Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mathematical jargon

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep. Mailer Diablo 01:23, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mathematical jargon

Violates WP:WINAD#Wikipedia is not a slang or idiom guide" and WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a dictionary" Frühstücksdienst 03:18, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

• Speedy keep. No offense to nom. This subject goes way beyond simple slang and is a well established article. PJM 03:30, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
• Delete: per nom. --Hetar 03:36, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep The article is neither a definition, nor is it about slang or idiom. It is a useful index of mathmetical jargon. Non-topic competent editors should know better than to make proposals for deletion, or to vote thereon. I would ask you to retract your votes on the basis that you are not topic-competent. pat8722 03:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy keep. Mathematical jargon is more than simply an idiosyncratic verbalization of otherwise expressible concepts; it is the means by which mathematicians express those concepts at all. See WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a dictionary, in particular the exception enunciated in point 3. I also second pat8722 regarding the lack of evidence that either Frühstücksdienst or Hetar has any mathematical expertise. In fact, both of them seem to specialize in participating in or initiating AfD proposals more than anything else. Ryan Reich 04:51, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy keep --Terence Ong 05:16, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
• Strong, speedy keep per remarks above. Very useful, verifiable, and encyclopedic. dbtfz^talk 05:31, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. While I am tempted to speedy keep this, the rules as I interpret it do not allow it. However, it seems from comments here that this article is very useful to the mathemeticians amongst us.Capitalistroadster 05:39, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
• 'Delete for violation. This should be a CATEGORY, not an article in and of itself. Travislangley 06:41, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Many of the listings don't merit their own articles, so a category won't do, in my opinion. Plus we already have Category:Mathematical terminology. dbtfz^talk 06:49, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keep as per Ryan Reich's reasons above. Gandalf61 09:09, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep The article could do with some expansion (something on origins would be good, for example, but we need to avoid original research of course) but has potential. Waggers 09:33, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. Looking at all these "not a dictionary" AfDs looks like Wikipedia is occasionally a slang/idiom guide. Not making a value judgement here; just noting that maybe the official policy is somewhat lacking in its spirit or wording. Weregerbil 16:10, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Completely unsourced and thus not verifiable. The statement that these particular phrases are not technical terms but are designed to "distinguish the insider from the neophyte," currently rests entirely on the authority of the article's editors. Because it is unsourced, it is difficult for the reader to verify which entries are accurate. For example, I say that "back-of-the-envelope" is an example of an inaccurate entry; it is used by physicists and engineers, not mathematicians. But since no source is given, you have no way to judge whether I, or the article, is the more trustworthy. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:49, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how a claim's being unsourced implies that it is unverifiable. It seems to me that missing sources are a ground for improving the article (e.g. by adding sources), not deleting it. Claims like "mathematicians use iff to mean if and only if" are easily verifiable, even if they are not currently sourced. Moreover, some things are so easily verifiable that it seems downright silly to source them. For example, if I state in an article that Washington D.C. is the capital of the U.S., do I really need to provide a source for this claim? In short, it seems that there may be a risk of being over-vigilant about verifiability requiring claims to be sourced, to the point of actually decreasing the quality of Wikipedia. dbtfz^talk 19:22, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Corrected my own words: I don't think we can be over-vigilant about verifiability, properly understood. dbtfz^talk 20:38, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
    • The verifiability policy says "This means that we only publish material that is verifiable with reference to reliable, published sources." It is the source that is verifiable, not the truth of the claim. The policy says "Editors adding new material to an article should cite a reputable source." Obviously if you have not cited any source at all, then you have not cited a reputable source.
      • You should sign your comments. The verifiability policy is also clearly not talking about jargon, but about "facts, assertions, theories, ideas, claims, opinions, and arguments", which do not include jargon. There exists a style guide encouraging definitions of jargon terms, as I mention below, and pretty clearly implies that the jargon is considered as auxiliary to the main encyclopedic content. If you like, you may think of this page as the collection of all explanations that would otherwise have to be inserted parenthetically into all the other math articles when these terms, which only mathematicians understand, are used. And if they were inserted there I doubt you would ask for them to be sourced. Ryan Reich 07:00, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
  • The verifiability of this article, which concerns a topic of broad, common knowledge to those for whom its subject is interesting or useful, is in the assent of its readers to the claims it makes. For such topics a source is unlikely to be found, yet the verifiability of common knowledge is not in doubt (as long as it is presented by a member of the group to which it is common). Using the same principle you invoke, one could argue that no clarification of documented fact is acceptable in the encyclopedia. This page documents clarifications of terms that can be found in virtually every mathematical document published in the last century (in English, anyway). It is a reference, not an opinion piece. Ryan Reich 01:42, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Where, in the verifiability policy, does it say anything like "the verifiability of common knowledge is not in doubt (as long as it is presented by a member of the group to which it is common?" Where does it say that anything in Wikipedia can stand solely on the authority of its contributors? The policy says "Editors adding new material to an article should cite a reputable source" and calls the policy "non-negotiable" and says it cannot be superseded "by editors' consensus." Dpbsmith (talk) 01:08, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Since you ask, it states in Wikipedia:Explain jargon that we should do just that: explain jargon. It does not mention the necessity of rigorously citing sources for the jargon, and I interpret this to mean that the intention of the policy is to encourage authors to define terms which are not standard English but which are standard in the context they are used, according to the authors' understanding of the usage. In fact, it encourages the creation of an article such as this one. Ryan Reich 06:54, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I think the intent of "not a slang or idiom guide" is that we not become Urban Dictionary. This doesn't push us any closer. (ESkog)^(Talk) 21:51, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - DavidWBrooks 00:34, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep useful and relevant. — Adrian Lamo ·· 06:47, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
• STRONG KEEP. Dmharvey 22:53, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep as useful, relevant and encyclopeadic. – Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 12:01, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. That being said, Dpbsmithb has a point. The intro makes claims which match my graduate school experience. I believe that the same can be said of almost any English-speaking mathematician; but I don't know it. I don't see how anyone can know it without having talked to a sizable and random sample. Let us either find a sociologist of mathematics who has done the necessary research, or edit to what we rigorously know. Septentrionalis 03:14, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.