Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 October 28

message: In response to my request for evidence, one of the types of which was a the use Erdos numbers in a general list in an official publication of a university or similar body, there was one (and only one) cited, in this edit by User:Turgidson: http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/math/research.html — and the preamble to that begins "A silly measure often cited in mathematical circles is the Erdos number of a mathematician, named after the prolific Hungarian mathematician".
I really didn't expect this outcome: that the only use by a university would itself agree that these numbers are "silly". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:22, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, that's their problem: whether they call it silly or not, they still use it, and that's what counts, I think.  But I still do not understand why my comment was expunged from the record of the Cfd. I wrote to the admin who deleted it, and asked for an explanation, but got no answer (or at least, the answer flew by me, in which case I apologize in advance).  Turgidson 22:24, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't recall "not silly" being part of how we write an encyclopedia. Pokemon is hardly a serious matter, nor is flatulence humor. Like I already said, it doesn't have to be a life-or-death, serious-as-hell ranking system to be included. --Cheeser1 22:29, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't have to be serious-as-hell to be included as an article, which is why we rightly have articles on flatulence humor and Erdős number, but this CfD was about categories, not articles. I can't think of any other  joke/silly categories attached to serious articles.  How many can you find? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:58, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I find it utterly bizarre that you've taken a single anecdotal comment by a Wikipedian who happens to be a mathematician, and a single website (which, by the way, was pretty much what you wanted as a source), and somehow the fact that each asserts that it is notable, well-known, and oh yes, silly, that somehow the silly is what we should focus on and how dare we have a silly category! You're making an argument based on a guideline and even if it were policy, we've already been down the WP:IAR road, which you summarily rejected by refusing to even consider, in good faith, the suggestion that we ignore any policies (or guidelines), which was suggested since there's a clear lack of consensus. --Cheeser1 04:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly. Guidelines reflect the consensus when they are drafted, but consensus can change and the guidelines cannot cover every situation. However, there is no consensus to ignore the guidelines and attach this silly trivia to hundreds (maybe thousands) of articles. It would still be good to know how many other cases you can find of silly trivia being used to categorise serious articles. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:04, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Before you hang still more weight on your "silly" hook, you should remember, as you noted above, that the entire quote is "A silly measure often cited in mathematical circles" - i.e. not serious, but still notable. Rather like :Category:Ig Nobel Prize winners or :Category:Golden Raspberry Awards are not serious but still notable (and are both far more subjective than Erdős numbers). Gandalf61 09:13, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally, I'd delete those categories too. But are you seriously arguing that mathematicians should be judged by the same standards as showbiz? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:32, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, obviously not, as I never said that or anything remotely close to that. I was giving two examples in response to your request to find non-serious categories that contained serious articles. Gandalf61 09:52, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And thanks for finding them (I should have said thank you in my first reply). But if we aren't going to assess mathematicians (and the academics in related disciplines, to whom the Erdos categories can be applied) by the same standards as showbiz, then we are still left without a useful precedent for keeping these categories in mainspace. I'm surprised, though, by the paucity of response to my suggestion below of keeping them as project categories on the talk pages. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:55, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: I am struck by the fact that the points listed by the closing admin are only the ones added in the latest discussion, despite the existence of commenters who said, essentially, "see previous discussion". This is consistent with the closer's comments that such comments aren't strong arguments: of course not, they're not arguments at all, they're pointers. Were points made in the previous discussions totally ignored? —David Eppstein 21:21, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is that the previous arguments all basically amounted to "but mathematicians like it". Which they do, and which I think is a potential argument for making an exception in particular cases. I like whimsy, if it doesn't run amok, and it pops up in a lot of ways in academia (gene names, MathSciNet's database field for E-numbers, and so on). But -- IMO -- people should acknowledge they're trucking in whimsy, and permit an honest debate to go forward based on that. If we acknowledged this was whimsy we could WP:IGNORE and talk about the gestalt-y kinds of things this issue, I think, brings up. Rather than waste our time on ever finer arguments about what correlation versus recognition, and necessity versus sufficiency. --lquilter 21:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And in that case we could also have considered my suggestion here to indulge the whimsy through talk-page categories. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:02, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: and those talk page categories could even accommodate the ultimate destination of this silliness, the (wait for it!) Erdős–Bacon number. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:25, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Another possibility is to put the Erdos number in infoboxes, and generate a list from those. That, at least, was meant to be one of the points of infoboxes. To accomodate data like this. Just as the articles on the planets and chemcial elements have excessive data on their orbital characteristics and physical properties that make most people fall asleep, so "minor data" can be shoved into a box and left there. If you use invisible links (pipe sort a space), it is even possible to have "what links here" to give lists of people with different Erdos numbers. Carcharoth 10:27, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

text:  Infobox is pretty good, actually, because it permits references, and also separate guidance on the infobox template page which could restrict it just to mathematicians. --lquilter 12:47, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Putting Erdos numbers in an infobox is a good idea. --Ramsey2006 14:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If some limitations are observed, it could be OK: see my comment below. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:50, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not talking about the category and opinions about the category, I'm talking about the fact that your opinion of Kdbank71's actions is being presented as objective fact. Some people may believe he acted outside the bounds of the closing admin's role in this CfD. It's not up to you to decide whether that's the case. --Cheeser1 20:33, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

text: BrownHairedGirl, you are trying to treat sociology-of-science problems as if they were mathematics and could be precisely axiomatized and proved as theorems. That seems wrongheaded to me. Why do you want to go beyond the usual standard of verifiability that we have for other subjects on Wikipedia? E.g., I suspect you will find that different sources use slightly different definitions for measuring the land area of a country or state; that doesn't prevent us from reporting those areas based on the sources that we have. —David Eppstein 21:27, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

text: I think the main discussions are elsewhere now, but that's quite striking, Ratfox. You assert that because you didn't know about Erdos numbers for "years" means "they can't be that important"? I had never heard of Yang-Mills until I met Yang, but I'm pretty sure that mathematical physicists, differential geometers, and quite many others had considered it important for some years prior. Personally I think it more striking that a "beginner" (not what I would call a post-doc) would know his Erdos Number. Also, I congradulate you on having earned a spot with a presumptive very fine Advisor, as it's highly likely  that he's pretty connected, at least, no matter what your field is. Caritz was 2, I never got to coauthor with him (although he did submit me for publication), and I never finished. I've never coauthored so I don't have an Erdos Number. Pete St.John 03:55, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Previous discussions?

message: The more I think about it the more attractive the list option seems to me. For me the interesting points mathematically is more the distribution of erdos numbers rather than the actual number themselves. Lists such as those at The Erdos number project I think convey more interesting information and enable some interesting comparisions, do ecomonists have a higher mean erdos number than chemist? Do Fields medalists generally have lower EN's than mathematicians as a whole. Which fields of mathematics have lower/higher mean numbers. A list also gives a better overview, browsing the list I was surprised to see that Thurston had EN2. This observation would have been harder with Categories, as I'd have to browse each category in turn. 
Anyway It would be interesting to see others view on a list. --Salix alba (talk) 15:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: These are all very compelling reasons -- I wholeheartedly agree (though I could list a few more, pertaining to the high E-numbers).  As I mentioned in the deletion review, I'm very much interested in how the E-numbers correlate with various fields: eg, I'm suspecting they are relatively much lower in combinatorics/graph theory, than, say, algebraic geometry.  (I now come to realize that these sorts of arguments are totally worthless when it comes to fend off the deletionists, but what can I do, I don't really know how to fight City Hall.) At any rate, as to Bill Thurston, his EN2 is explained by his collaboration with John Conway, who provided the gateway through which many geometers and topologists got connected via a relatively short path to Erdős (Richard Borcherds is another example).  As to the category vs list debate, I don't see these as mutually exclusive: they both have their own advantages and disadvantages.  Ideally, in such a situation we should have both -- not that there is a snowball's chance in hell to get that!   Turgidson 16:23, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Lists sound very interesting to me. Syntheses of information do not necessarily have to be WP:OR to be of unique interest. --lquilter 18:03, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Considering the list option 

message: The first DRV resulted in a decision to overturn the deletion of the Erdos number categories. However, that DRV has since itself been overturned by the closing administrator at the request of SparsityProblem. 
There is a new DRV for the Erdos number categories here: Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 November 10#Category:Erdős numbers --Ramsey2006 22:51, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Second DRV