Template talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive 1

Archive 1

Small parameter setting

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

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

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

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

{{maths rating|
 class={{{class}}}|
 importance={{{importance}}}|
 field={{{field}}}|
 vital={{{vital}}}|
 comment={{{commment}}}|
 small=yes}}

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

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

Hide the comment field

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

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

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

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

Style changes

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

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

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

field=image and field=list

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

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

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

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

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

Adding comments

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

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

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

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

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

Links and categories

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

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

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

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

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

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

Template basing-off question

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

Have a look at the end of this template

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

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

frequentlyviewed=?

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

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

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

Adding rating to templates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happened to the "field" parameter?

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

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

Some problems

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

"Comments" field

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meta Banner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adding C-Class

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

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

to

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

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

There shouldn't be. The main issues are:

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

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

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

Updating frequentlyviewed (2009 is old)

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

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

Suggested move

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured on portal

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

#if:{{{portal}}}

to

#if:{{{portal|}}}

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

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

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

And style changes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chaos theory?

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

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

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

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

Richard V. Southwell

I suggest adding Richard V. Southwell to your WikiProject. You are making it very difficult to help you by adding a WP Maths on the talkpage though (first time I have seen this for any WP), so I will let you do this. Thank you.Zigzig20s (talk) 07:31, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

OK, added it. Even though it has a different name the template works similarly to other projects' templates. Nat2 (talk) 03:35, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Dab class

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

I believe the reasoning behind this is that the maths rating template is intended specifically for rating articles; the maths banner template can be used for non-article pages. Nat2 (talk) 03:37, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Change to manage categories

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

That sounds like a change to be made to maths banner since that template would be used to categorize category pages. Nat2 (talk) 03:43, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Recent updates

There have been a few changes to this template recently.

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

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

Bplus has been merged to B, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 June 30. – Fayenatic London 09:45, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Corrupt page assessments data

Hi, it would appear this template is not using the standard {{WPBannerMeta}} template. Apparently the custom implementation is sending lowercased values to the {{#assessment}} parser function, resulting in corrupt assessment data, as seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Popular pages. I think all you'd need to do is use the {{#lcfirst}} parser function on the arguments to {{#assessment}}, but I'd encourage using the standardized meta template in the event other things change in the future. Kind regards, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 15:41, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

There is a proposal to standardise this banner and the code is in the sandbox. Some discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Proposed change to Template:Maths rating from 2018 — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:09, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Priority

Would there be any problem with renaming the priority categories to use a lowercase "p" (i.e. Category:Top-priority mathematics articles instead of Category:Top-Priority mathematics articles). It's just that it is the only project on the whole of Wikipedia that uses an uppercase for priority/importance and so needs a special exception in the meta-template. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:32, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

@Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars: are you going to complain if I just move these categories? I don't think we need to go through CfD for this ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:17, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Isn't that what WP:CFR/S is for? To make uncontroversial category changes without going through CfD. Question though: Why is the mathematics project the only one to use "priority" instead of "importance" which every other project uses? Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 22:18, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

That is the choice of the wikiproject. There used to be several projects that used "priority" rather than "importance" but for some reason the others were renamed. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:33, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Similar template

What is the difference between this template and the other Wikiproject Mathematics one? Horsesizedduck (talk) 21:11, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Horsesizedduck: The template {{WikiProject Mathematics}}, prior to November 2020, was not a WikiProject tag but an information page; it is now a redirect to {{Maths rating}}. Prior to November 2020, it instructed people to use {{maths rating}} for main space article or {{maths banner}} for other namespaces like drafts, categories and redirects. Since then, {{maths banner}} has also been a redirect to {{maths rating}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:36, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Template suggestion

@Redrose64: While I have your attention, I'd like to make a suggestion. I've noticed some other project templates allow for a makeshift checklist of B-class criteria to be added. Would there be a way to add that to this template? Horsesizedduck (talk) 22:10, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes. But first, please show me where WikiProject Mathematics have discussed this and agreed to the change. It's pretty major, after all: if implemented, it will immediately downgrade all B-class articles to C-class until they are reassessed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:35, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

My apologies!! Didn't mean to imply this discussion had already occurred. Just wondering why this was a thing for some templates and not others, and wished to know if it was possible. Seemed more productive (and it was) to ask here than scour the archives. Might ask about it in the Project talk page.Horsesizedduck (talk) 20:39, 14 July 2021 (UTC)