User talk:Oleg Alexandrov/Archive11

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[edit] Formal power series and residues

Hi. I reverted your edit to formal power series because that section in the article does not assume that X is a complex variable or that the series is even convergent. Rather, X is a formal variable, and the series can have its coefficient in any ring, and complex analysis is not applicable except in a very special case of holomorphic functions.

I wonder what you think. You can reply here. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC) (originally on User:Ivanip's talk page.

Hello there, let me just point out that residue calculus and singularity analysis of complex functions is used on formal power series all the time. I can't think of a good reference at the moment, but this is very common. Perhaps a trip to the library would convince you to reconsider your edit revert. Respectfully, :-Zahlentheorie 10:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
It surely is, if it is applicable. Any such edit should mention the assumptions and conditions involved. That because there are plenty of situations when such methods will not be applicable. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:54, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I look over some books, such residue calculus is often used to extract the coefficients in, e.g. Vertex Operator Algebra, where the series is a formal Laurent Series instead (Appendix, VOA and the monster, Frenkel et al). Actually I got the formula in my lecture notes, and that it is just a formal notation, in actual calculations we can use such expression with suitable assumptions. ivanip (talk) 01:42, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Just thought I'd drop you a note to say thank you for your ISBN converting tool. I use it every day and find it quick and useful. Much appreciated. qp10qp 17:30, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. My tool is not perfected yet though, see this tool which works better than mine I think. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:37, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] About the notations in probability articles

Hi, Oleg! It would be a nice thing to try to set some rules concerning notation for the probabilty and expectation symbols. In the various probability/statistics articles I've seen at least three notations: P,E, \mathbb{P},\mathbb{E} and finally P,E. Personally, I prefer the latter, as it's the accepted notation of the scientific community (sometimes the letters are bold, i.e. P and E but always straight). I have not seen nevertheless any guide that woud explain such a thing. Is there any way we could make a public discussion about this resulting in some agreement and guide for wikipedia community? Thanks in advance Amir Aliev 21:20, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I suggest you bring this up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mathbot

Hi, Oleg!

Say, I was poking around another 'bot's pages when I ran across this automated message. When I looked at the table I saw that Jitse has updated his 'bot's status, but the entry for Mathbot still says "Discontinued". I know you're busy, so I figure you may not have seen the automated message on Mathbot's talk page. So I'm just giving you a quick heads up.

Thanks for all the great things you do around here! DavidCBryant 02:07, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I found that one to be kind of a silly message. It did not say why that should be done, and what would happen otherwise. So I chose to ignore it. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:39, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 bot

Hi there, I noticed you run a bot in which updates the information and statistics for tables informing users of the number of good articles/featured articles/class A and class B etc articles. I did this once and find it extremely boring and difficult to do and I noticed that your bot updates daily on Wikipedia:WikiProject Scotland. Well i would just like to know how I could sign to get this Bot to help, I am the creator of WikiProject Tyne and Wear and I would really like to sign up for this bots help as the job is extremely boring to do manually. Could you please tell me if and how I can sign up for this bots help as soon as possible. Thanks and could you please reply on my talk page.TellyaddictEditor review! 12:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot. I'll reply on your talk page also. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edit summary and minor edits

Hi Oleg! I was not aware of this guidelines here. Thanks for the tip! I'll be more cautioned in further edits. Bye!Cyb3r 21:56, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Using WP1.0 Bot for GAs

Oleg, please can you read this proposal and leave comments. Perhaps I should've spoken to you quietly first, but there seem to be so many people confused by this, I wanted to get people's opinion. If you think this suggestion is not feasible, or it's too much work, please just say so. I had presumed that it would be pretty straightforward to implement, but please correct me if I'm wrong! Thanks, Walkerma 05:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I replied there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User:WP 1.0 bot

Hi Oleg: I noticed that both my bot and Betacommandbot posted message that were meant for your bot's talk page on it's userpage. You may want to have User talk:WP 1.0 bot redirect here, instead of to the bot's userpage, to prevent further things like that or confusion if a human editor wants to leave you a message regarding your bot. —METS501 (talk) 17:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

You are right. I removed the redirect now. Thanks! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:05, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
The Original Barnstar
For your cool WP 1.0 bot. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 02:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


Thank you, your barnstar is very appreciated! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:05, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Computer and video game articles by quality

Well, I was afraid of that. So is there any fast way to delete a bunch of subpages at once? -- Prove It (talk) 02:55, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. You guys wanted the rename, you've got to delete the old names (all 50-80 or so of them). Sorry. :) I'll reply on your talk also. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:57, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 Bot

Hi, Oleg. Is this bot (WP 1.0 Bot) operated by you? Because I am really curious about this another bot. I know that MathBot is operated by you, but I'm not very familiar with WP 1. 0 Bot. What's the function of WP 1.0 Bot? I really really want to know more about WP 1.0 Bot. Could you please explain this bot(WP 1.0) briefly? Please reply in my talk page. Thanks in advance, and cheers! Daniel5127 | Talk 04:08, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Try reading User:WP 1.0 bot. :) If you have more questions, ask me here. (I'll reply on your talk too.) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:10, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for quick response. As I have been reading about your bot (WP 1.0 Bot) on WP 1.0 bot, does this bot always updates an assessment on every wiki project? Is it right? Daniel5127 | Talk 04:28, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

It does not update the assessments page on any wikiproject, only those which follow the instructions. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:45, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Differential (mathematics)

I've been reworking the differential and differential (mathematics) pages so that the latter focuses on calculus and geometry concepts. I'd like to move it to differential (calculus), but don't have the admin rights, although I have moved the old differential (calculus) page to differential (infinitesimal). If you agree with my plan, could you do the move for me? I've sorted out most of the links. Geometry guy 20:28, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I did that. Thanks for the work. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:04, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Oleg :) I think of you and Fropuff as my (joint) number one friends here on wikipedia! Do you have any comments on my derivative talk contribution? This is an important page and I don't want to damage it! Geometry guy 21:31, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mathbot's tool

Hi Oleg, I found your tool on several RfA pages, but I can't seem to figure out how to get the edit summary tables that everyone else seems to have. I put my username in the blank form field, and pressed the button, but all it says is that I have 43% for major edits and 34% for minor edits, sans table. -Pandacomics 23:54, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for answering, but is it this tool that you are looking for? --MoRsE 00:06, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
That's right, my tool does only edit summary, not edit count. For that you need to use Interiot's tool MoRsE pointed out. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:05, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I meant the ones on the RfA's the appear in those nowiki boxes and say how many of the edits are major, minor, "significant", or non-minor/reverts, etc. -Pandacomics 08:10, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh I don't know about whose tool does that. Try to ask the people who paste in that info in RfAs. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:58, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Perlwikipedia

Hi Shadow. I am getting to like your Perlwikipedia package more and more (the current one I am using, WWW::MediaWiki::Client, has some bugs and things I don't quite like). I wonder if I could join the developer team, that is, if I could get access to the google code page. About my expertise, I've been running mathbot, a Perl bot, for around a year and nine months now (it has around 50,000 edits I think). If you let me in, I'd first focus on improving the documentation, then once you upload the updated code I'll see if I can contribute with anything. Anyway, wonder what you think. Thanks. You can reply here. (PS: My google account is oleg.alexandrov). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:28, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I've approved your account for SVN access, feel free to check out a copy of the source. I've started work on most of the documentation (POD format), and that should be committed within a day or so, along with a fix to the category retrieval code to make sure that Brion doesn't kill me. Thanks for your suggestions, and welcome to the Perlwikipedia team! Shadow1 (talk) 21:14, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Important publication

Hi Oleg,

It seems that we all agree that the name of the category is bad. However, some people would like to delete the category while according to their arguments rename should be enough. Theses categories, in what so ever name, are very important. Please help me to prevent the categories deletion.

Thanks, APH 11:51, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I happen to think that these categories are not necessary. Let's see what the admin closing that afd will decide. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:24, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arabic Wikipedia

Hi, In Arabic Wikipedia we need WP 1.0 BOT to work there can you give me the Bot to work or make it work there please?? Menasim( discuss) 08:17, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi. The code is here. You would need at least some Perl or scripting knowledge to make it work. Let me know if you have questions. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:29, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] B+ class articles for WP 1.0 bot

Is there an easy way to tell the WP 1.0 bot to count Category:Bplus-Class_mathematics_articles? There is no row in the table for these right now. I read the instructions, but they didn't clarify the matter. CMummert · talk 15:27, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

The bot is hard-coded to accept only A-Class, B-Class, FA-Class, GA-Class, Stub-Class, and Unassessed-Class assessments. It can be coded to accept others, but then the bot would expect a Bpluss category in each of the current 400 projects and would complain otherwise. I could modify my code to be smarter in that respect, but I am kind of reluctant to extend the code to support specific needs of individual projects (that could be a pain, since they are many). I would have the bot look at the Bpluss assessment if the community decides to add Bpluss as another official assessment along the existing ones. Sorry. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:49, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I am looking through the bot source code at the moment, and I see how the assessments are hard-coded there. User:Tompw has suggested that for WP 1.0 purposes it would be simple enough to ensure, using the math rating template, that all B+ articles are also in the B-class category, so that they get counted for WP 1.0 purposes. Right now, they aren't counted at all, which is a problem (but not your problem). They are already in both categories, but this fact was never well documented.
I think that the easiest thing would be to run a separate bot to create a table for the math project, including the B+ rating, and let the WP 1.0 bot continue to do exactly what it is currently doing. I will make a proposal on the math project page. CMummert · talk 16:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree that changing WP 1.0 bot would be bad. Would User:PockBot be useful here? Walkerma 22:31, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion. Really, it's not hard to take the WP 1.0 bot code and modify it to do what I was interested in; see User:CMummert/Sandbox2 for a table I generated this afternoon. This can all be done with query.php, checking category contents and backlinks, so there is no need to spider the talk pages. Also I already have a separate setup to look for unreferenced math articles that I could already use if I wanted to go the spidering way. The other thing is that PockBot doesn't seem to generate summary tables, which is really what I am interested in. And there is also the possibility that the math project will just stop using B+ ratings. CMummert · talk 22:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

The generation process for the table is very similar to the WP 1.0 bot; it uses the same framework. The class and importance categories are loaded using query.php (fetch_articles_cats.pl).

The fields are loaded by using query.php to get a list of backlinks to the articles that {{maths rating}} uses for the field links. I just copied fetch_articles_cats.pl to a new file and edited that to interface with the backlinks query. This isn't guaranteed to be accurate but I think it will be right 99% of the time. CMummert · talk 05:51, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'd be interested in seeing your code at some point in the future once you're happy to show it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:09, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
The code is here: [1]. The fetch_backlinks.pl and table_routine.pl files are the only ones that are likely to be of interest. CMummert · talk 00:13, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I downloaded and took a look at it. I was just curious. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:41, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User:Megazodiac

Hi, Oleg!

Hey, I hate to bother you because I know you're a busy guy. Anyway, I was looking at the new articles from Mathbot's list for today when I saw an inappropriate name change (from "Response bias" to "Response Bias"). So I got curious, and noticed that this new user, Megazodiac, has been busily moving properly named articles to improperly capitalized names all day long. Some of Megazodiac's other edits don't look so hot, either. So I'm dropping you a line, since you have a better idea of what to do about stuff like this than I do. Thanks! DavidCBryant 22:44, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Most articles got moved back. I moved a few more which were left. Thanks for letting me know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:28, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] / for division

Hi. I changed / to ÷ because / looks like a vertical line on my screen (with IE, mostly default settings). I've now changed the division to a Tex-style fraction to make it even more obvious. I hope this is okay! — 80.177.129.251 09:15, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Newton's generalized binomial theorem

Isaac Newton generalized the formula to other exponents by considering an infinite series:

{(x+y)^r=\sum_{k=0}^\infty {r \choose k} x^k y^{r-k} \quad\quad\quad(2)}

where r can be any complex number (in particular r can be any real number, not necessarily positive and not necessarily an integer), and the coefficients are given by

\begin{align} {r \choose k} &{}= {1 \over k!}\prod_{n=0}^{k-1}(r-n)=\frac{r(r-1)(r-2)\cdots(r-(k-1))}{k!}=\frac{r!}{k!\,(r-k)!}. \end{align}


This is the same as \frac{r!}{k!\,(r-k)!} factorials are defined for ALL complex numbers, except for negative integers

I don't know why you like to remove relevant information, maybe because you like (I do not know for what reason whatsoever) to deny the definition of non-integer factorials!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bombshell 09:30, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense to write the top as r! since then it is not defined for r being a negative integer. Rather leave the top as a product (of k factors), as then it is defined for any r. And yes, I am aware of the Gamma function. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:05, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, now I get it, I apologize for being kinda rude Bombshell 16:41, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Erdös-Renyi model

Hi Oleg,

I think you were working on the page covering the Erdös-Renyi model? I'm very much interested in the evolution of G~ (which is still to be completed). Is it planned yet? I can't find it anywhere else on the internet.

Best,

Daan

Hi there. I did run into Erdos-Renyi model (Erdös-Renyi model) at some point (I noticed it was a redlink linked from a lot of places), but I really know nothing about that topic, so I doubt I could write anything about this. Sorry. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:29, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 Bot - Quick Question

I just discovered that WP 1.0 bot can be run manually. In the changes log for my project, the bot lists assessment updates on a daily basis. So, what happens if I assess some articles, run the bot once, and then assess some more articles and run the bot a second time all in a single day? Would it be two separate headers, or would the bot just add the second round of assessments to the same day's list? I hope I've been clear with this question, it is really late here. Thanks.--Danaman5 09:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

The bot will merge the log pages, so there will be just one log for each day. I hope. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:10, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arthur Mattuck

Hi Oleg. I was just curious what happened to this article. Apparently since the first deletion, there was a deletion review and subsequent second AFD. This resulted in keep, but now the article is mysteriously deleted again! What's going on? --C S (Talk) 01:59, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Here is the complete history and log. Hopefully it answers your question. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:25, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Deletion log

    * 08:48, 23 February 2007 Wizardman (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "Arthur Mattuck" (recreation of deleted materal (csd g4))
    * 20:04, 23 December 2006 Trialsanderrors (Talk | contribs | block) restored "Arthur Mattuck" (9 revisions restored: Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2006 December 18)
    * 21:18, 17 December 2006 Yanksox (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "Arthur Mattuck" (per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arthur Mattuck)

To restore the entire page and its history, leave all checkboxes deselected and click Restore. To perform a selective restoration, check the boxes corresponding to the revisions to be restored and click Restore. Clicking Reset will clear the comment field and all checkboxes. Please make sure that you are following undeletion policy and that you leave a summary in the comment box.
Comment:        
        
Page history

    * 23:04, 3 February 2007 . . Alaibot (Talk | contribs | block) (Robot: sorting stub (based on existing categorisation))
    * 22:37, 28 December 2006 . . 24.177.112.146 (Talk | block) (improve ext link fmting, +cats)
    * 17:20, 28 December 2006 . . John254 (Talk | contribs | block) (afd closure as keep per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arthur Mattuck (2nd nomination))
    * 20:05, 23 December 2006 . . Trialsanderrors (Talk | contribs | block) (Start AfD per WP:DRV)
    * 14:47, 15 December 2006 . . Epolk (Talk | contribs | block) (clean up using AWB)
    * 22:37, 12 December 2006 . . Alex Bakharev (Talk | contribs | block) (afd)
    * 20:51, 12 December 2006 . . Bcartolo (Talk | contribs | block) (added hangon)
    * 20:49, 12 December 2006 . . Adam12901 (Talk | contribs | block)
    * 20:47, 12 December 2006 . . Bcartolo (Talk | contribs | block) (External links)
    * 20:46, 12 December 2006 . . Bcartolo (Talk | contribs | block)
    * 20:44, 12 December 2006 . . Bcartolo (Talk | contribs | block)
    * 20:44, 12 December 2006 . . Bcartolo (Talk | contribs | block) (External links)
    * 20:43, 12 December 2006 . . Bcartolo (Talk | contribs | block) (←Created page with 'Arthur Mattuck is a Professor of Mathematics at [MIT]. ==External links== *[[http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-03Spring-2006/VideoLectures/index.htm Differen...')

[edit] WP 1.0 bot and article class

I have a question about Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Numismatic articles by quality statistics. Pages in this project now have a category class, template, dab, etc. These new classes can be found at Category:WikiProject Numismatics articles. Do you think you can upgrade the bot to identify these classes? Thanks. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 08:09, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I will reply at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:09, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BV

Hello Oleg, I have a bit modified the plan of the "Bounded variation" voice, and I have placed it on the discussion page. Also, Sullivan.t.j have added some interesting contents. I found also that our first discussion about this voice in your talk page has disappeared: are you reordering your user talks? :) Daniele.tampieri 11:36, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Our previous discussion on my talk page is in the archive, at User talk:Oleg_Alexandrov/Archive10#A_proposal_for the structure of the .22Bounded variation.22 voice.. I am fine with the plan you propose at Talk:Bounded variation. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:09, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Admin

Thanks for the compliment. I don't think that I'm ready to do that just yet; the WP:RFA process currently seems to favor editors who do lots of vandalism editing over people who would only occasionally need admin abilities. And like getting tenure, passing an RFA seems to require spending a long time before it hiding one's true opinions and making everyone happy, which I have not been doing. I will be applying for a bot account soon; that at least seems like a rational approval process, and will be much more useful for me. CMummert · talk 13:02, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New math editor

Hi, Oleg. I have noticed User:Arcfrk, who appears to be new and someone worth making friends with. I don't know how those magical welcome messages appear on new users' talk pages, but I've seen you leave a few. If you get a second, you might pop by his site and say hello. (By the way, can anyone leave those welcome messages or is this some kind of admin thing?) VectorPosse 10:46, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

This message is generated by the welcome template subst:welcome (surrounded by two braces) and anyone can leave it by editing the user's talk page. I have welcomed User:Arcfrk anyway, but I imagine Oleg would like to say "hi" too. Geometry guy 11:49, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Yep, {{subst:welcome}} is what does the job. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for correcting my mistake (in your typical polite and understated way) and moving the welcome to talk. Geometry guy 15:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
It occurs to me we might create a welcome template tailored for new mathematics editors. Especially, we could offer them additional information to help them up the steep learning curve for our specialty. Or perhaps such a template already exists? --KSmrqT 16:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Something like {{mathwelcome}} or so sounds good to me. If you want, you could create one, announce it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics, and see what people think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:44, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 bot and the empty category

I have a question of interest, but of little importance: why does WP 1.0 bot report one article in Category:Unassessed-importance Arthropods articles in its summary, when that category has been empty for days? --Stemonitis 12:06, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

The article in question is Talk:List of Cumacea literature. For some reason, it does not show up in a Low-importance category, and then the bot thinks it is No-importance. I could not figure out how to fix that, maybe you can do it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Ah, replacing {{ArthropodTalk|NA|low}} with {{ArthropodTalk|List|low}} did the job. Next time the bot will run the article will be classified as low-importance. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. Funny that it didn't show up before. --Stemonitis 15:45, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I have noticed this phenomenon several times lately. I reported it to the developers using the bug system, but their advice was just to make a dummy edit to force mediawiki to regenerate the category list for the article. CMummert · talk 16:14, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 Bot and list stats

I went tinkering around with the Rock music articles by quality statistics, as someone added a list parameter to the {{WPRock}} template. This sorts list articles into Category:List-Class rock music articles/ The bot went and made this edit, removing that parameter from the stats. Is there a way to correct this? *May I also ask that you respond on MY talk page? -- Reaper X 16:16, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The bot does not accept List-Class or other classes beyond the default. See Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Index#WP_1.0_bot_and_article_class for more details.
I'll reply on your talk page also. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:33, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] shifted Gompertz

Hi!

Thanks for going over the page on the shifted Gompertz distribution. As it is my first Wikipedia contribution, I guess that other things might be improved as well. If you have any suggestions, please don't hesitate to let me know!

Best Regards,

Daniel —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Danhoppe (talk • contribs) 15:18, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

I made a few small changes. The formulas in the box on the right seem to be too huge. Perhaps they could be broken up in two or something. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:25, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. I already reduced the spacing where possible. I will have to read up if there is something like a TeX multline environment in Wikipedia, that might be smaller here. Danhoppe 08:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RFD for Manual of style (mathematics)

I have suggested that Manual of style (mathematics), a redirect page which you created, be deleted as a cross-namespace redirect. If you would like to comment in the discussion, it is found here. -- Black Falcon 00:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

The same applies to Math style manual. -- Black Falcon 00:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lost pages, especially lost archives

I was going to ask Gurch (talk · contribs) about this, but it seems that he has left us. Is there a process for finding lost pages, such as: pages with improper names, or pages which are not in a category? I was wondering about this because it appears that InuYasha has had its name changed (probably at least twice) in the past and its talk page, Talk:InuYasha, has archives with names like "2004" which do not show up when I do "What links here". Could there be lost archives out there? They also did not have the "talkarchive" template in them until I added it a few days ago. JRSpriggs 06:01, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

One could use Special:Uncategorizedpages for uncategorized pages. Also see Wikipedia:Subpages#Listing_subpages for finding subpages. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:59, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. JRSpriggs 06:26, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 Bot

Just curious, why is the bot running ever second day and not daily? =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:12, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

That's because each bot run takes more than 36 hours, so running the bot every 24 hours would put too much strain on the server I think. Also, I had to agree to not allow the bot to do more than one edit each 10 seconds when WP 1.0 bot was approved.
The bot can always be run by hand using this form if one wants a quick run (but that one seems to stop midway for very large projects, it may be some timeout issues with the hosting server). You could it a try. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:55, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moving user and talk pages

Vandal Fbs. 13 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) moved his user and talk pages to Derecho (talk · contribs). Is this not a violation of the rules? This was not a change in his user-id, just a page move. JRSpriggs 07:49, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I left him a message pointing to Wikipedia:Changing username. From the user page appears that we are dealing with a teen, I guess he does not think too much of what he's doing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:47, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Poignant remark on list of cycles

"And for example, woman should be out, even though a woman has a monthly cycle." LOL. I did really laugh out loud. --C S (Talk) 13:43, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Heh. :) Now, if only somebody would take the time to clean up list of cycles. Most likely it will pass the deletion but stay the way it is. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:16, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks Oleg! :)

Cheers for all the links on my talkpage, I definately do need to improve my wiki style a bit, I have not done lots of edits on this wiki yet, but I am very keen to learn.

Reaction diffusion is definately one of my biggest interests. I am a programmer though, on the visual-synthesis side of things - not a mathematician, so I probably take a slightly less technical angle on RD than most people who know it.

I was a bit disappointed to see how small the article was so I added a bit more basic info. I also have some original images that I can upload too which I will do soon.

Thanks again for noticing. (Danwills 06:58, 22 March 2007 (UTC))

Take it easy, it takes a while to learn the wiki style. :) Yes, images in that article would be very much appreciated. Note that when you upload them you need to specify under which license (GFDL, public domain) you do that. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:45, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Field (mathematics)

Hi Oleg,

I think your change to the article is good, but I should probably rename it Field (algebra) now. Also, skew fields are sometimes just called fields and are a very slight generalization of fields, so there is some likelihood that a person will refer to the field article thinking that, since a skew field is almost the same thing, there must not be an article on skew fields, and they won't bother referring to the disambiguation page. So I think skew fields should be mentioned despite the existence of a disambiguation page. What do you think? Joeldl 02:53, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I did mention skew fields, in paragraph two (division rings). If you want to mention it on top also, that's fine with me. (But it looks more natural in the text.)
Anybody moving the article to field (algebra) will have to fix great many links (hundreds, I think). I think we should consult with other people too before doing that change. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Is there an automated way of changing the links? Joeldl 03:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Some people have bots which can do that. So, it is not straightforward, but is doable. The bigger issue is whether the move should be done. Perhaps you could start a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics on the topic. I am not sure I'd support a move myself (I think things are quite rather fine the way they are). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
All right, I'll defer to your opinion. I don't feel very strongly about it. Joeldl 04:17, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Not that I feel too strongly either. Anyway, a wider discussion would be needed before a possible move. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Large deviations of Gaussian random functions

Hi Oleg.

Thank you for the "Welcome" message (on my talk page).

Yes, now I have a question. I volunteered a new page Large deviations of Gaussian random functions. It got the tag "need to be wikified". I did some improvements toward this. Now, is it already wikified? Should I remove the tag myself, or not?

Boris Tsirelson 12:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it is fine to remove the tag. I did it for you. One note however. When writing, it is good not to hit the "Return" key except between paragraphs. Otherwise, fragmented text within a paragraph does not look good in the diffs (see this for what I mean). Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I see. Thanks. Boris Tsirelson 14:54, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hey

Hi Oleg,

I was the Anonymous Calculus d-Erector before, and I'm sorry for the mass editing. I have reformed, created an acct, and posted my views on Talk:Integral.

Sorry I never read the policies and I hope to be more constructive in future. Thanks for the time! :)

Psymun

Hi Oleg: I hope, by making some efforts to smooth the waters, I paid the promised price for my somewhat inappropriate intervention in this mini-story, but I think we also reaped some rewards (which have made it all very worthwhile for me): wikipedia has a new (and reformed :-) ) user, and some useful discussion was generated. Geometry guy 20:39, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
In retrospect my message at User talk:86.11.118.108 was kind of rough, Geometry guy, thanks for your subsequent message which made Psymun make an account. Your role was not inappropriate, we had a friendly disagreement which was resolved via feedback from the community. Thank you for your involvement. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:50, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] probability metrtic

Dear Oleg!

Thank you for your invitation. I've been contributing in Polish branch of Wikipedia ([2]) since May 2006. When I found an article about a Probabilistic metric space in English Wiki I thought about supplementing it with some information about a metric that was a subject of my PhD thesis.

Funny thing is that it can hardly be called a "metric" as it does not fulfill the first metric axiom, which is in fact the only axiom to be required by other distance functions I know (pseudometric, quasimetric, prametric, ultrametric, etc.).

--Guswen 14:36, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the new Probability metric article. It would be nice if it had some references, but that of course can also be added later. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:45, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I hope that the reference is the Springer article (mentioned in the article) and my thesis (though the later is not published in electronic form). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Guswen (talk • contribs) 19:49, 27 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] About Diagrammatic notation

Hello Oleg. Thanks for visiting my newly created article on Diagrammatic notation and thanks for correcting the naming problem. You suggested something in the editing history. Something about style. Thanks. Would you mind helping me with my first article? --Freiddie 14:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Freiddy. Thank you for the new article. What I mentioned in the edit summary was that while Diagrammatic notation is meant to be about notation, there are too few specific examples of that notation. Say at the section "Levi-Civita tensor", you mention that
The Levi-Civita antisymmetric tensor is represented by a thick horizontal bar with sticks pointing downwards or upwards, depending on the type of tensor that is used.
I think it would be nice if that "thick horizontal bar with sticks pointing downwards" notation were actually written down (the formula, that is), as I find it kind of hard to think of that notation based on the description only. Now, I am not an expert on that, so maybe I expect to much. But anyway, what do you think? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:43, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
What fun! I've never seen this before, but a quick web search turned up this image in this blog entry about proof by picture. --KSmrqT 17:24, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi, Oleg and KSmrq. Well, I have been thinking about adding some pictures, only that I didn't have to time. I'll have to create a lot of diagrams for this one. I'll do it once I find enough free time. By the way, the entire material comes from Roger Penrose's book The Road to Reality so should I credit it in the Notes section of the article? The article is currently incomplete, and I'm not sure whether it's really a popular thing, since I have only been reading from his point of view, until I read the link suggested by KSmrq (thanks). --Freiddie 18:38, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Heuristic proof using circular motion

I think this is/was a interesting argument because it assumes less on the reader.

But most importantly:

It seems that in some of the proofs the writers didn't realized that you can only proof this identity after you clearly defined what e^(ix) means.

In this sense arguments like the ones in "using calculus" and "using differential equations" are incomplete, without at least a clear definition any argument becomes an heuristic argument.


I know of three ways of defining e^(ix).


(1) From the complex series of e^(z) defined as sum of z^n/n!

(2) as the limit of n to infinity of (1 + ix/n)^n

(3) or directly as cos(x) + i sin(x)


Either way only after defining e^(ix) is that you should show that it has the properties like e^(ia)*e^(ib)=e^(i(a+b)), or (e^ix)'=ie^(ix) that you would expect it to have, and some writers used fearlessly.

Number (1) is already represented, I think number (2) would be a nice thing to cite since it is analogous to the real case and can also be interpreted geometrically (as Richard Feynman does for a reference). But using (3) is totally misleading because it doesn't show why it should be true.

That is why I think heuristic arguments are needed to provide "a reason" for us to believe that such a thing should be true. Using circular motion seems to me much more simple and much less "out of the blue" then for example the "using calculus" approach.

My opinion is that Euler's formula is central to many different contexts and any effort to make it clearer is for the best. I will also post this on the discussion on the page.

Do you have something to comment on that? Thank You. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ricardo sandoval (talk • contribs) 22:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC).

Well, I still believe that the "proof" you added in is not so important overall. Let's see what others say at Talk:Euler's formula. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I guess that is a POV, but anyway, in the "using calculus" proof one should say 'assuming' that (e^(ix))'=ie^(ix) and e^(ix)*e^(-ix)=e^0=1 since you cannot use any properties of e^(ix) before defining e^(ix) ((and proving them)). Something similar goes for the "differential equations proof". And to make a clearer article one should define e^(ix) explicitly. Don't you agree? Ricardo sandoval 23:18, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] About Mathbot

I started a discussion about his RfA usefulness at WT:RFA#Mathbot..., and I thought as the operator you might be interested. Please weigh in, and whack me if there's something obvious I missed. -Amarkov moo! 03:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Derivative

Hi Oleg - you liked Derivative before. I hope you still like it!! Comments and criticism most welcome as always. Geometry guy 18:46, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

The article reads very well. Thank you for your work! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:25, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - and thanks for your tidying up! Geometry guy 19:30, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

There's been a request to archive some of the talk page (up to the GA-discussion). I'm going to give it a go soon: I guess I just create an archive subpage, move the material there, and provide a link. I thought I would mention this to my "mentor", just in case I make a mess of it! Geometry guy 20:24, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Oleg's your mentor? Boy are you in trouble ;-) I've noticed and appreciated your work here and there. Nice to have you aboard. You might want to add yourself here — now that's the kind of thing a good mentor would have told you! Paul August ☎ 21:04, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've done the archiving (though not in any fancy way, as there is just one archive page). Take it easy on Oleg - his energies are just spread a bit thinly these days ;-) Thanks for the kind comments. Looks like I ought to click on your link. Geometry guy 21:08, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I am just as surprised as Paul that I am a mentor now. :) One thing I can take credit for, however, is bugging Geometry guy to make an account and introducing him to the math wikiproject (admittedly, not to the list of participants :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:16, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Well I was just teasing :) , but in addition to the above, Oleg put the welcome message on my page, and I have turned to him for his admin rights at least once, so I owe him some respected title, beyond that guy with the bot ;) ! Anyway, I'm now on the list (I saw it before, but my commitment was not as strong then) and am having fun here. I hope you two established editors are too! Geometry guy 21:28, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, "mentor" sounds better than "that guy with the bot". :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:02, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

This made me laugh a lot! Anyway, esteemed mentor, I just produced a Power rules article only to find you removed proof of functional power rule from Wikipedia:Requested articles/mathematics on the grounds that it is not important :( - I hope you are not too displeased that I made an article anyway! ;)

In the course of doing this, I realised that base (mathematics) (which was previously, and is probably still, a redirect to radix) is flawed because it does not cover the fundamental notion of "base" as the base of exponentiation and the base of a logarithm. Unfortunately, the base/radix story seems to have history, so I have been facing nearly instantantaneous reverts whenever I try to do something... wish me luck! Geometry guy 20:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the new Power rules article! (You see, your mentor is pleased with you. :) I had thought it was not worth having a standalone article on a proof (proof of functional power rule), but that's just my own opinion. An article on the rule itself is much more valuable than an article on the proof of the rule, I think.
As far as Base (mathematics) is concerned, you could try to see what people say at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:55, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, absolute power rules, absolutely, rather than just an article on the proof (I agree entirely) so that is what I did. As for base, it seems to have settled down, but I'll certainly consider raising it at WP:talk if it becomes controversial. Geometry guy 12:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mathbot not Logged In

See 128.97.70.46 (talk · contribs). Regards, alphachimp 20:16, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that was odd. The bot logs in each time, and when I reran it it did log in. A singular occurrence, I hope. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:19, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Receiver operating characteristic

Hi, Oleg. Sorry to bug you again, but you have the magic wand. ;^>

I think Receiver Operating Characteristic should be named Receiver operating characteristic. Unfortunately, there are real articles at both locations. It looks as if Indon did a cut and paste job after a merge, instead of using the "move" function (this occurred on 31 Jan, 2007).

Anyway, now the article is not connected with its history page. Can you fix that? Thanks! DavidCBryant 13:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing this. I just moved the article back and merged the histories of the two pages. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I am a bit confused, because I've never copy-pasted. I did surely move the article, but dunno why it looks that way. However, thanks for the clear up. — Indon (reply) — 17:15, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Failed to get the link!

Hi!

seems that "Failed to get the link!" is some error for user Evgen2 at ru.wikipedia.org. Thanks. --Evgen2 07:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I guess you are referring to using Mathbot's tool. I will look into that, thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:51, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Integral Equations and Rao Transforms

I am new to Wickipedia contribution and I was not aware of the policy that material should have been published in well recognized journals. My contribution was made in good faith with a view to benefit the readers and enhance the value of Wickipedia. Now I know the policy of Wickipedia, and in this case it is likely to be a limitation of Wickipedia. You can read an expert review of my work here: http://www.integralresearch.net/#Expert_Review . Please see page 4 here which establishes the link between standard integral equations and Rao Integral Equations: http://www.integralresearch.net/wps.pdf . It is easily verified. As for naming my result, if my result is very important, then it is appropriate, and I believe it to be so. I am confident that my results will become "well established" in time. I am not in any hurry. I have protected my idea by applying for US patents. In public interest, in order to evaluate the correctness of my idea, if any qualified person volunteers to verify my results on behalf of Wickipedia, I can send one copy of my book free. But you can get a lot of information on my approach here: http://www.integralresearch.net/RTslides.pdf http://www.integralresearch.net/wps.pdf http://www.integralresearch.net/apex.pdf

Lastly, if someone shows that my new method of solution to solve the Fredholm Equation of the First Kind when applied to shift-variant image deblurring is not better than current methods, I will give them $250.

If you volunteers are serious about enhancing Wickipedia, you should restrict your comments to technical merits of my idea and point out technical weaknesses. Keeping the interests of Wickipedia and the users in mind, you can decide whether your want to post my method or not, is upto you.

I appreciate the voluntary service your are rendering to the public. Dr. Muralidhara SubbaRao (Rao) rao@integralresearch.net —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.47.184.148 (talk) 23:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC).

Let's continue this at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Rao_integral_equation. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:56, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 adding user

Is there any chance that the WP1.0 bot could add the user that made the change when it produces an assessment log?

-- TimNelson 01:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

That is doable, but will slow down the bot very much I think. You see, now the bot collects the changes by reading categories, so doing a batch of two hundred articles at a time. If it were to identify the user who made the change, it would need to investigate the history of individual articles, and gosh, are they many. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:01, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Sure, I can see that (I'm a perl programmer myself :) ). Don't bother with it, then.
Hmm. We could make a category for each person, ie. "Category:Articles assessed by TimNelson", and whoever was the most recent person to change the assessment automatically gets added this way :).
(Ok, just kidding :) ).
-- TimNelson 02:17, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Heh. But doesn't the bot have to read the revision for each page, to give the diff link? Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 02:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Right. But the diff is for the article page, while to get the user one would need to read the talk page, so it would be extra work. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:23, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
D'oh!. That makes sense. Never mind, as the reading diffs is the slowest portion of a bot run... Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 03:07, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Thank you for pointing out that preference. I did not know about it. Danny 03:25, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. I can see that your RfA will beat some records. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Intersections etc on WP1.0 bot

More ideas:

  • Could you generate a page that lists the 10 pages in Wikipedia with the most WikiProjects attached?
  • Could you make it so that it lists the 10 Wikipedia projects that have the most overlap, but no common task force? Eg. if WP Biography and WP Mathematics have a lot of overlap, but no common task force, it might be an indication that a Mathematicians Biography task force should be set up.

-- TimNelson 09:53, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, these are good suggestions. But I have rather little time for coding for the moment, and if I had more, more pressing tasks would be making WP 1.0 bot faster, introducing a table of contents in the index (as requested at WPT:1.0/I), and a few others. I can work on this, but it may take me a few weeks to get to it. You can also try to raise this at WPT:1.0/I. There are a few perl programmers there who could implement this. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:05, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Ok, done. Thanks. I'm in no hurry for this myself, it's just that I thought they'd be useful. Feel free to remove this section, any further responses could go to the page you mentioned, as I'm going to stop watching your talk page.
-- TimNelson 04:35, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] bug in WP1.0 bot?

There seems to have gone something wrong in creating the log for the biography project on 1 April. See here. Errabee 19:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi. This is odd. Usually, if the bot submits a page which has a huge amount of text, the server responds by blanking the page, this is what you see above. However, the bot is programmed to truncate any log to under 0.3MB to precisely avoid that problem. I guess that even that is too much. I now have made the bot truncate a log at 0.25MB (250K), hopefully that will make these problems go away. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Posynomial reference removed

Why did you remove the reference to the Geometric Programming tutorial on the posynomial page? Johngcarlsson 08:31, 5 April 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Johngcarlsson (talk • contribs) 08:30, 5 April 2007 (UTC).

Hi. Thanks for noticing. I thought I saw the same thing twice (Boyd), but actually I see now that they were different things. I put it back. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:03, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request redirect to join derivation and differential algebra

Hi Oleg --

I just redesigned the differential algebra page, incorporating the material from derivation (abstract algebra). I think it makes sense to redirect the search for derivation (abstract algebra) to differential algebra. Can you help?

Jessica —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Shellgirl (talk • contribs) 22:23, 5 April 2007 (UTC).

Hi Jessica. I did the redirect. Thank you for improving on the differential algebra article. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:06, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! And you are welcome, it was fun. Shellgirl 04:38, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comment on wallpaper image gallery bot

Hi, I just posted a comment on the talk page for the wallpaper gallery that (apparently) you wrote a bot for, and I'd like you to read that comment; to summarize, I suggest a method for that category where it's easy to suggest someone remove an img w/o having to muck about understanding how to edit the gallery myself. Sure, perhaps I should, but I won't. It's my personal opinion that the users / creators of a bot should be responsible for the content it generates, including removing inappropriate additions, but that's just mho. I'm sure this has all been discussed to death somewhere around here, but I'm not the kind of editor who cares about that sort of thing. Just offering my 0.02USD, pls have a look at the talk page (sry no link, but it's very late for me :) if you would, but no reply to me is necessary, however you decide to respond to this. Unless you feel like replying on my talk page, anyways, I'm too lazy to check back here. :) BTW, great work, keep it up. Eaglizard 10:37, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough, a bot owner should be responsible for one's bot output. :) I read your comment at Category_talk:Wikipedia_featured_desktop_backgrounds#Challenge_Process. Note that the bot tagged wallpapers only once, and that was more than a year ago. Should this become a regular feature, I would agree that some way of removing inappropriate wallpapers from the list should be implemented. (I will reply on your talk page too). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:42, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks so much for looking into this and replying on my page. :) Doesn't really matter to me what (if anything) happens about it, but 'wallpapers' is a good idea -- if there were someone who would regularly 'patrol' it, a regular bot would be good. But that's not at all the kind of thing I do. Eaglizard 20:51, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kurdistan articles by quality statistics

Whould you please update this page [[3]] with the bot from this day on. Thanks. --Bohater 13:41, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

If you follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot the bot will update that page automatically. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:55, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Well i have tried it, but there are a lot of problems. Could you check it please. --Bohater 19:08, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
What are the problems? Here everything looks good. The columns with no data don't show up on purpose, to avoid using too much space. Anything else looks wrong? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:19, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Violation of Tag Removal and Article Deletion

In regards to the two articles: Approximation error and Percent difference. If you read Percent difference, you would then have understood how there could possible be a difference between finding the "percent error" of two values, and finding the "percent difference" between two values. They do have two different English terms for a reason and I know from experience that these two techniques are repeatedly thought of as the same thing. This is an Unofficial Warning that you cannot just remove tags, or worse yet, DELETE an entire article without some sort of consensus. I look forward to discussing the matter with you and others. Gilawson 02:55, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I did not delete the article, just redirected it. I thought that based on the comment
"The difference is that percent difference is comparing two experimental values whereas percent error compares one experimental value with the actual/accepted value."
in the article the difference between the two is not that relevant. If you want to keep that article separate, that's fine with me. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:01, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
You did delete an article, because there was nothing left of it Your Edit. You deleted an article with the promise of carrying it over, but you didn't. Your argument was that the only difference was that the denominator had an average function. You then took it further and assumed that dividing by the average was "not standard" and therefore presumed that the equation given in the article Approximation error enveloped the equation in article Percent difference. This is wrong however and physics courses within Universities across the country have a hard time already trying to explain the difference of the two techniques to students. We actually grade them incorrectly if they use the equation on Approximation error when they don't even have a socially acceptable value. This also works backwards, students continuously use Percent Difference when they don't have two measured values to compare. In order to avoid any conflicts, I will have to continue improving the article Percent difference by including the equation given in Approximation error and thereby changing the title to something appropriate enough to hold both techniques for finding Percent Error and Percent Difference. Thanks for your time and comments. Gilawson 03:19, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Danny & impartiality

Thanks, and I take your comment in the spirit it was offered. I detest, yet cannot help but acknowledge, the requirements of political practicality. I would be only too glad to adhere to them were I conducting actual affairs of state, but something in me always screams 'It's just Wikipedia!' I am devoted to this project, but it is still just an encyclopedia project, and not a body politic. It can only suffer from taking itself too seriously. Perhaps my choice to carry out the promotion myself in this instance was an instance of upholding a principle to my own detriment; but I maintain that the decision was not just my own, and moreover that it was entirely justified. These facts belie any appearance of conflict of interest. I suppose I am, in this very trivial sense, an obstinate idealist; yet I do appreciate your advice. This may not be a battle worth fighting. — Dan | talk 06:35, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Appeal to help

I support your comment to Talk:Cubic equation, Complete formula. Please draw your attention to my discussion commencing with ˝The schoolbook lecture..˝ where, in my opinion, few significant unrevealed contributions are described. But, as a beginner in Wikipedia editing, I have no idea how to paste drawings and tables originally designed by means of Microsoft Equation 3.0, Word Drawing tool, and Excel (for example 3×3 and 4×4 determinants aren't presented at La Tex). I squandered days, nights and nerves editing these abstracts as such. Therefore I am forced to ask you as an administrator for the advice how and whether to proceed.
Besides the determinants Primeval Cubic should be emphasized i.e. find its place at main article since it enables graphical resolving achieved by means of simple shifting straight line(s) and Y-axis as well as since it simplifies application of hyperbolic and trigonometric substitutions.
Regards Mladen Stambuk
89.111.255.142 07:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure I followed completely your comment there. Are you suggesting to add some of those formulas to the article? My own opinion is that they are too complicated and too specialized for a general purpose article. But anyway, if your question is about how to create formulas, I'd say LaTeX is the only way to go. Try to look at a few matrix-related articles about how to typeset matrices and determinants.
Let me know if you have further questions. By the way, it would be simpler to communicate if you made an account, in case you don't mind. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to your advice. Meanwhile few improvements of the abstracts are worked out (see 6. All complete roots...). I am surprised that you found my complete formula (20) in comparison to (8) of main article (that is not complete) to be too complicated. Also my formula (21,2) should be compared to one quoted under Factorization.
I hoped everyone could recognize significance of Primeval Cubic 4x3 ± 3x = h being actually Embryonic one making f.e. Chebyshev radicals to be unneeded. As an aged (68) beginner I don't know how to make an account and why it would be simpler for me f.e. to draw Cubic parabola and straight lines - let me know contacts in this area. Cheers Mladen 89.111.253.80 22:11, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of pubs

As someone who has contributed to the talk page discussion on List of publications in philosophy and/or that article's previous deletion debate, I thought you might be interested in participating in its new nomination for deletion which can be found here. Thanks. - KSchutte 17:21, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I did comment there. By the way, let's not confuse the "list of pubs" with the "list of publications in phylosophy". I strongly feel the former is more useful. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:56, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Welcome

Thanks for the welcome you sent, evidently in response to my editing of the "reflexive space" page. Wikipedia is something I find myself using with increasing frequency, and I've decided to express my gratitude through contribution. One's gotta start somewhere. -- J.G. Gagelman 14:21, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 bot not updating

Hello Oleg, the 1.0 bot hasn't updated Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Harry Potter articles by quality log in 5 days. Is this hiatus expected or is it just being slow? Best, Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 01:35, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi. That was due to an experiment in which the bot was migrated to the toolserver, hoping it would be faster. Well, the toolserver is unstable and either crashes or loses its internet connection every now and then, which results in the bot run being stopped. I moved the bot back to the original computer and it's been running. It should get to the Harry project in half a day or so I think. See also WT:1.0/I for more background (section on bot being slow). Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:51, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Does this also account for not updating the Biography project since 4 April? Errabee 15:28, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I think so. I think it will get updated today or tomorrow. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:29, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Systems

Thank you for your contribution to Category:Systems in the past. There is currently a Call for Deletion for this category. If you would like to contribute to the discussion, you would be very welcome. In particular, if you would like to save this category, please add a Keep entry with your "signature" using "~~~~". Please do this soon if possible since the discussion period is very short. Thank you for your interest if you can contribute. Regards, Jonathan Bowen 18:32, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talk pages

Hi Oleg,

Thanks for your welcome message. Thanks for your welcome message. I am a long time user of e-mail and usenet, but have some trouble adjusting to the talk pages system. Can you give me any advice? Grotendeels Onschadelijk 03:12, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, the simple advice is: hit the "edit" link wherever you see it. :) The more serious note is that I also found the talk page system very odd at the beginning and not so convenient. But in time you'll get used to it (it has the great advantage that if one says something dumb, one can re-edit one's comment after thinking for a while). Welcome. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:14, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
The "edit" link I have found. My main problem is that it gives me far too much power;-) Avoiding accidentally editing other people's comments is what mainly worries me. Being able to get rid of my own mistakes on the other hand is of course a big bonus. Grotendeels Onschadelijk 04:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I recommend looking over (the most recent part of) the revision history of the page both before and after you do any edits. I do it before to verify the sequence of changes and make sure that there is no un-reverted vandalism. I do it afterwards to make sure that I made the change I intended and no other changes, and also to make sure that there were no edit conflicts with other users. Also by comparing the source with the visible page, I learn how other users achieve certain desirable visual effects. JRSpriggs 11:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 duplicate entry

Hi Oleg

You might want to fix Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index. It lists both WP:Universitites and WP:University. One is an incomplete duplicate of the other. Happy editing. Valentinian T / C 10:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

The reduntant category got deleted, I reran the bot, and it got removed from the list. Thanks for noticing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Known Digits

Hi Oleg

I hope you agree there is nothing objectionable about listing the number of known digits of the important mathematical constants. You left your note on my talk page after I added the references. Are there still open issues? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rbk (talk • contribs).

I do agree. The note on your talk page was just a welcome message. Welcome! :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I left a note on the talk page. Am I supposed to leave a note here as well? People have reverted my stuff without any notes to me at all. I'm fairly new and just trying to follow the crowd. It can be very frustrating sometimes. --Jim77742 23:19, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I see. I missed the note on talk. I expected that there would be an explanation in the edit summary. Welcome! I hope you'll get to like the place. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Obsolete red link in Mathbot's collection

Hi Oleg,
I've just corrected the Stern-Brocot tree article to point at Moritz Stern instead of (incorrect) Moriz Stern. So now you can remove Moriz Stern form the Mathbot's collection of red links. --CiaPan 18:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I removed it. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Townsville Lists

Hi Oleg, firstly thank you for including Wikiproject Townsville in your bot's work of compiling stats. Secondly, if you can, could you please add a lists column to the Townsville articles by quality statistics template and add it to your bot's program for automatic updates? Thanks, Alec -(answering machine) 08:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC) Hi Alec. Unfortunately the bot does not support lists and other columns beyond the default. The reason is that bot's purpose is to evaluate articles only by quality and importance, and any changes to the current way of doing things should be coordinated with all the other projects. Perhaps you could use the example of Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics (see that page, towards the bottom) which uses its own bot to generate a statistics table specific to its own needs and distinct from the default table? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalization of WikiProject Russia template

Hi, the {{WikiProject Russia}} currently puts articles in e.g. Category:Stub-Class russia articles. Note the small cap r in russia. If I wanted to change that, would you need to do something to WP1.0 bot so that the articles do not all appear in the Category:Unassessed-Class russia articles? Errabee 13:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

The bot won't mind any such changes and will be able to parse things correctly after renaming. All it looks for is some categories in Category:Russia articles by quality and Category:Russia articles by importance which start with the keywords "Stub", "FA", etc. So renaming the categories won't affect it. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:17, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Ok, so this diff which was caused by this change in {{WikiProject Russia}}, went wrong because the new categories were not in Category:Russia articles by importance but in the already speedily deleted Category:Russia by importance (see log)? As you may understand, I'm a bit anxious we'll get this same situation again. And as long as the new categories are in Category:Russia articles by quality, this situation won't arise again. Is that correct? Errabee 19:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
That's right, from now on everything should be fine. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/TOC

That's a good idea, but the recently created {{TOClimit}} can now do it automatically with CSS trickery (the RfA TOC is running limited-to-3 at the moment, although it doesn't actually make any difference). So it seems that Mathbot's busy on a task that's now redundant (sorry for pre-empting your bot's work, I appreciate it and Mathbot's RfA edit-summary-usage-summary is a welcome addition to my watchlist). I just thought you might want to know... --ais523 16:36, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

(By the way, would changing ;Support to ====Support==== on {{RfA}}, and likewise for all the other sections (including the 'General discussion' section, etc.), interfere with Mathbot? I suspect it won't, but I'm not sure.) --ais523 17:08, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Changing anything won't interfere with the bot. It cares only about the 'General discussion' discussion section, and it will be fine if it is replaced by ====General discussion====.
As far as my TOC is concerned, I agree it is not useful (and it was not a terribly elegant idea to start with). I speedied it, and the bot won't update it anymore. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:37, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External links to automated modular arithmetic thm provers - why did you remove them?

Hi,

While I agree that the links were perhaps in the wrong section, I do think they are very helpful, especially to people that have large non-linear non-convex problems, which Maple/Mathematica are not very good at.

Could you please return the links? Probably the right place to put them would be external links.

Thank you,

       Domagoj

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.189.141.19 (talk) 18:43, 21 April 2007 (UTC).

I'd argue that they are not so relevant on modular arithmetic which is a very elementary page about the topic. Perhaps you could add back one of them in the external links section. Adding all three will overwhelm that section I believe, after all, automatic theorem provers are just a very small part of what modular arithmetic is about, I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:09, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
That's a very subjective opinion :-) . Adding one would be unfair to others. How about adding all 3 at the end of external links section? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.189.141.19 (talk) 15:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC).
OK, fine with me. :) Thanks for asking. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your tool

Your Mathbot's tool does not seem to be working. This is the one that shows edit summary usage based on the last 150 major and 150 minor edits. Simply south 22:02, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

The toolserver was down I guess. It works now. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:07, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
OK. Simply south 11:51, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] exotic r4

i guess it really doesnt matter what it should look like; its just I'm a little OCD and i like everything to be perfect looking :) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jaxha (talk • contribs) 00:12, 22 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Missing Mathbot capability

Mathbot is also used to maintain lists of 'what is missing from this category' on several articles, ex. list of szlachta (using this script). I couldn't find a 'how-to' (even through I probably found it years ago). Do you know where it is? We should add it to the bot user page... That said, usage is simple: add the above script targeting the talk page (with _ instaed of spaces), and follow instruction it leaves. Btw, can you add a switch that would make the bot look through *all* subcategories? I want to use it to check what articles on list of subject topics are not categorized in that subject fields, and this may be quite tiresome if I have to add every subcategory manually...-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  16:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Piotrus. Yep, there is no how-to, but there is a link from bot's page to talk:list of numerical analysis topics, where, I hoped, the procedure would be clear from the example and the instructions included in each section.
It would be some work to make the bot add all subcategories automatically, I may work on it sometimes, but I don't know when. I have a few other things I need to program for other Wikipedia projects first, and I don't know when I'll get even to that. One day, hopefully. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:33, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lag time between creation of article and ability to find using "find"?

Oleg, thanks for inviting me to engage in discussion. My mother did some consulting for Encyclopedia Britannia back in the 1990's and I've been an encyclopedia aficionado for decades, so it's time for me to get serious about learning the Wiki-ropes and engaging in debate.

I created two articles yesterday but I have been able to find only one of them typing the name of each article into the "FIND" search box. Can you explain why this might be happening?

The two articles are: Hajo Holborn and Medal of Liberty. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dfloren1 (talk • contribs) 19:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] lag time ... additional information...

Oleg, if you want to look at the Medal of Liberty page, it is accessible by typing the URL into your browser

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Liberty

or clicking on a link at the bottom of the Hanna Holborn Gray page.

Yet, the article can not be found using the main "FIND" search box.

I'd say this was odd, but everything has its reason, however obscured from my feeble understanding. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dfloren1 (talk • contribs) 20:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC).

I typed in "Medal of Liberty" in the search box on the left, and it lead me to the article. I could not find it with Special:Search. I guess that's because the search uses cached information (just like google does). But most people find things with the search box rather than Special:Search. So I guess things are fine.
Note that sometimes even if after you create an article it may still show up as a red link for a few seconds or longer, that's just lag in updating the database, not much one can do about. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] cats at Tian-Yau conflict

Hi Oleg. I noticed this article showed up in the categories 3-manifolds and Geometric Topology. I don't believe this incident concerns papers actually in these areas (definitely not the former, and at best only arguably in the latter). I also don't believe it's helpful to put this kind of article in what is primarily a category for mathematics articles. For people, we have the relevant specialist categories. This article is clearly an oddball, but I would suggest some other math category (perhaps to be created) would be more relevant. --C S (Talk) 22:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that my categorization was poor. I guess I borrowed it from some manifold article without reading this article well enough. I agree it may not belong in a math category. I leave this matter up to you to judge. Thanks for the note. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:45, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fermat's last theorem

Hi Oleg, could you move Fermat's Last Theorem to Fermat's last theorem over a redirect. The page was originally there, but was moved to the current location to reflect the dominant capitalization used in the article. However, I have fixed this now, following WP and WP Mathematics conventions. I would do it myself but there is one entry in the target page history, so it needs an admin. I will be happy to fix any redirects. Geometry guy 21:02, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. I also fixed the redirects. I agree that the name should be in lowercase. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:11, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought you might agree on this! Geometry guy 21:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC) Now for something else that is on my mind...

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics is out of date

I visited this page recently and was surprised by what I found. This page should be a clear summary of what the project is about and how to contribute, but it didn't help me much when I first arrived, and it still isn't as helpful as it could be. Two issues:

  1. The emphasis on updating the list of mathematics articles is out of date. As I understand it, your lovely friend MathBot does this. Instead, we should be telling editors to add categories to their pages. My first experience of producing new articles on WP was a quick response from expert editors adding categories to the pages I created. I have never edited list of mathematics articles, but I could have added a category myself if I had known.
  2. It is fair enough to document the historical origins of the project and its progress, but not at the expense of getting to the point. The "2006 update" should surely be absorbed into a smoothly flowing text that encourages the reader to read on. Do you agree?

Geometry guy 21:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it is out of date. Feel free to update it in any way you feel appropriate. For some things you may think discussion is needed, you can start it at Wikiproject's talk page. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:37, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I've made a fairly conservative update. More could be done, but I agree that more substantial changes should be discussed on the talk page first. I also updated the list of mathematics articles. Geometry guy 18:57, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Putting the recent changes in the template is a neat idea. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:34, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Idei

  • Alecu Alexandrescu;
  • Ieremia Alexandrescu;
  • Olteanu Alexandrescu;
  • Ghita Alexandrescu;

Etc. --Thus Spake Anittas 08:44, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RFA thanks

Thank you, Oleg Alexandrov, for your constructive comments in my recent RFA, which passed with 86 support, 8 oppose, and 5 neutral !votes. I will keep in mind all your suggestions and/or concerns, and will try to live up to your standards. Please, if you have any comments or complaints about my actions as an administrator, leave a note on my talk page, and I will respond as soon as I possibly can, without frying my brain, of course.
Thank you once more,
· AndonicO Talk

 Image:Admin mop.PNG

[edit] Your Mathbot tool - another error

It does not seem to be working again and for the past few hours has been showing whichever users' edit summary usage to be 0 based on the las 0 major edits and 0 minor edits. Simply south 18:24, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I have to say I am having the same problem. It is an inconveinance during RfAs when it's nice to look at a user's edit summary usage.  Orfen User Talk | Contribs 02:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. The syntax of the contribs links changed, and that confused the bot. I fixed it now. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My (Selket's) RfA

Thank you, Oleg Alexandrov, for your support on my recent RfA, which recently passed 54/1/1. I hope I can live up to everyone's expectations. I will certainly take the constructive criticism I recieved to heart. Please, if you have any comments or complaints about my actions as an administrator, leave a note on my talk page. Thank you again· --Selket Talk 18:37, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jason J Brown

Their band got back in 2006 and I think that you should write that. I also think that you should write about the awards that they won and put some images in there. This page sucks!!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.186.72.97 (talk) 04:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC).

I never edited the Jason 'J' Brown article, and I don't know what that has to do with me. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks, didn't know that!

Thanks didn't know about links on disambiguation pages. Makes sense though. Strawberry Island 15:42, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for the thanks

Thanks for the thanks, Oleg. It's nice to know that my edits are helping. Cheers, Doctormatt 20:01, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Plots

Oleg, I would like to add a comparison plot of the Lebesgue functions for uniform grid points and Chebyshev points to the Lebesgue constant (interpolation) page. I have generated a figure using MATLAB but am unsure of how to upload it and specify licensing. I wish to make it public domain. Is there any problem with having used a commercial product to produce the plot? What export format should I use also? SVG, does not seem to work for exporting. Thanks!

Gregvw 09:56, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

There is no problem creating a public domain picture with MATLAB, as MATLAB is just a tool. You can save the picture to PNG, with reasonably high resolution, say with the command
   print('-dpng',  '-r300', 'my_picture.png');
from MATLAB. Then you may want to strip some of its wide boundary in an image editor. Alternatively, you can export to eps, with the command
      print('-deps',  '-r300', 'my_picture.eps');
then convert it to PNG in some way.
Lastly, see the "Upload file" link on the left, below the "search" box. You can specify a license while you upload it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is there a tool ...

Hi Oleg Alexandrov,

I was looking through some of PDFbot's recent edits when I came across one where PDFbot was hopelessly confused. It was an edit made to Thailand on the 6th reference (here is a direct link).

The problem here is not PDFbot, but rather a compounding of vandalism that has gone unnoticed. As you can see, reference 6 is very incoherent.

I tried sleuthing through the page's history, but for some of the damage (like the word "onouioioo"), it is not clear where it was introduced; the damage must have been introduced a long time ago.

Do you know of any good tools that would help me fix this part of Thailand? « D. Trebbien (talk) 20:14, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

By the way, you welcomed me very early on in my Wikipedia involvement when I didn't even know how to respond☺! Thank you very much for this; it made me feel like I was "part of the team". Now I help to welcome others. « D. Trebbien (talk) 20:14, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Heh, I am always happy to welcome people. :)
I fixed the vandalism, here's the diff. I had to look at the history and compare several versions to see what is wrong. That's the only way I know about fixing such things. The vandalism was two days old, but it was hard to find because the Thailand article has so many edits. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:39, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much. « D. Trebbien (talk) 03:13, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Semiprotecting Geometry

Hi Oleg, I started a discussion at the mathematics project talk page concerning semiprotecting the article Geometry, which is vandalised so often that it's nearly not being developed at all (the tally of productive edits out of the last 100 edits is 2 major edits, 3 minor edits, 2 bot link additions, the rest is vandalism, cranks, and reverts). The majority of the responses were in favour of semiprotection, with the exception of CMummert, who offered an admin perspective against it. I was wondering what you think about this, and if you agree with protection argument, whether you can use your awesome administrative powers to effect it. Thank you very much! Arcfrk 21:52, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I commented there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:56, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] fractions

Since I'm reverting your edits, in one case again and for the same reason; please do not blank page multiple times for the same reason without discussion- obviously someone disagreed with your blunt assessment and choice to simply remove content. the reason, as placed in the history previously, is that it is no less unencyclopeadic than one half or a list of quarter terms. further, and this may be a function of not being a native english speaker, but a unilateral declaration of "does not deserve its own article" comes across as unnecessarilly abrasive and arrogant- especially when it explicitly ignores edit history.

cheers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Darker Dreams (talk • contribs) 21:50, 12 May 2007 (UTC).

Last time I reverted One quarter was four months ago. I don't even remember it. I hope I may be forgiven for this protracted revert war. :) I will nominate these articles for deletion. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
No problems. I just found the approach brusque, especially given the fact that it was identical to the previous time, and am uncertain why it seemed to be necessarry. Darker Dreams 22:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
I did not mean bad. I did not even know you were the creator both times. It is just the articles are unnecessary I think, and both times I concluded independently the same thing. Here's the link to the deletion discussion, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/One third. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:01, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bilinear operator

Hi Oleg :) Could you move bilinear operator to bilinear map, which is currently a redirect, but has a (very short) edit history? I think there is consensus for such a move (the new name is less ambiguous, cf. binary operation, and more consistent with related articles). Thanks - Geometry guy 19:47, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Done. :) Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Oleg ;)

[edit] Mathematics CotW

I am trying to revive the Collaboration of the Week I am hitting everybody on the WP:WPM with this "I am writing you to let you know that the Mathematics Collaboration of the week(soon to "of the month") is getting an overhaul of sorts and I would encourage you to participate in whatever way you can, i.e. nominate an article, contribute to an article, or sign up to be part of the project. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks--Cronholm144 23:54, 13 May 2007 (UTC)" and sometimes a personal message. Input would be appreciated

[edit] My RfB

Many thanks, Oleg. I needed that! :)

[edit] Fatou components

Hi Oleg Thx for your notes, of course you are right about the style, but I don't understand some content changes you have made:

  • I think that definition of degree of rational function should be in the page about rational function not in Fatou components
  • The title of page is : "classification of Fatou components" so there should be information of all types of fatou components not only periodic.

(:-_) Adam majewski 16:25, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

About rational function, I have never seen the definition deg(p/q) = max(deg(p), deg(q)), and only somtimes I saw the def deg(p/q) = deg(p)+deg(q) (which makes a lot more sense). Unless you can provide a few good references for deg(p/q) = max(deg(p), deg(q)) I think that info is better kept out of the article.
You are right about classification of Fatou components of course. But note that your edits cut out the introduction and made the whole text rather unreadable (you also did not add any explanation for your edits in the edit summary). I did not know how to integrate your changes, and I did not know if you would ever come back to that article, so I preferred to do a straight revert. Feel free to edit that article of course, and add good information, as long as it is added in the appropriate place and the whole thing reads well. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:22, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

The degree of a rational function is the maximum of the degrees of its constituent polynomials P and Q.

It is from wikipedia article about rational function section complex analysis --Adam majewski 20:04, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User:Minestrone Soup

Hi Oleg, User:Cronholm144 has just pointed out to me an erratic change in the behaviour of Minestrone. He was editing as normal up to 06:55 this morning, then did not contribute again until 16:50, since when his only actions have been to blank his own user and talk pages with offensive edit summaries, and leave offensive messages on the talk page of User:ArnoldReinhold: see [4]. He has never left messages on this user's talk page before (or vice-versa as far as I can tell). They interacted recently on Trigonometry, but I see no sign of an edit conflict, just a few attempts each to improve the article. Cronholm thinks that Minestrone's account has been compromised and wonders how to proceed. My only thought is to warn ArnoldReinhold that this might not be Minestrone, and to keep an eye on the account for further abuse, but I'd be glad for the input of an experienced admin! Geometry guy 20:31, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Cronholm was right, but Minestrone is back in control now, and has addressed the issues, so I hope no further action is necessary. I have advised him to change his passwords, although this is probably unnecessary. Geometry guy 21:18, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Cool. Usually these kind of things should go to WP:AN/I where there are always some admins watching over things. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:22, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Math Template

Hey Oleg do you know who designed the Maths rating's templates for WP 1.0, I am trying to help out [5] Anton with his attempt to synthesize the WP:Numbers project template with the math template, but he is having some problems. All he needs is to be pointed in the right direction, thanks--Cronholm144 22:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Salix Alba and Tompw were surely instrumental. However, I have edited the template most recently, and understand all its workings. Geometry guy 22:54, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Ha ha, who knew? I didn't ask you because I had been spamming you with my blather on your talk page so much recently, but it looks like it always comes right back to you;)--Cronholm144 23:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. sorry Oleg it looks like I have begun to monopolise on your talk page as well

Don't worry about that. :) To answer your original question, I was not involved in desigining the math template. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:22, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] how to write mathematics online

my friend:

  How do you type in mathematics on the page?  Can you type mathematics in an email?

---jesusonfire

I don't think you can type mathematics in an email and have it look good. To type mathematics on Wikipedia, you do for example this:
\int_a^b \! f(x) \, dx
(try to edit this text to see the source). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
See Help:Displaying a formula for more information. I usually look for some existing formulas which have the features I want and then look at the source for them with the edit button. JRSpriggs 10:02, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
As regards e-mail, you can e-mail pointers to pages in Wikipedia. So if you can find a page which has the formula you want to communicate, you could e-mail a pointer to that page to your correspondent. If you cannot find such a page, you could put the formula on your user page and e-mail a pointer to that. For example, this page is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Oleg_Alexandrov . JRSpriggs 04:44, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Depending on your computer's operating system, there might be various applications you can use that will take TeX code in an email and with a simple click convert it into an embedded image (PNG, PDF, etc.). I only know about the ones for OS X, like Equation Service. --C S (Talk) 09:45, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] anon users

Oleg,

In view of the known identity abuses at WP, an user who wishes to remain anon (which they do for their own benefit) should not venture into questionable edits. I think this could be a self-enforced rule, for fairness. I am reverting the rating anyway because I don't agree with it. Hope this is useful. Edgerck 07:28, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Edgerck, Wikipedians who edit under their real name, and those who don't, are treated equally. I will raise this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:40, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Happy Oleg's Day!

Oleg Alexandrov has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian,
and therefore, I've officially declared today as Oleg's day!
For being such a beautiful person and great Wikipedian,
enjoy being the Star of the day, dear Oleg!

Love,
Phaedriel
00:25, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

A record of your Day will always be kept here.
Hi Phaedriel. Thank you for the very nice words you wrote above, and for the poem at the link for the record of the day (that's a beautiful poem indeed, the best one written in Romanian, perhaps). I am very glad that you are around spreading the wiki-love among people! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:31, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, dear Oleg, for all the excellent work you do here, and for being the wonderful person you are :) Your name will be displayed with joy all day at my userpage, along with Eminescu's poem in your beautiful language. Enjoy this, your special day, dear Oleg! Îmi pare bine! :) Hugs, Phaedriel - 00:46, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations Oleg!--Cronholm144 00:34, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

When I first encountered Phaedriel's wonderful idea to honour the finest Wikipedians with their own day, I immediately thought of you, Oleg, and wondered if you would be recognised. I am delighted to see that you have been! Geometry guy 01:32, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you Cronholm144 and Geometry guy. Oh, so much wiki-love around today! No surprise my wife doesn't believe Wikipedia is only about editing and says I love Wikipedia more than her. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:57, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Hope I'm not too late! Happy Oleg Day! And my condolences to your wife. bibliomaniac15 06:03, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hello,

Hi Oleg,

You recently posted a brief message on my talk page welcoming me, and also praising the utility of the Edit Summary. I'm curious as to whether there is a specific context in which I displayed ignorance of this particular marvel of collaborative editing, or if it was just a general proviso :D.

Regards,

Alex —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alexander.fairley (talk • contribs).

Hi Alex. You can see your contributions with Special:Contributions/Alexander.fairley. It appears that you use the edit summary rather seldom, but that is easy to fix. :) You can also set up your preferences to be reminded about this. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mathopenref

Oleg You complain about links to mathopenref. The reason the material is not in Wikipedia itself is that I use Java animations a lot, and when I put them in wikipedia pages they are deleted because Java applets are not approved. So what should I do? I am certainly not a commercial venture ( I wish it were so). I stand to gain no commercial value from my work.

Perhaps there are too many links. I will remove some a cut down to just a few. But my intentions are simply to add value.

Perhaps we should all should start to think about how to move Wikipedia math articles beyond just static text and on to the next stage. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.6.151.150 (talk • contribs).

Yes, I think it is a good idea not to have more than one or two links to this site in each relevant article. Otherwise things are unbalanced. About moving Wikipedia beyond text, well, I think Java is no longer the hot thing it used to be for interactive web programming, and many computers don't have Java preinstalled. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Subharmonic function

Thanks. Yes, I meant the Laplace-de Rham operator. Sorry for not making it clear. Tiphareth 09:26, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Preorder symbol

"≤" can be confusing for a preorder that is not anti-symmetric, it may suggest that a ≤ b implies that a < b or a = b.--Patrick 00:03, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree. But I don't think we even need preorder at ordered vector space, I'll cut that part out. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:30, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old

Hi... Mathbot seems to be missing the first AFD on the day log when it updates Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old. E.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2007 May 19's first AFD is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Camerupt, which is still open, but isn't showing up. This is also happening with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lilly, Do You Want to Know a Secret?. If this helps, DFBot's script at User:Dragons flight/AFD summary/All recognizes them, but doesn't seem to parse them correctly. Hopefully this is easy to fix, if not I'll make a note for closers to manually check to make sure the first AFD has been closed before removing a day from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old. --W.marsh 13:58, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

That was a bug, I fixed it. Thanks for noticing, this one was rather subtle and hard to see I guess. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:13, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Resolving inconsistency

There are two definitions of infinite sequence in Wikipedia which are not equivalent: a function from {1, 2, ...} to S, and one where an infinite number of terms are non-zero. Either one should be changed, or at least this should be pointed out. Please do not obstruct finding a solution for this.--Patrick 07:48, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

First, a general comment. The number of concepts which people use (even just in mathematics) far exceeds the number of words. So overloading, using the same word for several different things, is unavoidable.
Second, in what article and section is "infinite sequence" defined as one which must have an infinite number of non-zero values? That is certainly unusual compared to the other definition.
Third, pre-emptively accusing Oleg (or anyone) of obstruction will not win you friends. JRSpriggs 08:41, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
(1) I pointed out in sequences that there are two meanings.
(2) See Sequence space#Exampleshttp://en.wikipedia.org../../../../articles/s/e/q/Sequence_space.html#Examples.
(3) This refers to reverting attempts to solve the problem without any action or suggestion to do it in a better way. That is, his first reversal suggested a required improvement, but after I made that, he reverted it again.
Patrick 10:20, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
I assume that you are referring to "The space of finite sequenceshttp://en.wikipedia.org../../../../articles/s/e/q/Sequence.html#Examples_and_notation Φ consisting of all sequences where only a finite number of terms are non-zero.". This does not alter the meaning of "infinite sequence". It might be construed as altering the meaning of "finite sequence", but it is better to think of it as just an isomorphism. Referring to an isomorphic space as the same is rather like referring to a king as the "crown". It is just sloppy language, but everyone knows what it means.
If you want to change something, change Sequence space rather than Sequence. JRSpriggs 10:50, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes, identifying isomorphic sets is fine here, but the term "infinite sequence" might be understood as "non-finite". I added a remark in Sequence space.--Patrick 11:25, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree with the three other editors; the only thing that needs fixing here is a mental state, not the articles. There is no meaningful ambiguity, and attempts to "clarify" only introduce distracting confusion. Far from obstruction, we have a concensus solution: "It ain't broke, don't fix it."
Turning to more constructive matters, the sequence article seems unnecessarily specific about indexing with {1,2,3,…}. For example, if we consider a tuple of function arguments, names are more common than numbers. Nor is it so critical that indices start with 1. We need to be a little bit careful with the index set so that sequence doesn't turn into family (which isn't even mentioned, by the way), but that seems tractable. I'm not up to the rewrite just now, but I was curious if anyone else had the same reaction. --KSmrqT 12:29, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
Nadav1 has come up with a shorter way to fix the problem. That may be sufficient.--Patrick 13:10, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
I have little time for the moment, but I agree that changing sequence is not the way to go, the definition of a sequence is fine and sound. It is indeed sequence space where wording may need tweaking (or was already tweaked). Thank you for your comments. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:13, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] overwriting deleted articles

Have you ever investigated why the version of WWW:MediaWiki:Client in the WP 1.0 bot setup fails to edit articles that have been deleted? I don't want to start looking into it if you know that it's a hopeless cause. CMummert · talk 01:24, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I tried to fix that myself but I could not (there's something about the edit tokens which does not work well for articles with deleted versions). If you know anything about those things, you could give it a try (the source of the package is rather easy to understand).
I notified the author (Mark) of the client about this a few months ago, he's aware of the issue, but I guess he did not get to it yet. Perhaps you could ping him too.
If you really need something around this bug, there is another package, Perlwikipedia which does not have the bug. I used it a bit, and it works rather well, except that it does not notify of edit conflicts with other editors (that feature is not needed however for pages edited by a bot only). Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
It wasn't too hard to fix once I found your "advanced" submit feature to dump the raw HTML of the error message. The problem was that WWW:MediaWiki:Client was not parsing the server token saying when the edit began, which made the server think the article was deleted after the edit started. The patch below seems to work for me. CMummert · talk 04:34, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
--- Client.pm.b2        2007-05-27 00:22:25.000000000 -0400
+++ Client.pm   2007-05-27 00:29:05.000000000 -0400
@@ -91,6 +91,7 @@
 use constant EDIT_SUBMIT_NAME   => 'wpSave';
 use constant EDIT_SUBMIT_VALUE  => 'Save Page';
 use constant EDIT_TIME_NAME     => 'wpEdittime';
+use constant EDIT_STARTTIME_NAME     => 'wpStarttime';
 use constant EDIT_TOKEN_NAME    => 'wpEditToken';
 use constant EDIT_WATCH_NAME    => 'wpWatchthis';
 use constant EDIT_MINOR_NAME    => 'wpMinoredit';
@@ -591,6 +592,8 @@
     my $url = $self->_filename_to_action_url($filename);
     my $ref = $self->_get_ref_filename($filename);
     my $edit_time = $self->{server_date};
+    my $start_time = $self->{server_start_date};
+
     my $edit_token = $self->{server_token};
     # take field names from defined constants
     my $textbox = TEXTAREA_NAME;
@@ -598,6 +601,7 @@
     my $subname = EDIT_SUBMIT_NAME;
     my $subvalue = EDIT_SUBMIT_VALUE;
     my $timename = EDIT_TIME_NAME;
+    my $starttime_name = EDIT_STARTTIME_NAME;
     my $tokenname = EDIT_TOKEN_NAME;
     my $watchbox = EDIT_WATCH_NAME;
     print { $self->{debug_fh} } " to $url.\n";
@@ -607,6 +611,7 @@
             $comment    => $self->{commit_message},
             $subname    => $subvalue,
             $timename   => $edit_time,
+            $starttime_name => $start_time,
             $tokenname   => $edit_token,
 #            $watchbox   => 1,
         ]
@@ -624,6 +629,7 @@
     my $doc = $res->content;
     my $text = $self->_get_wiki_text($doc);
     $self->{server_date} = $self->_get_edit_date($doc);
+    $self->{server_start_date} = $self->_get_start_date($doc);
     $self->{server_token} = $self->_get_edit_token($doc);
     return $text;
 }
@@ -649,6 +655,19 @@
     return $date;
 }
 
+sub _get_start_date {
+    my ($self, $doc) = @_;
+    my $p = HTML::TokeParser->new(\$doc);
+    my $date = 0;
+    while (my $tag = $p->get_tag('input')) {
+        next unless $tag->[1]->{type} eq 'hidden';
+        next unless $tag->[1]->{name} eq 'wpStarttime';
+        $date = $tag->[1]->{value};
+    }
+    return $date;
+}
+
+
 sub _get_edit_token {
     my ($self, $doc) = @_;
     my $p = HTML::TokeParser->new(\$doc);

This is awesome! I've been hating this bug for a couple of years now. I'd suggest you submit the bug fix to Mark Jaroski, the author of WWW-Mediawiki-Client. I dealt with him in the past, he's a very nice guy and will be happy to accept the bug fix.

By the way, is the patch against the newest version, 0.31, of the client? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:27, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I did email the patch to Mark, and he said he will apply it as long as it passes the build tests. The patch is against the version 0.23, the one that you used to make your wikipedia_perl_bot release that I originally downloaded. You can probably apply it by hand to a newer version, since it's pretty much self-contained code.
I remember your docs claimed the latest version of the library wouldn't work in-memory. If that's not true any more, I'll upgrade. The in-memory part is much better than the file-based system that the mvs utility uses. In particular, it makes Unicode article names work more smoothly for me. CMummert · talk 23:27, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
The newest version (0.31) of WWW:MediaWiki:Client changed some API's, and my in-memory routines indeed stopped working. Not so long ago I modified my routines to work with the 0.31 version too, I'll release the newer version of them soon, perhaps tomorrow.
Note that Mark may have some trouble integrating your patch with version 0.31, since I think too many things changed from 0.23 to 0.31. But maybe I am wrong. Anyhow, once I post the newer version of the in-memory routines, and if you could at some point adapt your patch to work with version 0.31, that will be great. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] perlwikipedia problems

Greetings. I'm having trouble getting perlwikipedia to work correctly. I put a request in at User talk:Shadow1/perlwikipedia#More tech support. If you could look it over, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks, – Quadell (talk) (random) 14:27, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Most linked maths articles

This seems to be a useful and needed list: any chance you could ask your friend Mathbot to update it regularly (say once a week)? Geometry guy 20:44, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll have it updated every day from now (although the effect will be felt every other day, since mathbot uses the result of WP 1.0 bot which runs every other day.
Now, when the bot updates this list, it will only update the column marking the entries which have not yet been rated. I guess this is what primarily you find useful. That is to say, it will not update the number of times an article is linked from other math articles, for that I need to download all the 15K math articles, and I am not sure if it is worth doing that every week. If you need this info updated too, let me know. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:22, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

That is what interests me, yes, but I'm not sure about other users. How about updating the big picture once a month? Geometry guy 23:26, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to remember. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:47, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps every two months? Katzmik 07:27, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Partial derivative

Oleg, I unknowingly reversed your reversal of the notation for partial derivatives. It is my understanding that the subscript closest to the function name is the first derivative taken. For example, in fxy you first differentiate wrt x and then wrt y. Perhaps we should open this up to discussion? Jhausauer 21:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I am actually not sure how this goes, I have always thought that the order is the same as with the fraction notation. The best thing to do would be getting some references. Do you know of any book where this is discussed? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:57, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't have any textbooks with me but check Elementary Calculus by Keisler, an online textbook. He uses the notation I described. Jhausauer 17:05, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Oleg, I agree with you -- the order should match the partial notation. See the Hessian matrix article for the proper notation. Additionally, note that if second derviatives are all continuous, then fxy = fyx. Most likely the original reference that inspired the reversed notation was assuming such a function. The person using the reference was definitely confused by this and assumed that, for some reason, the notation should be reversed. Nevertheless, you are correct and you should put your change back to the article. --TedPavlic 13:47, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
The more I think about it, the more I think I am right here. Check HMC Calculus tutorial for another source. Jhausauer 15:35, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll try to look up some references through google books, I'll let you know if I find anything. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:43, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Check page 763 of James Stewart's Calculus: Concepts and Connections. Stewart is a very popular book in freshman and sophomore calculus courses. Also check http://www.mth.uct.ac.za/omei/a-calculus/chap2/node1.html. Jhausauer 15:52, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures

Hey Oleg, I saw your nice additions to neighbourhood. Could you do something similar for Codomain and Image (mathematics). I added my weak attempt to their respective talk pages, but it is not nearly article quality. If you don't have time I completely understand. Also, what is the name of the software you use to create those images, I would like to become a math wikifairy if I can. Thanks --Cronholm144 03:21, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I should read before I speak... inkscape, thanks muchly!--Cronholm144 03:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Such pictures should be really easy to do in Inkscape. If you want, you could take the SVG source of my pictures, paste it in a file which can be open from Inkscape, and go from there. If you need help, or if you want me to take a look or tweak the finished pictures, let me know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:30, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
Actually, you could maybe adapt Image:Multivalued function.svg to your needs. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll work with both, thanks for the help. :)--Cronholm144 03:38, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

so much better
so much better

Here's number one, but you can see the problem. The text doesn't render(at least for me). I released it under GFDL so I think you can edit it. I also put jpeg version on the Image (mathematics) talk page. Cheers and thanks for the pointers.--Cronholm144 05:34, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Inkscape has the option to use "flowed text", which is in the draft SVG 1.2 standard, but not in the current SVG 1.1 standard. Convert all your flowed text using the Text menu option "Convert to text". Then consider what fonts to use; your choices are listed here. --KSmrqT 06:40, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks so much, I'll do so now :) --Cronholm144 09:39, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! If fonts render poorly, you could export it to PNG (not jpeg), and then use that one in Wikipedia pages. But also include the SVG code below the picture, so that others can modify it.
There is one thing I'd like to notice though. The text size is way too small, it cannot be seen in the thumb. When you make a picture, I think it is good if you zoom out every now and then, so that you see it exactly as it appears in a thumbnail. I'd suggest you make the fonts bigger.
Also, to enter letters like φ, you can just copy them from somewhere (say Wikipedia) into inkscape. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:51, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
The default thumbnail size is 180 pixels wide (though accounts can choose a different default in their preferences under "Files"), so you might want to test against that. Some images won't be legible that small, and it may be desirable to force a bigger thumbnail. However, we want to be kind to readers with smaller screens and/or lower bandwidth. In the same spirit, try viewing your image in gray to see brightness contrast, the most important aspect of color choice for readability. (Or try ColorBrewer to select a color scheme.) --KSmrqT 00:16, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adminship

Ok, I've filled in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/David Eppstein. If you have any feedback for me, something you think should be changed in my answers before it gets submitted, please let me know; otherwise, you can go ahead and submit it. I'm going to be traveling next week, though, so if my active participation in the debate would be required it might be better to wait until the following week. —David Eppstein 07:45, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

All looks good. Perhaps the third part of your answer to question 1 could be made more clear, just to make sure people understand that you won't threaten vandals with a block right away, but only in situations that that person is not willing to stop, or something like that. But that's my perspective only. And then, you need to sign the acceptance and change the datestamp to a week from that.
Now, about traveling. Will you travel from Monday? If so, that leaves us with four-five days till then, and that period should be enough to answer any questions that may arise I think if we go ahead and transclude the nomination. But it is up to you when you want it on and when you are ready.
Lastly, it is you who should transclude it to WP:RfA, whenever you decide; my job was done when I wrote the nomination. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:47, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm leaving late Sunday night. Ok, will do. —David Eppstein 15:54, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bureaucrat chat is open on Gracenotes's RfA

Using Danny's RfA as something to compare with is probably not a good idea. That one introduced the inovative idea of bureaucrat chat (thanks to Taxman), but overall could have been handled much better I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely, which is why I didn't use Danny's RfA as the example above. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 16:39, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing science topics

I've started to remove links to existing articles at Wikipedia:Missing science topics before I noticed that it used to be done by Mathbot some time ago. There are plenty of blue links at math topics so I was wondering if the bot is going to go through these lists again? Jogers (talk) 18:25, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

It's been a year already indeed. Thanks for the reminder, I'll run the bot soon. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:02, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Secondary measure

Thanks for your welcome message and for the good format you have done on the article. I am a french teacher beginning on the english wikipedia and my syntax is not very sure. So thanks again for all your work. Have a good day. ENRGO 10:43, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Areas of Interest

Oleg,

Thanks for your kind message regarding my first post (Differential Equation -- 20th Century Uses). I am a lecturer at Northeastern University in Boston in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies and at Endicott College (communication). I hope to make some useful contributions to Wikipedia regarding mathematics, computers, robotics, information theory, telecommunications and intelligent agents, which are my areas of interest.

Best wishes,

Andrew Spano

[edit] Deleted neighborhood

Hi Oleg. In your last edit summary for Neighborhood (mathematics), you asked about deleted neighborhoods. I have heard this term before, and a quick Google Books search confirms that there are references for this usage. (It seems to be more common in complex analysis than in topology, though.) VectorPosse 18:19, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi VP. I should have checked, of course. :) Thanks! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:38, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] limsup and liminf

I have responded to your threats about the infimum limits and supremum limits. I made the trivial change that you requested and responded to your concerns in the discussion. Please review. I hope this is to your satisfaction. --TedPavlic 13:42, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I replied at Talk:Limit superior and limit inferior#Recent shape of this article also. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:20, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Style

Oops -- sorry. I'll try to remember to be more formal; thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nbarth (talk • contribs)

[edit] Problems with query.php affecting WP 1.0 bot

I am having problems with query.php. For example I can't load the contents of 'Category:Stub-Class mathematics articles'. I get the error pi_badpageids, which is interesting because I can't find that string anywhere in the source. Have you run into this with WP 1.0 bot? — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:24, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I verified with [6] that this affects WP 1.0 bot as well - it says it fails to fetch the second continuation of Category:Stub-Class mathematics articles until it gives up on the 10th attempt and moves on to the next continuation. If you find anything out, please let me know. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:40, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I will look into it, hopefully tomorrow. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:11, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
I replied on your talk page. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:54, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Complete Metric Space

No, Oleg, I am afraid you are wrong, you have missed a subtle point. The way it is explained on the page, it says that the distance from one equivalence class to another is defined BECAUSE THE REAL NUMBERS ARE COMPLETE. But how can you use the completenesss of the real numbers to prove that the completion of the rationals is the real numbers? I certainly agree that once the real numbers are known to be complete, then one can use the more straightforward procedure to perform the completion of any other metric space. But you can NOT use the completeness of the real numbers in CONSTRUCTING the real numbers. This is why I made the remark about "avoiding circularity". The right way is to define the equivalence relation using the zero distance relation to put sequences in the equivalence class (and then, in the case of completing the rationals, strictly speaking, one should prove that the set of equivalence classes form a complete totally ordered field, which identifies with the real numbers). This is done with some care in Spivak's book for example. This is not a matter of style or taste, it is a matter of mathematical correctness and accuracy. What is in the reverted article is faulty. Messagetolove 16:57, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the article aspires to prove that the real numbers are the completion of the rationals. As Oleg explained in the edit summary, this article assumes at the outset that the real numbers have already been defined and proven to be the completion of rationals, and continues to use this to show that any other metric space can also be completed. It is agreed that a separate proof for reals is required somewhere, just not in this article. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:04, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
If that is the case, then it should be properly explained that the completeness of the real numbers is assumed from the outset, and the text "Cantor's construction of the real numbers is a special case of this; the real numbers are the completion of the rational numbers using the ordinary absolute value to measure distances." should be removed from the article, since this clearly implies that the construction described for a general metric space,which, as described, makes use of the completeness of the reals, is the same construction as used to complete the rationals (or anything else not already complete) to the reals, which could not make a priori use of the completeness of the reals. Furthermore, the explanation in the Edit Summary makes the incorrect comment that if we do not already assume the completeness of the reals, we could complete them by the procedure outlined for a general metric space. This is circular reasoning for the reasons I have explained already, as the completion process in the article uses the completeness of the reals. I really do not care greatly about my own text being reverted- I think my record shows that when my text has been reverted in the past ( a rare occurence to date) I have explained why the text was as it was, and not blindly reverted it back. But I do care that the text remaining on the page is incorrect.

Messagetolove 19:39, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Post script: sorry, it wasn't in the edit summary that Oleg said that about completing the reals if they weren't already complete, it was on my talk page.

Messagetolove 19:56, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Continued at User talk:Messagetolove. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:22, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Importance vs priority

See User talk:CBM#Importance vs priority. Any comments? (I guess this is not an issue for the WP 1.0 bot, but it doesn't do any harm to make sure ;) Geometry guy 17:28, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I commented there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:53, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Carl and I have now implemented the changeover from importance to priority. I noticed a possible effect on WP 1.0 bot: will it automatically fix the links at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Mathematics articles by quality statistics? It isn't very important because I've turned the old pages into redirects, but it's nice to tidy up sometimes... Geometry guy 20:50, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi G-guy. It appears that the statistics table above survived fine the transition (diff).
Nice. I reckon that whoever programmed the code for WP 1.0 bot must be a clever guy :) By the way, I notice that Bplus gets folded in with B currently. Any chance it could be folded in with GA, or listed separately? Geometry guy 02:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I can't do that. The bot does not recognize the B+ class. I think now B+ gets folded with B because each B+ article is automatically B (per some code in the math template I guess) -- Carl should know about this. If you want each B+ to be folded with GA, one should modify that template (again, ask Carl, I think either he or Salix alba came up with the B+ class and whom it should be folded with).
The reason the bot does not recognize B+ is because that's a math specific grade, and as a matter of principle I try to keep the bot free of any project specific ratings (I'd go mad try to please all customizations of the hundreds of projects :) Any math-specific bot work could be addressed to Carl's bot, if he's willing to do it. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:23, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointer: it is a category thing. I've now folded B+ in with GA instead. (I know the maths rating template pretty well now!) Geometry guy 02:38, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
By the way, thank you for your help in answering questions about my bots (or about my silly mistakes about them). A few times I noticed that before I got to a post you replied there before me, and you gave great answers. Thanks! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:50, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
You're welcome. I'm sure you have explained 100 times how Mathbot finds math articles! It isn't rocket science really, once you realise that bots have access to all the same data (backlinks, categories etc.) as any other editor, but can process it faster. Yet many users are baffled and amazed by the bots' god-like powers. Good programming again, I reckon :) Geometry guy 02:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mathbot on AfDs

Mathbot is insisting that this AfD discussion is still open when it's been closed. You may want to review and see what assumption is tripping it up; at a guess, it may be because <!--Template:Afd top is lacking the closing -->, but naturally I have no idea how it determines that a discussion has been closed.

Cheers, and thanks for the good work on the bot! It's invaluable. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 22:42, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

This edit by KrakatoaKatie fixed things. The bot expected the heading below AfD top. Thanks for the note. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:28, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My RfA ...

Hi. Thanks for supporting my request for adminship and for your expression of confidence in me. The RfA was successful and I am now an admin. If I can ever be of help, please let me know. Cheers, Black Falcon (Talk) 05:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dual cones

Hi Oleg, I must admit that you have surprised me by removing 'merge' tag in Dual cone, while stating your point of view in the summary of the edit. I think it was rather dismissive on your part, quite contrary to my impression of you as a Wikipedian with fine understanding of Wikiquette. I've looked at talk pages for both articles, and this issue has not been discussed, but perhaps, it should be. This is what tags are used for, or at least so I thought. Arcfrk 01:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I did not mean to appear inconsiderate. To start, the person putting in the tag should attempt to explain why the articles should be merged. Also, I looked carefully at both articles, and I did not see a good reason to merge them, rather the opposite. So, I explained my reason for why they should not be merged, and removed the tag.
So, let's start from the beginning, why should the articles be merged? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:27, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

No problem! I guessed it was a misunderstanding, and I didn't realize that the 'merge' tag must be accompanied by an explanation (I see a lot of tags without explanations). But first a procedural issue, let us restore the tag and carry out the discussion at the talk page of the article, so that it may be viewed by other interested parties, OK? Arcfrk 02:36, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The merge tag doesn't have to be absolutely necessarily accompanied by an explanation, but without it, well, how can one start a discussion. OK, I restored the tag, I'd appreciate if you explain on the talk page why the articles should be merged. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:39, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] One-to-one

Thanks for your message on my talk page. I agree with your suggestion, and have just moved the page to One-to-one (disambiguation). --Edcolins 15:39, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. Thank you for moving the page and expanding it too. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
You're welcome. Cheers. --Edcolins 16:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need your advice...

Dear Oleg.

I was roaming Wikipedia when I stumbled across the article for Stephen Hawking (the cosmologist). Someone had edited it and wrote (and I quote): "Stephen Cripple legs Hawking... is a British top class athlete and winner of the 2004 Olympics."

I was utterly disgusted to see something so offensive especially on Wikipedia. I have full conviction that this is not representative of the organisation at all, and I think it is very likely that there are some rogues roaming.

I would like to make a request to the relevant authorities that whoever made this change should be banned. (1. I am surprised it was not altered until I saw it; and 2. I have consequently changed the article to how it was before using a cached link from Google.)

How do I go about this?

Thanks in advance.

PS I have a print-screen image of the page with the rude comments on, as proof of my claims. If you want, I can post it up, but I'm unsure how to attach (I'm a newbie user).

Natural Philosopher 14:11, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I understand your feelings.
First, about reverting. Using a cached link from google is not the best option, that may be outdated. Instead, you should click on the "history" tab, and select the last best version, and revert to it.
About banning the user in question. Well, you can't do that only for one or a few edits. You could go and write on his talk page. If the user shows a persistent pattern for a long while, then he could be banned.
That's the reality of Wikipedia, anybody can edit. All I can say is that on the whole, many more good things get added than bad, and the bad things usually get reverted after a while. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:03, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

_____________________

Thanks for your comments.

I have checked that the article has been restored to the latest correct edit using the History tab (I didn't know about that before).

I also now know the username of the member who did this. However, he does not have a user page. Is there any way that I put his name on a warning list or something like that?

Thank you.

Natural Philosopher 15:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

You can put the warning on his talk page. I already wrote one, but you can add to it.
There is no warning list, although for persistent vandals see Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:26, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

___________________

Many thanks for your advice and assistance in this matter, Oleg.

Natural Philosopher 21:14, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup templates

Just to let you know that most cleanup templates, like "merge", "fact", "cleanup" etc., are best not "subst"ed. See WP:SUBST for more details. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 17:10 9 June 2007 (GMT).

Hi Rich. Can you tell me what specific edit are you referring to? I am not aware of subst'ing such things.
And I have a note to you too. One should not use the minor edit button for non-minor edits, like talk page edits. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:14, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
<grin> Sorry about the "minor". Here's the edit in question. Rich Farmbrough, 17:55 9 June 2007 (GMT).
Yeah, right, I forgot about that one. Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:22, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 bot running slow?

Hi... I wasn't sure if you already knew it or not, but WP 1.0 bot hasn't touched the assessments for WikiProject Louisville or WikiProject Kentucky (and possibly other projects) for six days. I hope the bot is doing ok. Thanks! Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 19:31, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Today it is running. There were a few glitches. Usually the page WT:1.0/I is a good place where to check for what is going on. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:05, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
OK, thanks for the info (and for a great bot). I'll watch that page from now on. Cheers! Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 23:36, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
Not slow, stopped - again. It was restarted but only got so far before stopping. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 10:24, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unicode & browsers

Sorry about that, Oleg. I didn't realize my console setup would screw around with unicode when I edited something else on Wikipedia. I'll have to be more circumspect from now on. Thanx for the heads-up.

Pazouzou 19:36, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for your Help

Dear Oleg

Thanks muchly for your help with "Product Integral" plus your suggestions. There is so much in Wikipedia that I was feeling a bit lost.

I was hoping to contribute something on "dx-less integrals" (you'll have to look then up at www.geocities.com/multigrals2000 and download the appropriate word doc) and the "fair bet paradox" but I'm wondering if it might "be sailing too close to the breeze". Will concentrate on adding to Product Integral for now.

Again, thanks for your help

Daryl Williams 04:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

P.S: Liked your webpage as well.

P.P.S: Could wiki-mathematicians possibly help with dx-less integrals? Everyone I've shown them to can't figure them out. Daryl Williams 04:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

ABout this last thing, you can try asking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:39, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Will do. Daryl Williams 23:30, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] normal vector field

Hi Oleg,

you added a picture of a normal vector field to vector field. Since the vectors are normal to the surface everywhere, the vector field is effectively a scalar field. It's a section of the trivial real line bundle. Since vector bundles have their own article, I don't think this picture is appropriate (or at least problematic) for the vector field article. Let's stick to tangent vector fields. What do you think? --MarSch 09:04, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Every nonvanishing vector field is a section of a line bundle, namely its span. Further, the line bundle is trivial, because the vector field provides a trivialization!
However, Oleg's example is not, strictly speaking, a vector field, but a vector field along a map (damn, another article needs to be written: see Pushforward (differential)#Pushforward of vector fields). This is a common abuse of language, though, especially when the map is an embedding, as it is here, so it probably should be explained. Geometry guy 11:10, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
OK, I removed the picture, I agree that it is misleading there. I indeed confused a vector field with a section of a vector bundle. I added the picture at vector bundle, as an illustration of a section. If it is wrong there, or if the caption needs work, please let me know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:59, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Pictures

There are two problems with my pictures:

  1. shapes were drawn with Kig, then filled with The Gimp. To release them in SVG format, I should be able to fill them in inkscape, but this could be not really simple, depending on how badly Kig exports shapes in SVG
  2. I can't find them on my PC. Maybe I just don't remember their names, but I could even have lost them last time I erroneously deleted all of my documents...

if I find anything I'll tell you

--Toobaz 14:54, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I see. That's why it is a good idea to release the source together with the pictures, so that they don't get lost. :) Thanks for your reply. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:00, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Log and statistics subpages

Could you modify the bot from using page names such as Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chess articles by quality statistics to using Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chess articles by quality/statistics? That would create handy back links to the statistics and log pages too. Currently the those pages do not link to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chess articles by quality which is, in my opinion, more essential than linking to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team which is what they do. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 15:21, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

That is a good idea, but perhaps a bit too late (I wish I thought about it earlier). It would require doing hundreds of moves to fix all the existing pages (in order to be consistent among them). You could try raising this at WT:1.0/I, but I am not sure if it is worth it given the amount of work needed to bring all the existing page in the same naming convention. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:26, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conic sections and gravity in "Euclidean geomentry"

I corrected this section but you incorrectly labelled those corrections as wrong. Again: if v is less than escape velocity the object WILL BE IN AN ELIPTICAL ORBIT. You write "falls back to earth in a parabola" but miss the entire point. The only reason any object falls back to the earth is because it is not a point mass, otherwise any object would orbit. Satellites, for example, ARE IN ORBIT. Right? Can we agree? Guess what: their velocity is less than escape velocity, otherwise, by definition, they would not be in orbit. You think a satellite in orbit has a velocity equal to escape velocity. THEN HOW DO SATELLITES ORBIT AT DIFFERENT ALTITUDES? Answer: any velocity less than escape velocity is an elliptical orbit. Orbit is, by definition, a bounded energy system. If an object has a v equal to escape speed then it is no longer a bounded system and cannot be in orbit. If v is equal to escape speed then the object obeys a parabolic trajectory and escapes (duh) an infinite distance from the system. If v is greater than the escape speed than the object obeys a hyperbolic orbit.

Again:

  1. if v is less than escape speed then elliptical orbit
  2. if v = escape speed then parabolic trajectory
  3. if v > escape speed then hyperbolic trajectory

I try to contribute to this site and a moron who doesn't understand basic physics (and yet is supposedly a grad student) over-writes it. That is frustrating. Please stick to editing things you have some basic knowledge of. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.34.95.124 (talk • contribs)

You are assuming you already are in orbit. I am talking about a person on earth, and throwing a stone in the air. The stone will come back to earh. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:47, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
You assert "The only reason any object falls back to the earth is because it is not a point mass, otherwise any object would orbit." It is a struggle to interpret this so that it is true. Let's do the experiment on the Moon to avoid atmosphere. A small metal sphere is a good approximation to a point mass, and we can toss it straight up and watch it fall straight down. We could call this a degenerate elliptical orbit, but the "orbit" intersects the Moon. Even if we also shrink the Moon to a small radius (but not to a black hole), the "orbit" intersects the surface. With a little horizontal velocity and such a small altitude that the acceleration of gravity is effectively constant, the path is best described as a parabola above a flat Lunar surface. With a large enough altitude, the path does trace out a non-degenerate ellipse, but can still intersect the surface again.
If we consider a comet and the Sun, your trichotomy of orbits more clearly applies. But if you want to try to apply this reasoning to tossing pebbles while standing on the surface of the Earth, you're going to have to be extremely clear and careful.
Oleg is both intelligent and well-educated, yet you did not write well enough for him. Do you suppose a more typical reader will fare better? --KSmrqT 03:20, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Actually, 24.34.95.124 (talk · contribs) is correct, but perhaps does not express himself clearly enough. The thing which would have to be a point mass is not the stone being thrown, but the Earth itself. The stone (ignoring: atmospheric friction, deviations from a spherical Earth, etc.) follows an elliptical path when it falls back to Earth. It just seems to be parabolic because the other focus is the center of the Earth which is so far away. JRSpriggs 09:42, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

This is correct. The point mass I was referring to is the earth itself. Again, if the earth were a point mass, any object with any velocity less than escape speed would be in an elliptical orbit. Because the earth is not a point mass, but has finite dimensions, paths that would otherwise be elliptical orbits collide with the body of the earth. This is irrelevant, however, because "conic sections and gravity" has to do with orbital dynamics, in which all these masses are defined to be point masses, not the kinematics of a person standing on the earth's surface. So, one more time: 1. if v < escape speed, the object will be in an elliptical orbit. 2. if v = escape speed, the object will have a parabolic trajectory and not return to the planet (i.e. IT IS NOT IN AN ORBIT). 3. if v > escape speed, the object will have a hyperbolic trajectory and not return, obviously. I have no problem with the fact that wikipedia is often wrong. The problem I have is when a physicist makes a correction to a section about physics and someone who obviously has never taken a basic introductory freshman physics course overwrites those corrections because of his own gross incompetence. In order for an object to be in an orbit it must have a negative energy--i.e., it must be a bound system. When v = escape speed the object is not bound and it CANNOT BE IN ORBIT. I can't believe these basic misunderstandings of such simple physics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.55.200.20 (talk • contribs) 14:11, 2007 June 15

I remember proving in a math class I taught that a body launched from Earth and under the influence of Newton's law (F=m*a) will follow a parabolic trajectory, assuming that the gravity is the same everywhere (so it does not depend on height, that's a reasonable assumption if you don't through the body too far). Any comments here? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:42, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
This came up at Vomit Comet, and eventually the discussion ended with the claim that "NASA calls it a parabola." Some common sense and constraints are needed; for example, our best theory today is not Newtonian gravity. If you're managing Gravity Probe B, that matters; if you're hitting golf balls on the Moon, it doesn't. Physics always adapts models to circumstances. --KSmrqT 18:38, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Oleg, that is only true under a constant field, i.e., one that does not change in strength with altitude. The gravitational field, however, does change with distance, giving a potential energy that changes with 1/r. Thus, a man who throws a ball in the air only perceives a parabola because for this very small altitude change the field is roughly constant. It would, in fact, be an elliptical orbit if you took the earth to be a point mass, as you should, and accounted for the fact that the gravitational field is changing with altitude. This section is not about kinematics under fixed gravitational fields. It is about gravitational fields over very large distances (i.e., significantly greater than the size of a planet). This seems to be the source of confusion. You are looking at this in the wrong domain (a person on a planet rather than orbiting bodies). As I mentioned before, in order for a body to orbit it must have a bound energy--i.e., taking potential energy to be defined as 0 at infinite distance, and negative for anything less than infinite distance, the "negative energy" contributed by this potential energy must be greater in magnitude than the positive kinetic energy (1/2 m v^2). If they are equal in magnitude, thus giving a total energy of 0, then the system is no longer "bound" and the object proceeds in a parabolic trajectory. This occurs when v = v_escape. When total energy is actually positive (v > v_escape) the trajectory is hyperbolic. Only when total energy is negative (v < v_escape) is the system bound, and the shape is always elliptical in this condition. Again, in all of these cases, it is assumed that the distances are large enough for the gravitational field to be varying--i.e., the scale is large enough to allow 1/r to make a difference. For this purpose, planets are taken as point masses. --unsigned

This explanation is very appreciated of course. If you could write this in the Euclidean geometry article, and explain clearly what the assumptions are, so that there is no confusion, that would be very much appreciated. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:48, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
I changed the article. But now, I am wondering whether I changed it enough. Perhaps it would be better to talk about comets orbiting around the Sun rather than stones thrown from the Earth.
Comment on explanation above: The reason that the orbit of the stone is an ellipse is not just that the distance from the center of the Earth changes, but also because the direction to the center changes (assuming the stone is moving horizontally). JRSpriggs 08:23, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

JRSpriggs, awesome job at Euclidean geometry. Also, the way you wrote things the article no longer contradicts itself; a while ago at one place in the article it was claimed that the trajectory was an ellipse, and somewhere below that was a parabola. I agree that talking about comets orbiting the sun would be a good idea as the whole thing with the Earth could still be confusing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:09, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I attempted to implement your suggestion, plus a few other ideas. But I now abandon it to its fate, as I'm trying to focus on integral for a bit longer.
Keep in mind that orbits of satellites and moons can be quite different from Keplerian ellipses. For tracking purposes, the Keplerian elements of satellites in Earth orbit are constantly updated, and between updates good tracking models incorporate the effects of atmospheric drag, the non-spherical shape of the Earth, and so on. Also note the two famous co-orbital Saturn moons Janus and Epimetheus; they swap orbits every four years! --KSmrqT 20:57, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
KSmrq, thanks! Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Yes, KSmrq, you improved it a great deal over my version. Thanks. JRSpriggs 03:50, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Glad to contribute. But I wonder now if the two paragraphs discussing Galileo add anything essential; perhaps they are a distraction from the proper focus (!), Euclidean geometry. Ah well, one must resist the Siren lure of endless tinkering. :-) --KSmrqT 19:01, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] CfD

You may wish to comment at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_June_14#Category:Good_articles_by_quality. Geometry guy 10:57, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

(belated) thanks. I replied there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:50, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 bot not running on WikiProject San Francisco Bay Area

Hi! I was told that you are in charge of this particular bot, so hopefully you can help me with a problem. I was assessing articles for the SFBA Project when I noticed that the statistics table wasn't updating. I found the log and saw that for some reason, the bot had stopped checking on June 4th. I'm quite new to the project and I'm not sure what could have caused it to stop. Any help would be appreciated. =] MissMJ 20:52, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi. This was the problem, removing Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments. I suggest you ask the person who did that edit. I now reverted it. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:33, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much. =] MissMJ 18:52, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Military Operations of the Second Invasion of Iraq

I created a page with the above title and I think I chose the article title poorly and I would like to change it to say Military Operations of Iraq 2003 to current-Alphabetical - Kumioko

Hi Kumioko. I can do that, I am not sure I like the suggested title however. Perhaps you could visit Talk:Iraq War and ask there for an appropriate title of the Military Operations of the Second Invasion of Iraq page. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Correlate summation template cleanup

Hi Oleg, Do I need to do anything specific to clean up the article? Thanks/Brian Bwestwoo 14:44, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll reply on your talk page. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A strange removal from the project list by Wp1.0 bot

In the Biography log, the page Lynne Arriale is listed as removed from the Biography project. But it still has the Bio banner on the talk page, and the only thing that happened to it was that someone added the listas clause to the WPBiography banner. The links to the talk page also indicate the page has been removed from the Bioproject, where that clearly is not the case. Something strange is going on here. Errabee 23:41, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

This is odd. And the article on this person does show up in the category, see here. Let's see if the bot puts it back when it runs next time, in a couple of days. Maybe it was a server glitch. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:37, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, but it didn't put it back. And I've come across some more examples in the new log: Talk:Blair Underwood, Talk:Kevin Toney, Talk:Mansur ibn Ilyas, Talk:Mark Naftalin, Talk:Michael Omartian, Talk:Mohamed Boudjenane, Talk:Murray Waas, Talk:Stevie Jackson, Talk:Walter Bryan Emery and Talk:Zabdiel Boylston. This appears to be very widespread. Errabee 23:46, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
All the articles I saw which were removed happened to be reassessed yesterday or the day before, for example from stub class to start class. If the reassessment from say stub class to start class happened after the bot went through start and and before stub, the bot will naturally not encounter the articles anywhere, so will remove them.
If my guess is right, the bot should put them back, and with the updated assessment next time it goes through biography articles, which is in a day or two. Notice that the Lynne Arriale you mentioned earlier got put back in the meantime.
Such artifacts are bound to happen, and are nobody's fault. It just takes forever for the bot to go through the biography articles, and many changes to it happen in the meantime. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:50, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Texas A&M

Thanks so much for your help with the ampersand. The bot did what it was supposed to once, but i think it is having problems with "&" again. it still only updates texas a/ Thanks again for your help Oldag07 01:39, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I will now update Texas A&M by hand. It will take me a few more days until I fix the thing completely. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:47, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you so much again. We really appreciate your help. Oldag07 01:11, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
it is less important now, but yes, the bot is having problems with the "&" again. it was working earlier. it isn't that big of a deal anymore because i think we are at the mature phase of the project and we aren't rating/ adding much anymore. but for other projects, this might be something to look into again. thanks again for your help. Oldag07 20:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I have been distracted with other things these days and I did not get to fixing that completely. But now I did it. The instance of the bot currently running may still do an incorrect update, but from then on, Texas A&M will be updated correctly. Thank you for your patience. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:11, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I hate being one to bring up problems. This problem is minor, I just changed the link on our wikiproject, and things are OK. But, I guess pointing out a bug is good for everyone. The Texas A&M Articles by Quality page is correct, the changes page is correct, the Statistics page is working. The log continues to be updated without an "&". Where it should be Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Texas_A&M_articles_by_quality_log. Where bot is updating this log Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Texas_A instead. We definitely appreciate your help. again, no rush, I just gave a link to both pages on our wikiproject. Oldag07 03:31, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, the bot is fixed for sure now. I deleted those incorrect pages, and I believe they should not appear again. The reason it took so long was because I had to change to a very different framework for updating pages than before in order to deal with the & issue and others. But now it should be fixed, finally. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:11, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Oldag07 00:58, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't think this is a Texas A&M exclusive wikiproject problem. This may have been mentioned earlier, but it seems like the bot isn't updating any logs on any project as of july 4th. It might because you changed the interface the updating pages. But it seems to be working like a charm on everything else. Quality and statistics. Your bot has already been useful for our project in planning for future articles, and catching mistakes that we have made. Oldag07 22:27, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
That was a silly bug, sorry about that. It is fixed now. Thanks for the report. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:47, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Most needed pictures

Hey Oleg, do you know what math articles would benefit most from illustration? I am on a drawing kick (along with about ten other things) and I would like to knock the most important/needed images out first. --Cronholm144 15:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Your joke with adding the extra space was very amusing. :) Now, I don't know which articles need pictures. There was a page where people can request images, I forgot what the name was, but that has only few requests. I plan to go through User:Mathbot/Most linked math articles at some point and see which ones may need pictures. Or, on a different idea, more geometry inclined articles definitely need pictures. I can't think of anything else. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:09, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... I might do the same with mathbot's list. Although I have made a habit of remaking bad png pictures as svgs, and it seems that there is no end to the work in that arena (just type svg into commons and look at the articles needing replacement). I think I might also go through my books and see if they have any particularly good images that I can reproduce as svgs. That is, of course, if I have time. I need to finish grading E and I want to work on integral and I want to write articles on Hodge manifolds and the Poincaré-Birkhoff theorem... I think I might be spreading myself too thin. Anyway, let me know if you want me to doodle anything(assuming that you don't want to do it yourself) I find it a welcome distraction :) Cheers --Cronholm144 15:25, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I LOVE doing pictures. So if I find one that needs to be done, you can bet I'll do it myself rather than tell you. :) Now, indeed, don't spread yourself too thin, converting from png to svg is low priority I think, unless those pictures are of poor quality. More important is I think writing and creating new stuff. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:27, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for mathbot, but... speaking of Commons, would you please consider giving mathbot's edit summary capability the ability to analyze the edit summaries of Commons users? After cranking for a while on my User ID and "commons.wikipedia.org" (not really in the right domain), it comes back with "Edit summary usage for Jeff G.: 0% for major edits and 0% for minor edits. Based on the last 0 major and 0 minor edits in the article namespace." Thanks!   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 03:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a gallery Oleg? A gallery would give me something to compete against :) and give you a place to show off some of your work. --Cronholm144 15:41, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I have a gallery, it is accessible from my user page. Some of my more representative pictures are there. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:51, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I should have seen it earlier, but I was too distracted by the article about intelligent falling. :)--Cronholm144 15:56, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

62 in you gallery(only some!?), 30 in mine (admittedly over half were crafted as png replacements, but never-mind that), (Ignoring the facts) I am halfway there! ;)--Cronholm144 19:13, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I have more here (not counting png replacements) and some others I lost track of. I keep only the prettiest in the gallery. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:05, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
An article which would benefit from a picture is Girih tiles. JRSpriggs 07:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
My thanks to Cronholm for responding so quickly and adding two images to Girih tiles. Now if the tiles just had girih on them. (See the externally linked pdf files for example.) JRSpriggs 10:28, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Darn, I read that quasi-crystalline article about half a year ago and thought I didn't need to look... I will leave the old pic up for now while I make the new one.--Cronholm144 13:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Nice! Cronholm note that there is an option in Inkscape, at "Object->Fill and stroke->"Stroke style", which allows one to round the corners of polygonal lines to that they don't protrude from the shapes. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I know about this feature, but I copied the style used in the published work. It works out once you start putting them together. BTW I don't know what happened with my grammar in that caption. I must have been staring at the screen too long. I am almost done with the final illustration and I think it looks pretty good. I think I am going to make three versions frame only, tiles only, and both to illustrate the structure. Cheers--Cronholm144 15:39, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again. You have really got it now. You are amazing! JRSpriggs 08:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Long overdue recognition...

Alexandrov the great sage
Alexandrov the great sage

...by the Wikipedian Knightly Order.

Wise sage Alexandrov the Great, you have long been a source of inspiration and good council to the members of the Wikipedian Knightly Order. Recognition of your contributions and status is long overdue. Your all-seeing, all-knowing eyes equip you with a great wisdom, and the Knightly Order welcomes you warmly into its ranks for your support of our mission. Geometry guy 20:27, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Heh, thanks. :) And thank you for wikifying the text properly, we're an encyclopedia, you know. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

The least I could do. Long may you continue to reign over your kingdom so wisely :) Geometry guy 21:43, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for edit summary

Dear Oleg, I received your request and, as requested, in the future I will write an edit summary. Thanks for explaining. I didn't do it before because I did not happen to notice the importance of edit summaries (I always prefer to see the "diff"). Paolo.dL 08:08, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Symplectic stuff

It seems I always turn to you for page moves! Symplectic topology clearly should be moved to Symplectic geometry, but the latter has a history of two or three changes of redirects, so I can't do it. Category:Symplectic topology should likewise be renamed to Category:Symplectic geometry, although here I don't know the procedures: I doubt further comment at WT:WPM will contradict this obvious rename, but I understand if you want to wait a bit. Geometry guy 22:51, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi Gg. I did the move of the article. About the category, that should be handled through "categories for discussion" I believe (I also have little time for the moment for a category rename). Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:40, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

There appears to be no appetite at the round table for a CFD, so I have replaced most symplectic topology cats by symplectic geometry. I still think a cat move is slightly preferable to creating a new cat, but if you don't, then I will just do the latter. Geometry guy 20:22, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coastlines

Hi Oleg. While doing some daily prep for my "math for poets" course at Ohio State, I just looked up Wikipedia's claim for the length of the Japanese coastline, at the "Geography of Japan" page. It reports a very precise figure: 29,751 kilometers. Of course you and I know this is totally bogus: the coastline of Japan isn't a curve, it doesn't have a length, and any reported figure implicitly depends on a choice of ruler length, i.e., on the scale below which you ignore any irregularities of the fractal. Just to further illustrate this point, Wikipedia and Brittanica (last time I checked) report that the coastline of Honshu is 5450 km and 10,084 km respectively. (On the other hand, there is a Wikipedia page "Coastline paradox.")

Obviously this sort of bogus statistic occurs repeatedly throughout the encyclopedia, without any understanding that it's meaningless. It seems hopeless for the mathematically inclined to root out this misunderstanding, and yet isn't it unsettling that an encyclopedia would contain this sort of thing? Ishboyfay 19:34, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia reflects the knowledge of the world at large. Perhaps more clarification is needed about ruler length, but there's not much else we can do I guess. You can try raising this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics if you want more opinions. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:57, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
See Fractal dimension. I do not know what the fractal dimension of coastline (or the Japanese coastline, in particular) is. But if one could determine it, it would be appropriate to use it in the figure for the "length" of the coastline. If the dimension were, say, 4/3, then a number like 900,000 km^(4/3) would be given (roughly 30,000^(4/3) assuming that km was the resolution). JRSpriggs 07:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
A coastline is not a rectifiable curve, but neither is it a fractal. Both are just models (and current ideas in theoretical physics do suggest an ultimate smallest length scale: the Planck length). If you want to give the Hausdorff dimension, then the number before it should be the Hausdorff measure. I suspect, however, that this might be a tiny bit OR! However, this is a wonderful example to take to WP:V and WP:A for those who contend that encyclopedic content is about truth rather than knowledge. Geometry guy 20:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't recognize the acronym OR. Ishboyfay 03:54, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
"OR" is short for "Original Research" which is a bugbear around here. See WP:OR. JRSpriggs 05:51, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
To be clear, Wikipedia convention uses the term "original research" in a strange and confusing way. For journal publication, only original research (in the usual sense) is accepted. For Wikipedia, the opposite is true, to avoid crank theories and other abuses. In other words, if you find a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem that will fit in the margin of a book, don't try to put it in a Wikipedia article until it has appeared in a reputable peer-reviewed journal. This restriction is in tension with the fact that most writing involves some originality, if only to avoid copyright violation. Keep in mind that Wikipedia aspires to be a reputable encyclopedia despite offering no assurance of expert review; hence policies like "no original research". Did I mention strange? Yep. --KSmrqT 11:38, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mănăstirea Căpriana

Hi, Oleg -- sure thing. I'll try to add to the article when I get a chance -- I didn't know about the monastery before, but I was struck by its beauty when I stumbled upon the stub you created. Better do some math first -- I've been spending too much time at WP lately! :) Turgidson 11:28, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] About your WP 1.0 bot

What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
Such a great backlog work your bot does, very helpful tool for projects I'm working on Andersmusician $ 23:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] some WP bot issue

I noticed that Project stats chart at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Yu-Gi-Oh! articles by quality statistics show on the importance row "None" instead "Low", hope you fix this --Andersmusician $ 00:06, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the above. :) About the importance row, I think the bot just lists what is currently available. You may need to check if the articles are rated correctly and the categories are placed as they should be. If even after that the bot runs again and does not do things as you wish, then let me know. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
fixed alone, the problem was that cat:low impt Yu-gi-oh was empty at that time--Andersmusician VOTE 00:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] non-article stats

I wonder what would you think about making your bot to create an Project's article stats table but for non-article pages (example at category:Non-article Peru pages, discussion at Template_talk:Image-Class), thanks --Andersmusician VOTE 00:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

You could raise this at WT:1.0/I to see what people say. My own opinion is that such non-articles are besides the scope of the WP 1.0 project and as such, the bot should not list them. But if enough people think that's a good idea I can implement it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:30, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
You're right, not so necessary at all (except for the so-called lists), I don't wanna leave more tasks to these guys for now. thats all, thanks --Andersmusician VOTE 21:49, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My recent RfB

Thank you so much for your participation in my recent RfB. Though it closed with 72% support (below the required 90%), I'm still quite pleased at the outpouring of support shown by a fair percentage of the community.

I'm currently tabulating and calculating all opposing and neutral arguments to help me better address the community's concerns about my abilities as a bureaucrat. If you'd like, you can follow my progress (and/or provide additional suggestions) at User:EVula/admin/RfB notes. Thanks again! EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 bot and linking dates

Could you please make WP 1.0 bot not to link the dates and year as section headers? Linking them makes all date/year article changes to show up in Special:Recentchangeslinked, cluttering the change list to the point where it is hard to see relevant changes. I've unlinked those manually, but I don't think that is a good idea in the long run. DLX 04:55, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Done. It will take a few days until the bot overwrites all those pages and the links are gone. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:44, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Excellent. Thank you for that - and for your good work with the bot. DLX 07:08, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 bot

Hi Oleg! I'm writing you about a bot you operate, WP 1.0 bot (talk · contribs). It keeps adding the following pages to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index:

  • Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in Holland articles by quality
  • Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in Holland articles by quality statistics
  • Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in Holland articles by quality log
  • Category:Football in Holland articles by quality

These have all been moved or are in the process of being moved, to replace Holland with the Netherlands. The pages containing "the Netherlands" are right below Holland in the Index. I've tried to remove the pages containing the word "Holland" in the title from the Index, but the bot keeps putting them back in. I don't know how the bot has been programmed, or whether this is temporary, but I just wanted to let you know about this. AecisBrievenbus 21:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Another thing is that the bot continues to add updates to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in Holland articles by quality log and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in Holland articles by quality statistics. Both pages are redirects, to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in the Netherlands articles by quality log and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Football in the Netherlands articles by quality statistics. AecisBrievenbus 21:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that is happening because the bot takes two days to run, so it takes a while to react to changes. I don't think the bot will update those pages again. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:32, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mathbot

Curious about my edit summary usage, I tried to check and got a 403 Forbidden error. Ral315 » 08:36, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Now I don't get even that, I see only a "could not connect to server". I believe the problems are related to the toolserver. Here's a mirror of the tool [7]. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:45, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Format hellp

Thanks for your help in correcting my formatting. I'm learning. I have preposed a project to expand the logical connectives (proposal). Any input would be appreciated.

Be well, Gregbard 22:42, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hey there!

Image:Face-grin.svg Hey! It seems that your bot made some edits on the previous version of the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/R&B and Soul Music articles by quality statistics, can you fix it right now??


Regards Eduemoni↑talk↓ 01:43, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Heh. :) You can use this tool to run the bot at any time. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:47, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
It didn't worked =/
Eduemoni↑talk↓ 02:19, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
No, it was OP (operator problem) xD
Thanks for the help Eduemoni↑talk↓ 02:21, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
But it doesn't work, the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/R&B_and_Soul_Music_articles_by_quality_statistics isn't modified when I run the bot. What is going on? Can you help me? Eduemoni↑talk↓ 03:09, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, if no changes occurred, then the stats won't be modified. Can you be specific about what you want? If you just want empty columns in the stats table, the bot does not do that on principle, to keep the width of the table small. So, to see a given column, there's got to be at least one article in it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:13, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Anatomy articles by quality statistics

Hey there. First excellent thing you created. Second I have absolutely no idea how to make it up myself even though you gave instructions on one of the pages relating to wikipedia assessment. I was wondering if it was possible to give me some sort of instructions or maybe you can perhaps create it for me (as in get the bot to start making it and then it begins to do regular updates)? Sorry maybe the page I am looking at isn't the right one to look at to create a statistics table. It is for the anatomy wikiproject and only recently have I created a article by quality and article by importance category for the anatomy wikiproject so any help for Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Anatomy articles by quality statistics would be greatly appreciated :). Thanks heaps.petze 06:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi. The instructions are at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot. See if you have any problem following them. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:17, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I have already done all of that... and that was the page I was looking at but wasn't sure. As there is a project template for anatomy, a few articles tagged with quality and importance assessment; Category:Anatomy articles by importance and Category:Anatomy articles by quality are in the Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments list.. But the thing is... I don't know how or where to access all that is offered as shown by the examples (such as the log or the graph or the summary tables of all the articles)... where do the pages appear? Is there a period that you have to wait before they appear? I did all of the above yesterday so I dunno if I did something completely wrong or I didn't wait long enough? Thanks in advance and sorry about the trouble petze 16:11, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Never mind!!!! Sorry for all of the above, I found it on the index page omg so stupid of me lol...Thanks anyway...petze 16:15, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wave movie?

Hey. Since you seem to be the last logged user to write in Wave Equation, and you're an admin, I was curious if you could tell me if my proposal to add a video of a solution of a couple of wave equations is worthwhile for the article. Swap 08:12, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

The first one looks extremely nice. It would make an awesome addition to the page. But would it be possible to convert it to a gif, say 100KB in size (one could capture only one period of the oscillation, and then have the gif iterate). Then we could put it at the very top, and the movie would display when somebody visits the page. Otherwise I am not sure how to add it to the page while also making it noticeable. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Good idea, I hadn't thought of a gif. I'll get working on it. Btw, the solution isn't exactly periodic, as an expansion into the Bessel eigenfunctions will show. The actual period is irrational and very hard to nail unless your initial condition is a finite sum of eigenfunctions. The initial condition here was \frac{1-r^2}{2} where r is the distance of the initial condition from the centre.
Not having periodicity is a problem. Well, perhaps having only one oscillation could be good enough. Otherwise the gif can become too big. I hope you're willing to create the gif movie, would be a very nice addition to the page. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:22, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FEM

Hi, I am glad you like it :-) Zureks 10:03, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Integral

Hi Oleg, I sincerely wish to be proved wrong, but given the recent events at Integral, we may have to brace for a nasty revert war involving a keen editor with misplaced enthusiasm. I cannot spare much time these days, not on item-by-item rebuttals anyway, but I do not like his groping-in-the-dark editing of the lead. I know, the article isn't finished yet … however, the lead is the first thing someone sees after googling integral and following the top link. Arcfrk 19:15, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to keep an eye on it. I knew the editor in question was problematic from a previous encounter. I hope such things won't discourage you from contributing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Editorial_Team investigation

At Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team#Update_did_not_occur you mentioned investigating the problem. Do you know how to conduct such an investigation.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 19:34, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

That is discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Work_via_Wikiprojects#LGBT_Log_page_not_updating.3F. It is a recent bug which I fixed in the meantime. The log is updating now. Thanks for noticing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cross Product - M2L2FM Method

The xyzzy mnemonic is useful but the M2L2FM process simplifies the process even further.

M2L2FM becomes ML LF FM

ML = Middle coordinate (y) of first vector multiplied by the Last coordinate of the second vector(z).

LF = Last coordinate (z) of the first vector multiplied by the First coordinate of the second vector (x)

FM = First coordinate (x) of the first vector multiplied by the Middle coordinate of the second vector (y)

By simply mirroring all three sets of letters;

ML mirrored = LM

LF mirrored = FL

FM mirrored = MF

and placing them on the right hand side of the original sets;

ML LM LF FL FM MF

then placing minus signs between them creates all 3 cross product equations simultaneously;

(ML - LM) (LF - FL) (FM - MF)

which is the equivalent of

(a2b3 - a3b2) (a3b1 - a1b3) (a1b2 - a2b1)

in matrix notation or

(ByCz - BzCy) (BzCx - BxCz) (BxCy - ByCx)

in the xyzzy notation.

Perhaps the M2L2FM method is confusing to some people because it simultaneously generates all three cross product equations.

Most people, i.e. right handers, think in a linear/sequential fashion and can only extrapolate one equation at a time from the cross product using the xyzzy method while left handers like myself think in a parallel/lateral fashion and can visualize all three cross product equations simultaneously using the M2L2FM method.

I see. I still believe however that having this in the article is too much, one mnemonic should be enough, and I prefer the other one for reasons of simplicity. You may ask for more opinions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:44, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 Bot question

Greetings! I found a curious incident of the bot not adding all newly tagged articles to the log while adding it to the articles by quality list. I was wondering if it was a common problem or if it's localized to a certain WikiProject. Specifically, I'm talking about WP:CPS and the following pages:

Some of the new Stylidium pages I've created haven't been showing up in the log, but are in the list of articles by quality (specifically Stylidium sect. Biloba and others like that).

My concern is that if this is more widespread, then WikiProjects that have more activity might miss crucial article additions/moves/etc. I also watch the WP:PLANTS assessment log, and now I wonder how many articles the log has missed. Any ideas on this problem? Cheers, --Rkitko (talk) 18:07, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. The log was broken regretfully for a few days around that time due to a bug in my code. I fixed the bug. If this shows up again, please let me know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need your advice

Hey Oleg, would you mind taking a look here and giving an opinion. I really screwed up.--Cronholm144 05:42, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Replied there. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:18, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Invite

 Thank you for your recent contribution to a few logic articles. Have you considered joining the Wikipedia:WikiProject Logic? It is an effort to coordinate the work of Wikipedians who are knowledgeable about logic in an effort to improve the general quality and range of Wikipedia articles on logic topics. We at the project invite your participation and correspondence. Be well.

Gregbard 06:38, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I guess my answer is ¬, meaning no. :) I don't know any logic and any edits I may have made at logic articles are style. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:18, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Integral

Hey Oleg, I give up, this needs an admin's touch. See my post here also. Cheers--Cronholm144 12:32, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Are there provisions for banning a user based on disruptive behavior, other than 3RR? For example, for repeated reverting in the face of consensus? Arcfrk 16:08, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
CBM commented on this at WT:WPM. I agree with what he said. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:31, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Samuel Bruce McLaren not Samuel Bruce McClaren

Hi Oleg, Mathbot has Samuel Bruce McClaren as a redlink. I have created a redirect and article for the correct spelling: Samuel Bruce McLaren, — regards Diverman 12:53, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Cool, I removed the incorrect spelling. In the future, you can do just that, the bot won't object. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:40, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Most wanted redlinks

Hi. Any chance of an update to User:Mathbot/Most wanted redlinks? —David Eppstein 16:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I think you mean bluish-red links. :)--Cronholm144 17:00, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
I am now downloading all the math articles to my computer. Tomorrow I'll run a query through them and update the list. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:31, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this! I can already see some obvious stuff to fix (e.g. the first thing I'll look at: the "Paul Erd&" links) or would have been if someone else hadn't been faster (or less distracted by Harry Potter reading). —David Eppstein 01:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome, I was just planning to write to you that I ran the bot, but I see you noticed already. The Erdos thing, that's a glitch in my bot, everything else should be OK. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:25, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Curl

Your new images look nice, but I worry leaving out the axes neglects an important point about the spatial dependence.--Loodog 16:08, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Replied on your talk, to keep all conversation in one place. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:03, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 BOT and chess lists

  • Hi! WPBOT updates this page [8] brilliantly. However I noticed that the count doesn't include lists, such as for instance List of chess world championship matches. Would it be possible for you to let the bot to count those as well, and add them to that table?
The bot does not include list-class by design, as that is not a rating, unlike stub-class, FA-class, etc. If you want this changed, you can raise the proposal at WT:1.0/I. If people think one more rating should be accepted, I can modify the bot code to that extent. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:13, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for your replies. Maybe we should step away from having a list rating, which seems to be the simpler solution. Voorlandt 09:12, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I could, but it will not be very easy. In order to create the math list I have the bot download to my computer all articles about math, based on the very complete list of mathematics articles, and search through them. In order to do that for chess, there has to be a very complete list of chess articles to go through. Having that, what you request would be doable, but not trivial and time consuming; I could work on it if there is a strong feeling in the wiki chess community that this list could be useful. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:31, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Not sure about the high demand for this last one, since the chess project is relatively small. It is just that I am really curious about this. There is however a complete list of chess topics, which is a list of all articles in the category chess and all its subcategories (about 1850 articles). Once a specific subset of articles has been downloaded, do you have a bot that does all the rest automatically? From what you say, I gather that there is still a lot of manual work involved. If you don't fancy doing it, could you tell me in broad terms if it would be possible for me to do it (I have a beginners knowledge of Perl)? Best wishes Voorlandt 09:12, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I can give you my code and you can decide for yourself if you want to proceed with this (warning: it will be a few hours of work, but at the end of the day you may have learned how to write your own bot). The code is here. If you decide to work on it, you need to do the following:

  1. Download the archive linked above, and unzip it. It will create two directories, one called "modules" for general purpose utilities, and another one called "mathlists" for math-related stuff (you need to adapt those for the chess pages, I'll describe that next).
  2. Create a bot account. Go to modules/bin/wikipedia_login.pl and put in there a login and password.
  3. Create a "list of chess categories", imitating the list of mathematics categories (the list does not need to be complete, you can add to it later)
  4. Use the modules/bin/fetch_articles.pl code to create a list of chess articles by searching through the list of chess categories created right above (see the code at mathlists/update_mathematics.pl for an example on how to call the fetch_articles.pl routine)
  5. Create a directory somewhere where you will download all the chess articles found in the previous step.
  6. Visit modules/bin/read_from_write_to_disk.pl and write there the name of that directory (in the article_to_filename function in that file).
  7. In the directory you chose above, create subdirectories for each upper case alphabetic letter and the digits from 0 to 9 (so, need to have the subdirectories 0, 1, ..., 9, A, B, ..., Z).
  8. Run the script mathlists/download_articles.pl to download to your directory the body of all chess articles created earlier. The first argument of download_articles.pl is that list, the second argument is the list of articles which was downloaded (the bot adds to it as it does its work)
  9. Run the code mathlists/redlinks/extract_all_links.pl to parse through the downloaded articles
  10. Run the code mathlists/redlinks/rm_blue.pl to create lists of all chess redlinks a list of most wanted chess articles, which is what you want.

It goes without saying that all those codes need to be tweaked to work for chess rather than for math. So you need to read and modify each code to do what you want. Also, you need to specify the correct path to the "modules" directories you downloaded above in the "use lib" line of each script you run.

As I told you above, it could be some work to adapt the scripts to the chess, but if you wish it done, now you can. If you have questions, let me know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:56, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much. I managed User:Voorbot/Most_wanted_redlinks! I spend an hour fixing a bug I accidentally introduced, but your instructions were very clear. For everyone else giving this a shot under windows, it doesn't know about $ENV{HOME}, so simply delete that. Btw, the code is really impressive, well commented an robust. I also very much like the way you handle the html encode - UTF - ascii conversion. Using text editors in the past gave me headaches (East-Europe excels at chess and there a lot of fancy names :) Thanks again! Voorlandt 14:33, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
I am glad it worked. Apparently it took you less time to figure things out than I thought it would. I'll remember about $ENV{HOME} not being defined on Windows. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:47, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Using "the"

Hi, Oleg!

This is no big deal, but I noticed this edit summary. Sorry, but "The integral" is idiomatic in this context.

There's no easy way to explain when "the" is necessary, and when it can (or should) be omitted. Silly Rabbit's comment (next edit) about grammar is inaccurate – this is really a matter of English idiom, and not a matter of grammar, strictly speaking.

Just thought you might want to know ... ;^> DavidCBryant 17:33, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I see, thanks. So is "the" necessary or not in that case? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:35, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
It's not exactly "necessary", but it is idiomatic. If someone says "The integral is a core concept in mathematics" I accept the statement as ordinary and unexceptional. If someone says "Integral is a core concept in mathematics" I think to myself "this guy must be Russian or something, because he doesn't know when to stick in the word 'the'."
This is a particularly odd case. I guess the best way to describe it is to say that since the word "integral" can be either an adjective or a noun, native English speakers want the extra clue provided by "the" to identify that word clearly as a noun in this particular situation. DavidCBryant 11:19, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:14, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New project need to make sure it is set up properly for assesment?

Hi I am trying to get the Serial Killer Task Force (a task force of the Criminal Biography WikiProject ) assessment table to automatically update. I think it is set up right, I just used the Criminal Biography WikiProject as a guide. Could you please just take a look at everything and make sure it is set up to perform properly. Thank you so much, Jmm6f488 21:32, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

All is well. I went to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot and ran the bot from the link mentioned there. The bot created Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Serial killer-related articles by quality. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:14, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so very much!!! Jmm6f488 03:40, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again for all the help! I just have one final question. Is there any thing else I need to do or does the bot automatically update the assessment table every couple of days? Jmm6f488 17:28, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

The bot should update it automatically every three days. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:32, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Style guidelines

Sorry, I'll try and follow them in future. Eraserhead1 10:48, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for the reminder about the edit summary box.

Well, I'm not conspicuously using the edit summary box. I didn't exactly pay you message much heed when I got it, but the idea stuck in my brain and now I realize it's probably a good idea to write a quick message, whether I think it's important at the time or not. Just wanted to let you know I'm a convert. Rhetth 02:02, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Cool, the church of the Holy Edit Summary has one more convert. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Style

Hi... and thanks for making the modifications. Yesterday I was in a hurry, but while explaining topological space to a friend I thought some simple examples would help so I put one in the Wikipedia. I generally am very particular about styles myself... but I figured I will just put the gist of one example and run... so that other volunteers may modify it, and also put more examples.

Thanks again, Arnab

[edit] Please stop

Background for the discussion below. An article that appeared on Slashdot claimed that User:SlimVirgin was a secret agent. A dumb store for sure. Some people starting mentioning this story on Wikipedia, and then, a few Wikipedians started deleting all discussions on Wikipedia community pages regarding this, with the motivation that this is a personal attack against said user. It went that far that even complaints that such deletions may not be appropriate got deleted too. That is going too far in my view, this is censorship. Apparently the censors succeeded however,, as on-wiki discussion of this stopped. It is going on the Wikipedia mailing list though, see the "Slashdot" and "censorship" threads here. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:54, 29 July 2007 (UTC).
This story is IMO a load of bollocks with no evidence offered other than that she knows her way around the internet. This is pure conspiracy theory rubbish with no more credibility than the idea that W. Bush orderd 9/11, SqueakBox 21:58, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I agree with that. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:03, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

The benefit to Wikipedia of discussing this weighed against the downside of causing distress to a fellow editor is very questionable. Please stop. It's also against policy to participate in harassment and outing attempts. ElinorD (talk) 15:39, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh dear. It is not about causing distress to a fellow editor, to whom one can't add anymore. It is about Wikipedians purging completely things they don't like. That's not the way to go. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:41, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Are you really saying that if someone is distressed, then giving a few extra kicks to that person won't add to the distress? Or are you saying that it doesn't really matter if you cause misery to another human being? ElinorD (talk) 15:43, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Look, your intention is understandable. Your actions are not. To protect the feelings of an editor is noble. To ruthlessly purge or minimize any attempts at discussion, taking advantage the fact that Wikipedia content is editable, is self-censorship. Unfortunately that's the knee jerk reaction on Wikipedia when something is happening which Wikipedians don't agree with. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:47, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
It isn't an admin matter anyway. If you have to question it, why not on Jimbo's talkpage? He is involved on the site in question and has commented there (the site in question). LessHeard vanU 15:46, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
That does not excuse cutting out the discussion. I doubt it would survive on Jimbo's talk page either. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:47, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
If what you read on some external site makes you think that the editor in question has engaged in misconduct which needs to be investigated, I suggest a private email to Jimbo and/or the ArbCom. If you don't think that, I suggest not doing what the stalkers and harassers want you to do. ElinorD (talk) 15:50, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
There is no misconduct going on, and talking about stalking is just a way to distract from the issue. The issue is that Wikipedia is censoring itself to the extreme, and that can't be a good thing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:09, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
It may not survive, true, but you knew that when posting on AN/I (which is not an appropriate venue IMO) but it would give an indication on how such comments are regarded in the wider community (and by Jimbo). LessHeard vanU 15:56, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Said post shouldnt survive anywhere on wikipedia as it links to off site pages that attack another editor, which isnt acceptable. I fully endorse Elinor's actions, SqueakBox 00:32, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
My post did not contain any links to anywhere. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:35, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Okay but it still advertised what was going on with a serious off site attack on a wikipedian right now. I also agree that if you are going to bring this anywhere it should be via emails etc, ie off site and off the visible internet. BTW I have myself been policing this issue and so am involved, hence my comment to you here, SqueakBox 00:40, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
The thing is on Slashdot, of all places. Can't get much more visible than that already. I did not make any links, if you wish there can be even no mention of Slashdot in the post. The point I am trying to make is that one can't just purge Wikipedia posts of any thing mentioning "SlimVirgin" and "news". This is totalitarian control of Wikipedia information under the guise of "protection" for editors. There should be a sane way to discuss such issues on Wikipedia. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:46, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
And that place is behind the scenes. It's the attack not the fact of an editor being in the news. And unlike Essjay its just a lot of gossip, and it certainly doesnt bear on this user's work here, SqueakBox 00:49, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
There is no way to do any community discussion behind the scenes. Either things happen on Wikipedia, or on the mailing list, but either way in the open. Again, this is pure and total censorship, and very much unjustified in this case. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:53, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I believe that you may argue that the site is not a reliable source (which I would agree with) and cannot be used in article space, but for the purposes of bringing the matter to the attention of the community...? My point is that AN or AN/I was not an appropriate forum, and that time spent discussing the content of off-wiki sites detracts from the prime purpose of writing an encyclopedia. If there is an established COI, or any other legitimate area of concern, substantiated by an off-wiki site then (and only then) should the appropriate wiki processes be activated. I do not believe that anything has been established, but I certainly support Oleg Alexandrov's advocacy of transparancy should it become so. LessHeard vanU 11:17, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
All these excuses as "protecting the feelings of an editor already in distress" and your new one, "it would distract us from writing an encyclopedia" can't be a sufficient reason to cut off any debate and censor information. Totalitarian governments come up with even better reason as to why certain information should be supressed, and you know the results in the long run. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:42, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
How is the fact that this is just off-site unsourced gossip by someone with a stated grudge just an excuse? SqueakBox 17:18, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I am being consistent. I stated at AN/I that that was an inappropriate venue and suggested Jimbo's talkpage as an alternative. I also commented there that any discussion would ultimately work against writing an encyclopedia, since we cannot determine what happens off wiki. When I attempted to post this I found myself conflicted with ElinorD, so I copied back your original text and my response and saved it - and then self reverted. For the record I do not agree with ElinorD's reasons, which is why I placed my answer in the edit history, but reverted on the basis of my own position. LessHeard vanU 18:51, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

It cetainly does bear on her work here in regards to WP:COI, a hammer she herself has taken to wielding against those she has editing disputes (see User:Sparkzilla) among other things. Piperdown 00:54, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely not, this is offsite unproven gossip and we dont react to that. This is not Essjay. If you have issues re Sparkzilla you can bring them up in the appropriate place without mentioning this alleged stuff, SqueakBox 00:59, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Trying to censor all discussion about this simply makes a bad situation worse and is precisely what the attackers of Wikipedia want us to do. Paul August ☎ 18:39, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

So what are you suggesting? That we have a discussion about a bit of unproven off site gossip about one of our users? And to what end? There is simply nothing to discuss, SqueakBox 18:40, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm suggesting that we be mindful of the consequences of our actions, however unintended. Trying to suppress discussion is only giving ammunition to our detractors. If you think that there is nothing to discuss then don't participate in any discussion. But don't try to prevent other editors from doing so — even if it would be better that they didn't discuss it either. As a matter of tactics, it simply doesn't work. Paul August ☎ 18:59, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Well given there is no relevance these are nothing more than bringing up off site personal attacks towards this user which is clearly contrary to our no attack policies, so all I am doing is enforcing our policies. This user has the right to edit here without these unsourced bits of gossip about her being discussed on AN/I or any public wikipedia page (eg Jimbo's talk page is equally public), so its not about me not wanting to discuss or indeed what i feel at all, SqueakBox 19:04, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
But you are deleting even discussions about the conduct of people around the news and commentary on the actions of overzealous censorship. This is not gossiping anymore. As a rule, content should not be removed from talk pages unless there is an extremely good reason for doing so. You may have had a point about deleting links to attack page and prohibiting gossip, but you are going so far in your deletion that you are making more harm than the harm you are trying to suppress. Perhaps you should let this go. More deletion and less talk is not going to solve anything. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:55, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Well if its not been me its been somebody else (including edit conflicts where somebody has beaten me to it) and I disagree that deleting is doing more harm than good and know the person being spoken about doesnt want this tittle tattle gossip being talked about on wikipedia, SqueakBox 20:15, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Just stop, OK? Many people are deeply ambivalent about what a bunch of you is doing (see also the mailing list discussion). You've had a point, you've deleted comments by the bunch, but this can't continue. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:19, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Well that is what you have been asked to do. I will continue enforcing our policies, including our BLP policies (which counts for every wikipedian too) using the best of my judgement, SqueakBox 21:08, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I did not continue the thread on AN/I one of you deleted. As for you, again, please pause to see how the community feels about this. You may be wondering in grey areas when it comes to censoring anything even remotely related to said attack site, and the consensus on what to do is by no means clear. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:12, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I am very aware you didnt continue it, which was great, IMO. And this can be discussed off site. If I thought there was a scrap of proof about these claims then I would be the last to remove it from AN/I (eg the Essjay scandal needed talking about and we even have an article on it) but as long as it appears to be pure gossip with no back-up there is clearly no need for admin intervention or to spread it over a public page and plenty of policy to back up its removal. As I said if this comes up again I will use my judgement re the individual case rather than deciding what I plan to do in every situation now but wandering into grey areas is normally a sign for me of working with something important, and I consider BLP to be very important. I have given a lot of thought to both this issue and the whole on-site/off-site attack issue, SqueakBox 21:19, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
This can't be discussed off-site, it just can't. The discussions happen either on-wiki or on the mailing list, either way in public. Your suggestion that I write to Jimbo, the ArbCom, etc., are besides the point, we need to discuss things as community.
And what we need to discuss is not the rumor per se. The very point of my original post is how far people should go in censorship. You can't censor discussions on censorship, that defeats the whole point. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:23, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Well the mailing list may not be the right place either but as I have never used it I cant do anything about thaty. I dont believe removing BLP vios constitutes censorship and discussing these rumours (which are very serious rumours involving my country and a serious criminal attack against it) is likely a BLP vio, SqueakBox 21:32, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I disagree on your interpretation of BLP. And if people disagree, they talk. It will be a bad idea on your part to revert again such discussion if it shows up. As I said earlier, this can't continue. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:36, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Well lets just hope nobody does revert agin then as that itself could be considered disruptive and I certainly dont want to see this issue disrupting or damaging our project but I also consider the reputation of one of hardest working users to be extremely important in order to ensure we have an environment for which people want to volunteer, and I can see no reason why this off site gossip would require admin intervention and at least 2 admins (one being Elinor) show by their actions that they think the same. We are discussing this! or at least the censorship part,. What cant continue is giving one of users a hard time based on off-site gossip, SqueakBox 21:41, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
See the note I put at the beginning of this thread. I am willing to make it as gossip-free and as harmless as you wish, without removing the actual context however. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:54, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Support

Just a note to say that I saw what happened to your attempt to have a discussion about Wikipedia's self-censorship on AN/I and I think it was a shame that your post was dismissed so readily. Catchpole 16:58, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Oleg, just days ago, SlimVirgin permabanned an "outed" editor, Mark Devlin aka sparkzilla, for conflict of interest. Devlin is the publisher of Metropolis, a significant English language magazine in Japan (according to wikipedia). Once he was outed (which no one was banned for, by the way), he acknowledged his own COI and agreed to only post on talk pages of the articles he had edited before. That wasn't enough for SlimVirgin, who had previously been in an editing dispute with Mark, and took full advantage of a COI gray area to banish an opponent. Today's revelations are not revelations to many of us who have witnesses such hyprocrisy and more from Ms. Virgin. And now you all know why Ms. Virgin so ferociously protects abusive editors who have made taking pot shots at Patrick M. Byrne across several wikipedia articles a 9-5 workday job on-wiki, a result of an off-wiki Journalists vs CEO skirmish. And all over a french fry. There are several more COI's in that slim closet if you look harder, and they were fully hammered against many wikipedians with the full support of a admin's on-wiki social network. That's all I have to say on this matter, but those who consider themselves "powerful" at wikipedia need to take a hard look at the wagon-circling, COI's, and the effect of what appears to be sometimes more a social networking site than a serious encyclopedia. Piperdown 23:32, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Considering the block log shows that SlimVirgin blocked Sparkzilla for a mere six hours, and that the indefinite block came from JzG, and considering that the user page history shows that Sparkzilla voluntarily gave his real name and therefore was not outed, I'm not inclined to find your other allegations very reliable either, Piperdown. ElinorD (talk) 22:33, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Oleg - another note of support, and to let you know that I've raised similar issues again at the noticeboard - cheers, Purples 03:13, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Oleg, I reviewed what I could find of the removed material (for example, your notices at ANI), and I completely agree with you: this doesn't look good for wikipedia. I've also noted that the violent (over)reaction came entirely from two editors/admins. I am especially appalled by the alleged purging of the edit history. There is a good reason why we should be able to trust the edit histories, and it's distressing to learn that a determined administrator can unilaterally tamper with them! This is definitely a policy level issue worth discussing. Cheers, Arcfrk 03:44, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there are several editors and administrators who don't think it's decent to spread gossip that could either identify someone who wants to remain anonymous or (more likely) increase harassment of a completely unrelated and innocent person, but they don't want to say so because they don't want this to be rehashed over and over and over again. (I know that from several private emails.) The people who don't mind causing distress have no such motive for silence, though, which is why they're speaking up. ElinorD (talk) 22:33, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it is decent to spread gossip either. But I also don't think suppressing gossip at any price is appropriate. (Your actions, by the way, has made things worse; it is bad enough that people talk gossip, it is far more damaging when some people say or think that a cabal of Wikipedians censors things at any cost.) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:26, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bell's prime number theorem

Grateful for your views on this. PrimeHunter wants to delete it as trivial. He put on a prod notice that I removed. He's a specialist on prime numbers and what is trivial to him is surely not trivial to most people; anyway, if it's so obvious, how come he didn't know it already? I concede that it may not really be by Bell, but surely that's grounds for a rename, not deletion? How do I contest a deletion vote if he moves one?--Bedivere 21:21, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

You can voice your views at the deletion debate (go to Bell's prime number theorem page, and from there to the deletion debate). 01:26, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
It was deleted and I've started a DRV. If you can look at the DRV I'd be grateful.--Bedivere 08:25, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] COTN wikiproject bot

Hey, I had a pretty valid reason for removing "top" importance for snu but your bot retagged it. it's not neutral to tag a single university as top importance and ignore all the others. I'll be re-removing the importance unless you can give me a good reason. Thanks! Aepoutre 23:13, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I see the problem. The article WAS tagged, but incorrectly (and it was hidden, which is weird...). I fixed that, so your bot will probably make proper updates on its own, right? Sorry, again, and thanks again. Aepoutre 23:34, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I am not sure I know what "snu" and "COTN" means, but I hope you got the problem fixed. Let me know if the bot runs again and does it incorrectly. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:27, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] my editing habits

You are correct. I have some lax habits as far as the edit summaries. I will try to be more mindful of it. Gregbard 01:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

OK. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:05, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Curve

Repeated from my talk:
Regarding this, first just a remark. "Rvv" means "Revert Vandal", are you sure this is what you meant to say?
Second, in the case of Apollo, such note is of course allowed, since the Apollo missions are very famous, but Curves International appears to be just a gym company, it does not deserver special treatment.
You can reply here. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:19, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Apollo is but one example as there are many. For example, I also said firefly but Paraffin follows suit, and there are many more. Curves International is only the largest fitness franchise in the world, larger than Bally's and Gold's gyms combined. You can read a discussion on the Curves talk page to see why I'm doing this compromise, if you will, rather than seeking another rfc. Most people when they search for Curves, are not looking for the math concept, but in fact are looking for the women's fitness center. Again, this is in keeping with Wikipedia and the many articles that do the same. There is no defacing, no edit wars (hopefully), and I think is a good compromise. I originally created Curves and pointed it to Curves International, however, when the math guru's decided they wanted it to go to Curve, the math concept, that's where the issues arose. I went along with the community in the redirect, but I am doing so here with the perfectly accepted format of otheruses4 as a good compromise as well. Hope that answers your questions, if not, just let me know and I'll be able to answer whatever I missed. Cheers! --Maniwar (talk) 16:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Replied on your talk. Let's discuss only there, there is no point in copying this conversation around. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:28, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] multidimensional secant method

My apologies, you are right. Quasi-newton methods however are a generalization of the secant method to multidimensional problems. They are normally used to find the root of the gradient, rather than a function because that is what is useful in optimization. I corrected the text. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Smarchesini (talk • contribs).

Replied on your talk, to keep all conversation in one place. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:53, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Euclidean geometry -> Citation missing

I've undid your revert, because for such a long article, it really does not have much citations (only 3). The article really needs more inline citations (as well as reliable references). The template clearly states: Using inline citations helps guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. In good faith. Ǣ0ƞS 18:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I replied on your talk. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:25, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
I've no objection to putting the tag at the bottom of the article (In the Notes section itself will be ok), as long as people see it and the article gets improved. It will (and must) be removed when the article achieves the state required. Ǣ0ƞS 19:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I hope you will consider putting that ugly box at the bottom in the future. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:40, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
The template you mentioned (Template:Unreferenced = No references) is not the one I used (Template:Citations missing = Some references, but needs to be more precise as to where specific sentences originated). Also, each template has its own placement guideline, but as I said earlier, these template are just for the improvement of articles and as such their presence are 'temporary' (compared to articles). Ǣ0ƞS 19:58, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
I'll evaluate on a per article basis. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Cheers. Ǣ0ƞS 19:58, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] multi dimensional secant method

Ok, I added the description of the Broyden's method. Broyden's method becomes the secant method in 1D, so I think it is worth mentioning it in the secant method, but feel free to modify my entry. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Smarchesini (talk • contribs).

I will reply on your talk page. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:02, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The three Rs

Regarding the category change you made to article The three Rs I do follow your gerneral thinking about placing it in the master category Category:Education but we are working hard to remove all but the most basic of education articles from the master category and moving them into the appropate sub-category. Do you feel that this article truely belongs in the master category? I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the subject. Dbiel (Talk) 19:30, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

As a separate issue (after reading your user page) would you be willing to look at the following discussion regarding the deletion of Image:Deewar - A Wall.jpg Specificly the rouge admin's refusal to address the issue of un-deleting the image. User talk:^demon#Image:Deewar - A Wall.jpg Thank you in advance Dbiel (Talk) 19:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure indeed where The three Rs should be, but it should not be in category:Arithmetic, about that I am sure. Perhaps some subcategory of Category:Education would work.
About the image. Non-free images are a tricky issue. I don't know what to say. I suggest you raise this issue at WP:AN. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies and advice. The only reason I added Category:Arithmetic was because of the other 2 categories, but I agree with your deletion of all three of them. I have not found a better sub category, so will leave it in the master category for the time being. Dbiel (Talk) 20:24, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments pages not picked up

Is there an intermittent problem with the bot picking up Comments pages? Initially I thought that there may be a time lag between the comment page creation and it appearing in the log but that does not seem to be the problem as it has picked up some later comment pages.

For example the article Holderness in Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Yorkshire articles by quality/1 there is no comment appended yet the comment page was created on 5 July 2007.

Keith D 09:34, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I will look into this. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, that took longer than I thought. The problem was that Category:Yorkshire articles with comments was not in Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments. I fixed that, and now the comments are being added, see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Yorkshire articles by quality/1. I also updated the documentation mentioning that Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments needs to be added to any comments category. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:39, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for taking time to look at the problem. I would not have guessed that was the solution from it picking up some comments and not others Keith D 17:01, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Determinant

hello, first sorry i didnt see your complaint until i added the external link again. but can you explain why progrms to calculate determinants are not relevant to the determinant page --unsigned anon

It is relevant to some extent, but the determinant article already has an external link to such a site (and it had more, before I removed them). We don't need three or four links to online determinant calculators, one should be enough.
And above all, your insistence is not appreciated. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

ok sorry, the reason i kept adding was because i didnt realise that it was you that deleted it and just thought my updates were not working. I will not try to upload the link again --unsigned anon

[edit] looking for suggestions

I'm collecting an amount of lists for isolated articles (e.g. Wikipedia:Orphan) and managing some categories in ruwiki. Articles are put to appropriate categories by a AWB bot, which (un)marks them with some templates. Now it is much uncomfortable for me to use AWB because of some reasons, like:

  1. Need to wait for a toolserver script to complete with all tasks before downloading and running the AWB.
  2. No ability to combine edits for multiple types of processing.
  3. Significant customization restrictions for AWB.
  4. Many and many setting files for each subtask and separate input file corresponding to every settings file. So, everyday manual manipulations with subsequent settings and inputs list pairs.

After all of this, I am now looking at WikiBots, and taking into account the level of my Python, I've drawn my attention to perlwikipedia.

What I just want is to get some recommendations regarding to a stub to start with. Are there any perlwikipedia bots working on the toolserver and, let say, (un)tagging articles with templates? This kind of example, I hope, can give me a pretty nice time save. Mashiah 15:32, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know of any such bots. If you want to write your own, Perlwikipedia should be simple enough to use for tagging or untagging articles/categories.
I can't say more as I am not sure I understand what you want to do. You could start by installing perlwikipedia on your computer and testing it on a few examples. If it works, I can try helping you in writing such a bot.
You could also post a message at User talk:Shadow1 (Shadow is the creator of Perlwikipedia). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:00, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AWPP article

It would be wise to move make the 'Complexity Zoo' link stand out. Should I put a link in the main article? I'm also not quite sure how to make the article easier for someone unfamiliar with computer science. It seems that a description of what AWPP implies would be more useful to those needing more than just a technical reference. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by JWhiteheadcc (talk • contribs).

I don't know what specifically to advise, since I know next to nothing about complexity classes. I do agree however that the article is not very helpful to anybody not knowing much about the topic to start with. An introduction explaining in plain words what AWPP is about could help greatly, if you are willing to work on that. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:55, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question about proof

Hi Oleg,

I assume you are the author of the proof of the "Hahn decomposition theorem" on Wikipedia. Could you please explain the step: "ε1 is finite since 0 > μ(A) > -∞". Thanks.

The author of that article and the proof is in fact User:Fibonacci. After thinking of the proof for around 15 minutes I must say that step is unclear to me too. Try to ask Fibonacci on his talk page. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:13, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ban me!

Ban me! Math Maniac 11:14, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Heh. :) That's not how things work around here. From what I've seen from your recent contributions, you accumulated some frustration. That can be normal. I suggest you take a wiki-break and come back refreshed. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:23, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Request for edit summary

Could you please use the edit summary more often? Thanks. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:32, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Of course. :-)  I'm sorry that I sometimes forget. Which article are you referring to? Jim 17:38, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
You can take a look at Special:Contributions/Jim.belk to see. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:46, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you for your reversion of Trigonometry

You beat me to removing the information in the recent version you reverted to, and it's good to see some people are able to spot glaring factual errors. Thank you. Uxorion 16:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

No problem. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Documentary filmmakers

Can you please tell me how I might add myself to the British documentary filmmakers section?

I am an award winning documentary producer/director, with credits including:

Millennium: A thousand years of history (BBC/CNN) Commanding Heights: the Battle for the World Economy (PBS/BBC). Britain’s Finest Castles (Channel Five) Britain’s Finest Ancient Monuments (Channel Five) Weapons that Made Britain (Channel 4) Tales from the Green Valley (BBC)

I looked at the British and English documentary filmmaker categories, but I could not figure out how to add someone.

I realise you might not be quite the right person to ask, but if you can point me in the right direction, I will be most grateful.

Kindest regards,

Peter Sommer —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.148.158.190 (talk) 13:56, August 20, 2007 (UTC)

I think it is good if you don't add yourself to that list. Usually it is better to wait if some other party thinks you are notable enough to put you there. This way you can avoid charges of self-promotion. You could also take a look at Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Autobiography. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:25, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Smile

selfwormTalk) has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

selfwormTalk) 03:24, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Two requests

Hello. I have two requests that I was hoping could get a few moments of your time. The first is about a move I proposed. See Talk:Popcorn_function. The move seems to be totally uncontested (no one seems to be paying any attention to the article), but I can't move it on my own because the target article does not have an empty or trivial history (having a few minor edits). I'm not sure if I could technically do it, but the page-moving rules seem to say that I can't (or shouldn't) and I don't want to mess something up.

My second request is for comment, relating to small set and large set. Another editor determined that "large set" and "small set" cannot share a disambiguation, and split them up into two articles. I thought this was terribly redundant (just look at the two pages) and completely unnecessary. Maybe I'm wrong, but I want to merge them back together, so that people looking for large/small sets will find what they're looking for regardless. Could you give any input on this? Thanks for your help. --Cheeser1 12:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I did the move. I don't know about the small set. Try asking at WT:WPM. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:06, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the move, and for pointing me to the project. I'll see what others think. Thanks! --Cheeser1 05:40, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Perlwikipedia release

Hey Oleg, just thought I'd let you know that I've fixed up the remaining bugs in Perlwikipedia and released version 1.0 on Google Code. Although, with my luck, some gaping hole will pop up 30 seconds after I write this. Anyway, thanks for all your help! Shadow1 (talk) 16:53, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know! I will take a look at the new release sometime next week. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:00, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mathbot and AFD

The bot used to link to open discussions on /old like : 1 2 3 4 5 and so forth. This feature was great, can you bing it back? Navou banter 17:05, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I will look at this later this week. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:42, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
The feature does work, but only when there are under 20 articles, like here. Some people think going beyond 20 articles is too much, and I agree. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:54, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A new search engine for books -- Zercle.com

Hi Oleg,

I would like to invite you and other Wikipedians to check out Zercle.com, which is a search engine for nonfiction books that I've just launched.

Zercle is designed to solve a problem that often plagues us on book sites such as Amazon.com: We spend a huge amount of time trying (and usually failing) to get an idea of what books are available in our particular categories of interest. For example, if you enter "Group Theory" in the search box at Amazon you'll get a hodgepodge of 1431 results, the first page of which is mostly psychology books! It's ridiculous.

What if you want a list of all undergraduate-level books in "Group Theory" that are currently in-print? Good luck. There's no way to get that information, unless you want to spend a few days going through 1431 results. In effect, we're still very much in the Stone Age when it comes to answering such questions.

With Zercle, however, volunteer editors will create, edit and maintain book groups which contain all of the books that are currently in-print in a given category. Zercle has developed a special method for analyzing the core subject of a book to determine which group or groups are appropriate for the book. This is all detailed in the "Instructions for book group editors" page.

Zercle is like Wikipedia in that it is edited by volunteers and thus starts off with very little content being there for users. Unlike Wikipedia, however, Zercle requires editors to register and that they be "knowledgeable enough" in the subject areas that they edit.

I've already started building a few groups on Zercle myself, in the "quantum mechanics" area, since I'm knowledgeable enough there (BS Physics). If you enter "quantum mechanics" into the Title box on the Zercle front page you'll see those groups. If you also enter, say, "Griffiths" into the Author box, you'll see the specific group which contains the QM book written by that author. I've only just started these groups, so none of them are yet complete. But, as I've already alluded, the idea is to eventually have groups that are complete, so that users can easily discover what books are available in their categories of interest, and authors can pretty much be guaranteed that users have an easy way of discovering their book.

Once Zercle gets going we will no longer have to waste countless hours on Amazon only to get a tiny glimpse of what books are available in our particular categories of interest. We'll simply enter the title (or title words and maybe an author's last name) from any book in the category into the Zercle query box, and instantly have at our fingertips a *complete* list of the other books in that category, with links to their corresponding Amazon pages.

So please check out http://www.zercle.com/. Editors are needed in all non-fiction subjects (Zercle does not support *fiction* books). For questions/comments: paul at zercle dot com.

Thanks very much for reading this.

Paul White (developer of Zercle)

Emwave 20:01, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] hi

hi i am Ramesh from India. Your pictures & diagrams are so nice & very helpful to me. i serched for your mail id. but i couldn't get it. At present i am studying Mtech. my mail id is (snipped) I will feel happy if I get reply Thanking you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.110.246.230 (talk) 09:58, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

To contact me, you can click on Special:Emailuser/Oleg_Alexandrov. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:04, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Snipped email address for user's inbox's well-being. --Geniac 14:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 bot &WP Zimbabwe

Hello, I have been setting up over the last couple of months a WikiProject Zimbabwe. We have recently started assessing our articles and like other WikiProjects have a articles by quality statistics. However, we do not have the table filled in sufficiently and the few cells that are filled in I have done manually but this is a slow, painstaking process. I see however on the England page WP 1.0 bot has scanned the articles and filled in the data automatically. Could you, as and when you have the time, please run the bot on our page to try and save us time as I'm not all too sure how to do it. Many thanks in advance, Mangwanani 12:10, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

You can take a look at the index, and from that page there is a link to instructions about how to set up the bot to list the articles. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 bot & WP:PUR

Hey, for some reason WP 1.0 bot hasn't updated Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Puerto Rico articles by quality statistics in almost a week, I took care of the entire 900 page backlog and we need to know the current status because we are planing a project, when do you think will be possible for WP 1.0 bot to do the new assessment? - Caribbean~H.Q. 05:22, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know why it did not update. I ran it now by hand using the web form. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:57, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! - Caribbean~H.Q. 20:25, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "new" article?

Any idea why Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) is listed among "new articles"? I know that happens when a page gets moved, but this page has sat there at that same title for several years. Michael Hardy 17:50, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the article's history, it appears that GregorB recently added a Category:Probability theory tag to it. It had previously been categorized only as Category:Thought experiments. So that's probably why Mathbot picked it up as a "new" article. DavidCBryant 18:53, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
David, that's correct. I think it has enough (if little) probability in it to be considered math. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:36, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Working alongside Mathbot

Hi Oleg,

I recently started a new article about the mathematician John Hilton Grace (it's a skeleton right now, but it might become more informative later on) and noticed that Mathbot noticed and automatically added his name to List of mathematicians (G) - very cool by the way.

The question now is how to clue Mathbot to his nationality and birth/death years. Currently the line looks like:

  • Grace, John Hilton (?, ? - )

even though I added this information in a semi-standard way to the article.

I am considering starting articles for a few other mathematicians, so this information would be helpful. « D Trebbien (talk) 19:35, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

You should add the mathematician in Category:1873 births, same for deaths, and Category:British mathematicians. The bot will add that info in a day or two to the list of mathematicians entry you noted above. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:40, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the quick reply. I just changed {{UK-mathematician-stub}} so that pages transcluding this template are automatically added to Category:British mathematicians. « D Trebbien (talk) 16:29, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
That won't be enough. The bot actually needs to see the string [[Category:British mathematicians]] in the wiki code of the article. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:30, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
OK. « D Trebbien (talk) 16:33, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] abelian groups, Eisenstein integers, etc.

Your recent edit to Fortunate number has me wondering: when do you capitalize name adjectives? CompositeFan 20:36, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I think they should never be capitalized, unless proper words, like a nationality. Maybe the style manual will have more to say on this. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:40, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Logic

Greetings Oleg, Thanks for your work. I have placed "Fuzzy logic" under philosophy and not in mathematics at the WikiProject Logic. I think this is consistent with the wishes expressed at WP:MATH. Please look over the category division under scope at WP:Logic.

I have recently proposed that the project serve as an intersection of otherwise separate departments philosophy and math. My idea is that the Math project would designate WP:Logic as the task force responsible for the "foundations" field including set theory. WP:PHILO would designate it as the logic task force under its project. There will be two worklists derived from two banners: the math banner under foundations field, and philosophy under the logic field. I think this is best for everyone. I have used transculsions in several areas so as to make separate, and common areas for the math and philosophy aspects of it.

I guess all I can do is ask that the WP:Math group consider taking responsibility for certain categories, and coordinating with the philosophy poeple so as to keep the overlap small. I had been proposing for User:SatyrBot to do automatic tagging of categories for the logic banner. Now I am proposing that the philosophy department use fields with its banner including a logic field. The philosophy project appears ready to move forward on bot tagging. We are starting with metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, and aesthetics fields to see how it goes.

You run the bot activities at WP:Math, so I wanted to kind of give you an update on activities in that area. The discussion about covering topics under WP:PHILO has left out the math categories. So if they are to be acceptable as a part of a joint logic project, I think many would be acceptable under the separated proposal under math. I invite your corespondence. Be well,

Be well, Gregbard 03:34, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Greg. Thanks for the update. The logic categories mathematicians now "take responsibility for" are listed at List of mathematics categories (first section). If you have any suggestions about what should be/should not be included there, just let me know. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:41, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing me in a good direction. I will take a look at the categories, and if I think there are any I think are missing I will post a message on it's talk page. I admire your work. Thanks Gregbard 05:25, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Big O notation

If you don't agree with something, please discuss, rather than keeping reverting. Doing more of reverting will just get you blocked again. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:04, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Why don't you say that to Rubin218.133.184.93 06:34, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
You are reverting information that is correct. And there is no need to define max. Please stop reverting, otherwise I'll have you blocked for disruption. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:23, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reference tags

Sorry about wrong tag. I thought that part of the point of the tags was to help users recognize the level of authority, objectivty, and care in the article. High placement, to give fair warning, supports that. Otherwise its a bait-and-switch: Start reading, thinking it's authoritative, only to be disappointed at the bottom. DCDuring 03:57, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Replied on your talk. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:58, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP 1.0 bot

Our feed at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Ships articles by quality statistics hasn't been updating lately. I've run it manually at the web form a couple times recently; when I went to manually run it today, it failed out repeatedly, with errors like this on each query:

Warning: Could not fetch http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php?what=category&cptitle=Wikipedia+1.0+assessments&format=txt&cplimit=500 properly in attempt 1 !!!

Hope you can help straighten this out. Thanks very much! Maralia 02:53, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. This is being discussed at WT:1.0/I. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:00, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your mathbot

Hi, how can I link to your mathbot tool without getting the results for the corresponding user on en.wikipedia? My username is Adriaan_1 on af.wikipedia, and when I manually enter it into your website, it displays my edit count just fine. But when I link to it through a template, it displays the edit count of Adriaan_1 at en.wikipedia: mhttp://www.math.ucla.edu/~aoleg/wp/rfa/edit_summary.cgi?user=Adriaan_1. What should I do to make it display the edit count for accounts at af.wikipedia? — Adriaan (T★C) 16:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

You need to specify the language, as shown below. http://tools.wikimedia.de/~mathbot/cgi-bin/wp/rfa/edit_summary.cgi?user=Adriaan_1&lang=af Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:36, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Cool, thanks :P — Adriaan (T★C) 15:39, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Drunkard's walk

OK, I don't know how drunk you get mi amigo, but if you are stumbling in multiple dimensions,[9] I'll have what you are having.

But seriously, back in the day, this was a standard beginners program in LOGO, and it's remarkable, and very counter-intuitive, that you end up at the same point via a simulated drunkard's walk.

I generally throw a {{fact}} tag on anything I write that I don't have a source handy for, and I understand you might want to clarify the point, but the article as it stood completely neglected to explain the basic relevance mathematically/computationally behind the whole idea. So I've restored the edit. You yourself, frankly, with your knowledge of higher dimensions, might be better able than I to find a good source to support this, I strongly suspect. -- 146.115.58.152 05:49, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Oops -- Originally posted to the wrong user! Anyway, someone clarified this is specific to 2D since I wrote the above. -- 146.115.58.152 00:48, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I think that's not true beyond 2D, but I don't have sources ready either. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:41, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] after discussion(s)

hi oleg- thank you for your helpful suggestions. can you tell us how long to wait to post an edit to an article after posting to discussion? do we wait for your approval (as watch) or how does it work? kind regards, Kvihill 21:22, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

There are no formal rules. You could wait a day or two and then perform the edit. You could state in the edit summary that the edit is explained on the talk page. That may lead towards a discussion, hopefully, rather than towards an argument or a revert war. Let's see how it goes. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)