Talk:Manifold Destiny

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This is an attempt at documenting this extraordinary article and its account of the remarkable circumstances surrounding the proof, and its verification, of Poincaré's conjecture. As of now, this is a very rough draft, and readers who know more are more than welcome to contribute constructively to the development of this post. --Kidiawipe (Edited to better reflect the object of this Wikipedia article)

Sorry, but I consider this article to be somewhart over the border. The history of the proof of the Poincaré conjecture should be covered there, from a diverse set of sources, and hopefully not now, but some 6 to 18 months later, when the dust has settled. --Pjacobi 16:48, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Pjacobi: Thank you for your comments. I did initially have some reservations about creating this article, but the extraordinary nature of this article demands otherwise. It concerns itself with the human drama surrounding events leading to the proof and its verification, while also not merely presenting an interview with Grigori Perelman, so I believe this merits an article of its own, not to be subsumed (at the moment) under the Poincaré conjecture or the Perelman article. Certainly, things took a twist with the emergence of the alleged statements of clarification from some of the mathematicians.

For an appreciation of the intricacy of issues explored in that article, I can refer you to no better source right now than CH's comments at Talk:Grigori_Perelman, under the section "Apology, Withdrawal, Outline of Major Corrections Needed".

On the Poincaré conjecture article, I believe there is too much noise about the human drama for the liking of a more mathematically-inclined audience, so this article may serve as a kind of quarantine, if you will, of some of the more social aspects of the process.

As for the timeliness or otherwise of the coverage, may I suggest you make your wisdom available to the Wikipedians editing that page. --Kidiawipe

I have no problems postponing the AfD 18 months. --Pjacobi 10:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I predict that a merge with either Grigori Perelman or Poincaré conjecture will be this article's destiny; the Manifold Destiny article itself clearly is not notable. (But its contents add good information to other notable subjects.) But let's let the dust settle first. Arbor 08:10, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I've been of the mind for a while (as have others) that having a whole separate article on this New Yorker piece was too much; however, it seems recent events are proving me wrong, as there is quite a controversy (and apparently a legal battle) developing over Nasar and Gruber's work. It seems less and less likely that the resulting article will be merge-able into either the Perelman or PC articles. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 14:30, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it would seem to be the case, although there appears to be no legal battle as yet, only a possibility of commencing legal action. If the Tian-Yau affair is anything to go by, this may well turn out to be a pitch battle fought exclusively online. Only time will tell. --Kidiawipe

Contents 1 "represents an attack" 2 Reliable sources 3 past tense? 4 Frequent reversions 5 bboard rants 6 Current event?

[edit] "represents an attack"

Lumidek (talk • contribs) replaced "[the article] is a rather unflattering portrayal" by

The biased article, filled with a lot of untrue and distorted statements and conspiracy theories, represents an attack against the mathematical community [...] and Shin-Tung Yau.

I do not think that this formulation is NPOV. Specifically, it represents the POV of Yau , and not the POV of the article's authors. It may be the case that one of this POV's is actually the truth, and the other is completely wrong. But I don't see that -- so far.

I think that "unflattering portrayal" is a good formulation; but instead of saying that the article

represents [...] libel agains Yau

(which is, at the moment, POV), we should mention in the first paragraph that the article is the subject of a libel suit by Yau (which is NPOV).

Aleph4 15:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reliable sources

It is particularly important that this article only cites reliable sources. Blog posts and similar are not generally considered reliable; the case for using such as references has to be made in each instance. Charles Matthews 07:22, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] past tense?

Shouldn't the article be written in present tense? The article which it is about still does exist... Subversive element 19:18, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think whether the NY'er article still exists has to do with using present-tense narration, though I don't know the rules. Anyway, I changed the verbs to the present tense where the subject is the New Yorker article or its authors, so it's okay now.

[edit] Frequent reversions

These days, all the edits to this page that I see are reversions, and in all but one case (which instead concerned an IP editor) they are reversions from Mikeeverest1. It looks like there is some disagreement over whether the letters in support of Yau should be quoted or merely mentioned. Perhaps now is the time to discuss this? Ryan Reich 17:17, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

The user in question is not known for discussion. I was going to suggest a Request for Comment, because this is persistent edit-warring with no dialogue. Charles Matthews 18:36, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] bboard rants

Some anonymeese are ranting on the newyorker bboard, if anyone cares. I'm not going to try to guess who they are.

http://boards.newyorker.com/message.jspa?messageID=1700

[edit] Current event?

Seems like Yau is content with having a sympathetic profile on the New York Times, and is unlikely to sue the New Yorker. In any case, there hasn't been any news regarding the Manifold Destiny affair since the Oct 17 NYT article. I think it no longer counts as a current event. Wikaly324

I agree, the latest development concerning the article and the issues it deals with is the erratum to the Cao/Zhu paper, which was put up about a month ago. Hence the article doesn't qualify as "current" until any new developments take place, so I'm going to take down the current event tag.--M m hawk 17:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)