Talk:Xi-Ping Zhu

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This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or if there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

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[edit] Blanking previous discussion

I have read through the previous discussion in thorough detail. I found it useless in terms of helping improve the article, and it quickly degraded into a verbal fistfight. There are also serious allegations that have been tossed around, with what I would consider rather reckless disregard for WP:BLP. Thus I have blanked the page.

Please look over the relevant policies; I believe everyone involved are familiar with them, but it does no harm to refresh one's memory.

All I have left to say on this matter is that this has been discussed on several other talk pages. Other Wikipedians besides myself have expressed the belief that there is little we can do to clarify any controversies other than report the facts from the most reliable sources. It is not our role to settle any ongoing disputes here or insert our own opinions and POVs.

This talk page is only for discussion on how to improve the article. It is not a soapbox (cf WP:SOAPBOX). If reliable sources cannot be found for some assertion, it is pointless to debate about its correctness. --C S (Talk) 00:19, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notability Through Award

In terms of notability, it is recorded that Xi-Ping Zhu won a notable ICCM award in December 2004. According to [1], the number of international participants of ICCM'04 is 700, which makes the conference one of the largest international math venues and a notable one. In North America and Asia, the influence (with respect to notability) of a conference and organization is proportional to its scale---if you can attract more participants or audience, at least the notability concern is relieved.--Jiejunkong 10:40, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notability Through Controversy

WP:BIO states that a person may be considered notable if "The person has been the subject of published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject." Zhu has been mentioned in The New Yorker, China View, and NPR regarding the current controversy over the Poincaire conjecture. These sources are all very independent of the mathematics subject. What this article needs is a summary of the controversy and Zhu's role. It is not Wikipedia's role to state who's right or wrong, when the question is still in controversy. Wikipedia should accurately state the controversy and the people involved in a WP:NPOV way. Weston.pace 22:09, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recover blanked contents that were related to the subject

I personally know John Lott and John Morgan and fully support the continued existence of this page. --Mathsci 18:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Zhu is currently well-known in mathematics (he was on the list oif invitees to MSRI when I was up there).--Mathsci 18:48, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

the scandal around Zhu's name, as well as Cao as students and/or collaborators of Yau must be objectively reflected. They have published claims "for crowning achievement", and "first complete proof"...I shall insert information of this scandal in the main entry. The scandal is huge enough, so that all China knows Zhu and Cao as "discoverors" --Danko Georgiev MD 02:12, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Please stop trolling. The remaining comments from User:Mathsci are merely descriptions of physical facts, such as who he knows and where he has been. These are not his opinions, but facts. If you want to exchange your opinions with him, please go to proper user talk pages. Otherwise, you should restore the original talk page to let readers see the entire context. I did revert once, but a few users don't think most opinion exchanges in the original talk page are constructive.--Jiejunkong 08:54, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, this quote appearing here isn't Danko's fault. I went ahead and copied that section in here from the previous discussion. It was the most factual comment by Danko I could find, but I thought every viewpoint which was at least loosely based on facts should be recorded. The word scandal has a negative connotation and I rather it be changed to controversy, but I'm not sure it would be valid to change words in a quote. It is recorded in some China articles that Zhu and Cao solved the Poincaire conjecture, and they did publish those claims. The claim that these facts represent a scandal is an opinion that got mixed in with the facts and I couldn't extract it. -Weston.pace 13:52, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Concern from BLP point of view

Some time ago, attempts were made to delete this page through notability concerns. The editor involved made unsourced and derogatory comments regarding the subject of the article. The editor claimed the subject was not notable because his work was not valid.

As a result, a number of facts were brought up stating that the subject was indeed notable for other reasons, and that his work was valid, and the deletion of the article was stopped. I added to the article by clarifying the controversy, and the subject's role in it.

C S has recently expressed concern over the article's potential to do harm to a living person. Wikipedia does not intend to do harm to living people and has policies regarding the issue at Biographies of living persons.

I invite comment over how to address this issue, some ideas are to delete the article, strip the section on the controversy down to a bare minimum, and removing the controversy section entirely. -Weston.pace 14:21, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

By my observation, so far the major controversy about Xi-Ping Zhu's June 2006 paper is the "crowning achievement" claim and the credit oversight of Lemma 7.1.2. After Xi-Ping Zhu published a revised paper in December 2006 to fix both problems, no complaint is raised against the revised paper. In both papers, I don't think Zhu has done anything that can be classified as misbehavior. In contrast, the mass media system has shown ostentious misbehavior in this case.--Jiejunkong 21:32, 19 July 2007 (UTC) My personal opinion is to reduce the section on the controversy down to a bare minimum, as the blackened sentences shown above.--Jiejunkong 21:37, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Hello. I do not think it is appropriate to include an account of this controversy on a biography page. There is certainly no equivalent passage on the biographical page of his coauthor Huai-Dong Cao; this seems quite unfair and inconsistent. On the other hand this controversy is discussed on pages connected with the Poincare conjecture. Therefore it seems reasonable not to have a section on the controversy, but instead to have a brief neutral statement with a link to one of these other pages where it is discussed. As I have written before, Zhu's name is currently known to many mathematicians and therefore he merits a WP bio. --Mathsci 00:28, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough, I've removed the section for now. Would someone be interested in putting in a NPOV reference? Weston.pace 03:38, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I basically respect experts' opinions on issues which belong to their research fields. Since I am not a pure mathematician, I would say that User:Mathsci's opinion should be respected (unless there are equally competent pure mathematicians arguing against him).--Jiejunkong 20:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I wholeheartedly agree with Mathsci that one sentence is enough, and I added one pointing to an article where details can be found. Please do improve on my edit because I'm not very happy with what I wrote. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:23, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Danko has been perma-banned

I think this means we NO LONGER HAVE A DISPUTE. :) --Cronholm144 17:05, 19 July 2007 (UTC)