being talked about on wikipedia, SqueakBox 20:15, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Just stop, OK? Many people are deeply ambivalent about what a bunch of you is doing (see also the mailing list discussion). You've had a point, you've deleted comments by the bunch, but this can't continue. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:19, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Well that is what you have been asked to do. I will continue enforcing our policies, including our BLP policies (which counts for every wikipedian too) using the best of my judgement, SqueakBox 21:08, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I did not continue the thread on AN/I one of you deleted. As for you, again, please pause to see how the community feels about this. You may be wondering in grey areas when it comes to censoring anything even remotely related to said attack site, and the consensus on what to do is by no means clear. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:12, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I am very aware you didnt continue it, which was great, IMO. And this can be discussed off site. If I thought there was a scrap of proof about these claims then I would be the last to remove it from AN/I (eg the Essjay scandal needed talking about and we even have an article on it) but as long as it appears to be pure gossip with no back-up there is clearly no need for admin intervention or to spread it over a public page and plenty of policy to back up its removal. As I said if this comes up again I will use my judgement re the individual case rather than deciding what I plan to do in every situation now but wandering into grey areas is normally a sign for me of working with something important, and I consider BLP to be very important. I have given a lot of thought to both this issue and the whole on-site/off-site attack issue, SqueakBox 21:19, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

This can't be discussed off-site, it just can't. The discussions happen either on-wiki or on the mailing list, either way in public. Your suggestion that I write to Jimbo, the ArbCom, etc., are besides the point, we need to discuss things as community.

And what we need to discuss is not the rumor per se. The very point of my original post is how far people should go in censorship. You can't censor discussions on censorship, that defeats the whole point. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:23, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Well the mailing list may not be the right place either but as I have never used it I cant do anything about thaty. I dont believe removing BLP vios constitutes censorship and discussing these rumours (which are very serious rumours involving my country and a serious criminal attack against it) is likely a BLP vio, SqueakBox 21:32, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I disagree on your interpretation of BLP. And if people disagree, they talk. It will be a bad idea on your part to revert again such discussion if it shows up. As I said earlier, this can't continue. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:36, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Well lets just hope nobody does revert agin then as that itself could be considered disruptive and I certainly dont want to see this issue disrupting or damaging our project but I also consider the reputation of one of hardest working users to be extremely important in order to ensure we have an environment for which people want to volunteer, and I can see no reason why this off site gossip would require admin intervention and at least 2 admins (one being Elinor) show by their actions that they think the same. We are discussing this! or at least the censorship part,. What cant continue is giving one of users a hard time based on off-site gossip, SqueakBox 21:41, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

See the note I put at the beginning of this thread. I am willing to make it as gossip-free and as harmless as you wish, without removing the actual context however. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:54, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Support

Just a note to say that I saw what happened to your attempt to have a discussion about Wikipedia's self-censorship on AN/I and I think it was a shame that your post was dismissed so readily. Catchpole 16:58, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Oleg, just days ago, SlimVirgin permabanned an "outed" editor, Mark Devlin aka sparkzilla, for conflict of interest. Devlin is the publisher of Metropolis, a significant English language magazine in Japan (according to wikipedia). Once he was outed (which no one was banned for, by the way), he acknowledged his own COI and agreed to only post on talk pages of the articles he had edited before. That wasn't enough for SlimVirgin, who had previously been in an editing dispute with Mark, and took full advantage of a COI gray area to banish an opponent. Today's revelations are not revelations to many of us who have witnesses such hyprocrisy and more from Ms. Virgin. And now you all know why Ms. Virgin so ferociously protects abusive editors who have made taking pot shots at Patrick M. Byrne across several wikipedia articles a 9-5 workday job on-wiki, a result of an off-wiki Journalists vs CEO skirmish. And all over a french fry. There are several more COI's in that slim closet if you look harder, and they were fully hammered against many wikipedians with the full support of a admin's on-wiki social network. That's all I have to say on this matter, but those who consider themselves "powerful" at wikipedia need to take a hard look at the wagon-circling, COI's, and the effect of what appears to be sometimes more a social networking site than a serious encyclopedia. Piperdown 23:32, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Considering the block log shows that SlimVirgin blocked Sparkzilla for a mere six hours, and that the indefinite block came from JzG, and considering that the user page history shows that Sparkzilla voluntarily gave his real name and therefore was not outed, I'm not inclined to find your other allegations very reliable either, Piperdown. ElinorD (talk) 22:33, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Oleg - another note of support, and to let you know that I've raised similar issues again at the noticeboard - cheers, Purples 03:13, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Oleg, I reviewed what I could find of the removed material (for example, your notices at ANI), and I completely agree with you: this doesn't look good for wikipedia. I've also noted that the violent (over)reaction came entirely from two editors/admins. I am especially appalled by the alleged purging of the edit history. There is a good reason why we should be able to trust the edit histories, and it's distressing to learn that a determined administrator can unilaterally tamper with them! This is definitely a policy level issue worth discussing. Cheers, Arcfrk 03:44, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there are several editors and administrators who don't think it's decent to spread gossip that could either identify someone who wants to remain anonymous or (more likely) increase harassment of a completely unrelated and innocent person, but they don't want to say so because they don't want this to be rehashed over and over and over again. (I know that from several private emails.) The people who don't mind causing distress have no such motive for silence, though, which is why they're speaking up. ElinorD (talk) 22:33, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it is decent to spread gossip either. But I also don't think suppressing gossip at any price is appropriate. (Your actions, by the way, has made things worse; it is bad enough that people talk gossip, it is far more damaging when some people say or think that a cabal of Wikipedians censors things at any cost.) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:26, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Bell's prime number theorem

Grateful for your views on this. PrimeHunter wants to delete it as trivial. He put on a prod notice that I removed. He's a specialist on prime numbers and what is trivial to him is surely not trivial to most people; anyway, if it's so obvious, how come he didn't know it already? I concede that it may not really be by Bell, but surely that's grounds for a rename, not deletion? How do I contest a deletion vote if he moves one?--Bedivere 21:21, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

You can voice your views at the deletion debate (go to Bell's prime number theorem page, and from there to the deletion debate). 01:26, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

COTN wikiproject bot

Hey, I had a pretty valid reason for removing "top" importance for snu but your bot retagged it. it's not neutral to tag a single university as top importance and ignore all the others. I'll be re-removing the importance unless you can give me a good reason. Thanks! Aepoutre 23:13, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I see the problem. The article WAS tagged, but incorrectly (and it was hidden, which is weird...). I fixed that, so your bot will probably make proper updates on its own, right? Sorry, again, and thanks again. Aepoutre 23:34, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure I know what "snu" and "COTN" means, but I hope you got the problem fixed. Let me know if the bot runs again and does it incorrectly. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:27, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

my editing habits

You are correct. I have some lax habits as far as the edit summaries. I will try to be more mindful of it. Gregbard 01:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

OK. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:05, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Curve

Repeated from my talk:

Regarding this, first just a remark. "Rvv" means "Revert Vandal", are you sure this is what you meant to say?

Second, in the case of Apollo, such note is of course allowed, since the Apollo missions are very famous, but Curves International appears to be just a gym company, it does not deserver special treatment.

You can reply here. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:19, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Apollo is but one example as there are many. For example, I also said firefly but Paraffin follows suit, and there are many more. Curves International is only the largest fitness franchise in the world, larger than Bally's and Gold's gyms combined. You can read a discussion on the Curves talk page to see why I'm doing this compromise, if you will, rather than seeking another rfc. Most people when they search for Curves, are not looking for the math concept, but in fact are looking for the women's fitness center. Again, this is in keeping with Wikipedia and the many articles that do the same. There is no defacing, no edit wars (hopefully), and I think is a good compromise. I originally created Curves and pointed it to Curves International, however, when the math guru's decided they wanted it to go to Curve, the math concept, that's where the issues arose. I went along with the community in the redirect, but I am doing so here with the perfectly accepted format of otheruses4 as a good compromise as well. Hope that answers your questions, if not, just let me know and I'll be able to answer whatever I missed. Cheers! --Maniwar (talk) 16:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Replied on your talk. Let's discuss only there, there is no point in copying this conversation around. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:28, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

multidimensional secant method

My apologies, you are right. Quasi-newton methods however are a generalization of the secant method to multidimensional problems. They are normally used to find the root of the gradient, rather than a function because that is what is useful in optimization. I corrected the text. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Smarchesini (talk • contribs).

Replied on your talk, to keep all conversation in one place. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:53, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Euclidean geometry -> Citation missing

I've undid your revert, because for such a long article, it really does not have much citations (only 3). The article really needs more inline citations (as well as reliable references). The template clearly states: Using inline citations helps guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. In good faith. Ǣ0ƞS 18:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I replied on your talk. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:25, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I've no objection to putting the tag at the bottom of the article (In the Notes section itself will be ok), as long as people see it and the article gets improved. It will (and must) be removed when the article achieves the state required. Ǣ0ƞS 19:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I hope you will consider putting that ugly box at the bottom in the future. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:40, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

The template you mentioned (Template:Unreferenced = No references) is not the one I used (Template:Citations missing = Some references, but needs to be more precise as to where specific sentences originated). Also, each template has its own placement guideline, but as I said earlier, these template are just for the improvement of articles and as such their presence are 'temporary' (compared to articles). Ǣ0ƞS 19:58, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll evaluate on a per article basis. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Cheers. Ǣ0ƞS 19:58, 4 August 2007 (UTC)