Talk:Topological group

message: "Almost all objects investigated in analysis are topological groups (usually with some additional structure)."
The above statement, which appears at the beginning of the article, is ambiguous. For example, continuous functions, open sets, and Lebesgue measure are not topological groups in any reasonable sense. Can someone rephrase the sentence? --Acepectif 03:45, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  objects in analysis 

message: After the remark that the fundamental group of a topological group is abelian, this is deduced from the corresponding property for H-spaces.  This is silly: the proof for topological groups works the same way and is simpler, so H-spaces introduce needless generality.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.82.36.10 (talk • contribs) 21:08, 27 August 2007
I do not fully agree with the logic of this remark. If you have a general theorem it seems to me perfectly reasonable to cite the theorem in justification of a particular case of it, whether or not the particular case can be proved more simply. Apart from anything else this helps to show relationships among different parts of the subject. Nevertheless I have reworded this statement in an attempt to answer this criticism. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:59, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  H-spaces 

message: On 17 September 2008 Topology Expert tagged this page as possibly requiring a complete rewrite. I have read the page and cannot see why this should be. I have also looked at the talk page to see whether Topology Expert gives any explanation there: he doesn't. Topology Expert has disputed a few facts concerning closures of compact sets with Zundark, but a dispute on one point scarcely justifies a complete rewrite. Can anyone justify keeping the tag there? JamesBWatson (talk) 13:01, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the tag. The article could obviously be improved, but it's no worse than many others, and the tag doesn't really seem justified. The discussion between me and "Topology Expert" above is not relevant, as "Topology Expert" eventually admitted that I was right anyway. --Zundark (talk) 14:02, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I am putting the tag back with the following justification:
* There are many important results that could be included about topological groups such as its applications to harmonic analysis and Lie group theory
* The article is not structured well; different facts are places in a haphazard manner
Topology Expert (talk) 09:33, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

text: Under those conditions, wouldn't most articles qualify for this tag? We need some sort of threshold to fall below before we apply the tag, and I think any reasonable threshold would exclude this article. Topology expert, why not make use of the comments page, which is included in the rating template above? This way your ideas are still noted until taken care of, and we aren't in the situation of applying rewrite tags to articles whenever they're not close to good articles. Ben (talk) 23:40, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

text: This article does not need a rewrite. Sure it's missing content, but articles needing rewrites are ones that are seriously deficient in many respects, and often have no structure at all. If you look at "vector space" before the flourish of activity that made it what it is now, it wasn't really any better than this article is now, and no rewrite was required to turn it into what it is now. This article has structure (but needs more) and content (but needs) more, that's all. And no, topological groups are not more important than vector spaces. RobHar (talk) 18:05, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

text: Not that I really care to get in a discussion with you about this statement, but pretty much every field in math (and science) uses vector spaces. Many subjects in math use groups that are topological groups, but that doesn't mean that topological groups are that important. The amount of math that requires the notion of topological group in its full generality is extremely small compared the amount of math that uses even finite-dimensional vector spaces on a regular basis. I mean, many things in sight are topoi (including topological groups), that doesn't make them as important. Yeah, Lie groups are extremely important, and pretty cool (and I've never thought of what the "start of modern mathematics" is), but that doesn't make topological groups important. RobHar (talk) 19:10, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

text: Well vector spaces are completely classified in the sense that any two vector spaces over the same field, having the same dimension are isomorphic. This is not the same (there is not an analagous property) for topological groups in general.
Topology Expert (talk) 19:16, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

text: I was simply responding to JamesBWatson's question about whether anyone else had an opinion. I gave my opinion. You didn't have to remove the tag because of that. You only argued about whether topological groups were more important than vector spaces, which has nothing to do with the tag (or really with what this talk page should be about). If you find topological groups really important then that's great for this article and you can put the energy you have into improving the article. Perhaps I shouldn't have included that last sentence in my original comment because it clearly upset you and brought the discussion even more off target, but I simply found your comment about the importance of topological groups wrong (and unnecessary). I didn't mean to upset you. Regards. RobHar (talk) 19:39, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed rewrite 

message: Is Template:Basic notions in group theory intended for this article?  It is referred to.  Quotient group (talk) 19:27, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Silence means consent.  Quotient group (talk) 19:37, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say it usually means "apathy". Sometimes it means "consent", but often it means "you must be joking" or "I wasn't paying attention". --Zundark (talk) 20:40, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Very often it means that the people who might have an opinion haven't seen the message. It is certainly unrealistic to assume it means consent. Since you ask I have no idea whether the template was intended for this article, nor do I care.I don't find it particularly helpful, but perhaps it does no harm. JamesBWatson (talk) 10:07, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template