Talk:List of people by Erdős number/Archive 1

message: I propose to use multiple columns within each group of people with the same number.  This is achieved by bracketing the group with  and  and interspersing it with . Roger Hui (talk) 18:19, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This would certainly improve the layout of this long, narrow list. An alternative would be to add an explanatory note next to each person, giving a few notable details. Ntsimp (talk) 18:29, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Column Breaks 

message: It would be nice if each letter were its own editable subsection. Could someone who understands Wikipedia:Template messages/Compact tables of contents please fix this? Ntsimp (talk) 19:15, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't understand compact tables of contents, but I made them into triple-equal sections — is that what you meant? Feel free to revert if this causes problems. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:39, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

text: I am about to revert it as the new TOC is pretty unsightly. A compact TOC as in Wikipedia:Template messages/Compact tables of contents would be good but I don't know how to do separate ones for EN1 and EN2. Roger Hui (talk) 20:00, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Navigation 

message: Ntsimp recently moved Armand Borel from 2 to 3 per the ENP. This is one of those instances where MathSciNet disagrees: they list  and  as giving a path of length two through S. Chowla. In this case I agree with ENP: the first citation from MathSciNet appears to be merely a book to which Borel and Chowla were both independent contributors, not a true joint publication. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:15, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Armand Borel 

message: This is simpliy the list of people with some Erdos number (Read the page). Please do not try to delete names without verifying or change the basic purpose of this article. There is nothing like who is notable and who is not notable. How someone  got Erdos  number is more importnat than what you want to identify him or her. This site is for professional people with good attitude and respect for others. If you do not agree, it is good you remove yourself from this listing and go away from editing. There are people who do not want to have websites for them. The entry will remain red as you have seen for many.
We should concentrate on our work than playing with someone's name for no reasons.
- At this state I'll remain Annynymous (IP address is there), but I have Erdos number (Does this number really speak about your greatness?). It is just a honor to Professor Paul Erdos.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rnaik100 (talk • contribs) 14:11, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Is it a coincidence that, soon after you added some names yesterday, an anonymous editor added a redlink to someone with a name very similar to your login, R. Naik, which I reverted? In any case: No, this is not a list of all people with Erdos numbers. That would be unmanageably huge and redundant with the lists at the Erdos number project's web site. It is a list of the ones that have articles here, or are notable enough that they should have articles here. Please see WP:RED for our guidelines on when it is acceptable to include redlinks in Wikipedia articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:43, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

text: One correction: I am not in charge of anything here; it is run by consensus. But we have been through this issue of how inclusive to be several times before, and the guidelines are I think pretty clear on this issue. I agree that the numbers are not especially useful, but that doesn't prevent some people finding them amusing. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:08, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

text: A useful place to start for learning about "such rules" is Wikipedia's five pillars. The rules for notability are covered under the first pillar, as is the fact that The part about consensus is in the fourth pillar. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:50, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I don't call myself notable. Somebody else created the article about me, and nowadays I try to edit it only in cases when there is something blatantly wrong with it to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. I agree with you that Nash-Williams should have an article, but I haven't found the time yet to do it properly myself, although at one point I did go through the other articles mentioning him and make sure that their redlinks to him were consistently formatted to make it easier to make an article for him in future. Apparently, nobody else has found the time to write an article here about him either. As for whether having an Erdos number of 1 automatically means we should have an article on someone and not having that number means we should delete the article, I disagree. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:50, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Another Wikipedia guideline for you to read: assume good faith. Also, for you to compare: Shrikhande's, Nash-Williams', your, and my publication records in Google scholar. I realize that MathSciNet might be a better choice of database for mathematicians, but my own work is not primarily in the math literature and the pattern there is in any case not very different. The point is that for Shrikhande and Nash-Williams I can see clear evidence of notability just from the Google scholar citation counts. For you I can't, and would need some other justification for having an article here. That's why I removed the redlink. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:49, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

text: This conversation is going nowhere. I've tried to be patient but I see no point in continuing it. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:16, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Noted Erdos numbers

message: Thanks Mikkalai and Ntsimp. Pete St.John (talk) 17:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Untitled 

message: Pomte is right; the link to Wikipedia:Wikipedians by Erdős number is an inappropriate self-reference. "Any link in an article in the main namespace that links to one in the Wikipedia namespace" is one of the first examples given in WP:ASR. Ntsimp (talk) 15:38, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I went ahead and removed the section. Ntsimp (talk) 14:31, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self-reference 

message: What does the comment "Noted Erdos number section will be deleted from the discussion page. It is a done case - No more conversations on this" from R Naik? is this a language issue or am I missing something? Thanks. Pete St.John (talk) 18:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It refers to the discussion now on the talk archive page. As Naik said in that edit summary, discussion was finished, but deletion would have been the wrong way of closing it off. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:06, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  ah thanks, that's clear, I had misconstrued the wording. Pete St.John (talk)  —Preceding comment was added at 19:56, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  comment clarification? 

message: When I created this list I included only Erdős numbers 0–2, since they're what I mostly cared about and can be immediately verified from the ENP lists. After an anonymous editor created the #3 section, I added some people listed on the ENP site as having Erdős number 3. Since then, a number of others have been added, some by me, without an obvious way to verify them. I'm not really sure what to do about that. There are still plenty of articles that were included in the old categories for numbers 3–6 and that have not been added to this list—but again, what about citing sources? Does a list such as this, with little actual article prose, need citations? If so, how shall we go about it? And how high should the numbers on the list go? Ntsimp (talk) 22:37, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That would have been an advantage of the category (as opposed to the list); the notability is defined as usual for the article. Anyway for the list I'd hope for new addtions to include citations. If the subject has an article, I wouldn't care how high the number is, and if not, then I think about 3 is the cutoff for notability in se? Pretty subjective, but "2" just means "coauthors of Erdos", so at least 3 for the networking quality of erdos numbers to be relevant. Also Carlitz is only 3; and that actually has some historical interest since they were contemporaries in related fields and both reputed for their proliferation. Pete St.John (talk) 17:16, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I always added the path I have in mind to justify the upper bound on the Erdos number in he edit summary, as I did when adding an article to the category (before they were deleted).Billlion (talk) 18:43, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Works for me. Pete St.John (talk) 20:24, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

text: You misunderstand. There are many thousands of people with Erdős numbers 1–3 whose names are not on this list. It's not intended to be exhaustive, only to include those who either already do or (in a few cases) eventually should have their own Wikipedia articles. However, I think Specker probably does belong on the list. Ntsimp (talk) 06:47, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Indeed, this doesn't require any special access; it's a public web site. However, it counts many things as joint publications, such as joint editorships or even joint obituaries! There are also those whose shortest legitimate path to Erdős passes through a paper not found in that particular database. So, it's certainly a great resource, and referenced at the top of the article. But it's insufficient. Ntsimp (talk) 23:42, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Higher numbers and verifiability 

message: Irving S. Reed just got moved from the number 3 to number 2 section. Neither the ENP nor the MathSciNet search confirms his number is 2, but the user who made the change, Giftlite, provided this citation:
Since Arthur Rubin has Erdős number 1, Reed must have Erdős number 2. Ntsimp (talk) 23:06, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks valid to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:31, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irving S. Reed 

message: Is Ari Jabotinsky, son of the famous Zionist activist Zeev Jabotinsky, the same person as Eri Jabotinsky listed as an Erdos coauthor in MathSciNet?  Ari and Eri are both possible transliterations of the Hebrew name.  The thing that troubles me is: Ari got his PhD in 1957 but Eri started publishing in 1946. McKay (talk) 13:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Ari Jabotinsky refers to http://www.knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/mk_eng.asp?mk_individual_id_t=402 which mentions both Zeev Jabotinsky and "PhD in Mathematics from Hebrew University (1957)". I searched for author="Jabotinsky" in the library catalog of the Hebrew University; there was one PhD thesis by "Eri Jabotinsky" from 1955 and nothing for "Ari Jabotinsky", so I guess this must be the PhD thesis of Ari Jabotinsky (the difference between 1955 and 1957 might be just publication vs. graduation?). The English title of the thesis is "Theory of iteration". Now using this information it's possible to find http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01831113 which is a survey on "iteration theory". This survey + MathSciNet clearly shows that the PhD thesis ("Jabotinsky 55" in the survey) is by the same person who has joint publications with Erdos (actually, the survey even refers to "P. Erdos and E. Jabotinsky"). So everything seems to match. A confirmation by someone who has first-hand knowledge would be nice, though. — Miym (talk) 14:26, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ari/Eri Jabotinsky 

message: Newly added Elisha Netanyahu has EN=1. Nathan Netanyahu has EN=2 (through Ruth Silverman). My understanding is that they are close relatives (at least, I've been told that Nate N. is a cousin or something of the Israeli PM, and Elisha's article says the PM is his nephew). But they don't seem to have worked together and it may be that their collaboration distance is the sum of their EN's.
Not something for the article content, as there's no reliable sourcing, I just thought it was interesting. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:53, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Netanyahu curiosity 

message: For discussion:
===#1===
* Gregory A. Freiman - home page.
===#2===
* Zvia Agur.
* Valentin Danilovich Belousov - Page from Math Genealogy Project.
* Boris M. Schein - Page from Math Genealogy Project.
===#3===
Under current policy [consensus], these should all be removed.  (These have been removed, until notability is established and an article created. --Jwesley78 21:26, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recently added redlinks - March 2010 

message: Under current policy [consensus], these should all be removed.  (These have been removed, until notability is established and an article created. --Jwesley78 21:26, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: #3

message: According to the Erdős number project, the counts of Erdős numbers are:
      Erdös number  0  ---      1 person
      Erdös number  1  ---    504 people
      Erdös number  2  ---   6593 people
      Erdös number  3  ---  33605 people
      Erdös number  4  ---  83642 people
      Erdös number  5  ---  87760 people
      Erdös number  6  ---  40014 people
      Erdös number  7  ---  11591 people
      Erdös number  8  ---   3146 people
      Erdös number  9  ---    819 people
      Erdös number 10  ---    244 people
      Erdös number 11  ---     68 people
      Erdös number 12  ---     23 people
      Erdös number 13  ---      5 people
There's no way we could include all 6593 people with Erdős number 2 in the article here. I think it would make sense to go a different way:
# Use a list of people with Erdős number 1 to add all people with EN 1 to the article, redlinked or bluelinked
# Only include bluelinks for the remaining numbers (2 through 13). 
# Develop a way to cross-check the lists from the EN project against the enwiki page list, to see if we are missing links. 
— Carl (CBM · talk) 13:03, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been bothered by the proliferation of redlinks too. It's a fact, though, that I'm still planning to write articles for all the redlinks I've added myself—though I wouldn't be averse to someone else writing the articles for these (to my mind) definitely notable people (and redlinks are supposed to help motivate people to do that). We surely shouldn't have links for everyone with Erdős number 2, and in fact, there are many people with Erdős number 1 that aren't WP-notable. We've been good about reverting all additions of redlinks to the #3 section, but I don't take out redlinks added to 1 or 2 if they check out in the sources. And we decided a while back to avoid numbers above 3 due to verifiability problems. In a nutshell, I prefer the status quo to your proposal, but I would be open to ideas for pruning the redlinks that seem unlikely to generate articles. Ntsimp (talk) 14:03, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

text: Any policy must be emphasized in the text description of the name sections as I did for #3 today. It can not be the situation that the reader looking the lists is not informed about the exact mission of the list.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.179.145.66 (talk) 10:49, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  The lead section of the article says, "This list includes researchers with Erdős numbers from 0 to 3 who are notable in their own right."  So the people listed here would be eligible to have an article about them on Wikipedia even if they were not coauthors with Erdos. I think this is stated clearly enough, and does not need to be reiterated within the subsections. Jwesley78 11:02, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  about redlinks for EN 2 

message: There appears to be a disagreement about whether redlinks should be allowed for those listed under #3.  I agree with the current policy and the way it's managed, but thought I should create a section to discuss it here. Jwesley78 19:30, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears this decision has been in place for some time, and is consistent with other Wikipedia policies. Jwesley78 19:37, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  The question raised here  is whether this policy [decision made from consensus] must be explicitly stated in the reader-visible portion of the page. Jwesley78 19:41, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't see any way to make that request (it's not a policy; just the consensus that has developed here) visible without falling afoul of WP:ASR. Besides, it's not relevant to readers, just editors. I thought about just going ahead and making some quick stubs for the few redlinks I care about, then deleting the rest—but I'm not sure that's a good idea, what with all the recent heightened BLP attention. Maybe the status quo, where bold editors add #3 redlinks and get reverted, is the best possible solution? Ntsimp (talk) 20:59, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm also ok with the status quo. For #1 and #2, the creation of a BLP article should not be done until the editor has time to do so properly. Jwesley78 21:29, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

text:  "Besides, it's not relevant to readers, just editors." I don't think so.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.179.145.66 (talk) 11:39, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

text: I added the missed text in the description of the section. It is not enough that the status quo is in the comment only. The reader looking the list has to be informed about the current policy.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.179.145.66 (talk) 10:39, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: * User 212.179.145.66, I think your recent change of the subsection's title is not in good form.  Such a statement would be more approprate as text within the section, but even there it would be considereded "self-referential". Section titles are also supposed to be precise.  These policies are discussed here and here. Jwesley78 10:46, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

text: I'm curious—of what value would it be to tell non-editing readers not to add redlinks to the #3 section? Ntsimp (talk) 13:40, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  (I agree with the current consensus, but will argue the opposing point.)  It's reasonable to expect some readers to wonder why their favorite mathematician "XYZ", with Erdos #3, is not listed here.  "XYZ" might meet the notability requirement to have her own biography article, but it simply has not been created yet. The question becomes, should we anticipate users readers questioning why such a prominent mathematician is not listed. Jwesley78 14:16, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

text: I've made another tweak.  I think we've reached a good compromise, but I wouldn't oppose another tweak or two. Jwesley78 17:01, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redlinks - Erdős #3 

message: The formulation is not proper, because as far as the Erdős number of a researcher is smaller there is a higher reason to include the researcher into the list. When I put this elaboration into the article, this was inverted on the score of "This should be taken to the talk page." I did not think so, because it is not so even actually: there are many "non-notable" researchers in the lists of #1 and #2. I think (and it is in correspondence with the status quo!) that the criterion has to be more hybrid: notable only for #3, almost notable for #2, but all for #1. If we don't put all researchers of #1 into the list, then the mission of the list will be destroyed. But even in the case you want to discuss this point of view, the actual current state of the list does not give to use the cited phrase. 212.179.145.66 (talk) 18:34, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you be specific as to which people listed under #1 or #2 are not notable.  If they do not meet the requirements listed here then they should probably be removed (regardless of which section they're in). Jwesley78 18:39, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

text: The "mission" of the list is not allow people to calculate their own Erdos number.  Thus, not all people with Erdos #1 need to be listed. Jwesley78 18:41, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

text: See WP:SAL#Lists of people. It would be highly inappropriate to include in the #1 section every last one of Erdős's 511 co-authors, most of whom should not and never will have Wikipedia articles. Readers interested in that level of detail are referred to the ENP. I'll concede that there are likely some non-notable redlinks in sections 1 and 2, mainly since I only remove the ones that aren't verified by our sources. Anyone is welcome to boldly delete any non-notable redlinks here, and even more welcome to write well-sourced articles for the notable ones. Ntsimp (talk) 19:32, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

text: Also, if you continue to make adjustments to these explanations on the list, please please remember WP:ASR, and don't add the word "Wikipedia" anywhere. Ntsimp (talk) 19:48, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The phrase "this list includes only those who are notable in their own right" 

message: It appears that when we sort people whose last names' begin like "Mac*" or "Mc*", we treat the two prefixes as equivalent. (This appears to be the case, but I want to verify.)
For example, in this article we have listed:
* Kevin McCurley
* Ian G. Macdonald
* Eugene McDonnell
* Angus Macintyre
(Excuse my ignorance here...) Is this something specifically addressed in Wikipedia policy? Or, is this generally how such names are sorted? I believe that there are bots that sort names on Wikipedia, and I wonder whether they also know to follow this pattern.(?) Thanks, Justin W Smith talk/stalk 19:44, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I found where this is discussed: Collation#Alphabetical_order.  Justin W Smith talk/stalk 21:55, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sorting names - "Mac" vs. "Mc" 

message: Anne Bauval questioned whether Kenkichi Iwasawa and Max Karoubi belonged on the #2 list, since neither is in the ENP data. It turns out that the MathSciNet calculator lists them both as being at distance 2, for the same erroneous reason: a review of an edited volume in which they were one of the contributors and someone at distance 1 was a contributor to a different chapter. In Iwasawa's case the review is  and the other contributor is Chowla; in Karoubi's case the review is  and the other contributor is Gérald Tenenbaum. I don't think these should count as valid paths. The best actual distance I can find in MathSciNet for Iwasawa is 4, via  through Charles C. Sims. For Karoubi we get distance 3 via  to Adrien Douady,  to Jacques Dixmier, and  to Erdős. So I'm moving Karoubi to #3 and removing Iwasawa. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:58, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Iwasawa and Karoubi 

message: The recent addition and removal of Fereydoun Hormozdiari raises the following question: do we need any readlinks on this page? For example, Fereydoun Hormozdiari seems to have Erdos number 2 – this looks to me like a valid joint publication with Noga Alon – but I nevertheless agree with the removal, as it seems fairly obvious that this person is not (yet) "notable in their own right". A simple way to deal with non-notable people would be to remove all redlinks. — Miym (talk) 21:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm inclined to agree, although there are still a few definitely notable redlinks on the list I just haven't gotten around to writing articles for yet. The list would look cleaner without the redlinks, and WP:RED encourages us to write the article first. Unfortunately, since the decision was made to ban redlinks from #3, it feels like most edits here are redlinks being added to #3 and reverted! At least when someone adds a #1 or #2 redlink that shows up in our sources, it gets verified quickly and left alone. Ntsimp (talk) 01:05, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-notable redlinks 

message: What would you all think about eliminating all the redlinks in #2, or possibly even in #1, per WP:WTAF? There are a lot of non-notable people with Erdős number 2, and we're not trying to replicate the entire Oakland database here. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:58, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I thought we even agreed this at some point in the past but I couldnt see it on this Talk page.Billlion (talk) 17:13, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

text: I've started working on getting rid of the redlinks in #2 (not touching #1 at this time) but it's slow because I keep finding someone who is clearly worthy of an article and stopping to create it. Some of the ones I'm getting rid of are probably notable as well but no big loss, we can add them back if we ever get an article for them. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:53, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

text: I don't agree with this. I think everyone in #1 should be listed regardless of whether they have an article.  This is supposed to be a list of coauthors of Erdős, not a list of wikipedia pages. However, since the red colour makes it ugly, let's try black. McKay (talk) 05:11, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

text: Suppose we add at the top of the #2 section something like: "There are at least NNN mathematicians with Erdős number 2.  Here we list those with Wikipedia articles."  And similarly for #3 (with the counts filled in). This might reduce continual addition of red links. McKay (talk) 05:47, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we have a disagreement about the purpose of the list. It would be a fairly trivial matter to just copy the list of all 511 of his coauthors here, but what would be the point? Most of them aren't Wikipedia-notable, and why duplicate a list that already exists elsewhere? Ntsimp (talk) 14:04, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see your point. Everything in Wikipedia is supposed to come from a reliable source somewhere else, so the fact that it (partly) duplicates an outside source is normal and not a reason for not having it. On the other hand, I don't see a purpose for a page whose content is "Erdős collaborators with their own Wikipedia page". Why would someone want that? It would need to be renamed and perhaps turned into a category. The reason we banned red links for #2 and #3 is that including everyone would be too much and some objective way to reduce it to a manageable size was required. The requirement of being famous would be better but it is too hard to implement. (Actually I wouldn't lose any sleep if #3 disappeared altogether.) McKay (talk) 03:56, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: This list had its origin in a set of categories, which was deleted. It's always been about linking to the Wikipedia articles, not just listing random people you can't even read about (why would someone want that?). As far as fame goes, there are many #3s that are far more famous (and notable) than many #1s. Ntsimp (talk) 14:33, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

text: I think that having redlink for all the #1s is reasonable, since many of them are likely to have done other things and pass WP:PROF. The question is where to draw the line, but I don't see any problem with redlinks for #1. Remember that redlinks are valuable because they help us see places that our coverage may be lacking. We should certainly include in the list all of the people who have Erdos number 1 - I thought there were all there already. If not, we need to add them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:12, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Erdős collaborated on an enormous scale; that's really the origin of the Erdős number. He even published joint papers with people who never did much of anything else. Having Erdős number 1 doesn't make someone notable, and I repeat my claim that most of them aren't. Ntsimp (talk) 15:15, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: That's true, but there are zillions of people named in Wikipedia who don't have their own articles. That is fine if their name is appropriate in the article it appears in. This article exists because someone decided that having a small Erdős is something notable in itself. I don't see what harm is done by including the very small number of #1s who don't have their own articles yet, and some of them are indeed quite deserving of articles. On the contrary, removing their names makes the list less useful. McKay (talk) 03:56, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: "Very small number"? I count (by hand) 193 bluelinks in the #1 section. I think adding some 300 unlinked names of people who don't (and many of whom shouldn't) have their own articles would make the list far less useful. There's nothing special about the random sampling of #1s without articles that have already been added to the list; it just happened organically, one at a time, without anybody deleting the redlinks the way we have in section 3 (and, recently, 2). Ntsimp (talk) 14:33, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stricter redlink policy? 

message: I'm a little uncomfortable about new names added to the list, which don't have articles. Since the Canfield contributor was anonymous, I just checked, easily found this geneology item. If I wanted to add someone I'd at least make a stub with a link to their academic home page or whatever, right? Pete St.John (talk) 17:12, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked him up too, after seeing that edit. I think we should only be adding redlinks of people who are clearly notable for something other than having a low Erdős number, but I also think Canfield qualifies, e.g. for editing EJC. Canfield's home page. A redlink here should be a hint to anyone looking for a page to create, but I don't think we need to actually create articles for all the redlinks until we're ready to take the time to do so properly for each one. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:03, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Since this list was based on the defunct categories, obviously it started with just people who already have articles. I didn't start adding redlinks until others did. I added two redlinks in copying people from the ENP list of prizewinners with Erdős number 3. I've been keeping a list of people with Erdős numbers 1 and 2 for whom I wanted to create articles. I finally copied the most important of those onto this list. If someone else makes articles for these before I get to them, then so much the better. But I certainly agree with David that they should be notable. Ntsimp (talk) 19:16, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

text: No problems. I'll just say that if I were anonymous, when adding an item I'd create a stub with at least a link (mathscinet, the geneology project, a departmental page...) so we would know who was meant. And save us from checking :-) but sure, righteous contributors such as yourselves are welcome to paste whole lists wholesale, it's damage control. Pete St.John (talk) 21:55, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Er. If you were anonymous, you wouldn't be able to create a stub. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:17, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ouch. Then I guess I'd put the link in the talk page (viz, here). Pete St.John (talk) 22:35, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

text: People without articles should not be added with a red link. If we want to keep them on the list, we should just add their names (no link). --Farzaneh (talk) 12:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:RED says, "Please do create red links to...topics that should obviously have articles." The redlinks encourage the creation of these articles, which should exist. Ntsimp (talk) 14:21, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

text: We have no separate article on Calkin — his name redirects to Calkin–Wilf tree. Until we have a separate article, we should not list his name here. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:25, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  New names 

message: There are 511 people with Erdős number one, and 1.1009 × 104 people with Erdős number two.  Higher Erdős numbers grow exponentially in population.  In my opinion, this is unmanageable for a single Wikipedia page.  We should at the very most have one Wikipedia page listing the 511 coauthors of Erdős, and perhaps a second Wikipedia page listing the 1.1009 × 104 coauthors of persons with Erdős number one.  All other persons with Wikipedia pages who also have defined Erdős numbers should be grouped together using wikicategories.  Placing a wikicategory link on the Wikipedia page for each person with a defined Erdős number will automatically create the wanted lists.  This should be faster and easier than trying to keep track of the names and numbers on a separate Wikipedia page, which is unnecessary for a list of names that can be easily grouped with wikicategories instead.  Nicole Sharp (talk) 15:34, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  using categories 

message: Titu Andreescu was just added to the #2 list, but I can't verify his number. He's not on the ENP list, and the AMS seems to have pulled open access to its calculator. Could someone please verify? Ntsimp (talk) 12:49, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: MathSciNet gives him distance 2 via Florian Luca and the publications  and . So it looks ok to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:12, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Titu Andreescu