User talk:Arcfrk/Archive5

User page policy

Howdy, you asked about the user page policy. I think WP:UP#OWN is approximately the right place. The idea is that your user space is much closer to being "yours" than anything else on wikipedia, but policy violations (WP:NPA is specifically mentioned) should still be removed.

Casual things like correcting spelling, or formating, etc. of other people's user pages tend to be discouraged, but are not forbidden. Adding new content is almost always heavily discouraged.

Elonka is a semi-elected official type person who specializes in diffusing long-term disagreements. She is reasonable good at finding solutions that work for both parties. If you do decide to return, she can probably help make it smoother.

I think Hilbert space needs some help, in case you happen to be returning now. There is a particularly tricky thing wrong with the article: the lead (section 0) is quite well written, but it does not summarize what is in the article. Someone needs to rewrite the lead so that it both gently introduces the topic and summarizes the article. This probably means moving some of the current lead into motivations, background, or definition, or so. There are some other big things to do too (I think someone wants Sobolev spaces to get bigger mention, there need to be more inline references, maybe more is needed on operators, etc.). JackSchmidt (talk) 01:42, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, Jack! I still cannot seem to find the actual policy (as opposed to various guidelines), and especially, explication of the due process (who determines what conforms to the policies and what violates them, including censorship issues, how does the enforcement works).

It seems that Geometry Guy and Silly Rabbit are managing quite well at Hilbert space. I think that the third paragraph of the lead, the one that tries to summarize the article, is actually the weakest of all. But like GG said before, let's not worry too much about the lead before the article is ready. The most significant shortcoming, to me, is the lack of applications (the corresponding section is just a collection of wikilinks, without explanations; the first sentence is oddly misplaced — was it moved over from another section?) This is especially unfortunate because quite a few people — justifiably — pointed out that without them, the article seems to bar anyone but professional mathematicians from the readership (this has led to flare-ups in the past). It would be great to include something from signal processing, for example, but I am too far removed from it to do it well. In the next order of urgency, the theory of operators and spectral theory are way underrepresented, even though, next to orthonormal bases and projections, they form perhaps the most important part of the theory. But the main thing, the process of improvement has finally kicked into higher gear, so I have confidence in a good outcome. Arcfrk (talk) 22:32, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

What is O.Yu.Schmidt's problem?

In this edit to the article on Burnside's problem you introduced the text "... thus affirmatively solving O.Yu.Schmidt's problem. However, there is no further explanation of or reference to this problem in the text.  --Lambiam 12:43, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

The original problem had asked to describe infinite groups whose proper subgroups are all finite. For a long time, it was not even clear whether any finitely generated noncyclic groups with this property existed; Ol'shanskii solved this narrower problem by constructing "Tarski monsters" (infinite, generated by 2 elements, every proper subgroup is cyclic). If you see how to make the text clearer without introducing tautologies, please, do! Arcfrk (talk) 10:59, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Surface transport

Hi,

I adjusted the section on Riemannian connections at differential geometry of surfaces to fit better with the case of surfaces. Please take a look. Katzmik (talk) 10:38, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

I hope I wasn't overbearing, and I certainly didn't mean for you to make public any correspondence. In fact, I would have been satisfied by your saying that you had independent confirmation of the event. --CSTAR (talk) 03:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

No apology necessary! I was similarly stupefied when I first heard the news and wasn't able to find any obituary or an independent confirmation. I generally prefer to err on the side of caution, although in this case I suspect that the letter was meant to be public. Arcfrk (talk) 04:10, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Note

Please, if you have other concerns about Mathsci's behavior, please take them to User talk:Mathsci. Continuing to talk about things at the WikiProject is just going to make you look bad. Your best avenue is to post a polite message at his talkpage, to provide diffs of the comments of his that you have concerns about, and to try to work things out with him directly. This is more than just a formality. Posting at someone's talkpage is also effective because it helps to keep a record of concerns, so that admins can see diffs all in one place, rather than having to track down complaints on other unrelated pages. Posting at someone's talkpage is also helpful, because admins may have it on their watchlists, whereas they may not be watching other pages. And lastly, you need to show a good faith effort to try and work things out in a mature fashion. If that doesn't work, you can try starting a thread at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts, but for best results, you'll want to show that you tried other avenues first. See also Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. --Elonka 22:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestions. I've thought them over, but I am afraid that I have to disagree with you in several respects. As it must be clear to you by now, Mathsci has all of the maturity of a seven year old, and working things out with him "in mature fashion" is simply not feasible. I do believe that WP Math talkpage was the right forum to bring forth this issue (or, at least, it was the best one to choose from). Incidentally, did you know that there is a very large number of administrators associated with the project who watch that page? Cheers, Arcfrk (talk) 23:37, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I've noticed the admins and arbitrators there.  :) --Elonka 23:51, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Mathematical sources

Every time you contribute mathematical content to this encyclopedia you should take the trouble to add careful sources. Otherwise unsourced content that you add constitutes an essay: original research that will be reverted without further discussion. Thank you for your understanding. Mathsci (talk) 01:29, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I beg your pardon? Is this a threat? I hope that you are familiar with a policy WP:Harrassment. In my opinion, you have crossed the line. Arcfrk (talk) 07:46, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Re: Help request

Hi Arcfrk, I've replied to your post on my talk page. Paul August ☎ 19:36, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

area

Hi, I merged area (geometry) into area and added some comments, see if you agree. Katzmik (talk) 14:33, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia's Expert Peer Review process (or lack of such) for Science related articles

Hi - I posted the section with the same name on my talk page. Could you take part in discussion ? Thanks ARP Apovolot (talk) 01:09, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Coxeter element / Longest element of a Coxeter group

Hi Arcfrk,

Thanks for the correction, and sorry for the mistake!

I’ve fixed it everywhere, and otherwise elaborated. I had been confused by the notation w vs. w₀ and lack of examples. I’ve also added some (referenced) examples at: Coxeter number#Coxeter elements, so one sees the Coxeter element of A_n (n-cycle) vs. the longest element of the group (reverse permutation).

Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 02:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

AfD

There is an interesting discussion at Bishop-Keisler controversy, please comment if you get a chance. Katzmik (talk) 14:17, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Duality (mathematics)

Hi, you expressed some interest in working on the duality article. Are you still up to it? I'd like to develop the article to Good Article standard, but I think this is a broad topic so more hands/eyes would be good. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 16:45, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Without a picture, what's the use of this example?

Is this picture the one you had in mind? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:24, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

No, this is an associahedron (14 vertices, square and pentagonal faces); for Bruhat order for S₄, we need a permutohedron (24 vertices, square and hexagonal faces), labeled with the elements of the group. Actually, even the labeled hexagon (n=3) would do. Arcfrk (talk) 23:51, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Help

Hi, I'm posting this on your (and other members of the Maths Wikiproject) talk as we need editors who are knowledgeable about Mathematics to evaluate the following discussion and check out the editors and articles affected. Please follow the link below and comment if you can help.

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Block_review_-_uninvolved_admin_request.

Thankyou. Exxolon (talk) 16:34, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Critical point

Hi, What is confusing in critical point of complex quadratic polynomials ? --Adam majewski (talk) 16:47, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Quite a bit: labelling it as an "example", its placement within the article, the fact that the link talks about holomorphic case: derivative of complex functions in the sense of complex analysis, unlike the referring article. The main issue is that it doesn't add anything of value to the article, I am afraid. Cheers, Arcfrk (talk) 17:31, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

So if you see the difference you should write about it in the article. Share your knowlage (:-)) You agree that this example shows critical point of the map, if this name has 2 meanings show it. Cheers--Adam majewski (talk) 19:05, 7 July 2009 (UTC)