User talk:Mathsci/Archive 11

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Zonal spherical function

Take it easy, friend. I marked the article you're working on while patrolling new pages. Perhaps you should mark such articles with {{underconstruction}} next time. --/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 23:11, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

That is not what I normally do. Now please just leave me alone. Look at my mathematical edits. I am not a 12 year old school kid and when you see the start of a mathematical article, have the humility not to intervene, particularly when the edit summary makes it clear what is going on. You left less than 2 minutes before putting in templates, which I reagrd as rather unintelligent. Try to be more patient and learn a little common sense in future. Mathsci (talk) 23:17, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Well I'm sorry for that, but considering it's Wikipedia, you should expect someone to come along and edit the article you've helped write. If you want an incomplete article to have some degree of protection you might want to consider placing it as a subpage in your userspace until you consider it "ready to go". Let's try to assume good faith here; I'm just trying to make sure the good articles stay in and the bad articles stay out. I figured yours was going to be good at some point. --/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 23:34, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Not one and a half minutes after its creation, when the edit summary says "more to follow"!!! Either you are an expert in semisimple Lie groups or you are being completely disingenuous. I am an experienced editor of mathematics articles, as you can quite rapidly find out. If you have not edited any higher mathematics articles yourself, please keep your thoughts to yourself. If you have no expertise in representations of semisimple Lie groups, you will have very little to contribute to this article. Now try to be a little more patient. Mathsci (talk) 23:40, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Civility

I have observed your recent conduct on this project with some concern. I am sure it is not news to you that editors are expected to interact with each other in a civil manner and to avoid personal attacks. Elonka has in her role as an administrator attempted to calm various disputes you have recently been in. Your attitude to other editors appears extremely hostile [1] and Elonka has been giving you good advice. Your approach of accusing her of wikistalking, name-checking her in unrelated edit summaries, making threats and digging up errors she made early in her time editing here which she clearly regrets in an apparent attempt to intimidate her are totally unacceptable. Frankly, it appears to me that you are trying to get your way by bullying people. Please reconsider your approach, which seems to be escalating matters quite unnecessarily. WjBscribe 12:30, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

She has been following me around, i.e. she has my edits on her watchlist, and I do not like that particularly. When I started editing a new and rather difficult article Zonal spherical functions, where I was interrupted by a recent changs patroller unwittingly within one minute of my first edit, where I had clearly indicated in the edit summary "more to follow", she needlessly intervened. It is precisely because she has been following my edits and unnecessarily intervening that I have shown a reaction to her. Her behaviour - having all my edits on her watchlist - is not normal. This is a situation of her own creation. I am perfectly aware of how to edit mathematics articles without her help; in fact, she has said my edits excellent, but only after calling me a revert warrior, which is not justified by my mainspace edits. Therefore I would like her to stay away from me for a while, because I have grown tired of having somebody looking over my shoulder. I found her intervention on European ethnic groups, where she failed to recognize a known anti-Turkish POV pusher, twice admonished on WP:AN/I, particularly frustrating. I have asked her on numerous times for her to stay away from me. I am not aware that I have been uncivil to her, but I can not hide my irritation at her interruptions when I am clearly actually engaged in serious editing. If this continues, I will simply stop editing WP. I have not seen behaviour of this kind from an administrator before. Before her appearance, I am unaware that there have been problems with my edits. The best idea is for her to avoid me, and I have told her that several times. There are many administrators and editors on WP, so this kind of deliberate interaction is quite needless. It is impossible to play the piano while somebody is dusting the keys. Mathsci (talk) 13:22, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I also do not understand why you describe a mistake by a recent changes patroller as a "dispute". When he added {{confusing}} and {{references}} tags within one minute of the creation of the page, he apparently had not taken into account the edit summary, which said "more to follow". He should have left a reasonable period of time before adding tags like this. Editing WP is not like playing a video game, with split second reactions. How do you expect established academics to contribute to WP if their contributions are instantly "rubbished" in this way by editors who have applied little or no thought to what they are doing. Each line of Zonal spherical function requires a lot of thought and off-wiki work, which fills in a lot of difficult material previously only sketched on the WP by my ex-colleague Charles Matthews. Thank you, Mathsci (talk) 04:45, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The main issue is that regardless of the cause of the incident, that you should not have responded to him as aggressively as you did. But you are right, that he should not have tagged your article so quickly. I believe at this point that he's acknowledged the issue, has been willing to drop it, and the problem has not recurred. So can we just accept it as a learning experience, and move forward? --Elonka 05:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Let he (she) who is without sin, cast the first stone. Mathsci (talk) 05:26, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

No I will not "keep such private musings off-wiki in future". Far from being my private musings, it was a fairly formal warning that your comments were becoming unacceptable. I suggest you heed it as there will likely be consequences if your aggressive behaviour (again evident in your comment on my talkpage) continues. WjBscribe 11:27, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Your comment reads like a threat. Couldn't it be described as slightly aggressive? Mathsci (talk) 04:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Wallace

Heh, you've been going through my contribs back in 2005? That's quite a bit of free time you have, I'm flattered.  ;) And sure, I'd be happy to chat with Edgar Wallace's grandson. In a nutshell, if there's an error on Wikipedia, he is welcome to fix it. See also WP:AUTO and WP:SELFPUB. What he wants to avoid though is adding any information from personal knowledge, that hasn't already been published somewhere. For that kind of thing, it's better to just create a personal website. But if there's an actual error, he should either fix the article, or bring it up on the related talkpage. Or of course just tell you, and then you can determine for yourself whether or not a change is appropriate. Oh, and whenever in touch with a famous person or a family member of one, definitely ask them for a picture!  :) --Elonka 13:48, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello. It didn't take any time - I just pressed "earliest" and looked at the first diffs. It is true that since arriving back from California a week ago I am still alas on California time as you might guess by the times of some of my edits. It was fine in the other direction, so it must be my extreme old age - remember I'm one year older than you and, according to the catastrophe theorist Rene Thom, the males of our species are "biologically more fragile" :)

I told him he would need sources. He is in fact a professional photographer and was also sort of thinking of contributing photographs to wikimedia commons with a appropriate free-use license (with attribution). He told me it's illegal for example to publish photographs of museums such as the Musee Granet here in France - I don't know what the rules are. Since what he wants to modify involves death certificates, there might be some legal problems. But I'm sure he will be delighted to provide a photograph for the page, as you have suggested, which he said was almost entirely correct (amazingly, considering the complexity of his grandfather's life). Regarding photos of mathematicians (for example), I've only done this once, with the Octacube (mathematics). However, it's unlikely I'll do that sort of thing again unless there are exceptional circumstances. (It might encourage the kind of vandalism that already occurred on Ian Grojnowski's page.) Mathsci (talk) 15:01, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia (and Commons) image policies are enormously complex, so if I can help there, please do not hesitate to ask. The policies on museum images in particular are a bit, hmm, schizophrenic. For example, though it's completely unacceptable to upload images that are someone else's copyright, when it comes to museums, the Wiki culture actively encourages uploaders to ignore museum rules (!). The community consensus is "take pictures of whatever you want in a museum, and if it's against the museum's rules, well, lie to the guards".[2] I've argued against this policy, but haven't been able to make any headway (let me know if you'd like links to the discussions at Commons). So in the meantime, any images that your friend wishes to upload to Commons, are probably going to be welcomed with open arms. If he's confused about licenses, I recommend CC-by-SA 3.0 . That's a good one, as it lets him retain copyright, but also authorizes the image for other reasonable purposes (such as on the web). I'm not sure what the rules are about death certificates. What is the change that he wants to make? --Elonka 16:20, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I actually only wanted a picture of the outside of the museum (although there is a marvellous gigantic sculpture of the Marquis de Vauvenargues, whose family chateau became Picasso's final resting place); so perhaps he misunderstood me. It's hard to imagine that that's illegal. I will find out more about what he wants to change, if anything, and also about the photograph of his grandfather. Mathsci (talk) 16:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Nice pic.  :) I took a look at the vandalism on Grojnowski's page. My guess is that it's from students. Often times when someone on Wikipedia is an active professor, if they give a student a bad grade, the student sometimes "retaliates" by vandalizing the professor's bio. Such things happen thousands of times a day on Wikipedia, and it's usually a simple matter to revert the graffiti, and block the vandals. I doubt that adding a picture would increase the amount of vandalism, but that's up to you, (and/or Grojnowski. Some people are more private than others. I know a few people who are extremely notable, but they absolutely do not want Wikipedia bios, because they don't want the additional attention and/or noise and/or "target painted on their back". Wikipedia bios are definitely a mixed blessing! If you enjoy reading general rants about me, for example, you might find entertainment here.[3] It's given me several good laughs.  :) --Elonka 17:03, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

The vandalism was by an easily identified colleague. In general it seems best to separate the real world from wikipedia "wonderland", even if it contains exemplary contributors like User:WillowW. (It's a much more pleasant experience looking at her approach to contributing - a lesson to us all - than reading mindless hate pages off WP.) Mathsci (talk) 03:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I looked at the forum you linked, but off-wiki forums are full of puzzling and contradictory statements [4]. I didn't follow the ArbCom case because I was on wikibreak while in Cambridge, but I would never question the integrity of Durova. Mathsci (talk) 06:05, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Article nominated for deletion

(comment deleted)

Cheers! --Eae1983 (talk) 23:23, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

PS: I fully support you against that weird guy Koala something... He actually gives me creeps so much he is brainwashed! Anyways it is also really good to know brains like yours exist over here!

Reply

Hi, sorry about that. This is the best I could do. Also, the reason why I reverted his comments and deleted them is so that the AfD would not get out of hand. Also see Wikipedia:Canvassing. Not sure how else you would prefer that I edit your talk page. In all likelihood, I will not have to edit it again unless something like this reoccurs. Khoikhoi 04:09, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks. Mathsci (talk) 04:24, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Carried on from AN/I

I'm answering you here so as to avoid sidetracking the discussion on the noticeboard. Yes, I have used another account prior to May 2008 (though I haven't edited Wikipedia, aside from minor corrections from my IP, for many months), and I have never made any secret of that. I did quite a bit of work on physics articles, writing a couple, and spending too much energy fighting 'theory of everything'/'Einstein was wrong' crackpots. The reason I didn't go back to that account is that it is too easily linked to my IRL identity, which, for reasons I am sure you will appreciate, I simply cannot afford to have brought into this particular topic. It's not a violation of any policy that I know of; on the contrary, I think it expedient.

I am not here to push a POV either. I am neither a racist nor a fanatical adherent to the genetic hypothesis. Indeed, I think it important that it is shown that there is, at present, no proper consensus, one way or the other on the issue of the causes of racial differences in measured intelligence (I also have my differences with the philosophy of science which places such importance on consensus, but that is a subtle matter, and I fully understand how useful the notion of 'scientific consensus' is in getting rid of lunacy on Wikipedia!).

As an example of what I mean here, let me draw your attention to this reversion I made earlier: [5] . I reverted a wholesale removal of content from an article, when the content in question, while obviously contentious and rather poorly presented, was relevant, notable, and included sourced criticism. Simply because certain ideas make people uncomfortable doesn't mean that they have no place here.

But I would draw your attention to another matter. The criticism in the section I restored was sourced from the Journal of Black Studies. The research it was criticising has been published, inter alia, in Intelligence, and other rather more prestigious journals. This is my problem with undue weight (although to be fair, a better source of criticism could certainly have been found). To use an analogy, it would be like including research that has been published in Phys Rev B, and citing criticism from Physics Essays as if that criticism settled the matter. It would be better to cite criticism from Phys Rev B itself (we should also always remember that just because something passes peer review doesn't mean it is correct, merely that it is -- in theory, anyway -- not outrageously wrong or methodologically ludicrous).

And the existence of a Journal of Black Studies at least goes to show that whatever race might be, it is certainly a valid and very real phenomenon...and that therefore the problem of race and intelligence is an interesting problem. There has been no final solution to that problem either, as of yet, and it is mendacious to claim otherwise...certainly, the genetic POV is a minority one, and should be presented as such, but it is not pseudoscientific, tendentious or similar; it is a minority position but not a crackpot one -- to use an analogy, admittedly a poor one, think of constructivists in mathematics; citing anti-constructivist polemics (if there are such things) doesn't make constructivism go away...a Wikipedia editor who went around the maths articles demanding that they all reflect constructivism as a majority view would be tendentious indeed, but asking that constructivist views are given a fair hearing in the axiom of choice article is not exactly outrageous (and no, I'm not a constructivist). The biggest difference, of course, is the political dimension to this particular issue.

So my main concern here is simply to get an article which is more in keeping with reality; I have no interest in promoting one POV over any others: they should be reflected in accordance with their relative weights in the scholarly literature, but they should also not be caricatured or otherwise artificially diminished. I know I might have a fight on my hands, but I have resigned myself to that. I hope, however, that progress can be made, and reason and sanity can prevail. Though perhaps I'm too optimistic. --Plusdown (talk) 02:10, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is the right place for this discussion. Your statements about race as a concept and the reasoning you use in "And the existence ..." seem to be your own. As has been said many times, this encyclopedia article must report on what is in main stream academic books and literature. The existence of a journal of Black Studies says nothing at all about the concept of race: it simply tells us that there is a journal of Black Studies. What further inference can be drawn? As for the other points of view, we can again only report what appears in the mainstream academic literature. On the other hand, I believe Jagz is on record in the talk archives as stating explicity that he thinks that, in addition to discussing what appears in the mainstream academic literature, the article should also discuss the popular debate in the media, primarily in Noth America. It is not at all clear that such a coverage of the popular debate, whatever it might be, is a fitting topic for an encyclopedia article, unless it has in fact already been discussed in the academic literaure. As a comparison, a similar problematic subject would be the BBC's past pseudoscientific reporting of certain claimed paranormal phenomena. Is BBC2's "Secrets of the Paranormal" (1996) for example discussed on WP? It doesn't appear in Paranormal television. Are there articles on moving beds on WP, the subject of one programme in this series? There is an article on Bedknobs and Broomsticks, which involves a flying bed; and I found a reference to tantric flying in Mahamaya-tantra quoting this source - "Tantra.com, the #1 online resource for tantra, tantric sex and the Karma Sutra". --Mathsci (talk) 03:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Hehe -- another technique for me to learn after I've finished my course on quantum healing. No, if I had my way (which I know I won't), the material on the popular/media debate would be far removed from the article, which absolutely should reflect the ideas published in the mainstream scholarly literature; I couldn't agree with you more. Unfortunately, the 'public controversy' is probably 'notable', in the Wikipedia sense, especially given events like James Watson putting his foot in it, etc. And I don't like those 'controversy about x' (where x is a contentious topic) articles, because they very quickly turn into troll magnets. Thus the solution -- as I see it -- is to have a section in the main article, in which newspaper columnists' opinions on the matter can be put, which then clearly contextualises those opinions and keeps them separate from the scientific strand, as it were. That's the downfall of Wikipedia's populist philosophy...for better or worse, we have to deal with popular/media portrayals, because academic journals are not the only 'reliable sources'. But we can try to keep separate issues separate, something I have made clear in my unapproved draft should be attempted (since if we don't pre-emptively include it, some random, well-meaning person will add it in because they read it in the paper that morning, and set off an edit war).

As for the Journal of Black Studies...that it exists indicates, as we know, that Black Studies exists. For Black Studies to exist, the concept of 'blackness' -- whatever it might be -- is probably (well, we can hope) something real; whether a social construct used a tool of oppression, or a biological reality. It doesn't matter. Fact is, race has been and still is a very important topic, both in everyday life and as an object of academic study; hence its correlation with intelligence, another important topic, is interesting: if only to show that there is none, or that the research is biased and evidence of racism, or whatever. That's the point I was trying to make, and I don't think it is particulary idiosyncratic. And my objection to the Journal of Black Studies being used as a source isn't because it is the Journal of Black Studies; it's that it is one of those 'multi-disciplinary', politicised, humanities journals, and hence, in a scientific matter, doesn't carry quite the same weight as a scientific journal specialising in the topic at hand. At best, it can be used to show what that particular field of enquiry makes of the debate, but it isn't indicative of the debate in the specialist literature -- though as I say, a better source could be found anyway.

Incidentally, I read the discussion above re the zonal spherical function; I had to laugh in sympathy...I once had a similar problem on an article I was writing relating to spectral theory, which someone on the 'cleanup squad' tagged for deletion as 'gibberish'. It got resolved very quickly, of course, since other editors who knew what they were talking about could weigh in and say that it was fine, just necessary jargon/shorthand, but that's Wikipedia for you... --Plusdown (talk) 11:15, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with almost everything you have said on avoiding "pop" topics. As you will see, I unfortunately have been under the beady eye of some possibly over-zealous administrators, so what you see on this page might have been blown a little out of proportion. The article on Zonal spherical functions originates in physics with the work of Hermann Weyl (on Spectral theory of ordinary differential equations), Dirac and Bargmann. Harish-Chandra, one of the greatest experts on representation theory of the 20th century, started out as a physicist, duplicating some of the work of Bargmann on representations of the Lorentz groups. Likewise Kodaira, the Fields medallist and geometer, sharpened his teeth by generalising Hermann Weyl's work on spectral theory: Weyl invited him to Princeton after the war. This article is just one of a chain of related articles that I am gradually adding to the WP as I simultaneously prepare a course intended to become a book. This is one example of the beautiful interaction between pure mathematics and theoretical physics. I will not ask which article on spectral theory you edited if you wish to preserve your anonymity, but this was of course just the right thing to say to me :) Mathsci (talk) 11:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems the course will be given at the alma mater of one of the recent visitors to this page. Rôles will therefore be reversed when I return to mark examinations and essays there next week. I am in deep shock, but I'm sure I'll recover my composure. As you said, that's Wikipedia for you ... :)Mathsci (talk) 12:42, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Your recent inappropriate comments

Mathsci, you really need to re-think your recent comments.[6] Your personal comments about WBJscribe and Elonka are completely inappropriate and honestly come across as a form of stalking. While its acceptable to look through a person's edits, making references to their personal life isn't. And for the record, yes, I have worked with Elonka before which is why her talk page is on my watchlist, so there's no need to try to find a way to dig that up and attack me for it. You need to disengage and take a few days to clear your head on whatever issue you feel you're having. Shell ^babelfish 08:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

(ec with WjBscribe) Good morning. Why would I attack you? Administrators are volunteers and you all seem to do an excellent thankless job. Recently Elonka has been editing mathematics articles, one of which I created, possibly after chatting to me here and has asked me for some personal details (languages, if I know famous people, etc). Again, apart from the fact that the confusion arising after user:Koalorka's recent block might have got things onto the wrong foot, it is unfair to think I have some axe to grind. I was unhappy about the June 2 personal attack on me ("butthurt Marxist ...") and Elonka did a very good job in keeping track of this. I can't really claim to be offended by it, because it gives us far more information about the person saying it than me. In order to ease the occasionally confrontational interactions between Elonka, WjScribe and myself, and to show that I appreciate the spirit of what you have written and what you are are doing, I will further refactor the post I left on Elonka's page. After all, the problem I wanted to address was with actual editing to mainspace articles, not silly and unintentional misunderstandings generated in the heat of unstructured discussions on talk pages. Thanks for your helpful intervention, Mathsci (talk) 09:49, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for taking a second look at that comment and resolving the issue. I really appreciate the way you handled things :) Shell ^babelfish 11:08, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Blocked

I have blocked you for 24 hours for continue the aggressive and harassing behaviour I had warned you about. Threatening other editors is completely unacceptable as you should well know. This post completely crossed the line. You are welcome to continue editing once your block expires but note that resuming your uncivil and threatening behaviour will lead to future blocks. WjBscribe 09:20, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree and as you see above I was about to remove it following the remark above. Please could you remove it for me? I apologize for all these crossed wires. Mathsci (talk) 09:51, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Looking into this, I have redacted this comment [7], which I agree with you was utterly outrageous. I see Elonka called the user up on it- I must say I would have been inclined to block them had I seen the comment at the time it was made, rather than several days later. I am certainly willing to extend you the benefit of the doubt and allow you to resume editing now, but I would like your assurance that you will calm your approach to other users in future. Wikipedia is not a battleground and I must you to take a less combative approach to your interactions with other users. WjBscribe 10:04, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I only found it by accident (Pandora's box). Just to reiterate my remarks above to Shell (I was about to send you a personal email), you do have my assurance. As made clear from the edit I was about to post as you were blocking me, I felt extremely uncomfortable about appearing to be critical of people whose thankless hard work I admire, including in particular you. The disruption caused by User:Koalorka seems to have created a lot of confusion, this being part of it. Can I offer you my personal apologies for any offence caused? Mathsci (talk) 10:27, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, I appreciate that. I am going to unblock you. I hope you will extend an olive branch to Elonka and approach future interactions with her, and other editors, in a more collegial manner. WjBscribe 10:37, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks. I will now do what I had proposed to Shell in the edit conflict that arose while you were blocking me. Mathsci (talk) 10:41, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the refactor, could you also take a look at this edit. I have no problem with you objecting to what was a highly uncivil comment, but please remove the references to this person's name and where to find it. WjBscribe 11:08, 5 June 2008 (UTC)