User talk:David Eppstein/2023b

figuring out how to clean up a large semi-automated mangled citation mess

Thanks for fixing my revert mistake on Complex number‎. I made several other similar reverts somewhat quickly though I was trying to check them; hopefully I picked the right reversion point on all the others or if not hopefully someone watching those pages will double-check.

The overall problem here has a scope that is well beyond my capacity to handle on my own. I am guessing there are at least several hundred edits that need to be reverted or carefully manually fixed. I only checked/tried to revert the most recent handful. I opened a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#help cleaning up mangled citations but haven't gotten much feedback there yet. Ideas? –jacobolus (t) 07:42, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I've been trying to address the problem, but the amount of checking required is substantial. XOR'easter (talk) 16:27, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Temporally disrevert then revert the 'Power of 2' article

Your recent editing history at power of two shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war; read about how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Can you disrevert the 'power of 2' article, copy-paste the changes I made and paste it to your user page, then revert it? See Power of two. Faster328 (talk) 11:20, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

The reason I added 2^160 and 2^2^2^n section is to provide more knowledge. 2^160 is approximately 1.461501637x10^48. You can make the new section better and improve it. Faster328 (talk) 11:23, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

No, I'm not going to stuff up my user page with useless powers of two. If you want to see the text you added, look at the article history. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:11, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Can you improve my secondary page - Draft:2^n, 2^2^n, 2^2^2^n? Add more ciations for the secondary article. Faster328 (talk) 00:57, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

More? There are zero citations. See WP:NOR. You should be working from sources, not piling up calculations in the hope that maybe someone else can source them for you. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:58, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I have proof that my calculations are true. I found it using the logarithm method. Below I will show you the logarithm method. The more precise the value is, the more accuracy. I can find a maximum of 4157 digits.

My calculations have been proven true because using a small change in value to log10(2), there is also a small change in the digits of the log10. When I remove a few digits, like 4 digits removed, the logarithm of the value change by the same amount of digits. I find the decimal point, copied the digits after it, then add a '0.' to the first digits of the number. I then used the 10^() function to convert the logarithm to the value. After that, I copied the digits before the decimal point and paste it between the brackets in the 10^(). The final result is the value times 10^(number of digits). I also added a fact for you guys that every tetration of 2, a new fixed digit appears. The fixed digits then converge to a 10-adic number(...5075353432948736). Faster328 (talk) 01:49, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

This vague description does not fill me with confidence. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:54, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Can you make a simpler description? Faster328 (talk) 01:57, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Can you answer the question of what you think the point of adding this sort of calculation to Wikipedia would be? What information is a reader of the article likely to be looking for that would cause them to see this and think "that's what I was looking for"? How is it not just a useless pile of digits making the articles longer and making the actual information in the articles harder to find? —David Eppstein (talk) 02:05, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

You can disrevert the page, then copy to the secondary article(Draft:2^n, 2^2^n, 2^2^2^n), then I can thank you. Faster328 (talk) 02:12, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

So you still haven't read anything anyone has responded to you here or elsewhere, including my statement that I will not copy this material for you and my suggestion that if you want to find it again you look in the article history? —David Eppstein (talk) 02:13, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree with David on this one, I don't see the point of of listing 2^2^2^n all the way to n=11, for instance. What does this accomplish? I would suggest that this kind of research belongs in a Math journal, but are not interesting enough to the general public on Wikipedia. Try publishing your own paper. Dhrm77 (talk) 17:05, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Beckman–Quarles theorem

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Your GA nomination of Beckman–Quarles theorem

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Powers of 5 article

I hope you can create a draft article named 'Powers of 5' and add values and sources from reliable ciations like the OEIS. You can use the ciation bot if you want. Faster328 (talk) 02:24, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Get used to disappointment. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:42, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Possible. Faster328 (talk) 06:50, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

NPP

Hi. Have you ever thought of doing work over at NPP? You could focus only on scholars and other academic subjects. You are definitely the best one at assessing their notability. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 12:18, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I do regularly look through the new pages listed at User:AlexNewArtBot/MathSearchResult and User:AlexNewArtBot/WomenScientistsSearchResult. That tends to focus more on articles I'm likely to have an interest in. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:19, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I always value your opinion on all articles, but most especially on those types. I often say to myself when reviewing a borderline NSCHOLAR article, "self, what would David Eppstein think?". Onel5969 ^{TT me} 01:17, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I liked ...

... your response here, "a more convincing argument" indeed ;-) Paul August ☎ 00:35, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Notch another one up for Socrates. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:12, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Each pile of calculations needs an article.

I need you to create an article called 'Power of 2 Values' and add links from and to Power of two and 'Power of 2 Values'. Faster328 (talk) 06:11, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

du Chatelet and journal publication

Hi David, I noticed your edit on Eunice Foote. I thought it was a good edit, and we should indeed not forget about Émilie du Châtelet. In particular I was ignorant of her publication "Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation du feu," and am glad to know more about her work - your edit inspired me to do so, and so I just wanted to say thanks for that. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 12:58, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/198 (number)

Hello, David Eppstein,

You nominated this article for deletion last year and I closed the AFD as "Delete". I was just notified that a discussion has been started at Deletion review and an editor is asking for the article history to be restored. I'm not sure if you have an opinion about this but I think you probably have a stronger view than I did since you nominated the article for deletion and I simply assessed the comments that had been made by the participants. I hope you had a pleasant weekend. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:26, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I don't think I have strong feelings about this either way. The history is a bit of a mess regardless. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:30, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Revert on Big O notation?

Can you explain the revert on Big O notation? Your comment makes it sound like it should be obvious but I don't see why, based on the talk page and WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. Assuming I'm missing something. - Procyonidae (talk) 06:48, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

NOTTEXTBOOK means that we should not include certain types of unencyclopedic content, such as user manuals for pieces of software, game play-throughs, or recipes for cooking meals. It does not mean we should avoid saying anything at all that a textbook might also way. It does not require us to omit claims that might be useful to readers, merely on the basis that they are useful and therefore might be found in a textbook. In particular, it does not require us to omit the observation that 0 is never used for O-notation even though it looks a lot like O. It also does not require us to delete content merely because it is phrased in imperative. That phrasing is common throughout mathematical writing, especially as a way of avoiding the use of passive voice (as I used above instead) or second-person plural. Its use is merely a matter of grammatical choice, not an indication that the sentence is forbidden by NOTTEXTBOOK. Even descriptions of step-by-step processes for doing things are not always forbidden by NOTTEXTBOOK. For instance, many algorithms are notable, should be covered by Wikipedia, and cannot be covered without describing the steps of the algorithms. More often than not, when I see NOTTEXTBOOK used, it is used incorrectly. My edit summary was intended to indicate that your use of it was not merely incorrect, but more incorrect than usual. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:10, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Followup: ok so even if NOTTEXTBOOK is the incorrect reason, I still think it makes sense to remove the statement "The digit zero should not be used" from the article, no? - Procyonidae (talk) 07:38, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Why? —David Eppstein (talk) 15:47, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

As written, it's just an uncited personal suggestion. Even if we add refs supporting the advice to not use a zero, I think it would need a qualifier, to the effect of "within [field/subfield], other symbols like a zero or theta are not considered equivalent". And then on top of that, I would think there still needs to be more to justify its inclusion in the article. For example, the page for π wouldn't include the sentence "The character n should not be used", unless there was some recorded justification, e.g. an observed trend of people using n for π, despite the two being similar in form. Does that reasoning make sense? What do you think? - Procyonidae (talk) 20:54, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

It is very easy to source: https://books.google.com/books?id=-YZcDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA273 https://books.google.com/books?id=aYxSZurAGXEC&pg=PA590 https://books.google.com/books?id=zwdiK3qwcOcC&pg=PA137

And since this is an article about notation, material that is precisely about notation is very much on-topic. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:02, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

@Procyonidae I think your intuition here is "Wikipedia is descriptive not prescriptive". Idea: you could change the wording to "The digit zero is never used"—that was its wording before this edit. 'wɪnd (talk) 02:17, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

@'wɪnd that wording looks better to me, I agree. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:13, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Sourced positive descriptions and vacuous puffery

I'd like some clarity on your undo here: Editors should refrain from this sort of effort until they learn to tell the difference between sourced positive descriptions of something and vacuous puffery.

And for context, the two relevant phrases are (emphasis mine):

• Euler is held to be one of the greatest mathematicians in history and the greatest of the 18th century.
• Euler is also widely considered to be the most prolific [mathematician]

Two things:

1. I checked the given sources before editing and also where the edit was introduced. It's not clear to me where the source is.
2. As I see it, greatest is a peacock term here in my reading of MOS:PUFFERY. It seems to me, our disagreement arises from the word pointing to different things for different people when applied to humans. For some of us, "greatness" is a factual term and can be measured by certain (implied) criteria: e.g. number of times cited, number of ideas used today that can be traced back to their writings, etc. For others, "greatness of humans" is not factual or sharp, but a subjective opinion/ranking based on unclear criteria. I believe, that's why MOS:PUFFERY points out Instead of making subjective proclamations about a subject's importance, use facts and attribution to demonstrate it.

The facts implying importance here are the sourced opinions of Laplace and Gauss and the "number of publications". Moreover, and arguably most importantly, the various ideas introduced by Euler which are listed. 'wɪnd (talk) 21:15, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

@David Eppstein Or... did I misunderstand the MOS:PUFFERY and WP:PUFFERY page? It seems to me, it doesn't make the distinction between vacuous and unvacuous use of peacock terms, rather it says to avoid them all together... with the exception of attributions such as 'Laplace said: "Lisez Euler, lisez Euler, c'est notre maître à tous."'. What do you think? 'wɪnd (talk) 17:31, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

WP:AN

In all seriousness, if you (or any lurker) have any suggestions about how I could have edited better before or during or conducted myself better in relation to this filing, I would be very appreciative of that - here, at my own Talk, or anywhere really. Newimpartial (talk) 01:52, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

For a start, you could maybe have paid attention to the complaints that, by responding on the talk pages of everyone who left a negative opinion, you were bludgeoning the discussion, instead of continuing to do exactly the same thing, as you have done here, after that behavior had already started to become a significant topic of discussion? —David Eppstein (talk) 02:01, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Well, you seem to be saying that asking seasoned folks like you and Ealdgyth how I can improve is a form of bludgeon? Is that because I didn’t wait long enough after the !votes were cast, or something? My understanding is that BLUDGEON is about trying to convince people of something, usually to influence !votes, and my comments (at Talk pages of five of the ten non-support !voters) weren't aiming to do that at all - two of the five were simple questions about how to improve, and the other three were clarifications I wanted to make, not intended to convince anyone of anything.

So maybe BLUDGEON means something that I don't get from reading WP:BLUDGEON? And I do get (partly thanks to a helpful comment by Beccaynr) that I need to take more reflective time before deciding what is worth saying in response to others. But what else am I missing? You don't owe me an answer, of course, but I am asking for insight, I'm not trying to influence anything (especially not the current AN outcome, which seems foregone). I just want to grow and learn, here, as I have (sooner or later) from prior experiences on-wiki. Newimpartial (talk) 02:17, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Asking again

I've waited 24 hours after the closure of my ANI filing, and since you have not (yet?) banned me from your Talk I want to ask again how I can improve my editing, in relation primarily to your comment here. I have taken on your reccomendation here (and I have expressed my realisation about that and some of my plans going forward), so I should be able to a avoid recidivism on that specific matter.

To clear the air, I have to disclose that I felt rather hurt by your comments, especially this one. I consider that almost everything I understand about NPROF, and a large part of my understanding of WP:N, came from reading your contributions, and in a previous brief interaction at ANI, [1] I felt that you were standing against bullying I was experiencing, whereas this time you stood on the other side (I have explained some of my experience - with no aspersions about any other editor - here). It is difficult to be dismissed by an editor I have seen as a kind of exemplar.

Anyway, with that air cleared, I just want to know what (apart from staying away from the Talk pages of discussion participants while a discussion is going on) you think I ought to be changing in my editing? I am trying to keep the question as open-ended as possible, so that if you choose to answer the reply will be affected as little as possible by my own blinders and preconceptions. Newimpartial (talk) 18:09, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Rook's graph

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Apologies for the confusion on Rotating Calipers

Hey! Sorry about my incorrect """fix""" on Rotating calipers. I glanced at the citation and saw that it needed a journal and didn't think before I edited. Apologies and thanks for correcting me. Moon motif (talk) 22:30, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

No problem. Sadly, I have been unable to find a usable link to the actual paper; you can find copies online but they're typically fair-use links from someone's course readings, probably fair use for the person putting it there but a violation of WP:ELNEVER for us. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:42, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Jaigris Hodson

Not sure my ping in the edit summary worked. Could you please take a look at this one? Thanks. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 11:11, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Talk page stalker here. Without looking deeply, this one looks a bit WP:TOOSOON for NPROF. We've got 2 moderately cited papers, in what I don't think is an extremely low citation field. I think that's short of WP:NPROF C1. She does not appear to be editor-in-chief of the Journal of Digital and Social Media Marketing (none such is listed, but Simon Beckett is the one writing the editorials for the last couple of issues of the journal), and I am anyway uncertain as to whether this would be a well-established journal for WP:NPROF C8. A Canadian Research Chair I understand to be more along the lines of a grant; anyway, WP:NPROF C5 explicitly does not give a pass for associate professors. No books are apparent for NAUTHOR. I didn't look too hard for GNG. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 11:57, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't really see anything to disagree with here. I might try to use #C5 for a tier 1 Canada Research Chair, but this one is tier 2. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:28, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Missed this. Thanks to you both.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 10:28, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

"vandal"

I'm not a vandal, and not that vandal, whoever you were refering to. Sorry if my edit was considered non-constructive by you. Best regards, 2804:14D:5C32:4673:93CE:2F22:61C6:ABCC (talk) 05:39, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Herschel graph

The section "Polyhedron" in your pre-nomination GA Herschel graph may be added the name "Herschel enneahedron"? Because some of the sites and platforms (such as Youtube) used the term "Herschel enneahedron", but sadly it seems that in the Google Scholars there are only two sites that mentioned about that name: [2] and [3].

The second one is from MathWorld, but I don't think you wouldn't agree to use this source, so I'm waiting for your comment. Regards, Dedhert.Jr (talk) 12:31, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Why not wait until that name is used in scholarly work, not just YouTube? —David Eppstein (talk) 16:10, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Okay :D Dedhert.Jr (talk) 05:26, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Women in Red May 2023

Women in Red May 2023, Vol 9, Iss 5, Nos 251, 252, 267, 268, 269, 270 Online events: New: Alphabet run U, V, W | Disability | Women in Education | CEE women Continuing: Peace and Diplomacy (year-long initiative) | #1day1woman | See also: Wikimedia CEE Spring 2023/CEE Women - Wikimedia contest with postcards and prizes The Wikipedia Library: #1Lib1Ref - May 15th to June 5th Tip of the month: Use the Google translate app and camera on your phone to translate text from an article or book Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events. Follow us on social media: Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk) 18:27, 27 April 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Your GA nomination of Midsphere

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Your GA nomination of Rook's graph

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Your GA nomination of Rook's graph

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Your GA nomination of Midsphere

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Objection on proposed deletion Permutational_Number_System

Good day Professor David Eppstein. This is regarding your proposal for deletion of article Permutational Number System. You are absolutely right that the referred eJournal is not peer reviewed. This is because of the fact that at the time of writing the paper, I decided not to spend a lot of money on publishing in peer reviewed journal so I selected free eJournal. But I would be glad and honored if you can peer review it, and guide me for publishing in a peer-reviewed journal.

Here is a very quick summary for you:

[1] Factorial number system along with Lehmer-code can be used to rapidly compute nth unique permutation.

[2] Similar to point 1, Permutational Number System which is an extension/generalisation of Factorial Number System can be used along with Deep-Code(generalisation of Lehmer-code) to rapidly compute nth k-permutation.

Regards,

Deepesh Pateldeepesh (talk) 23:42, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Turing test article

Classes of automata

I've been thinking of expanding the Wikipedia article for Turing test to include a new section dealing with the sub-question of when a Turing machine is able to discern if the output of a responding machine is limited to being a pushdown automaton, a finite state machine, or a conventional machine limited to logical connectives as shown in the diagram. I'm currently aware of an exponential algorithm which solves this problem for whether a responding machine is limited to using only logical connectives, but do not have data for the other higher classes of automata which I just listed. Have you seen any algorithms published for these types of questions? ErnestKrause (talk) 20:55, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

There's some relevant material in the computational learning theory / machine learning literature on automaton inference. For example, see: Rivest, Ronald L.; Schapire, Robert E. (1993), "Inference of finite automata using homing sequences", Information and Computation, 103 (2): 299–347, doi:10.1006/inco.1993.1021, MR 1216458 —David Eppstein (talk) 20:59, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Really interesting article by Rivest which I was able to download; they appear to be claiming an algorithm of cubic complexity for determining if the input/output behavior is from a finite state machine. Do you know if there are any articles about the other automata classes (for example, push-down automata) as well? It seems for the Rivest article that their claim to cubic complexity for FSM is substantially better that the exponential algorithm I've located for solving this problem when limited to automata using only logical connectives. ErnestKrause (talk) 21:19, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

I don't know that literature very well but I think the keywords to use in searching for analogous results for push-down automata (or maybe rather context-free grammars) are grammar inference. We have a Wikipedia article on a closely related topic, grammar-based code, a data compression method based on finding a context-free grammar that accurately represents a given input. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:28, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm finding the following two books and I don't know if they are what you think best: (1) 'Grammatical Inference: Learning Automata and Grammars' by Colin de la Higuera, and (2) 'Grammatical Inference: Algorithms, Routines and Applications' (Studies in Computational Intelligence Book 673) by Wojciech Wieczorek. I don't know either author and maybe you can direct me to the better book since these are hard to get books. Your idea about switching to the study of grammatical inference in CFG grammars (rather than formal machines as I suggested) might be useful though there appears to be no mention of these algorithms in my edition of Hopcroft and Ullman's automata theory book. It might be useful if you could locate any insight into whether this question is even solvable/unsolvable for CFG grammars? ErnestKrause (talk) 15:19, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, no idea about the books.

The focus of learning theory tends to be less about whether a fixed input has a solution and more on whether some principle like parsimony or approximate probable correctness will lead you to eventually find a good solution over a stream of inputs. So while the theory of automata in Hopcroft and Ullman is essential for this area, the decidability or not of problems in this area may be less so. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:22, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

The article for this at Wikipedia appears to be the start article for Grammar induction, which seems to be in need of some enhancement. From your previous comments, that is still leaving the questions about whether the question for a push-down automaton is still open as to being either P=NP or even decidable; do you have any thoughts on how the proof might be sketched out for either showing that its P=NP or if its even decidable? At present that would fill in the gap in the Wikipedia Turing Test article, for which I currently have citations only for FSMs and automata limited to logical connectives, but not for push-down automata. Sketching a proof for either P=NP or a statement about decidability would fill in that gap if you have any thoughts or references for this question. ErnestKrause (talk) 14:09, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

What is the precise formulation of the decision problem whose decidability you think should be open? It cannot be "can the input be described by a context free grammar" because the answer is always yes. It cannot be "can the input be described by a context free grammar of complexity at most K" because that's obviously in NP. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:00, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

The problem is stated as a subsection planned for the Wikipedia Turing test article, which deals with the subproblem of the Turing test when limited to formal machines. First, is the question decidable for looking at the input/output sequences for automata limited to using logical connectives alone; the answer here is that its decidable and an exponential algorithm can be given for it. Second, Rivest's paper which you linked states that at the next level of the automata hierarchy, that looking at input/output sequences, then there exists a cubic algorithm for determining if it is an FSM. Third, and unanswered here, is if there exists an algorithm that looks at input/output sequences which determines if the sequence is coming from a pushdown automaton; is this question decidable, and if it is, then is it NP-complete for PDA? That I think would be the precise formulation for this missing detail. ErnestKrause (talk) 14:26, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

You're still not being precise enough. EVERY sequence can be generated by a FSM. EVERY sequence can be generated by a pushdown automaton. So the question "can this sequence be generated by this kind of automaton" is trivially decidable. It is decided by an algorithm that ignores its input and always answers yes. The only question is, do those automata provide any explanatory power by being significantly smaller than the sequence itself. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:55, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

In the case of automata using only logical connectives, then a proper formation of the question would state, without loss of generality, to start with three binary input variables for the input, and then to observe the output. One then enumerates the inputs for all 3 digit combinations of zeroes and ones, and then collecting the observed outputs into a table mapping these inputs into the observed output values. If the input/output behavior is consistent, then the inference is that for 3 input binary variables, that the automaton being observed can be modeled by logical connectives. If not, however, then an automaton more complex (more than just logical connectives) is needed and possibly an FSM could then be constructed which does model and predict more complex input-output behavior. Rivest says he has an order three polynomial-time algorithm to determine if there exists an FSM which does successfully model observed input-output behavior for a given sample. If Rivest's algorithm fails, then an FSM does not exist by his construction which models the input-output behavior being sampled, and either a pushdown automaton or Turing machine is needed to perform the task. Rivest does not give the algorithm for doing this for either Pushdown automata or Turing machines, implying that he has set up his input-output experiment using a separate perspective from the one which you have just presented. Can Rivest's FSM approach be restated for pushdown automata in a way comparable to what he did accomplish for FSM in his paper which you linked above. ErnestKrause (talk) 23:44, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Removal of BLP PRODs

Hey @David Eppstein, could you correct me if I'm wrong here but I believe the articles I tagged that you reverted are covered under WP:BLP. I based my decision to PROD those articles on WP:BDP "Anyone born within the past 115 years (on or after 17 May 1908) is covered by this policy unless a reliable source has confirmed their death.". Since there wasn't a source I figured this was alright, if I'm wrong could you point me to the correct resource so this doesn't happen again. Thanks for your time and helping me understand things better. Dr vulpes ^{(💬 • 📝)} 01:58, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

You do know what the L in BLP stands for, right? It stands for living. I removed your BLP prods, which are intended only for people who are living or very recently dead, because they were on biographies of people who were not living and were not even recently dead. Zhao Wenfu died in 1990, Wen Minsheng in 1997, Song Yuxi in 2000, etc. They are not eligible for BLP prod. WP:BLPPROD clearly states "To be eligible for a BLPPROD tag, the entry must be a biography of a living person". The material you are quoting for WP:BDP is for people who might reasonably be considered living because we do not know what happened to them. There is no reasonable way to construe it as being about people with clearly stated death dates long ago. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:11, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Ahhh thanks for clearing that up makes complete sense. Guess I misunderstood the requirements. Thank you. Dr vulpes ^{(💬 • 📝)} 07:01, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Appeal withdrawn

Appeal withdrawn, as per your advice Jack4576 (talk) 08:07, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Good choice. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:30, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Draft:Joshua Knowles (computer scientist)

Would you mind having a look at this declined AfC draft I just came across? It was declined under GNG but the subject has an h-index (64 according to google scholar) that looks high enough for WP:NPROF to me. I figure as a computer scientist you'd have a better idea of what actually is a high h-index in CS. -- asilvering (talk) 21:18, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback,but please recheck your facts

Every line is considered as a curve. This is proved in mathematics.I confess that I don't explain it in great depth but still it's a proved fact.Please recheck your facts.Appreciated your valuable feedback.Hope you next time don't revert it when I publish it.

Yuthfghds Yuthfghds (talk) 07:05, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

It is not the facts, but their presentation, that I considered to be unhelpful. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:08, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, understood

Appreciated Yuthfghds (talk) 07:22, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Women in Red - June 2023

Women in Red June 2023, Vol 9, Iss 6, Nos 251, 252, 271, 272, 273 Online events: New: Alphabet run X, Y & Z | LGBTQ+ women | Wiki Loves Pride | Women in Music Continuing: Peace and Diplomacy (year-long initiative) | #1day1woman See also: Women in Green: June 2023 GA Editathon event page Wikipedia:Wiki Loves Pride/2023 global campaign The Wikipedia Library: #1Lib1Ref - May 15th to June 5th Tip of the month: Looking for new red links? Keep an eye out for interesting and notable friends, family, or associates of your last article subject, and re-examine group photos for other women who may still need an article. Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events. Follow us on social media: Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Lajmmoore (talk) 09:15, 28 May 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Independent and identically distributed random variables

Dear David, I thank so much for clarifying that! I guess now, finally, the penny has dropped with me, and the fact that a fair dice is uniformly distributed confused me. Don't you think it would make sense to clarify in the main part (!) as well as in the Examples section of that article, that this has nothing to do with uniform distribution, as you pointed? I think this is really important but I don't want to include potential fallacies, so I guess I'd rather keep my hands off for the time being. Hoping for your kind support, Hildeoc (talk) 21:31, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very, very much for that swift and important improvement! I do highly appreciate this, as it brings essential clarification to thwart fallacies like mine. Well done. Per aspera ad astra! Best wishes, Hildeoc (talk) 13:59, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Descartes' theorem and Soddy circles

I notice you were just doing some cleanup of Descartes' theorem. Some of my own experimenting about the ellipses/hyperbolas with two triangle vertices as foci and passing through the third (https://www.desmos.com/calculator/pi2p2g7b4q) led me to notice that the 3-way intersections of these hyperbolas looked like they might be the two "Soddy centers". I did a quick literature search and there's apparently (as of only last year!) a paper discussing this, doi:10.31896/k.26.2. It might be worth mentioning in the relevant section there. I'm happy to make some figure(s) if there's anything that would be helpful.

It doesn't seem like these authors mentioned it but there are several other points worth exploring / noting. One that should probably get published somewhere if it hasn't been previously is that if you apply what John Conway called "Extraversion" to the triangle (treat one of the side lengths as negative) you get another set of three mutually tangent circles whose centers are the triangle vertices but with one enclosing the other two. Overall there are 4 different sets of such circles including the standard set. For each set of circles from an "extraverted" triangle, there are 2 additional tangent circles; these are centered at the 3-way intersection between two of the "vertex ellipses" and the third "vertex hyperbola" for the triangle. –jacobolus (t) 00:53, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Also see Lemoine (1890) https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k201173h/f131.item –jacobolus (t) 01:22, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I added that, but is KoG really a reliable journal? Also, triangle geometry is a maze of many many lines and points and curves that coincide in different ways and I'm trying not to let that section overrun the rest of the article, as it's a bit tangential to the main topic. So while I would like to mention significant points of connection I would also like to keep it concise by confining much of the detail to the other Wikipedia articles on the specific centers and curves mentioned here. (Also not mentioned: the triangle centers in the final bullet point of that section are called "Eppstein points"). —David Eppstein (talk) 01:53, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't really know much about Croatian journals' editorial policies etc., though I don't really think it hurts anything to cite this kind of paper even if the journal is easy to get published in, as long as nobody is trying to use Wikipedia as a vehicle for self promotion or build whole articles out of it. –jacobolus (t) 01:59, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

You should probably cite your paper there, whether or not you attach your name to these points. –jacobolus (t) 02:01, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

If you want to play around with an interactive diagram:

https://www.desmos.com/geometry-beta/xq6er5hpin

Try toggling visibility on the different folders of circles in the list to the left. –jacobolus (t) 08:04, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

There is discussion of the additional three "extraverted" sets of "Soddy circles" and "Soddy lines", including the intersection of the four lines at the de Longchamps point in

Vandeghen, A. (1964), "Soddy's Circles and the De Longchamps Point of a Triangle", American Mathematical Monthly, 71 (2): 176–179, doi:10.2307/2311750, JSTOR 2311750

I think it's worth mentioning that every triangle generates these 4 sets of circles. –jacobolus (t) 17:23, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if it would be worth splitting Soddy circle into its own article, merging Soddy line into there, and discussing more features of triangle geometry per se there, while just leaving a summary at Descartes's theorem. –jacobolus (t) 19:17, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

In the current version, the first and last third of the "From triangles" section are very much on-topic for Descartes' theorem itself: the first third gives a closely related formula for the circle radius, and the last third sketches a proof of Descartes' theorem based on triangle geometry. It is only the middle third that is more tangential, and that is already more or less just a summary of related topics. So I'm not sure what savings would be possible by carving off another article. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:42, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but it seems like there is more to say here, but it gets increasingly out of scope and off topic at this article. So I am wonder if there's a good place to try to put a bunch of closely related topics in clearer context (semiperimeter, Soddy circles and lines, incircle and excircles, Gergonne triangle, Gergonne point, Extouch triangle, Nagel point, Heron's formula, Conway's "extraversion", these vertex conics, etc.) Maybe an article at extraversion (triangle) could be an okay place for it.

There is another similar cluster of topics related to altitudes and orthocenters etc., for which orthocentric system seems like a reasonable home (though that article is currently very poorly sourced and could be substantially expanded). –jacobolus (t) 22:49, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I am going to try to rewrite the 'triangle' section as paragraphs instead of a bullet list, and include details about the 3 other sets of Soddy circles centered at the three triangle vertices when one of the circles is tangent to the other two in its interior. I started a draft, but it might me take a day or a few; particularly tricky is figuring out how to make legible figures showing several of these relationships without getting too cluttered. But I think it's important to include if we're going to e.g. mention the de Longchamps point which is the intersection of the 4 Soddy lines.

(Aside: My impression from fiddling around here is that the Euler line is the unique line and the de Longchamps point is the unique point which are equivariant under Conway "extraversion" – i.e. flips of which half-plane adjacent to a side of a triangle we consider to be the interior vs. exterior. Does that sound right? Is such an observation published anywhere?) –jacobolus (t) 21:50, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

@Jacobolus: Ok but please try to keep it concise. The rewrite so far is looking like extended content that loses the focus on connections to Descartes' theorem and maybe belongs in a separate article. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:32, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

The content is mostly the same as what was there before, except I tried to slightly cut down on the "grab bag of trivia" feel by adding a tiny bit of justification for some of the claims. I think it's worth slightly elaborating about the isoperimetric / equal detour points (a) because their previous mention as just some jargon and a link is hard for readers to make sense of (though I guess it can either be skipped or the link clicked), and (b) because there's surely something fundamental about these distance relationship constraints that make the points satisfying them also the mutually tangent circle centers (though I still don't feel like I have an intuitive understanding of why that is).

I think there's clear relevance to the point that any 3 points define 4 sets of mutually tangent circles (and vice versa, given any 3 mutually tangent circles, whether via internal or external tangency, we can make a triangle from their centers and the other circles tangent to all 3 have these triangle-related properties). This is a somewhat fuller set of relationships than just the narrow curvature equation, but still seems like part of the same topic.

But I think a few figures will make this section a lot easier to follow. I'll try to get some up soon. –jacobolus (t) 00:57, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if the citation template for the Lemoine paper should use "journal" for the book title. This was a conference paper presented at the 1890 Congrès de Limoges, then published in the proceedings. I don't really know what the best practice is with {{citation}} for conference papers (though I also find the metadata options in {{cite conference}} a bit confusing sometimes).

While we're at it, the hyperbolas are also discussed in:

Veldkamp, G. R. (1985). The Isoperimetric Point and the Point(s) of Equal Detour in a Triangle. American Mathematical Monthly, 92(8), 546–558. doi:10.1080/00029890.1985.11971677

–jacobolus (t) 18:59, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Conference proceedings (that are not also journal issues) should be formatted like chapters of edited volumes: |contribution= for the individual paper title, |title= for the proceedings title. The complication comes when a conference proceedings volume is simultaneously a journal issue, as happens for instance with some modern conferences like SIGGRAPH. Then you can either format it as a chapter in a book (with the journal acting as a |series=) or as a journal paper (with the conference proceedings title acting as a |department=).

If you would use @inproceedings in bibtex, you should use book formatting on Wikipedia. If you would use @article in bibtex, you should use journal formatting on Wikipedia. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:14, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Is there a metadata field for the name/year/location of the conference separate from the title of the book? –jacobolus (t) 19:21, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

No. Not really. The Association for Computing Machinery uses the series metadata parameter for the acronym of the conference series, but they are incorrect to do so. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:22, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I mean in {{citation}}. {{cite conference}} seems to have separate fields for these. –jacobolus (t) 19:24, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

No, it just goes in the title of the proceedings. It is incorrect to use the |location= parameter of {{cite conference}} to indicate the location of the conference, or to use the |date= parameter to indicate the date of the conference. Those are for the place where the publisher is based, and the date of publication, the same as they are for all the other citation templates including {{citation}}. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:30, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

What I mean is that {{cite conference}} has separate |title= and |conference= parameters. So we could do something along the lines of:

Lemoine, Émile (1891), "Sur les triangles orthologiques et sur divers sujets de la géométrie du triangle", Compte rendu de la 19me session de l'association Française pour l'avancement des sciences, pt. 2, Congrès de Limoges 1890, Paris: Secrétariat de l'association, pp. 111–146, especially §4 "Sur les intersections deux a deux des coniques qui ont pour foyers-deux sommets d'un triangle et passent par le troisième", pp. 128–144

–jacobolus (t) 19:48, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorry to butt in, but I happened to browse this page on the same day that I tried to figure out how to format the following citation (in CS1): Kent, IV, Richard P.; Peifer, David (2002), "A geometric and algebraic description of annular braid groups", International Conference on Geometric and Combinatorial Methods in Group Theory and Semigroup Theory (Lincoln, NE, 2000), Internat. J. Algebra Comput., vol. 12, pp. 85–97, doi:10.1142/S0218196702000997 Does that look right? --JBL (talk) 19:23, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

So that's an example of a conference proceedings published as a special issue of a journal. That formatting is acceptable, I think, but my tendency would be to instead format it as a journal paper:

Kent, IV, Richard P.; Peifer, David (2002), "A geometric and algebraic description of annular braid groups", International Conference on Geometric and Combinatorial Methods in Group Theory and Semigroup Theory (Lincoln, NE, 2000), Internat. J. Algebra Comput., 12 (1–2): 85–97, doi:10.1142/S0218196702000997

MathSciNet produces invalid bibtex for this with @incollection and journal=. zbMATH just formats it as a journal paper, not even mentioning its conference origins, as does crossref. Maybe a librarian rather than just someone who uses citations would have a more principled opinion on which one is better. Unfortunately we lost User:DGG a couple months ago. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:41, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

That does look better to me -- thanks! --JBL (talk) 20:57, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Math query

I would normally ask this of Gog the Mild, but he's on vacation and currency calculations boggle my mind. I am hoping that you will be able to help me, but if you are too busy or not interested, no worries. My subject earned 18 sous per day ca. 1865. According to this a sou = 1/20 of a livre, which was almost the same value as a franc (81 livres=80 francs) At the time 25.25 francs = 1 £, so what would be the conversion of 18 sous to GBP? If you can help, I will be very thankful. SusunW (talk) 21:24, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

18 sou × (1 sou / 20 livre) × (80 frank / 81 livre) × (1 £ / 25.25 frank)

= 18 × (1/20) × (80/81) × (1/25.25) £

≈ 0.035 £

But in 1865 they would have used £/s/d, not decimal £.

So one more level of conversion: 240 d/£ gives about 8 1/2 pence.

A cross-check on the calculation: in 1837 Canada a sou and a ha'penny were the same thing [4], so the fact that we started with 18 sou and ended up with 17 ha'pennies checks out. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:33, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate your help so much. So if I cited both sources and said she earned the equivalent of 8 1/2 British pence or 17 Canadian half pennies, at the time, I'd be good? SusunW (talk) 21:50, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I would just go with the British unit and not the Canadian one (Canada wasn't even really a separate country at that time), but yes. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:51, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Very good. I am truly thankful for your help. SusunW (talk) 21:56, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Cantor's isomorphism theorem

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Cantor's isomorphism theorem you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Kusma -- Kusma (talk) 14:00, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Wishing David Eppstein a very Eppstein happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! Mann Mann (talk) 15:36, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Cantor's isomorphism theorem

The article Cantor's isomorphism theorem you nominated as a good article has failed ; see Talk:Cantor's isomorphism theorem for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Kusma -- Kusma (talk) 13:21, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

It didn't fail GA. This is from another user who replaced to failed-GA-template even though the reviewer hadn't given some comments, and I have reverted it back to normal. Another similar problem is that the user replaced it again in Talk:Free abelian group, and I have done it as well. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 14:55, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I've undone a couple more of this editor's talk-page disruption, and warned them. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:36, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

No worries. I sometimes come to play around in your to-do page, in the hope of looking for new potential GA, and looking at the GAN entries. Most of your (pre-)GA articles I've listed in my watchlist (just math only). Dedhert.Jr (talk) 17:58, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Herschel graph

The article [Herschel graph] you nominated as a good article has failed ; see Talk:Herschel graph for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article.

Your GA nomination of Herschel graph

The article Herschel graph you nominated as a good article has failed ; see Talk:Herschel graph for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Hmmmthe7 -- Hmmmthe7 (talk) 18:24, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

regarding your Herschel graph GAN

I CSD'd (and Kusma has deleted) Hmmmthe7's disruptive review and reverted Talk:Herschel graph back to your edit. – dudhhr ^talk _contribs (he/they) 18:53, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Looks like they're blocked now. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:03, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Cantor's isomorphism theorem

The article Cantor's isomorphism theorem you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Cantor's isomorphism theorem for comments about the article, and Talk:Cantor's isomorphism theorem/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Kusma -- Kusma (talk) 14:02, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Nominations for deletion on women academics

Hello. You have made a comment that my nominations for deletion may be targetting on women academics. Please, if you check my history of Special:Contributions/Chiserc, you will see numerous nominations and comments on male biographies and many many others the last few days, since I have started to work on that. I have made nominations for male academics, male fillmakers, at the past male radio producers, male bishops, recent comments on male athletes, projects, organizations, events, etc.

I have followed different categories Women, or Biography, or even country-specifc Belgium, and that's why some nominations are in the same category. That isn't against any policy, since it organizes my time better to follow a similar topic and search similar sources to recognize notability. I have specific argumentation for each nomination, each and every article has already a notability issue with a relevant template added always by another user and the discussion is open for everyone. You could see that I check many different articles, but I try to follow similar categories for better time organization.

I think your comments are not valid and they doesn't recognize my work after devoting so much time for that process. Actually, I expected to hear something quite positive after that, not exactly the opposite. You could please see my work in many different fields the last few days in copy-editing, removing advertisment materials, and also nominations for deletion. You could check all of them, I'm ready to see if there is any problem, thank you! Chiserc (talk) 08:26, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

You should avoid all non-diffusing categories (the ones involving women and minorities) in this sort of patrolling. They are generally for disadvantaged groups, and patrolling them would have a disproportionate and discriminatory effect. You may well not have misogynist intent in doing that, but you have misogynist effect, and that's something you should strive to avoid. —David Eppstein (talk) 13:02, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

You could search my nominations here: Chiserc. Males, females, organizations, etc... Where did you find any kind of discrimination? I have searched numerous categories, including women, that had clearly notability issues. I think you may have misinterpreted what I said. Chiserc (talk) 13:24, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

@David Eppstein, could you please clean-up your latest edits and check again what you say, since you put the same comment in 5 nominations, 2 of which are not even nominated by myself, and you may have spammed the discussions? Probably, you didn't check properly before you did all these comments repetitively. You can always check my nominations to validate that there is no discriminatory issue after all, however, because of your quite unfair comments, I decided to withdraw from such work (AFDs) even though I had more to nominate. Kind regards, Chiserc (talk) 21:56, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

You are still unrepentant about the discriminatory effect caused by searching women's categories for deletion targets, correct? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:10, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

My research was multi-factory, I searched a lot of categories and the nominations was selected based on multiple factors, check my nominations. It's not really necessary to convince you on that; however, it's not acceptable to comment other nominations, you said I made 5 nominations on women academics, while I made 3. That's what I asked for, to clean-up and check again properly. Not use Catharine Young (scientist) or Chelsea Shields for that discussion. Ok, it seems you understood that. No worries, I won't be involved in that work again. If I made a mistake, I apologize, I am very new user. Thank you! Chiserc (talk) 22:19, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

It seems you do not understand my point.

If you search gender-neutral categories, the results of your searching will themselves be gender-neutral.

If you search women-only categories, which do not have corresponding men-only categories, the results of your searching will cause you to nominate more women for deletion. The result will be discriminatory.

I have good faith that you do not intend to discriminate, but when the discriminatory effect of what you do is pointed out and you continue to insist on doing the same thing, your intent is not so relevant. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:23, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for June 14

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Typo

Thanks for catching that, and my apologies. I’ll make sure to proofread more thoroughly (and thanks for the help on that article in general). Warrenmck (talk) 01:28, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I am curious

Your surname is Eppstein, or have you thrown an extra P in there to throw people off?? Btw I have cousins with the surname Epstein. Regards, Govvy (talk) 10:23, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

@Govvy: You may find some hints in our article Epstein. Good luck! (talk page stalker) CiaPan (talk) 10:48, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

@CiaPan: I have no idea if any of those would be cousins to me, I got some Epstein cousins in Toronto and I believe there was a relationship with Epstein furniture, you might want to type that into google. [5], Regards. Govvy (talk) 10:59, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

@CiaPan: And the best thing about wikipedia, Perloff, I see one uncle there and the rest are all distant cousins!! heh. Regards. Govvy (talk) 11:03, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

One p is by far the more common spelling. Two p's is how my great-grandfather who emigrated from Prussia to New Zealand in the late 19th century spelled it. I don't know more than that about the variation. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:08, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Question about professor article sourcing

Hey there. I saw your !vote at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andras Farago, and also Onel5969 speaks very highly of your knowledge of professor notability, so I was wondering if I could ask you a question.

Are poor sources in professor articles like Andras Farago a problem? There is definitely a class of professor articles (and I feel this one is included) that pass notability on WP:NPROF #1, but their citations are all their own papers (non-independent) and university "about me" pages (not reliable). I never known what to do with these at AFC, and there are admins that will delete them on sight. But it seems like these sometimes pass AFD. What's a good balance to strike? Should I be accepting these at AFC and NPP? Any tips? Thanks for your time. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:34, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

I think WP:BLP generally allows non-independent but reliable sources, such as university profiles, or self-published sources, such as curricula vitae, for the basic facts about an academic's career. Independence is required for GNG-based notability but only reliability is needed for verifiability. WP:PROF is independent of GNG and states explicitly that certain non-independent sources are allowed, even to source claims that are used to pass its notability criteria; for instance, society fellowships may be sourced to the society. Lots of our articles are sourced that way and I don't think it's a big problem.

But you cannot use the subject's publications as sources for much more than the bare fact of their publication, and you cannot say anything evaluative using self-published sources. If all you can say in an article is the bare career facts, with nothing about the scholarly contributions that make the subject notable, it's not very useful as an article, and maybe an A7 speedy candidate. So I prefer articles to have some source, reliable but possibly non-independent, that allows for a little more to be said about the subject's research or other contributions. For instance, it might be an award that comes with a description of what they were given the award for, a survey article by someone else with an in-depth description of some of their research, a published review of one of their books, or a puff piece about them in the alumni magazine.

You can probably find many examples like that in my recent article creations, where the article is at best start class because there's little to say, but there's nevertheless more in the article than bare career facts, and more in the sources than the subject's faculty profile or cv. For instance my latest, Maïté Brandt-Pearce, has both citation numbers and a society fellowship supporting notability, a blurb from the fellowship describing the research she is notable for, and a puff piece in the student newspaper (arguably independent, but only barely). Farago is more of a borderline case, because the only case for notability that I could find was WP:PROF#C1 and the citation numbers, and we have no sources at all beyond faculty profiles. I wavered between weak keep and weak delete because of that. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:01, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

ACM Web Conference 2023

As part of a COI/PROMO/AUTOBIO thing that I happened to notice because a big cleanup effort indirectly led me to the page Author-level metrics, I am wondering: is the annual ACM Web Conference one for which presenting a paper is a highly selective standard to meet? More specifically, is appearing in the 2023 proceedings like getting printed in a serious journal in a more journal-oriented field? The ACM runs so many conferences that my inclination is to say "no", and in this particular case I think our general preference for secondary sources would argue against using the citation in question even if there were no COI factor involved, but it can't hurt to get a second opinion. XOR'easter (talk) 19:05, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

The short answer is that I don't have any personal knowledge about that specific conference. We do have an article on it: The Web Conference. In general, in computer science, publication in selective conferences is what matters, in the same way that in most other technical fields publication in selective journals matters. This one has been going since 1994 and recently added sponsorship by ACM, which is, in general, a sign of quality. (There are plenty of good conferences without major-society sponsorship but unlike IEEE I don't know of any bad ACM-sponsored conferences.) Research.com ranks it as the second-best conference in "Web, Mobile & Multimedia Technologies", but their ranking of CS theory conferences (which I do know about in more detail) is so completely broken than I don't think they can be trusted for anything else.

So yes, I would guess it's "like getting printed in a serious journal in a more journal-oriented field". Certainly good enough to use as a reliable source. But all of the usual reasons for being careful about adding content based on newly-published and uncited journal papers, even in good journals, would apply equally well to this. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:20, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Alison Miller

What's your take on Alison Miller? She hasn't made professor even in a teaching capacity. Abductive (reasoning) 20:39, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

So? Neither has Donald Trump. Nothing in our article about her has become invalidated by her stepping away from the tenure track. We base articles on what the subject has already become known for, not on the hope of future accomplishments. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:43, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

So, some high-level undergraduate prizes means she deserves an article? Abductive (reasoning) 20:56, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are not about whether people are "deserving", but whether they are "notable". The criteria are explained at WP:N, and mainly center around the existence of coverage in credible, independent secondary sources. (Disclaimer: I went to college with Miller.) –jacobolus (t) 20:59, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

The article was deleted at AfD and was basically the same as it is now. Abductive (reasoning) 21:02, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Maybe, if by "basically the same" you mean half the current prose length, padded out with an indiscriminate listing of publications, with only bare urls for references. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:24, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

It is a bit weird that you are presenting yourself as if you were asking a question, given that that's not what you're doing. (talk page stalker) Incidentally, jacobolus, I also went to college with Alison (though I am a bit older than her), so I guess by the transitive property I should know who you are? --JBL (talk) 22:53, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

I didn't go to college with her. I am the one who nominated the article for deletion in May 2011. The article was recreated in Feb 2013, which means that I and a lot of other editors fell down on the job. I think I'll take a look through other old AfDs and find more examples, maybe nominate them for deletion. Abductive (reasoning) 00:10, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

You are misreading a part of a comment addressed to someone else. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:29, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Eight years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:56, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Women in Red July 2023

Women in Red June 2023, Vol 9, Iss 7, Nos 251, 252, 274, 275, 276 Online events: New: Women in Red's 8th anniversary | Alphabet run A & B | Sports Continuing: Peace and Diplomacy (year-long initiative) | #1day1woman Tip of the month: Look out for contributors interested in writing about women and invite them to join Women in Red Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events. Follow us on social media: Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

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Colin Shindler

Thanks for your efforts that have prevented Colin Shindler being deleted. Why some people think it's a good thing to delete useful, well-written articles just because they don't measure up to some petty rule is beyond me, but I'm thankful there are better people like you to stand in their way. Sammyrice (talk) 01:32, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

You're welcome! I'm not really a partisan in the great inclusionist/deletionist wars, though; the last time I looked it up my record of keep/delete opinions on deletion discussions was pretty close to 50-50. I do think some standards need to be maintained, to prevent the encyclopedia from being overrun by self-promoters with little in the way of actual accomplishments. But I also think it's important to rescue articles from deletion attempts when their subjects really do have those accomplishments; Shindler fell into the latter class, for me. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:25, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of 17-animal inheritance puzzle

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Your GA nomination of 17-animal inheritance puzzle

The article 17-animal inheritance puzzle you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:17-animal inheritance puzzle for comments about the article, and Talk:17-animal inheritance puzzle/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Chiswick Chap -- Chiswick Chap (talk) 02:42, 29 June 2023 (UTC)