Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zariski surface

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 was Keep. Seraphimblade 03:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Zariski surface

Zariski surface (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) - (View log)

This page was originally authored by Dr. Piotr Blass who has recently been banned from Wikipedia due to his exhaustion of the community's patience with his repeated creations of his vanity autobiography and abuse of the courtesy blanking performed on his autobiography's first AfD to just continue to make his biography over ten unique times. However, this is not the entire reason that this article is being deleted.

The only resources for this article are books and articles by Dr. Blass himself, and one by the individual this manifold is named after. If one does a Google Search and has it so any pages containing either "Piotr" or "Blass" show up, Google gives 374 "unique" pages of which Oscar Zariski's article shows up on Wikipedia and its mirrors. Compounded by the fact that Dr. Blass has used the page to promote his original research and had plastered his name all over it, until JzG got rid of nearly all mentions of him, this article should be deleted as an unimportant geometric figure with no reliable sources that do not promote the primary author of the article (R.e.b. was the originator, but Dr. Blass has taken a stranglehold on this article).—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 01:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• One Question. You say it has "no reliable sources that do not promote the primary author of the article". Ignoring the author entirely for a moment, are the sources themselves reliable or not? --tjstrf talk 01:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep, my question has been answered. Blass may be a self-promoting jerk, but that's not a deletion criterion and it sounds like we still have our sources. --tjstrf talk 02:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: An article's problematic history or attractiveness to a now-banned editor are not good deletion rationales if the underlying content is sound or there is good material that can be added. (After all, we are dealing here with an abstract mathematical concept, not a living person biography.) It would be good to have input from the mathematics contributors as to whether this is a valid concept, appropriately described, and using reasonably common terminology. There are several links to this article from others which suggest that the answer might be yes, but I am not knowledgeable enough to say. Newyorkbrad 01:14, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• I do not know know if the sources themselves are reliable or not. What I do know is that Dr. Blass used this article to continue to publish his ideas. Of the resources, only one has an ISBN number, and it is not cited. I do realize that this is an extremely abstract concept, and that the fact that Dr. Blass is now banned is not a deletion criterion. I have contacted WikiProject Mathematics about this.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 01:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Excellent. Thanks. Newyorkbrad 01:59, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. It's not my field of mathematics, but the question is, is the term Zariski surface really used for this concept (by someone other than Dr. Blass and his students). If so, we should have some article here, even if it turns out only to be a stub because none of us know the appropriate references. If not,.... — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 02:11, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. A search of MathSciNet found 26 papers or paper reviews containing the phrase "Zariski surface", with authors Masuyaki Hirokado, Joseph Blass, Piotr Blass, Jeff Lang, Tim Ford, Angie Grant, Toshiyuki Katsura, Torsten Ekedahl, Raymond Hoobler, Masayoshi Miyanishi, Peter Russell, James Deveney, John Mordesen, Marc Levine, Richard Randell, and William Lang. That many legit mathematical publications and that many different authors (despite many being related by coauthorship to Blass) seems well above threshhold for a mathematical WP article to me. —David Eppstein 02:21, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. I looked through MathSciNet too, but I couldn't find any articles with the words "Zariski surface" in an article that wasn't written by Blass or one of his co-authors. I'm also not a geometer either so I don't recognize the description as having a name different from "Zariski surface". Lunch 03:37, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Per WP:AN#Piotr_Blass and the shortage of non-Blass-related references I consider this a well-judged nomination. I am unqualified to evaluate the significance of mathematics-related articles and have no opinion on the outcome, yet a discussion of whether to delete this article is very apt. I was the administrator who performed the actual banning of Dr. Blass and his sockpuppets. Durova^Charge! 04:19, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. It's obvious that a decent number (> 10) of the 26 papers mentioned by David Eppstein are in perfectly respectable journals, e.g. Duke, Compositio, Proc. AMS, etc. Thus the concept should be considered valid for Wikipedia purposes. The only issue here is on the title. But generally we don't delete valid content just because we suspect the title may not be appropriate. We try to find a better one and then move it to that. Unless evidence is shown that indicates that there is another more popular name for "Zariski surface", I see no reason why this concept should not only have an article but live at its current title. The reliable sources we have so far suggest that is the name. The fact that many of these authors are related to Blass somehow is not important (with only several actually being his students), as they are perfectly respectable researchers. I would expect this kind of thing to happen for a niche topic. Incidentally, Marat Gizatullin mentions in his review MR0546289, that "here we are using P. Blass's suggestion to call a surface $X$ a Zariski surface if $X$ is birationally equivalent to a hypersurface in $A^3$ defined by an irreducible equation of the form $z^p-f(x,y)=0$ [see Blass, "Zariski surfaces", Ph.D. Thesis, Univ. Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1977]". This strongly suggests to me that there was no widely accepted name for this until Blass proposed "Zariski surface". --C S (Talk) 04:34, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Weak keep per Chan-Ho. Although I cannot follow the mathematical journal articles, this appears to be a topic of minor but genuine importance. The article should be carefully policed for WP:COI intrusion in the future, which should be easier with the recent ban. bikeable (talk) 05:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• keep A named scientific contribution of this sort referred to by multiple other mathematicians is unquestionably notable by our standards. Whatever we think of the circumstances. DGG 07:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• keep per David. Article existed long before Blass started contribution. It does require some cleanup with quite a few references need filling in. --Salix alba (talk) 09:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. The concept is useful, but the article itself is not well-written. It almost looks like a series of abstracts from two or three different papers all jumbled together. DavidCBryant 12:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. The attempt to delete this article seems to motivated entirely by personal considerations rather than any discussion of the merit of the article itself. Whatever personal conflicts Dr. Blass may have with the admins here should be kept out of the discussion. --Lee Vonce 17:05, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• That is unfair. The problem here is that the major source for this is known to be a serial and prolific creator of vanity articles (not just on himself). He has inserted his name and links to his website into numerous other articles. Since the only source we had for the significance of this subject is one whose judgement on the significance of his own endeavours has proven to be exceptionally unreliable, it is valid to ask whether this is in fact a notable mathematical concept outside of its (very few) proponents. That question remains unanswered. How many secondary sources exist for this? Is it included in standard texts at undergraduate level? Guy (Help!) 18:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment:The journal sources show that "Zariski surface" as an actual topic in mathematical research. Whether it is included in an undergraduate text is irrelevant, as that is not how we judge whether a mathematics article should be deleted. I can understand the situation has been confused by Blass' actions, but really...the situation is simple enough, I wonder what the problem is. If this were any other mathematics article whose topic was the main subject of a dozen papers in well-respected mathematical journals, it would be an automatic keep by many non-mathematical editors. --C S (Talk) 18:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete Sorry guys, hate to be the lone dissenting voice, but this article is promoting original research. It's unforuntate that often times Wikieditors are asked to voice opinions on conceps we have little experience with, which makes it truely difficult to sift what's accepted in the applicable community from what is being promoted as a new construct or theory. Google hits shouldn't be completely trusted, as it appears everything we find originates from the same source (who was, incidentally, banned). /Blaxthos 18:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: As material on Zariski surface has been published in reliable sources, i.e. respectable math journals, it is not, in fact, "original research" in Wikipedia's sense. I don't understand why you bring up Google, as nobody advocating "keep" has mentioned Google at all. Perhaps you are confused by the mention of MathSciNet. --C S (Talk) 18:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Reply: I think the main issue here is that the articles on MathSciNet are still all connected to Dr. Blass and his research on the manifold. While I do not own a subscription (and I don't know that as a student at UM that I have access to MathSciNet/I don't remember my library PIN), these results still show an avid connection to Blass' research, which we do not have knowledge of peer reviews.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 19:17, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
      • (Google was mentioned in the nomination.) Lunch 19:24, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Why is this a "main issue"? People are frequently "connected" like this for niche topics. As for peer review, actually we do have quite a bit of knowledge of what is peer-reviewed or not. If you have any doubts as to say, whether the Duke Mathematical Journal, is peer-reviewed (because of MR0650373), just ask! --C S (Talk) 19:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
        • {Is a biology student) The reason I listed it for AFD was to see if there were sources that could be utilized that have been peer reviewed and utilized for the article, and it was not just Dr. Blass publishing his research.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 20:00, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment If you think this article is worth keeping because Blass (and coauthors) have published a few papers in reputable journals, did you also vote to keep the article on transreal numbers? I could see someone arguing either way. Anderson has had only one or two coauthors and has only published a handful of papers in journals. (He has self-published a lot more, but for the moment let's ignore that.) Blass, on the other hand, has had about 10 coauthors and has published a couple dozen articles in journals. Some of his coauthors have gone on to publish independently of Blass --- but still are, in a sense, his collaborators and aren't "independent". Where does one draw the line? Lunch 19:24, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: I'm very surprised that you would bring this up. You were one of the people that mentioned in the transreal AFD discussion that Anderson's publications on transreal numbers were not peer-reviewed. Anderson basically had a couple papers in some conference proceedings that were not reviewed. I based my "delete" on that. The major difference here is that Blass and the other authors have published in well-known peer-reviewed journals. Not to mention that they are actually mathematical journals versus whatever it was that Anderson published in. --C S (Talk) 19:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Yup, at the time I thought the proceedings where Anderson published were not reviewed. I was incorrect. The standards for that particular proceedings journal are different; his (few) articles were reviewed. The proceedings were also tangentially computer science related.
    • For the record, if it were my choice, I'd keep the article (this one on the Zariski surface). But I could see someone wanting to delete it. Lunch 21:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment My understanding of the wiki process is that, if I invent (or research or discover) the magnificent Foo, I am essentially disqualified from writing the wikipedia article on Foo. The proper writers are other wikipedians, and the proper sources needs to be journals on Foo, newspaper articles on Foo, and government surveys sampling the economic impact of Foo on homeless beagles. The three sources on this page listed are by Zariski and Blass, and I'm guessing that Blass made significant contributions to the realm of knowledge -- which means neither of them are good sources, and neither of them need to be the wikipedian writing this article. Ideally, someone who understands such things should gather some information from reliable, secondary sources, and that person should write this article. (It won't be me; I didn't comprehend the first sentence.) Anyone want to correct my perception of how things should work? I do not have absolute faith in it. Deltopia 20:48, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, that's not quite right. If you invented the magnificent Foo, it's perfectly okay for you to write about it, assuming your writing is based on published sources. Other editors may question the notability of Foo, or whether the article is NPOV, though. In particular, WP:COI says: "Who has written the material should be irrelevant so long as these policies are closely adhered to." --Sopoforic 21:11, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep per Chan-Ho and others.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  20:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment The original short form of the article seems to have been quite satisfactory. I suggest retaining just the current introduction and references, which are adequate for cross-links from other wikipedia articles such as List of algebraic surfaces. Mathsci 20:57, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep If its been published multiple times in reputable peer-reviewed journals then it doesn't matter if all the articles have a common author (plus many other co-authors). This pattern of authorship is fairly common in new and specialized work. AmitDeshwar 21:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep The theory is legit, even if I'm not fond of the author. Philippe Beaudette 23:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep assuming the theory has been published in a reputable journal beyond the control of the author, I'm not sure how it could still be called original research. JCO312 23:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep If it has been published in reliable sources, it does nat matter in the least that the author has been banned from Wikipedia. There is no "nice guy" requirement for scientificor mathematical theoories. Edison 01:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep or Merge Zariski seems to have been a real mathematician. There also appears to be an article for Zariski topology and the literature points to the existance of a Riemann-Zariski surface, which may be the same as a Riemann surface. An expert needs to go through and figure out if these are not all the same thing. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Infrangible (talk • contribs) 03:53, 19 January 2007 (UTC).
• Keep Not the same thing as the Riemann-Zariski surface; introduced by Blass (presumably by analogy). The first paper at a search for Zariski surface (WE Lang 1984) says:

Remark: The motivating examples to which our theorem applies are the generic Zariski surfaces introduced by P. Blass in [two preprints] Blass uses the phrase "generic Zariski surface in two different senses in these two papers, but in both case it refers to the non-singular model of a weighted hypersurface with only rational double points, to which our theorem applies.

The next result (Favre, Johanssen 2005) cites "what is now called the Riemann-Zariski surface" as from Zariski, O.: The compactness of the Riemann manifold of an abstract field of algebraic functions. Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 50, 683–691 (1944)

So there's a preexisting concept, and Blass's generalizations; all used by other people. Neither can be simply Riemann surfaces, known well before 1944. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• This discussion has been added as a test case to the proposed guideline Wikipedia:Notability (science). trialsanderrors 07:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment On ISI Citation search the 1987 monograph by Blass & Lang got three cites, if I include other Blass articles that refer to Zabriski surfaces I get about six. ~ trialsanderrors 08:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• This is a speedy keep. Zariski was one of the greats of 20th century mathematics; this isn't about the Riemann-Zariski surface at all, but a special class of surfaces Zariski discovered. Zariski surfaces are entirely notable in algebraic geometry. User:R.e.b. is a mathematician of such distinction that there should be no question of deletion. Charles Matthews 21:38, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep (it's a little too late for "speedy") per Charles Matthews. Newyorkbrad 21:40, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, per Chan Ho. Paul August ☎ 02:23, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Is the erroneous belief that Piotr Blass is the initial author of this article the only point against it, or is there something else? Michael Hardy 02:56, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. Not exactly. If Blass and his students are the only ones using that name for the concept, the article shouldn't be here under that name, nor should there be a redirect at that name. I believe the concept to be notable, which Blass's papers in peer-reviewed journals give credence, but I'm not convinced that the name is actually used by wotking mathemeaticians other than Blass and his students. (It's not my field of mathematics, nor do I personally know an algebraic geometer I could ask.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 03:24, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment on comment. Is there a good reason Zariski didn't himself name these objects 'Zariski surfaces'? Yes! Doesn't mean that the concept is less worthy of inclusion. Charles Matthews 12:22, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Maybe someone could leave a message on r.e.b.'s talk page and ask him if he knows. Lunch 03:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Given that User:R.e.b. created the article under this name, presumably he believes it's an accurate name. I would support asking him to go through the article and delete anything that might have been inserted that's incorrect or OR, however. Newyorkbrad 03:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't see why this article title should not be used if it's the one generally used by mathematicians who publish in this area. If some other name were in general use, then you'd have a point. Michael Hardy 02:33, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep — even a stopped clock is right twice a day; Zariski and his work is worthy even if Blass is a community-banned waste of electrons. ➥the Epopt 03:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment The fact (if it is a fact---I haven't checked) that Piotr Blass is banned would seem to mean he cannot now edit this article in any way that would be abusive. Therefore no such danger can be a reason to delete the article. Michael Hardy 02:41, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Legitimate work. Reliable sources exist. | Noticket 19:08, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • This is a pretty esoteric page for such a new user to contribute to. Is there something in particular that drew you to this discussion? Are there references that you can help add to the article? Have you edited before under a different user name? Thanks. Lunch 03:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Chan-Ho. S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 02:54, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, since apparently the POV text can be fixed and nothing else to argue the deletion from. Which cat would this nom be now? - Penwhale | Blast the Penwhale 12:31, 23 January 2007 (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.