Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0

message: Instead of looking at the "most comonly linked" articles, which reflects a certain author bias, can we get a list of "most commonly viewed" math articles, which hopefully reflects reader interest? Better yet, "most commonly viewed by non-editors" of which "most commonly viewed by anons" might be an aproximation. Just because diameter is heavily linked does not imply to me that anyone is interested in reading about diameters. linas 21:05, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How is anyone supposed to know how much an article has been viewed? From what I've heard, that feature was disabled a few years ago because it bogged down the servers.  ⇒  JarlaxleArtemis 00:49, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: this page from 2004 may be helpful. Walkerma 05:29, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing that out. I filtered the list to only show the mathematics articles see User:Salix alba/maths/top viewed maths articles. Its nice to know that mathematics ranks high at number 16, (above Penis so there is hope for humanity). Some of the articles we rate as most important get a poor showing. Algebra, Arithmetic don't appear and Geometry ranks quite low at position 1803. --Salix alba (talk) 09:41, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't forget that viewing ratings depend on both importance and value-to-the-reader!  If you look at the articles you mention as they were in Jan 2004, you can see they were all basically stubs: Algebra, Arithmetic and Geometry.  Thankfully this project has made all three much more useful today, thanks to you for that. Walkerma 16:16, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a brand new page listing the top 100 most viewed - Maths takes a back seat compared to sex, I'm afraid! Walkerma 02:55, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Most commonly viewed? 

message: I've now created a bunch of categories and a template for inclusion on talk pages.
*:Category:Mathematics articles by quality
*:Category:Mathematics articles by importance
*Template:Maths rating
very minor start at adding the template to pages. --Salix alba (talk) 16:38, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And mathbot (who else? :) generated Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Mathematics articles by quality which I guess will be the repository for WP 1.0 mathematics articles. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:16, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I note there is a comment column in the table. How is this filled in? --Salix alba (talk) 08:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  That needs to be done by hand in the table, then the bot will not overwrite it. I don't know of any good way to add that info by a bot using the categories. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:36, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories and ratings 

message: So the table on the page for topics in algebra looks lonely.  Do we intend to eventually have a table listing the core topics for other subfields, like say topology, geometry, analysis?  What about more refined lists of core topics?  Like a core topics list for group theory?  Wait for Wikipedia 2.0, probably. -lethe talk [ +] 11:01, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ideally. I think the priority is to identify the Top importance articles, in each sub field. Just a matter of time and effort. Eventually these tables will be replace by the automatic lisiting in Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Mathematics articles by quality, this will require the  tag adding to the articles. --Salix alba (talk) 11:16, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I should mention, we at WP:V0.5 have built into the template  a parameter called "category", so we can classify articles as Socsci (Social Sciences & Society) or Math, take a look at the template (which includes a nice summary of how to use it).  There are ten subcategories of Version 0.5 articles that correspond to these.  I could see you organising the maths articles the same way- category=Topology and the like. That way you could (at least in principle) have the bot generate a table for each of your subcategories, such as "Mathematics Topology articles by quality". Walkerma 16:06, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  subfield core topic tables 

message: I've changed the "Quality" legend table to better conform to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment. — Paul August ☎ 21:04, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changed "Quality" legend 

message: I'm increasingly finding a need for a B+ category, these are articles which are close but not quite at GA status, and those which have either been delisted from GA or been failed GA. Pi is a typical example better than your average B-class article but not quite making the GA grade. There seem to be quite a lot of maths articles which fall into this cat Knot theory, Fractal, Chaos theory, Number, Statistics, Matrix (mathematics). 
I've changed the maths rating template to allow for this new rating, this should not affect the 1.0 Assesments as articles will also be listed as B-Class. Hopefully this category will allowus to identify those articles with the best chance of becoming GA's. --Salix alba (talk) 18:56, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  B plus articles 

message: On Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Core_biographies#Mathematicians.2C_9 there are 9 mathematicians.
# Archimedes
# Euclid
# Leonhard Euler
# Pierre de Fermat
# Carl Friedrich Gauss 
# Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi
# Gottfried Leibniz
# Blaise Pascal 
# Pythagoras
These don't match with our ratings as Pierre de Fermat, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, Blaise Pascal only get High or Mid ratings.
If we could suggest just 9 mathematicians who would they be? (Newton is already included under physics). --Salix alba (talk) 20:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Top 9 mathematicians 

message: I notice that ratings like "B", "A", etcetera have been popping up on articles lately.  It would be helpful if somewhere the rationale for these ratings were posted, so that the feedback could be used to improve the articles.  (Conversely, then we can also assess whether the "graders" are using reasonable criteria.)  —Steven G. Johnson 21:40, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See the main page for the grading scheme. Basically
*Stub - very short articles
*Start - fair coverage of mathematics, but missing important sections, like history, context, illustrations, references. May not be accessable, to the layman.
*B - passable articles, most of the basics are covered, but needs expansion and polishing.
*B+ - Better articles, generally have a good attempt at explaining the topic in laymans terms, history section, Addition is a good example of this.
*GA - reserved for articles which are Good articles
*A - Articles close to being featured articles
*FA - reserved for featured articles.
The line between Start and B can be fuzzy.
Importance can be faily subjective.
*Top - the absolutely essential articles. Top level articles on major fields, and basic mathematical concepts.
*High - Important topics, any good mathematical reference work should have these
*Mid - Topics a for well rounded mathematical education.
*Low - Specalist topics.
The grading is still in development, much of it is a comparative grading, obtained by comparing the different articles. Input is most welcome. --Salix alba (talk) 22:20, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You misunderstand me.  I saw the general guidelines for grading.  What I am suggesting is that graders add somewhere (e.g. on the Talk page of the article in question) the specific reasons why they assigned a particular grade to that page.  It is almost totally unhelpful (and fairly arbitrary) to see that a particular article was assigned a "B" grade without knowing what specifically "needs expansion and polishing".  —Steven G. Johnson 17:56, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there a particular article you are think of? --Salix alba (talk) 18:25, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

text:  There is a way... you use the "comment" option in the math rating template. For example, the Topology article has  Is this what you had in mind? Tompw 19:56, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rationale for rating? 

message: The following are articles listed in Wikipedia:Vital_articles#Mathematics. Current count: 58 Mathematics articles. These (should) all now appear in the main page, so have been removed here for reference purposes. Tompw 18:11, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mathematics Vital Articles 

message: Why are Hypercomplex number,  Quaternions, Octonion, Sedenion, Hyperreal number,  Surreal number, Ordinal number, Cardinal number, etc... listed under number theory? Was this already debated? They are not generally considered to be number theoretic topics.  shotwell 06:48, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point, not quite sure whre to place all these. Hypercomplex number,  Quaternions, Octonion, Sedenion probably go under Algebra. And Hyperreal number,  Surreal number, Ordinal number, Cardinal number, are set thoery hence under foundations. --Salix alba (talk) 07:50, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think (quite possibly me) knew that the ywere types of "numbers", and thus felt they should therefore go under number theory. The logic would be fine if it wasn't for tge fact that number theory isn't really about numbers... Tompw 11:20, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strange things to list as number theory 

message: The Wikipedia 1.0 is now 43KB in size, and won't be getting any smaller. I would therefore like to propose each of the twelve "Articles to include" sub-sections into seperate pages (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0/Basics, etc.), and leave everything else on the main page. What do people think? Tompw 18:41, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Given three days has passed withotu a single comment, I shall go ahead and do this. (Such move won't affect Mathbot's stats collecting - that's done via the categories). Tompw 20:30, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split page up? 

message: "Currently supported values for field are: basics (elementary material and terms used throughout mathematics), analysis, algebra, geometry (includes topology), applied mathematics, probability and statistics, number theory, Discrete mathematics, foundations (logic and set theory), Mathematical physics, history and mathematicians."
I'd like to propose that history be replaced with general. The reason is that there is only one article on the history of mathematics, but there are lots that are more general (such as everything under the general section). Tompw 17:05, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Field" element of maths rating - propose replace "history" with "general" 

message: To quote from the article:
"In mathematics, specifically in complex analysis and algebraic geometry, the Riemann–Roch theorem is an important tool in the computation of the dimension of the space of meromorphic functions with prescribed zeroes and allowed poles. It [the theorem] relates the complex analysis of a connected compact Riemann surface with the surface's purely topological genus g, in a way that can be carried over into purely algebraic settings."
... which means it encompasses geometry, topology, algebra, and analysis. So, what should I put in the "field" element of the maths rating template? Tompw 19:50, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is a major theorem in Riemann surface theory, which sits most comfortably in the "geometry and topology" field in my opinion. Geometry guy 16:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Riemann-Roch theorem : Which field?? 

message: We've got a weird situation over at GA Review - we have someone who is claiming that his math proves Einstein's theory of special relativity is false and so should lose its GA rating and he won't go away until someone checks his math :-P We're not mathematicians, etc., so was going to see if someone here might be able to put this to rest? --plange 15:40, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help with math 

message: The following changes are proposed.
* Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Legend and rating should be split into two templates — the latter, in particular, needs to be reformatted because it is too long (also it is overused) — it has been replaced by a much shorter description in all but two places.
* Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Table could be moved to the Wikipedia 1.0 subpage (which is currently a redirect) for consistency. Moved to Wikipedia 1.0/Table with VeblenBot's part at User:VeblenBot/MainTable.
* A Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Grading scheme page should be created, as a replacement for Template:Grading scheme, taken from Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0#Grading Scheme.
* Template:WP MATH 1.0 should be modified to refer to all of the mathematics assessment categories.
* Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Legend and rating should be replaced by a template for the mathematics article assessment categories. Done apart from the Unassessed categories and the overarching :Category:WikiProject Mathematics articles.
* The full length description of the maths rating syntax should only be given in the  page. There are now only a few two pages that use this detailed rating.
* A category should be created for this project, e.g., :Category:WikiProject Mathematics assessment or :Category:Wikipedia 1.0 Mathematics. Any preferences or other suggestions?
* Most pages in the project should begin with a banner which puts them into this category: one option is to use  for this purpose, as this banner already links to most of the pages in the project. (The banner is now at the top of most relevant pages.)
* Rewrite some of this article to reflect the current state of the project. Some rewriting now done.
* Delete Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Legend and rating, which is no longer used. Too much work to merge, I marked it historical. CMummert · talk 21:19, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested "to do" list 

message: I implemented the alternate formatting for the pages that contain all articles with a fixed quality grade, and I also changed the formatting for the history and theorems pages while I was at it (since those are not single-field pages). Are there any other changes to the bot except the mathematicians page?  If not, I am going to leave the bot alone for a week or so to make sure no problems come up. 
I think that this page (the actual page, not the talk page) needs to be formatted better, especially at the top.  I would like to see it start with some text, which is more friendly than starting with a nav box and a table.  Maybe we could move the table down to below the first section, and rewrite/split up the intro? CMummert · talk 00:15, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Progress indeed! Yes, I agree we need a more friendly start, although I like (but am not wedded to) the nav-box as a banner. It would be nice to move the table down, but it is not completely obvious how to do it as the page is full of tables! Something to mull over, I guess... Geometry guy 00:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further progress 

message: There's been some discussion on user pages lately regarding the meaning attached to the Top/High/Mid/Low importance labels, and indeed their application by different people is (understandably) not quite consistent at the moment. In particular, two views have been advanced: (i) that the importance level should be relative mathematics as a whole, and (ii) that it should be understood within a specific subfield of maths (such as algebraic geometry or analysis).
First of all I think either way this matter should be settled here centrally to avoid unnecessary switching back and forth of labels (while in my mind a very useful activity, let's face it, the grading of articles is still time away from editing articles, so the more efficient the process the better). In this context I would like to offer my view on the matter: I'm quite strongly in favour of importance assessment within all of maths, not within smaller areas, for the following reasons:
* Assessment within disciplines leads to a serious proliferation of Top/High labels
* Deciding how finely grained subdisciplines to use adds another layer of complexity; obviously the finer the grid the more Top/High-importance articles
* Assessment within the totality of maths fits in my mind better with (one of) the goal(s) of the whole grading exercise: prioritising the articles form the viewpoint of importance to a high-quality encyclopaedia. 
In addition, some further guidelines could be useful for the importance assessment exercise. I would like to propose a hierarchical approach that could also help organise articles around major topics. A possible model could be:
* The main subdisciplines in maths (plus some selected "general" articles) should receive Top importance (e.g., Number theory, Algebraic topology, Analysis, Integral). These articles could then refer to High-importance articles for further details.
* Second-order subdisciplines within the Top-importance areas as well as the very few most important objects / theorems should have High importance (e.g., Homology and cohomology, Elliptic curve, Harmonic analysis, Fourier transform). These articles could then link to Mid-importance articles for further details.
* Third-order subdisciplines (or theories) within High-importance topics as well as most definitions, theorems etc. that should belong to a good graduate student's general knowledge regardless of own field of speciality could for the Mid-importance layer; and
* The articles of Low imprtance could be those that would not likely be interesting to people outside of the speciality.
Stca74 22:22, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I felt this was a topic for the entire WikiProject to discuss, so I initiated a discussion yesterday afternoon UTC at WT:WPM#Importance of mathematics articles. I suggest that the discussion be carried out there. I actually disagree with quite a few of the above points, as I have explained in more detail at WT:WPM. In particular, I don't think Wikipedia is an encyclopedia like EB: it is an overlapping nested family of encyclopedias. I also think classifying importance within mathematics as a whole is hopeless. How to compare the Atiyah-Singer index theorem with platonic solid? I would rather not use subfields, but categories to provide the context for assessing articles. If an article is a important article in an widely populated category, it should be regarded as important. This avoids comparing chalk with cheese. I do not believe such an approach would overfill the top importance rating, quite the contrary, because notability within a major category is rather hard to achieve. Furthermore, this approach is more flexible: setting up a rigid framework for importance assessment is less adaptable as WP grows. Geometry guy 23:08, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Importance assessment 

message: Does Actuarial Science belong more properly in "Applied Mathematics" or on "Probability and Statistics"? -- Avi 16:37, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say Probability and Statistics is the closest fit. --Salix alba (talk) 17:40, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree, this is primarily stats! Geometry guy 22:09, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Actuarial Science 

message: Is there a way to request that a particular article be assessed?
I created a new article recently, Collaboration graph, and I do not think it would be proper for me as its creator to assess it myself.... Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 12:53, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assessment process 

message: This WikiProject uses a non-standard B+ grade to mark those articles that are very near GA. I think the purpose is to determine those articles that would benefit most from editing to get to GA. Since the B+ level is not recognized by the WP1.0 Bot, such articles are doubly categorized under the GA-class articles such that they can also be counted by the WP1.0 Bot. I don't agree with this and suggest instead that B+ articles be doubly categorized as B-class instead of GA-class. This way, the Wikipedia-wide WP1.0 statistics for GA-assessed articles would closely match the actual GA count. --seav (talk) 09:18, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  B plus articles categorized as GA-class 

message: Mathematics WikiProject members, please, this is being discussed at:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of small numbers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Names_of_small_numbers#Names_of_small_numbers
Thank you. Pandelver (talk) 00:02, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please review seriousness v. proposed deletion as parody of new article [[Names of small numbers]] at [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of small numbers]] 

message: Hey there! I'm from WP Elements, and we want to start using Bplus-class for our articles, but without any idea how to introduce it. I noticed you use it, so could you help us to do it? Help is surely appreciated--R8R Gtrs (talk) 09:43, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not au fait with the internals. I just wonder why you'd want the bother of being different. In maths a lot of contributors just can't be bothered with all the FA GA stuff so this is more for internally setting the scale. I'd have thought the elements would be something that you could get through those sorts of processes much easier and get them featured on the front page and suchlike goodies. Dmcq (talk) 10:04, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but we're also much smaller than this project. And yes, it's planned to be an internal thing as well. So, if anyone could help, it would be very sweet--R8R Gtrs (talk) 10:23, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: For the technicalities you would need to modify your project banner template to allow for Bplus as well as creating the appropriate categories. Template:WPBannerMeta/doc#Custom masks seems to be the appropriate part of the documentation. I'd advise sticking with the standard Template:WPBannerMeta template as the base template for your project template. The hardest bit may be to get any pages which need summary information of number of Bplus class pages, you might need to get a bot for that.--Salix (talk): 13:03, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bplus-class 

message: Crossposted from Category talk:Mathematics stubs:
Several times I have seen articles classified as stubs that had multiple refs and multiple sections. Each word is a separate link, by the way. These examples came from a tiny section of the first page. If I were a member of the Mathematics project, I'd reassess all these so we'd know how many stubs we really have. That said, I don't know what the standards are and I don't want to step on anyone's toes.
Addendum: Are articles reassessed at regular intervals?--Rmky87 (talk) 04:31, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Go ahead and remove stub tag and change the rating as you have done at Absolute Galois group. Anyone can reassess articles using the criteria overleaf. We don't have a formal reassessment process.--Salix (talk): 07:25, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Overestimation of stubs