Talk:List of people by Erdős number

message: I've argued in the past that the (subtle, indirect) guidance against adding redlinks must not mention Wikipedia, per WP:SELF. It wasn't until I saw User:David Eppstein's recent edit summaries that I realized that User:RishiAcharya28 had actually added that mention again. When I reverted it, User:XOR'easter reverted my edit. My reading of SELF is that we don't say the articles are on Wikipedia, because that complicates things for derived works. I'm as frustrated as anyone with the ongoing addition of redlinks to this list, but I think this is the wrong solution. Not only do I see it as conflicting with the guideline, but it clearly doesn't stop them anyway. Ntsimp (talk) 19:33, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Removing the word "Wikipedia", as you did, does not remove the reference to Wikipedia (the sentence stating that this list only lists people with Wikipedia articles); it just makes that sentence more difficult to understand. It was not an improvement. Are you arguing that, in a list restricted to entries that have Wikipedia articles, we cannot tell the readers that the list is restricted in this way? That seems unhelpful, more a pedantic overinterpretation of the rules than a useful thing to do. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:47, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I am arguing that the guideline is precisely about using the word Wikipedia. The license allows this list to be re-used in many ways, and the guideline is saying to use portable phraseology. My revert returned the sentence to the way it had been worded for a long time, up until last October. If that's not good enough, surely there's a better way to explain that it's a list of articles rather than a list of people, without running afoul of the guideline. Just saying "Wikipedia" isn't going to stop people from adding redlinks; it never has. Ntsimp (talk) 20:13, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Nothing short of page protection would stop people from adding redlinks. We might as well have the sentence be as clear as possible. And even if the page is mirrored on some other site, it remains true; it is, actually, portable. XOR'easter (talk) 20:24, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

text: Another relevant guideline is MOS:LISTINTRO which explicitly tells us to describe the scope of a list in its introductory material. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:19, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: That one specifically says to avoid referencing Wikipedia. I think our situation is one that has been thought of before. Ntsimp (talk) 21:34, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The scope of this list is, deliberately, people with existing Wikipedia articles. Not saying so would be a disservice to the reader. If that were omitted and the text were copied elsewhere, then the other copy would be a puzzling partial list. Self-reference is probably best to avoid most of the time, but most isn't all. XOR'easter (talk) 21:39, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

text: Perhaps it is also worth pointing out that WP:SELFREF explicitly states "Similarly, many list articles explicitly state their inclusion criteria in the lead section." and suggests to mark such things as  (that is, a self-reference that is explicitly allowed and would make sense in a print version of the article) rather than removing them. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:49, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I just added , rephrasing the sentence a bit to make it work. XOR'easter (talk) 21:55, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I like this solution. Thank you. Ntsimp (talk) 22:00, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm glad we found one that works! :-) XOR'easter (talk) 22:06, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self-reference again 

message: Are we too respectable to include https://xkcd.com/599/, either here or on the Erdős number page? -- Roger Hui (talk)  (Erdős 2) 04:25, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: If it were appropriate, the main article would be the place. But I'm not sure that "XKCD has a good joke on this topic" belongs in an article. Ntsimp (talk) 21:31, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Oh, I wasn't going just say that XKCD has a good joke; I mean to include the XKCD images.  But I guess not. -- Roger Hui (talk) 22:06, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  XKCD 

message: It seems that all Péter Pál Pálfy (DOI: 10.1016/S0012-365X(98)00325-2), Péter Kiss (mathematician) (DOI: 10.4064/aa-57-3-267-281) and Tarlok Nath Shorey (DOI: 10.4064/aa-30-3-257-265) co-wrote an academic paper with Paul Erdős. Their Wikipedia articles have been created in January 2016, December 2012 and June 2013, respectively. If you agree, please add them to the list. --PKalnai (talk) 07:55, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Added, since the AMS calculator agrees. Lklundin (talk) 11:50, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some missing bluelinks of people with Erdős number 1 

message: It seems like Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and their advisor Terry Winograd co-wrote a paper with Rajeev Motwani, who is already mentioned here as having EN = 2. The paper is "What can you do with a Web in your Pocket" from 1998 published in "IEEE Data(base) Engineering Bulletin". The question is if it can be considered as research collaboration in the required sense. The paper is indexed in Microsoft Academic (2398953749) and dblp (BrinMPW98), however, it is missing in Mathematical Reviews or zbMATH. If you have an opinion on this, please share. --PKalnai (talk) 16:22, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: This paper clearly counts. I added them. Note that Winograd shows up as #3 on the calculator too. Ntsimp (talk) 14:05, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Google computer scientists possibly with Erdős number 3? 

message: Hello,
I'm relatively new to Wikipedia editing so I'm not sure whether there are policies against this, but recently I added Moscow (U.S.S.R.) as a collaborator with Erdos number 2. The edit was reverted, in my opinion wrongly. This can be confirmed both through MAA MathNet as well as by the following paper due to Conway: A Headache-Causing Problem. Conway is listed with an Erdos number of 1. This also complies with the requirement that we already have a Wikipedia page on everyone we add to the list.
The last question is whether Moscow can be considered a person. While I am not an expert on Russian law, note that in American law there is precedent for municipial personhood in at least a limited fashion. See Holloway for example on a brief introduction to the matter and an argument for full municipial personhood. Due to the fact that Moscow is a person under current legal frameworks at least in certain circumstances and can be confirmed as a second-degree collaborator to Erdos via Conway both directly and through the MAA, and whereas Wikipedia prides itself as being an impartial and correct source of information, I believe the reversion was in error. I would like to find confirmation that there isn't something I'm overlooking here before going back in and editing again.
--Goldenshrike (talk) 19:59, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: this is a "List of people by Erdős number" -- people = human beings, no cities, no universities, no countries, no continents Brienanni (talk) 20:29, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

text: This is, like, a mildly amusing riff on the Conway / Paterson joke, stripped of context in such a way to leave it obscure and unfunny.  Next time you tell the story to your math friends, you can end with the coda that you tried to add Moscow to this page and some sourpuss Wikipedia editor gave you a lecture about policies requiring reliable sources and forbidding original research and so on.  But don't add it again. --JBL (talk) 21:33, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I suspect F. D. C. Willard also has a finite Erdős number, fortunately a large enough one that we don't have to worry about whether they qualify for listing here. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:40, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Erdos Number of Moscow