Talk:List of mathematics articles

message: It is OK to write Matiyasevich's theorem but not Dirichlet's theorem. Why is that so? Can you please decide how to name theorems? --XJam 09:50 Oct 14, 2002 (UTC)
: Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (theorems)
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Should redirects like poset also be listed ? --FvdP
Yes, for two reasons: some people will use this list to look up a certain term, and we shouldn't hide "poset" from them; also, sometimes a redirect is turned into a real article, and we want to monitor things like that with the "Related Changes" feature. AxelBoldt 01:24 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)
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What about deleting one of "regular expression" and "regular expressions"?
They point to the same article and are definitely redundant in this list.
I would delete "regular expression", because the plural form sounds nicer to my
ears (just a feeling ...). What do you think out there? --zeno 07:12 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)
:I'd say it's a pretty common standard in the mathematics area to use the singular; that way you can write number of integers and get number of integers (the Wiki formatting automatically includes the "s" in the link). If only the plural form were only available, you'd have to write  number of integers. The worse part is - without a standard, you'd always be guessing; is it the Sylow theorem or Sylow Theorems?. So I always use singular, as in real number, rational number, etc. Chas zzz brown 09:18 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)
:The main purpose of this list is to monitor changes in the math area by using the "Related Changes" feature in the sidebar. Since the article lives at regular expression and regular expressions is just a redirect, we need to keep the singular in the list for this monitoring to work. The plural could be deleted. As a general naming convention, singular terms are preferred in article titles, for the reasons Chas gave above. AxelBoldt 20:11 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)
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In view of the length of this page and the time it takes to load, I think it would be useful to have a page titled "Mathematical topics" on which one sees:
A, B, C, D, ....., Z, and then clicking on any of those would take you to a page that lists mathematical topics with the corresponding initial letter.  Michael Hardy 00:53 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)
:Yes very good idea Michael. The same thing would probably be with page List of astronomical topics and if someone would start others like List of physical topics, ... I guess AxelBoldt did not think this would be necessary some day. --XJamRastafire 01:04 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)
The problem for me is, I have a shortcut which takes me to related changes for this page - if we broke it up into A, B, C, etc., then I'd have to check related changes for math with "A", then check related changes for math with "B", etc. I don't know if there's a workaround; but the main reason for this page to exist is that related changes function. Maybe a database function could be implemented which would make this easier somehow... Cheers Chas zzz brown 02:02 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)
I agree with Chas: the original reason for this page was to enable "Related Changes" for a quick list of changes in the math area; it's not really meant for users to look up mathematical topics. They should just use the search engine. AxelBoldt 04:18 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)
:Yes Chas and Axel's arguments are just okay. But I understand also Michael's torments when he is opening this page. This problem still remains regardless of being just a function for related changes. His second function of being a certain mathematical index is also very useful. How to kill two flies with one shot would be fine to know. --XJamRastafire
If, for each link in the page, "Related changes" returned changes in both to the article and the talk page, then we could remove about half the current links (the talk: ones). That would probably make the page load a bit faster. Chas zzz brown 10:47 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)
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A related idea I've been thinking of... Many of the topics on this list might be better served by a List of physics topics. For some examples from recent changes in the last 2 days: temperature, charge, semiconductor, Electromagnetism, special relativity, evolution, diode. These are topics that I wager a lot of mathematicians know something about, but strictly speaking, they aren't mathematics proper.
Of course, a lot of physics these days is mathematical; and there's no particular reason some topics couldn't be on both lists; after all, this is primarily a maintenance page. But I see no particular reason to include "diode" for example. I can start on this process, but first - comments? Chas zzz brown 01:47 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)
Sure, diode and evolution don't belong here for sure. Do you want to start List of physics topics? It's a lot of work though. AxelBoldt 03:23 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)
Start with List of physics topics Looxix 00:34 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)
:Refactoring is sure needed but first can we break this up into several pieces? The article is extremely too long to edit. -- Taku 14:39 18 May 2003 (UTC)
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What is the purpose of all the empty Talk: links? Don't they make the page unnecessarily large? -- Timwi 22:57 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)
:They are there so that when you click "Related changes" (which is the main purpose of the page) you see recently modified Talk pages as well. --Zundark 19:12 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)
::Aahh.... the software should really be doing that automatically :-p  -- Timwi 21:39 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)
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How about having two lists? One as an "index" of terms and the other as a list of top level categories. For example, the last list could simply have "Group theory" while the first has Lagrange's theorem, normal subgroup, group homomorphism, automorphism group, etc.. Phys 17:09, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: The top level topics should be (and I believe are) listed at mathematics. AxelBoldt 13:20, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

text: Good idea. And I'm eager to hear about the outer automorphisms of S6 (if there's anything deep underneath at least). --FvdP
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On general stuff about these mathematical topics pages:
#there is now no consistency in the way they self-link;
#the links to each other are as they should be (??);
#I don't actually agree with the idea of links to (for example) Riemann as well as Bernhard Riemann now being in the list.
Charles Matthews 14:32, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Names of theorems 

message: Someone has put a very conspicuous link to the mathematics category page on Wikipedia's main page.  At this time, very few of the mathematics articles on Wikipedia are listed on that page.  Therefore, I put a warning to that effect on the category page, with a link to list of mathematical topics.  So suddenly, this page becomes much more conspicuous to the (non-Wikipedian) public.  Since the "recent changes" links on this page appeared above the actual topics lists pages, they were more conspicuous than the links to the actual topics lists.  The non-Wikipedian public should be directed first to the topics lists and only later to the "recent changes" lists. Michael Hardy 20:32, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Reasons for my recent edit

message: Today I started adding articles from the math categories. I caught some bugs in my code, and as result at some point I reverted the lists 0-9, and A to C. (And I learn again and again that the only way to make sure a bot does its job is to check every single edit. :) Oleg Alexandrov 04:33, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update 

message: I started a new list, List of mathematics categories. I would appreciate it if more people have it on the watchlist and correct me if I add something wrong there. Oleg Alexandrov 01:39, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The reason this list is important is because my bot daily fetches articles form the categories listed there and adds them to the list of mathematical topics. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:58, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[List of mathematics categories]] 

message: This is a result of discussion over at List of lists of mathematical topics - most people wanted it renamed, and it was also suggested that this article (and related) be re-named List of mathematical articles or List of mathematics articles. I know it would be a lot of work to actually do, and I would be happy to help out where I could. What do people think? Tompw 23:30, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed renaming 

message: Topics are external to Wikipedia, as they exist in the real world.  Wikipedia's articles exist solely within Wikipedia making reference to them a self-reference, and a departure from Wikipedia's Manual of Style. --The Transhumanist 11:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Now the page violates [[WP:SELF]] 

message: I've posted the above thougth at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#It's time for a new namespace: "Contents:".    --The Transhumanist 11:29, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New namespace proposal 

message: I just left this same note at User talk:Oleg Alexandrov. I think that a move to the Wikipedia namespace should be seriously considered.  The problem with this page is that, except for the  template, the entire page is written as if the reader is an editor of Wikipedia.  If this text were reused for some reason in another form, it would not make sense. Khatru2 18:46, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you should post the note of suggested move to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Note that the move would be a lot of work (I did one such move earlier) and I would not agree with it, I think those lists look better in the main namespace. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:49, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Lists are an exception to the no self-references guideline.  See the list guideline.  The Transhumanist  19:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

text: If you're suggesting it should replace this list, I'd say that's wrong on several counts.  That category is not intended to contain all mathematics articles most of which are in subcategories, and categories are vastly inferior to topics lists. Michael Hardy 02:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree with Michael.  Categories are vastly inferior to topics lists. The entries of a topics list are centralized, that is, they reside on the topics list itself and can be edited directly; categories are autogenerated, with their entries on the pages of the entries rather than on the category pages, which makes the direct editing of categories impossible.  This makes categories cumbersome to create and maintain.  Because they are decentralized, categories are much harder to edit, requiring a tool like AutoWikiBrowser, which most editors do not know how to use, and force a time-consuming save operation after the addition or removal of any change in a category, which slows edits down to 2 to 6 edits per minute.  By comparison, in topics lists you can add, delete, or move hundreds or even thousands of links at a time without having to edit the pages represented by the links being moved. Lists take a fraction of the time to build and maintain, and therefore a single list editor can maintain many times more list items than the category items a  category maintainer can handle. Topics lists are also easier to monitor and defend against vandalism and inappropriate changes because they have edit histories, while the edit histories of category pages do not track changes to the categories themselves -- and because of this, entries can be removed from a category and not be noticed by anyone else.    Because of the reasons just given, lists with dedicated maintainers are much more comprehensive, while the corresponding categories are typically sparse or filled with holes.  Topics lists are more useful: they support scrolling, while categories only display 200 items at a time, but force most topics to be presented in subcategories -- therefore, accessing topics in the category system is more time consuming, and its small segmentation and formatting hinders copy/paste operations.  Topic lists support Related changes better, because more items can be presented on each page -- this is useful for spotting vandalism and inappropriate changes to the articles represented by the links on the list, making the lists a powerful tracking tool.  They also support redlinks, which are useful for tracking topics that do not yet have articles, and for spotting articles that have been deleted, allowing a new gap in the coverage of a list to be addressed and corrected.  Categories do not support redlinks - deleted pages simply disappear from categories.  Topics lists can be formatted, structured with subheadings, supported by images and templates, and aren't forced to be alphabetized -- entries can be presented in whatever order is most appropriate or useful in serving the purposes of the list.  Lists rock.  Categories suck.  Relatively speaking.  :-)  The Transhumanist  18:43, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self-references and suggested move 

message: I have made a couple of edits to this article in order to:
* draw attention to the list of mathematics categories and its relation to this list;
* clarify the purpose of the topical lists;
* make this article look more like a mainspace article in an attempt at compromise with those who think it should be moved to Wikipedia (I am neutral on this point, but understand that it would be a lot of work).
There are a couple of other changes I would like to make:
# incorporate the recent changes lists into the  template, so that they are less dominant;
# replace the final section with a See also section pointing to these links with briefer descriptions in a more appropriate tone.
Comments? Geometry guy 12:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updating this page 

message: There's a discussion on what the reference requirements for lists like this one.  The Transhumanist (talk) 01:10, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Archived at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Archive_23#Should_there_be_an_exception_for_indexes?. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:29, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Should there be an exception for indexes?]] 

message: I removed LaTeX and LaTeX2HTML from this list. Does anyone know why they were added? The categories that they are in don't even seem mathematical. Cheers, — sligocki (talk) 08:34, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed [[LaTeX]] 

message: Is this list a notable topic, or is it a WP:LINKFARM? Join in the discussion at WT:NOT#Linkfarm. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:31, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linkfarm 

message: A move was requested to rename this article to Lists of mathematics articles, a page which currently redirects to Lists of mathematics topics. It seems to me that this page is meant to be the top-level of a general list of all mathematics articles, so that the pages it links to are subpages of it in some sense. On the other hand there is always some confusion between "List of mathematics articles" and "Lists of mathematics topics". I think it would make more sense to make "Lists of mathematics articles" into a dab page that lets readers go to either of those, since it is not clear which one they would mean if they went to it directly. What do other people think? Is there some better way to organize these? — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: This page should be split, the content as is can be moved to Wikiepdia: namespace, since its content is mainly links to WP:, the mainspace content can be kept in mainspace, if it isn't already duplicated here.  Rich Farmbrough, 00:42, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed move / reorganization  

message: This hasn't been a list in many years and now is merely a call to a template.  I suggest redirecting this page to Lists of mathematics topics Illia Connell (talk) 22:46, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Tentatively agree. –Quiddity (talk) 00:39, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Absent any further comment for a week or so, I have made the change Illia Connell (talk) 07:20, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirect to [[Lists of mathematics topics]]