Talk:Boundedness

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Moved from Bounded to Boundedness so that the page title would be a noun, in accordance with naming conventions. (Of course, keeping the adjective as a very convenient redirect, so all links work fine.) -- Toby Bartels 08:33, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)

I see your point. I read now the naming conventions, and that rule in general makes sense.

In this particular case though, I would rather not follow the "recommended" rule. You see, 98% of articles would indeed link to bounded rather than boundedness, and the boundedness noun sounds kind of clumsy and artificial. What do you think? Oleg Alexandrov 18:44, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I certainly don't find the word clumsy and artificial; it's the word that mathematicians use when they want a noun that describes the property shared by bounded functions. You can find examples among the pages that link directly to Boundedness; another (almost) example is on the page Totally bounded space, where I naturally wrote (with no ulterior motive) the phrase "total boundedness" a couple of times. The proportion of links is irrelevant; that's (one reason) why we have redirects: so that people can write "[[bounded]]" without needing to use the pipe trick as "[[boundedness|bounded]]".

(It is true that one reason that we have naming conventions is so that links to nonexistent articles will work properly. Thus anybody familiar with our naming conventions should use the pipe trick as "[[boundedness|bounded]]" so long as the page doesn't yet exist. Then when it's created, ideally under the proper title Boundedness, the next person will creat a redirect from Bounded instead of using the pipe trick. Only once the page has been created can we fall back on writing "[[bounded]]" directly.)

I do agree that this isn't an ideal title; I definitely prefer titles like Bounded space and Bounded function. Someday, those will exist as separate articles; and then this page will become a disambiguation page. But it should still be at Boundedness. (See Completeness -- including its edit history -- for an example of how I expect this page to develop.)

-- Toby Bartels 11:27, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)

Should blue be redirected to blueness? Charles Matthews 20:36, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't see why; the word blue is a noun (meaning the same as "blue colo[u]r", much as the noun "English" means the same as "English language"). However, a redirect the other way wouldn't be a bad idea -- I'll create it now! ^_^ (Arguably, the grammatical relationship between the noun "blueness" and the adjective "blue" is the correct analogue of the grammatical relationship between the noun "boundedness" and the adjective "bounded". But then the noun "blue" is more or less the analogue of the noun "bounded space", which I agree is a better title! -- once we have an article that precise.) -- Toby Bartels 11:27, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)

I would interpet Charles's comment as the statement that the word "boundedness" is a cooked up noun. Come on Toby, I get the impression you are just determined to follow the rule even if it does not make much sense in this particular setting.

Maybe we should ask more opinions about this, but the way I see it, boundedness is not a good idea. Oleg Alexandrov 19:11, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree with Toby and I do not think boundedness sounds awkward. But I must admit I am not a native speaker. MathMartin 20:55, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I do suggest bounded space and bounded function are really separate pages for the future; this page should probably mostly give that choice. 'Blue' was just my first reaction. I suppose if the principle is correct, rather than advisory, we should look at semisimplicity from semisimple; but that really is a jargon word, while boundedness is real English (actually I think unboundedness is more familiar). Whatever the principle, it is true that abstract nouns are less used in English than in some other European languages. Charles Matthews 21:06, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How about a wider discussion on Wikipedia Talk: WikiProject Mathematics? Anybody willing to post this? Oleg Alexandrov 03:23, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Compromise?

I created a bounded function aritcle. I suggest moving this boundedness to bounded set, and making bounded into a disambiguation page. Anybody disagrees? Oleg Alexandrov 05:08, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Having received no objections for one week, performed the move. Oleg Alexandrov 00:07, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The disambiguation page The new page (Bounded function) is great. However, the disambiguation page should still be at Boundedness, which is, of course, not in any sense a made-up word -- as evidenced by the fact that it is used! (I cited an example above.) -- Toby Bartels 04:41, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

I disagree, and I feel strongly about it. Would you like to post this on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics, so that we get more opinions? Please do not make unilateral changes before that; above, you had had one week to reply to my comment before I actually performed the move back to bounded. Oleg Alexandrov 04:55, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I take it back. The disambiguation page is terrible! Don't you know how to make a disambiguation page? You can look it up at Wikipedia:Disambiguation (particularly section 3) if you like. Since I've just gone through all the work of fixing all of the links to Bounded, and fixing the page Boundedness (which you left redirected the wrong way), and fixing the amazing distortion of grammar that you put through on Totally bounded space, I don't feel the least bit unjustified in that, after fixing all of that as smoothly as I could, the page has just now ended up back at Boundedness.

I will, incidentally, be happy to accept a naming convention that pages like Bounded, Complete, and Semisimple ought to be placed at adjectives. I would disagree with such a change, but it's not a big deal; and I left things so that, once such a naming convention is adopted, anybody (not just an administrator) can make the change. But in the face of current naming conventions, I am hardly making unilateral changes as I clean up your mess.

-- Toby Bartels 08:22, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

Just like "completeness" and "compactness", "boundedness" seems perfectly fine, and is preferable to "bounded" IMHO. Paul August ☎ 22:21, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

By the rule of the majority, boundedness wins.

What?! Surely, we don't want to resort to the tyranny of the majority? I would prefer that you had been persuaded by my brilliant (though subtle) argument. ;-) Paul August ☎ 02:48, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

No, no, I did not mean to say your argument is not good. I would on any day vote for "compactness". However, I really love "bounded" more than "boundedness". You see, "bound" is a noun, then you make it into the adjective "bounded", which is very reasonable, and then you force the "ness" at the end just because you want a noun derived from an adjective. And before all this story started, it was so easier to say "a function is [[bounded]]" and "a set is [[bounded]] rather than "a function is [[boundedness|bounded]]". Now of course those are separate articles, so this last argument loses force, but the one before is still valid. Anyway, I felt that this is one of those cases in which the (noun) rule trumps common sense; although I can certainly live with "boundedness". Oleg Alexandrov 03:10, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

PS I hope nobody saw in here more than a friendly disagreement. Oleg Alexandrov 01:18, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New naming convetion talk page

See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ambiguous adjectives).

[edit] Future changes

Just to make things clear, if people don't want to keep this page organised as it is now:

• To move Boundedness back to Bounded (perhaps after a change in naming conventions?), just use Special:Movepage like normally. This can be done by anybody at any time, and doesn't require an administrator. (And it can be undone by anybody afterwards.)
• To combine Bounded function and Bounded set once again into a single page (either at Boundedness or at Bounded), you do (now) need help from an administrator. However, I'm pretty sure that nobody actually wants to do this.
• To add new meanings of "bounded" (I can't think of any offhand, but they must exist), just add more bullet points on the diambiguation page, with appropriate links.

Anything that I haven't thought of, just ask me. Even I disagree with a proposed action, I'll still tell you how to do it! (If I don't respond here, then try my user talk page. Note that I don't check Wikipedia every day, but I'll help you when I get here.) -- Toby Bartels 21:07, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)