User talk:Oleg Alexandrov/Archive5

Steganography miscorrection

Mathbot incorrectly changed "codecless" to "codeless" on Steganography. FYI. (I fixed it). Lunkwill 22:47, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Now I will know that the word "codecless exists. Oleg Alexandrov 23:24, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's a pretty sketchy word that I haven't seen before, but "codec" is a common compound of "coder/decoder", so I guess codecless is okay. Maybe it should be codec-less. Lunkwill 00:16, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes you are right, codecless == codec-less. I did not realize it. Oleg Alexandrov 02:38, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

i did a quasiperiodic article.

i copied some stuff from Planet Math and added how the term quasiperiodic is used in digital signal processing, speech processing, music synthesis. i also changed the redirect of quasiperiodic function to point to this new article. i also created an article on instantaneous frequency. normally, i just fix articles, i don't create them, but these needed to be done. i also fixed a mathematical error in frequency modulation. please check them out, Oleg. r b-j 08:54, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Some words about style. According to the math style manual, one should not have PNG images inline, rather html (if you want to see PNG images, you can just set up your Wikipedia preferences that way). Also, one should not have that much space between sections, and the period and comma better be in math tags. These are all minor, but I thought I would let you know. Thank you again for your work. I don't know if you are aware of my pmtool which can make it easy to copy stuff from PlanetMath. Oleg Alexandrov 16:34, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

RE: comprehensibility of math articles

Hi Oleg. Thanks for taking my comments into consideration! Actually, I didn't even know that there was such a thing as a {{technical}} template (I'm not a big fan of slapping templates all over the place). If I happen to stumble across any confusing math articles in the future, I'll be happy to leave a few comments about what I didn't understand. -- Avocado 23:24, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

User:JimJast

Can you make sense out of User:JimJast, and his paper he wants to have undeleted?

It seems rather clear to me that it violates WP:NOR, but is it sane? Can we hope for constructive edits of Jim in other articles in GR etc?

Pjacobi 22:01, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

It does look to me like WP:NOR, but I am not an expert in general relativity. Did you try posting this at the appropriate wikiproject? Oleg Alexandrov 22:31, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Yep. I've followed his steps and raed the original VfD, it is already thumbs down by our GR guys. Nevertheless I still wonder, whether he has his mathematics right. --Pjacobi 08:19, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

User:MrHumperdink

People misinterpreting the words of others is the single largest cause of conflict, methinks, especially in the body-language-free internet. But I tend to see the bright side of things, ;). See you around. MrHumperdink 00:43, September 13, 2005 (UTC)

Yessssir! :) Oleg Alexandrov 00:44, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Mathbot dictionary

One for the mathbot dictionary: offshoot (noun) and offshoots (noun plural). Currently it is correcting to offshot. See history of Spatial network analysis software. --stochata 11:09, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

This is me not being a native English speaker. I was positively sure that the noun is "offshot" and not "offshoot". Thanks! Oleg Alexandrov 11:16, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Adminship

Hello, Oleg Alexandrov! Have you ever considered becoming an administrator? If so, I would be happy to nominate you. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 20:59, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Flcelloguy. Thank you for your offer to nominate me for adminship. I would be happy to be nominated (disagreements over commas nonwithstanding :) Oleg Alexandrov 01:33, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Darn, I had just decided to a nominate you myself. I had seen that you had finally agreed recently to be nominated by Charles, but he seems to have forgotten, missed seeing your reply, or has been procrastinating. Flcelloguy better be quick about it or I may just cut in line! Paul August ☎ 06:02, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Done; see WP:RfA. And Paul, feel free to co-nominate! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 16:12, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Missing period bug report

Please note that your contribution at snake lemma was wrong. There one has a strange occurence of a sentence interrupted by a picture, and so the period should not be there when the picture shows up. I fixed it. Oleg Alexandrov 01:17, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

• Thank you for the find. I changed it to a colon now, which makes more sense. -- WB 01:26, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Floor

Hey Oleg. I thought it was notable that the floor function's derivative is always zero - it's never stated anywhere else in the article. 04:20, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I see. But putting in that the derivative of the floor of f(x) was too much I think. That follows immediately with the chain rule from the fact you state above. I now added the basic fact back.

Thanks! 03:56, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

"Boolean Logic" vs "Boolean syllogistic"

Hi Oleg. I just wanted to let you know that your name may (or may not) be being used in vain. See: Talk:Boole's syllogistic#Proposed replacement for this article (replacement done, see next section). Paul August ☎ 16:09, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

P.S. The clock is ticking on Flcelloguy.

Thanks Paul. I clarified my view at Talk:Boole's syllogistic#Proposed replacement for this article (replacement done, see next section). Oleg Alexandrov 16:44, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

So let's see two minutes after I wrote the above, Flcelloguy nominated you. Coincidence? I think not. And not only am I peeved that I didn't get to nominate you, I dithered so much over the writing of my support vote, and there was such a mad rush to vote for you, that I got trampled (by an edit conflict) as I was trying to get to the ballot box, and so I don't even get to be the first to vote support! Paul August ☎ 17:06, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Moldovan wikipedia

Oleg,

Mergi la http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Acolo vei vedea ce a facut utilizatorul Node ue cu aşa zisa wikipedie moldovenească. Mergi la versiunea in cirilică pentru ca de fapt wikipedia in „moldovneneşte” este numai in cirilică. Node ue este un american care habar nu are de limba romană sau „moldovenească” cum îi zice el. Totuşi a reuşit să devină sysop deşi nimeni nu l-a votat în această funcţie. Încercăm sa organizăm un vot democratic pe 1 oct. pentru al înlocui cu un moldovean care măcar ştie limba şi care nu este românofob ca Node ue.

Ne-am bucura foarte mult dacă ai participa şi tu la această discuţie pentru că până acum a fost mai mult o ceartă intre acest node ue si prietenii lui smirnovişti şi românii din România(neuniţi şi in unele cazuri neînformaţi). Nimeni nu a prea cerut opinia moldovenilor.Domnu Goie 16:46, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. Creating a Wikipedia in the Moldovan language is definitely one of the silliest thing one can do. I will go there now. Oleg Alexandrov 16:57, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

It seems the discussion there is rather long and complex, and I've got to run now. But I will definitely comment there soon. Oleg Alexandrov 17:06, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Dirichlet

Oleg, about Dirichlet, Lejeune is part of his first name because all the references I've seen index his last name as "Dirichlet, ..." in alphabetical order. Giftlite 18:05, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! By the way, you might have noticed, I use a bot to add names in there. But I can't always know which is the last name of a person, and dealing with more than 1500 entries also means that some don't receive as much attention. So, any help with that page is appreciated! :) Oleg Alexandrov 19:42, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Remark

Hi Cesar. Thank you for cleaning up my admin vote page. One remark. Your edit removed one of the support votes, see here. If it were a oppose vote I would not mind, but since it is support, would you mind putting that back? :) Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 03:43, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. I was trying to debug a rendering problem (Tidy giving up), which I and Tim Starling eventually found out was caused by my having the MathML mode enabled on the preferences (the math tags were confusing Tidy, and thus it wasn't fixing the broken markup). Thanks for the note. By the way, weren't you an admin already? I always thought you were one. --cesarb 03:58, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

alegerilie la wikipedia moldoveneasca

Oleg am crezut ca tu erai de părere că wikipedia mold. este "silly" dar îl susţi pe node ue care este clar împins motive politice anti-româneşti. Păi node îţi insultă poporul şi naţia cu literele lui chirilice ptr. ca limba RM nu se scrie cu astfel de litere( impuse de Stalin) de vreo 16 ani. De ce nu aştepţi să vezi şi ce are de spus Jeorjika până să-ţi faci o opinie.Domnu Goie 13:18, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I do think that having a Wikipedia in Moldavian language with cyrillic alphabet is silly, however it looked to me from that page that now it is an accomplished fact, as people voted on that issue, and it was decided to keep it. I truly doubt the long-term viability of this project (except for the admin there who poorly speaks the language, I don't know who else will contribute). But I just voiced my opinion on what to do next given the circumstances, and that is, as other people suggested, make an admin election (as the current admin seems to be appointed rather than elected) and see how things develop. Oleg Alexandrov 15:21, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Oleg, not that I want to shape your opinion or tell you what to do, and the only reason why I am insisting on the subject is because I just think that you did not understand what is going on over there. The Moldavian wikipedia is by no means an accomplished fact. It is a bunch of stubs and the election for its maintnance was criticized by a number of people. In any case, the community there agreed to vote again after a period of 45 days. Comming to the election, I just don't understand why you would support Node, a person who does not speak the language, nor wants to contribute out of the goodness of his heart.

There is a Moldovan right now,who put forward his candidacy. All I am suggesting is for all of us to hear what he has to say and not jump to vote Node again.Domnu Goie 18:15, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes I will follow that is going on there and think more. I thought Node would make a good admin because so far he is the most interested person in maintaining that project. (however weak or useless that Moldovan/Cyrillic project is). It seems that he knows the language to some extent and is actually contributed things. I cannot imagine myself or any of the Romanians (you?) willing to write in Cyrillic and contributing to it. How about that Moldovan you said, is he/she willing to contribute long-term? I am afraid all of that project is Node and nobody else, and when Node gets bored (so far there are no signs) the project will languish. Oleg Alexandrov 19:26, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Remark on hyperreals talk page

I assume that the anonymous contributor annointing you as Czar is probably very insulting since if I'm not mistaken you are from Moldova. Sometimes I find WP too much to take.--CSTAR 16:44, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

No, we never really liked the Russian Czars in there, but I was not offended (I have been in US long enough to understand what he meant to say). I am happy that contributor got an account for now. It is clear that this person still has no idea of how Wikipedia works if he (Michaelliv) does not want others to edit his contributions. I will leave that page alone for a while. Eventually his part will need some heavy editing I think, but there is no rush. Oleg Alexandrov 19:17, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Mathbot (subtlety)

Hi Mathbot,

you seem to be correcting to "subtilty". The more usual spelling is "subtlety". --Trovatore 20:24, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, so I changed "subtility" to "subtilty" which you later changed to "subtlety". Webster says that both my and your spelling are correct, but you are right that the second is more widespread. I will know now, thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 20:40, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

And, I am not Mathbot, I am Mathbot's boss! :) Oleg Alexandrov 20:43, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Edit to Requests for arbitration

I am one of the Arbitrators. After a case is accepted it is put on its own page and the request is removed from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. Fred Bauder 21:13, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I know you are an arbitrator. Right, I did not realize that you deleted that text in order to put it on its own page. I have witnessed several occurences in which text vanishes after an edit with the respective editor swearing he/she did not mean to remove it. That's why I notified you, but now things are clear. Oleg Alexandrov 21:31, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia moldoveneasca (romana in alfabetul chirilic)

Buna Alexandrov,

Thanks for what you said about me.

I am actually not the only contributor to the Cyrillic-Romanian/Moldovan Wikipedia. A user called Gabix has contributed, so has one called Vertaler, one called Dmitriid, and one called Ronline.

However, it is true that I am the only person who feels a constant commitment to it.

Having said that, I want to make it clear that: 1) I do not support Moldovan as a separate language from Romanian per se; terminologically however I find that "Moldovan" and "Romanian" refer to slightly different things. "Moldovan" is used, especially in academic literature, to refer to the peculiarities of Romanian unique to Moldova, especially the Moldo-Russian slang used in the suburbs of Chisinau. 2) I realise that to many people, Cyrillic brings feelings of URSS and the Soviet era. However, there are also a some people who learnt Cyrillic in school, and who still feel more comfortable in it, especially in villages. In addition, the generation of children going to Transnistrian separatist propaganda schools will quite likely grow up more comfortable in Cyrillic than Latin. I feel that they deserve an encyclopaedia too, which is accurate and free from the bias they might get in print encyclopaedias in Transnistria.

Also, contrary to domnul Goie's claims, I can speak quite a bit of Romanian. It is in fact my first language. However, having been born in raised in the US, my only reinforcement was in the home. Even my parents spoke mostly in English after I was about 5, so it is through aunts and uncles and grandparents that I got the best exposure. However, I don't use Romanian often, and English has been the dominant language in my life since I started school, so my Romanian fell into decline. I'm prone to make mistakes that native speakers usually won't make, such as errors in grammatical gender or incorrect usage of a word. In fact, I wrote two articles already in Romanian-Cyrillic for mo.wiki (the rest are transliterations of existing articles from ro.wiki), and I hope to write more soon.

Domnul Goie also makes it sound as if I have been anti-democratic. However, as you should be able to tell, that Wikipedia has been mostly empty except for myself and Gabix for a few months now.

In addition, on other talkpages he says I am an ex-KGB Smirnovist agent.

Having said that, I will be happy with any election outcome, so long as people are committed to the future of the Wikipedia.

Multumesc!! Node ue 00:12, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Node ue. Thank you message. Let us see how it goes. I will keep my doubts about whether the Cyrillic project is worth it, but will also try to see that politics does not goes too much in the head in there. Oleg Alexandrov 01:30, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

You're a sysop!

I'm pleased to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. Congratulations!. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:41, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Just noticed you were up for sysop nomation, but it seems you made it even without my support :) MathMartin 09:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Congrats! <sarcasm> It's good to know that you missed with such a slim consensus. </sarcasm> Seriously, though, keep up your good work in Wikipedia, and welcome to the cabal! Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk | W_S 13:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations Oleg! I can now reveal to you all the secret mysteries, arcana and ritiuals of the Brotherhood Of The Admin (also know as the Sisterhood of The Sysop) —but first we must switch to Admin Secret Communications Invisible Ink (ASCII) mode, you do that by clicking the new tab following the watch/unwatch tab above. I'm switching over now … (unsigned post by Paul August, 07:34, 25 September 2005)

I think even your signature was in Admin Secret Communications Invisible Ink... :) Oleg Alexandrov 19:15, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations! A very impressive and well-deserved showing at the RfA. Keep up the good work! Owen× ☎ 15:14, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I will try to not hit the "block" button too often (now I will actually need to pay attention to what I am doing in here :) Oleg Alexandrov 16:23, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

More congrats!

Three cheers for Oleg! Congratulations! :-) --HappyCamper 20:15, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, three cheers indeed. Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 20:54, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

multiple integral

When i wrote the italian version of Multiple integral it was strange for me see that there wasn't any article about it, so i've decided to copy it on en.wiki because i think that this article is complete. :-P Unfortunately my english is not very good so please don't reproach me too much :p --Matsoftware 18:58, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

What we have in here is double integral which is a small article.

I will be happy to help you polish the English in that article. I also plan translating some sections with Google. I already translated the second one from the last at multiple integral. Oleg Alexandrov 21:15, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm gonna keep on translating the article; maybe is possible to insert the text of double integral in multiple integral to avoid an useless double. --Matsoftware 15:50, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I would actually like to keep them separate, because multiple integral is a big article, and double integral has some useful info about iterated integrals. But we can ask other opinions too. I wanted to translate more yesterday, but did not have the time. I will help with translation tonight. Oleg Alexandrov 17:21, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Mmm..i think that it could be integrated in multiple integral..however...that is not important now. When you'll translate a piece please insert the "work in progress" template so we won't "shake" the revisions; ( google translator sometimes makes some mistakes, but i will check them)

Good work! :p --Matsoftware 17:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Fortunately i've placed the wip tag in time :D Don't worry however ;-)

In two days i think I'll finish translating all the article ;-) ; in the meanwhile you can help me by correcting my BIG english mistakes :-P,then I'm happy to help you in editing double integral (i warn you that i'm gonna studying in a few days so after i won't have much more time :-( ). --Matsoftware 19:34, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

How to write a bot?

I would like to write something to help maintain the reference desk pages, specifically the archival of old questions on a regular basis. Could you point me in the right direction to get started with writing a bot? --HappyCamper 20:17, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi HappyCamper. Good question. :) A bot is basically a text processing script with a couple of function calls to fetch stuff from Wikipedia, and then upload the processed results back. The most popular programming languages for bot writing are Python and Perl (in this order). I use the latter (and upload things to Wikipedia with the Meta:WWW::Mediawiki::Client), because, in my very biased view, Perl beats the pants off Python for text processing.

Most people write a Wikipedia bot in Python however. Python has a cleaner syntax, and there is the excellent pywikipedia framework with lots of ready-made bots and examples.

See also some discusion, and pointer to source code at User_talk:AllyUnion#VfD.2FOld (by the way, AllyUnion is the lord of the bots if you wish, and he has been doing it much longer than me).

A short answer to your question now. You've got to choose which language to program your bot in. You've got to learn that language if you don't know it. If you decide to settle on Perl, I could help with debugging and things. Otherwise, AllyUnion can help you. Hope that helps. Oleg Alexandrov 20:43, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Hyperreal numbers

Hi, Oleg. Can you, please, delete my discussions with you and CSTAR? I don't think they belong to this ecyclopedia, since our exchanges were not very civilized. Sorry things got out of hand. Or you can let me know if I can delete them and not be branded a vandal.

On a lighter note, there is a wonderful new approach to Elementary Analysis developed by Hermann Karcher, you mihgt be interested, take a look at

http://www.math.uni-bonn.de/people/karcher/Reformen.html

I'm developing a similar approach to Calculus and will add some links and explanations to the appropriate pages. You can take a look at my stuff at

 http://world.std.com/~michaell/calculus.html

You can find some further links and references there too. 206.15.128.118 21:37, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't know how to proceed about that, really. I doubt anybody will brand you a vandal because of deleting your own talk from an article talk page (in this case Talk:Hyperreal number), but I doubt it is a good idea. You're on your own here. Oleg Alexandrov 22:07, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Moldovan vote

Oleg, mă numesc Jeorjikă, candidez contra lui node pentru postul de sysop. Platforma mea este simplă. Vezi http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere

Am să fiu foarte onest cu tine pentru că nu vreau să te mint. Nu ştiu despre tine dacă eşti susţinător al teoriei Moldovenismului sau nu. Eu unul nu sunt. De asemenea nu sunt de acord ca să politizăm până şi o wikipedie. Cred ca eşti de acord cu mine că la noi în RM denumirea limbii la şcoala, istoria învăţată de copii, etc. etc. toate au căzut victime acestei politizări continue.

Între noi vine vorba, cred că ştim amândoi unde vrea să meargă Node cu mo.wiki. Sincer să fiu, nu cred ca este interesat în progresul acestei wikipedii cât este interesat în a întării noţiunea “Moldovenismului Primitiv”, care cred eu: ne-a umilit destul. Datoria noastră cred că este ca să spunem oamenilor adevărul despre noi şi limba pe care o vorbim, inclusiv pe wikipedia. Opinia mea este că, lăsând politica la o parte, adevărul e că noi vorbim româneşte. Dacă vei fi de accord, aş iniţia un poll in primele doua săptămâni de la alegere ca să vedem care opinia tuturora cu privire la existenţa acestei wikipedii. Dacă lumea va vrea să schimbe anumite aspecte ale wikipediei atunci le vom schimba, dacă nu atunci nu şi o sa continuăm aşa cum este.

Registrează-te sub „REGISTRATION FOR THE ELECTION” până miercuri. Dacă mergi pe pagina de mai sus, şi "scroll" până jos o să vezi că Mihaitza a făcut un subiect nou „REGISTRATION FOR THE ELECTION”.

Şi nu uita: votează pe 1 octombrie. Toate cele bune,

PS: Ateţie, se pare că fiecare avem 2 voturi deci poti să le foloseşti cum vrei tu. Poţi acorda un vot la 2 candidaţi sau 2 voturi la unul singur. Îţi zic nu ca să te influenţez ci doar pentru că nimeni nu ţi-a spus.

Jeorjika 04:43, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Salut Jeorjikă. Eu nu sunt prea bucuros de aceasta enciclopedie Молдовеняскэ, si as vota sa fie inchisa daca va fi un poll. Diffirenta intre noi este ca eu nu sunt sigur daca tu intelegi care este functia administratorului. Un administrator are grija de blocarea vandalilor, editarea interfetei, si protejarea paginilor. Asta nu este o platforma prezidentiala. Eu cred ca pana acuma Node ue a facut treaba buna la aceasta functie.

Daca tu vei fi ales administrator sau nu nu ar trebui sa aiba nici o legatura cu pollul despre viitorul acelie enciclopedii. Sunt lucruri total diferite. Oleg Alexandrov 21:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

thanks

Thanks for the kind words and the advice. My problem was that I made so many little changes that it did not seem possible to summarize them all. I did explain what I was doing on the talk page, first.

I really think the Calculus article needs a total rewrite. It should be one of the best articles in wikipedia, and it is not that, as it stands.

Question. If I rewrite the Calculus article section by section, should I first post my rewrite on the talk page and only later move it to the article if it is approved, or should I go ahead and post it in the article (with an explanation) and let people revert if they don't like it. If I see something that is just plain wrong, I fix it, but here I'm talking more about point of view than error. As it stands, the article seems to make calculus sound like an application, rather than a part of mathematics

I've been working on a lot of the math articles, as well as writing new articles on the topics listed in Maths as uncovered. Rick Norwood 13:27, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I think you could start by stating on the talk page that you want to rewrite the article. And probably, since you are talking about a big rewrite, first writing a section on the talk page, and then see if people have comments, is a good idea. After that, if the response is positive, I guess you can write directly in the article, without posting the content first on the talk page. Oleg Alexandrov 17:25, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Popups tool

Congratulations on being made an admin! I thought you might like to know of a javascript tool that may help in your editing by giving easy access to many admin features. It's described at Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups. The quick version of the installation procedure for admins is to paste the following into User:Oleg Alexandrov/Archive5/monobook.js:

// [[User:Lupin/popups.js]] - please include this line 

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
             + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js' 
             + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

popupShortcutKeys=true; // optional: enable keyboard shortcuts
popupAdminLinks=true;   // optional: enable admin links

There are more options which you can fiddle with listed at Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups. Give it a try and let me know if you find any glitches or have suggestions for improvements! Lupin|talk|popups 00:12, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Lupin. I will give it a try soon. I've been messing up with scripting things serverside (read: bots). Javascript seems to be offering powerful programming features for client-side in-browser programming, which indeed can be a great tool for many things. Oleg Alexandrov 00:43, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Maybe you can help (or, IP addresses and stuff)

Oleg, I just added Raymond Paley to List of mathematicians before I login as myself on my computer. I bought this secondhand PC a few months ago. I see my computer's IP address is credited with many contributions I never made in the past few months. How can one IP address be not unique on Wikipedia? Giftlite 01:09, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the problem is with the computer you have. Rather, most likely it is your Internet service provider. I have no idea how telecom works, but it is likely that your ISP has a limited set of IP addresses that it cycles around. That is a guess. But why does it bother you? Just log in, and mind your own business. :) Oleg Alexandrov 01:46, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes to both. I think Netscape and AOL share IP addresses. And, it does bother me because some users using this IP address are blocked by Wikipedia for some reason. At times, I'm blocked while trying to edit after signing in. Giftlite 02:01, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, this because many AOL users vandalize pages, and it is AOL's fault because it constantly shuffles IP addresses around (my ISP provider, Verizion, changes my IP address very seldom). Are you saying that you are blocked from editing even after you are logged in? I ask you to confirm this, because this would turn upside down things I believed. I was sure that only anons are blocked. Oleg Alexandrov 02:10, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Precisely. I was blocked several times after I logged in. Giftlite 02:23, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Not much I can help with. :( Getting a different provider will help of course. I don't know where you live, but here in Los Angeles, Verizon has entry level DSL (200KB/sec?) at $15+tax. I think you probably have dialup if you still use AOL. Oleg Alexandrov 03:37, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Hooray!

for your radical work (on radical of an ideal)! Much better now, thanks! mousomer 13:02, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

User page vandalism

I'll take that as a compliment. Thanks! (Grinning) (and you too, Paul August). linas 14:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

List of mathematical topics (A-C)

Empty edits seem to work in pywikipedia. I added some lines to my daily script to purge and make an empty edit to List of mathematical topics (A-C), ..., (V-Z). I just did a test run and the article Arithmetic spiral, which was added to LoMT yesterday, is now included in the related changes. Unfortunately, I forget to check that it was not included before my run, so I'm not yet sure that it works. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:18, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Great. I did not do edits to that list (A-C) for a month now, so I am rather positive that arithmetic spiral was not showing in the related changes before. By the way, at what time do you plan to run those empty edits? This so that I also do some testing, checking the recent changes before and after your empty edit. Oleg Alexandrov 20:59, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

The empty edits will be done after Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity is updated, which is between 1:20 and 1:25 UTC (please check the history, I may have make a mistake when converting times). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 00:36, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

PS Today I am little online, as I am finishing moving to a new apartment. Wanna give a hand? Oleg Alexandrov 20:59, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I'd love to help, but I'm fairly busy myself: still at the department at 1am to copy lecture notes (perhaps you don't believe it, but I have better things to do, like, erm, silly conversations on Wikipedia). What a joy to see that a new year begins: flocks of students are streaming through the corridors in an attempt to quench their thirst for knowledge; soon they'll be in front of me, eagerly listening to my explanations on how to differentiate. I often get hallucinations when I'm working late. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 00:36, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

He-he :) I don't teach this Fall. But I wish I did. That's more fun than moving anyway. Now I am in the new apartment, with lots of unpacked stuff around me, and I can't bow because of back pain. At least I can check Wikipedia, using some neigbour's unprotected wireless connection (my ISP said it will take one week to move the connection over). OK, I will complain more tomorrow. Oleg Alexandrov 04:40, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Scuze

Scuze. N-am ştiut că te va deranja. Am văzut că i-ai scris pe ruseşte lui olichanciuc sau nu stiu cum îl cheamă pe moldovenistul ala nou care tot schimbă pagina de la Republic of Moldova. Şi ştiam ca la ruşi nu exstă "X" ci "ks". Încă o dată î-mi cer scuze.Duca 17:46, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Nici o problema. Pasiunile sunt cam incinse cu alegerea administratorilor, si fara motive bune, caci nu asta este problema principala a acelei enciclopedii. Oleg Alexandrov 21:47, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Oleg, pot să te întreb o întrebare personală, care nu are prea mult de a face cu discuţia de la votul lui Node?

Tu ai nume rusesc, zici că vorbeşti româna, dar tu în suflet cum te simţi? Român, Moldovan, sau Rus? Te întreb pentru că acolo numirea limbii este mai mult o chestiune politică. De obicei, cei care zic că vorbesc româna sunt mai culţi şi mai patrioţi(faţă de România şi ţin mai mult la limba lor) iar cei care zic că vorbesc moldoveneasca sunt mai puţin educaţi şi mai filo-ruşi şi comunişti.

Nu cred că eşti inclut. Ba din contră. Dar totuşi cum se poate ca un cetăţean al RM care se consideră românofon, să fie de acord cu o wikipedie in cirilică(alfabet impus de şovinii Sovietici) numită Moldovenească.Mihaitza 01:10, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Salut Mihaitza. Eu sunt Râman, si am facut studiile la Bucuresti. Eu as suporta inchiderea wikipediei chirilice/moldovenesti. Ce m-a suparat pe miine ca discutia la Mo.wikipedia este in directie incorecta. Alegerea lui Jeorjika ca administrator nu are nici o legatura cu viitorul acelei enciclopedii. Alegerlie nu au fost facute dupa reguli. Si nimeni nu poate sa ii ceara lui Node ue sa renunte la positia de administrator, caci nimeni nu va putea dovedi ca el nu si-a facut treaba biine. Oleg Alexandrov 01:16, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Oleg, Node ue nu este un sysop legal. De ce crezi că şi-a pus candidatura dacă oricum ar fi rămas sysop? Putem foarte bine să-i cerem să renunţe. Când a "devenit" sysop nu a fost ales democratic. Citeşte răspunsul meu la pagina cu alegerile. Şi să nu crezi că Node ue e prost. Ştie el foarte bine că dacă nu candida şi nu era ales nu putea să rămână sysop pentru că nu ar fi avut credibilitatea necesară (el fiind până acum doar un fel de "sysop temporar"). Nimeni nu l-a recunoscut până acum. Când am început votul, toţi candidaţii au pornit de pe picior de egalitate.

De ce crezi că de abia acum s-a trezit şi contestează alegerea. Pentru că el credea că va câştiga. Şi nu a fost aşa. Se pare că lumea nu-l vrea. Mihaitza 01:51, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Nu cred ca ai dreptate in privinta lui Node ue. El nu a candidat pentru ca creada ca va castiga. Era clar si dinainte ca inafara de miine, Roneline si Gabix altii nu il doresc. El a candidat pentru ca este baiat de treaba, si nu a vrut sa se puna mai presus ca altii.

Node ue este sysop legal. Atunci cand se hotaraste sa se creeze on enciclopedie intro limba noua, primul lucru care se face este crearea unui sysop sa aiba grija de traducerea interfetei, etc. Este imposibil de creat o enciclopedie noua fara un sysop. Astfel, ordinea este urmatoarea:

1. Un sysop este creat.
2. Sysopul intemeiaza enciclopedia.
3. Apare comunitatea utilizatorilor.

Tu ai vrea sa fie alegere de sysop la inceput, dar unde sa il alegi, daca nu exista nici o pagina in enciclopedie?

In cel mai rau caz, Node ue, este sysop doar temporar, asa cum ai zis si tu. Dar regulile Wikipedia nu sunt clare in aceasta privinta. Nu exista nici o regula pentru cand in sysop trebuie sa isi paraseasca functia. Astfel, eforturile voastre de a scapa de Node ue sunt un pic in zadar. Oleg Alexandrov 02:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Oleg, wikipedia exista şi până a venit el. Era doar o singură pagină unde zicea:

"Deoarece limba Moldovenească este una cu limba Română, vă rugăm să vizitaţi ro.wiki"

Şi nu-l lua în serios pe Anittas. Nu prea ştie prea multe despre realitatea Moldovei şi de voi acolo. Totuşi, las-o mai moale cu "noi moldovenii" şi "voi românii". Înţeleg ce vrei să spui. Am citit destulă istorie ca să ştiu că după unirea de la 1918, lucrurile nu au fost chiar aşa roz cum se zice în cărţile noastre de istorie. Dar mulţi români din Romania nu o să înţeleagă. Mai mult o să-i înrăieşti decât o să-i luminezi.Mihaitza 01:24, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Possible RfC?

Hi Oleg,

I just noticed the things Duca said at Serhio's talkpage.

This, combined with some of his inflammatory language in the past, makes me wonder if someone should start an RfC against him.

As you can see from his user contributions, the vast majority of his contributions to the English Wikipedia are either mocking people on talkpages, or reverting other people's edits.

I'm anxious to hear your thoughts about this.

Cheers
Node 06:47, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I would think that things are not that bad yet to request an RfC. Yes, Duca can be rather rude sometimes, but you might need more than that for an RfC. Besides, he has very few edits (under 100), and the edits I saw show no malicious intent. Oleg Alexandrov 15:12, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Bounded operator

See Talk:Bounded operator, where somebody wonders about a sentence that you wrote apparently. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:25, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I passed the question on to Charles Matthews. By the way, I'd appreciate it if you ran the script updating the contributors to the Planet Math Exchange some time. Did you check whether my empty edits to LoMT (A-C) work? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:37, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I do plan to have that contributors table be updated together with the reviews table, hopefully today.

It seems your empty edits work. The page Femtillion added yesterday is liked from List of mathematical topics (D-F). Thank you Jitse. Oleg Alexandrov 17:55, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

RfA

Not trying to beat you down from your objection, but your "too few edit summaries" thing is mainly focused on the one large clump of stub sorting edits. It probably would have added an extra hour giving edit summaries to each of my edits. - A Link to the Past (talk) 06:57, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I do appreciate your great work in sorting stubs. And thank you for your clarification. There is a tradeoff between doing more work, and doing less work with more effort to the detail. I don't know myself where the balance is. But for an administrator, putting edit summaries is rather important I think. By the way, if you use the Firefox web browser, it saves the edit summaries, and that helps a lot as you don't need to retype them every time. Oleg Alexandrov 17:29, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

User:Vb

Dear Oleg, I like to edit pages as an anon because I hate authoritative arguments. This is not because someone has made more than 100000 wonderful edit that she cannot make a bug or be utterly wrong on some idea. However I did an account to load pictures and signing my contributions to discussions. Vb 131.220.68.177 07:13, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure I follow you. Working with an account is the same as working without an account, with the difference that you can track your changes better, others can keep track of you, and you are not so scrutinized by poeple checking for vandals. And again, it is in your right to stay without an account, but when you start logging thousands of edits, getting an account seems to be natural, at least to me. Oleg Alexandrov 19:25, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Discutie pe Meta-wiki

Oleg salut,

Cred ca ai facut bine punand in discutie problema Wikipediei moldovenesti pe Village Pump. Asa opiniile se depolitizeaza cate putin. Eu sunt de parerea - cred ca ai mai vazut-o deja - ca Wikipedia moldoveneasca trebuie inchisa.

In privinta administratorului. Eu nu cunosc foarte bine toate politicile Wikipediei, insa cred ca ar fi corect ca Jeorjika sa fie investit in calitate de administrator, pe langa Node ue. Chiar daca acesta nu a avut nici o contributie, el si-a exprimat opiniile sale pe paginile de discutie si beneficiaza de sprijinul majoritar al comunitatii. Si, la urma-urmei, pe Wikipedia moldoveneasca esti activ daca iti exprimi opinia vizavi de existenta acesteia. Acesta si a fost criteriul de eligibilitate pentru votarea administratorului. Daca ar fi luate in cont contributiile reale, pai atunci votarea ar fi avut loc intre doua trei persoane. A mai fost pusa in discutie derularea votarii. Pana la urma problema duratei a fost reglata. Votul acordat de Jeorjika lui Jeorjika ar trebui anulat; inclusiv trebuie de anuntat Node ue si Dmitriid ca acestia nu au dreptul de a vota (doar daca vor sa voteze pentru vreun adversar). Pentru moment compromisul - corect din punctul meu de vedere - consta in a avea doi administratori: Jeorjika si Node ue.

Acum despre Wikipedia insasi. Parerea mea e destul de subiectiva, insa sper ca argumentele mele sunt convingatoare. Am citit discutia de pe Village Pumpsi mi-am dat seama ca va fi intradevar difcil de a o inchide. Insa, aceasta idee e sprijinita de majoritatea comunitatii active - 11 persoane (poate chiar 12). Doar toti - cred ca in afara de tine si Ronline - nu au votat pentru alegerea unui nou administrator, ci pentru existenta Wikipediei. In plus, aceasta Wikipedia nu are un viitor. Unde va ajunge aceasta, daca se limiteaza la contributiile lui Node ue si Dmitriid (nu cunosc alti contribuabili). Si nu cred sa se gaseasca multi care sa doreasca sa o faca. Adica, aceasta este dar si va continua sa fie un "stub". Iar cel mai rau e ca pe paginile de alegere al administratorului si a existentei Wikipediei se ajunge sa se discute despre cat de mult se iubesc moldovenii, rusii si romanii. Si cel mai neplacut e caa se ajunge la atacuri personale.

Deci, as vrea stiu opinia ta despre ceea ce am expus aici. M-am uitat pe Meta-wiki, si nu am inteles unde trebuie de inceput discutia despre viitorul Wikipediei. Si cred ca ar fi rezonabil de organizat cat mai curand o votare pe Wikipedia moldoveneasca (rezultatul careia nu cred sa puna intrebari). Astfel, pe Village Pump si pe Meta-wiki, argumentele vor avea o alta valoare.

Bine. Cam asta-i. Sper ca vei raspunde in curand. --landroni 15:29, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Sunt de acord ca mo.wikipedia ar trebui probabil inchisa, si ca altfel va lancezi fara contribuitori si cititori. Eu as fi de acord cu compromisul ca Jeorjika sa fie al doilea administrator, eu am spus de la inceput ca un singur administrator nu este suficient. Jeorjika nu are experienta la Wikipedia, dar cel putin nu este dispus la atacuri urate ca Anittas si Duca. Inrebarea mare este ca trebuie un bureucrat sa il aleaga, si eu nu stiu cum de facut asta.

Totusi, eu as crede ca contribuitori care contribuie doar la discutie si nu la articole nu ar avea mare valoare nici ca administratori si nici ca persoane sa voteze. Dar sa amanam acasta discutie pe alta data.

Apropos, de atacuri personale trebuie sa ii invinuiesti pe romanai. Node ue sa purtat foarte civilizat, dar multi din romani au vorbit foarte urat.

Cred ca discutia finala are trebui sa fie la mediawiki, pentru altfel orice romanii ar hotara la mo.wikipedia nu ar avrea legimitate. Oleg Alexandrov 15:52, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

mo.wiki in forma ei actuala nu are ce cauta la wikipedia. Aici este scrisa in Cirilica, cand "limba Moldoveneasca" se scrie in Latina. Daca am pastra-o ar trebui sa o numim ori Romana/Moldoveneasca in Cirilica sau Moldoveneasca in Cirilica(1936-1989). Politic corect asta este numele ei. Existenta limbii Moldovenesti( in special in formatul ei actual) este la fel de absurda ca si existenta unei limbi Santesti. Ma intreb daca noua ne-ar place daca cineva ar incepe o wikipedie noua numita Wikipedia in Santista".

Pe de alta parte Oleg as vrea sa-ti zic ca nu cred ca este prea constructiv sau frumos din partea ta ca sa zici "vina este a romanilor" sau "romanii nu au voie sa determine viitorul wikipediei mol.".

Daca faci asta, inseamna ca te pui mai jos decat cei care s-au purtat -sa zicem mai putin cu capu si mai mult cu sufletul-.

Vrei sa ne imparti intre noi si ei? Nu-i de ajuns ca Duca si cu Anittas cred ca esti rus? Vrei ca sa-i elimini orice dubii?

Nu stiu despre tine. Eu sunt Roman si punctum. Pentru mine, nu exista "romanii si noi". Suntem romani cu totii si unii dintre noi ar trebui sa fie mai mandri si mai constienti de asta.Jeorjika 04:30, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Salut Jeorjika. Eu ce am zis este ca oricie hotaram noi la mo.wikipedia nu ar fi legitim. Da, romanii vor vota toti sa inchida enciclopedia, si apoi vom avea aceleas probleme ca cu alegerile pentru administratori, nimeni nu va avea puterea sa implementeze deciziile. Deci nu e vorba daca romanaii pot sa hotarasca sau nu, ci unde asta are loc. Eu as crede ca daca facem un vot la wikimedia, unde nu doar romanii ci oricine ar putea sa voteze, conclusia va fi considerata democrata si oamenii la wikimedia au puteri sa inchida enciclopedia daca asta va fi decizia.

Si apropos, eu am studiat la Bucuresti. Am avut doar un coleg sau doi moldoveni, restul au fost romani. Am intalnit oameni foarte de treaba, cu suflet mare, care m-au ajutat enorm, si cu unii inca tin legatura. Dar Duca si Anittas, nu sunt de aia. Asa-ca nu imi pasa ce cred despre miine. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:49, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Oleg,

de cateva zile ma uit si nu este absolut nici o activitate pe wiki-media. M-am gandit ca ar fi o idee de contactat direct vreun bureaucrat (lista e scurta) ca sa vedem ce ne sugereaza. Iar eu nu prea inteleg: ce diferenta are daca esti rus sau roman si punctum atata timp cat actiunile tale (la general) sunt dirijate de intentii corecte? Poate nu e corect formulata ideea, dar fie. --landroni 14:42, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Salut

Re:Your edit comments on my Userpage- Happy now Oleg? :) --R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 20:09, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, now I am happy. :) By the way, your user name attracted my attention because of a movie which I watched recently, I, robot. There this phrase was kind of important part of the plot. (I learned from your page that this phrase is actually much older than this 2004 movie). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:35, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Maths of GR

Hi Mathbot.

A request: please refrain from editing the article mathematics of general relativity for the time being - there's a tag at the top of the article which says that the article is currentlly undergoing a major edit (by me). Thanks. ---Mpatel (talk) 08:18, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Why are you saying that to me? Tell this to my bot! He thought the word "inuse" was misspelled, how could he know that it is {{inuse}}?

Now seriously, sorry! And one remark. Mathbot contributed to that article 15 hours after your last edit to it, and it took five more hours after that util you did your next edit and had an edit conflict. I don't think it is a good idea to keep the {{inuse}} for days at a time. Maybe a better idea would be to just edit it offline without the inuse tag on the article, and then just merge with whatever changes that article underwent in between. That is to say, in my view {{inuse}} should be a short-term lock on an article, rather than a long term one. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:24, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

My Monobook.js

On WT:AFD/Old, you posted about my /monobook.js file. I just created an even smaller version of that file, which you may want to look at. – ABCD✉ 02:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Power formatting

Yes, formatting powers with HTML does look better presently. But in the long run, I think MathML might be the best way to go. I've changed to MathML the power notations in 10000 (number), which I hope might encourage more discussion on this detail. PrimeFan 17:33, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

adresare la un bureaucrat

Oleg,

de cateva zile ma uit si nu este absolut nici o activitate pe wiki-media. M-am gandit ca ar fi o idee de contactat direct vreun bureaucrat (lista e scurta) ca sa vedem ce ne sugereaza. Iar eu nu prea inteleg: ce diferenta are daca esti rus sau roman si punctum atata timp cat actiunile tale (la general) sunt dirijate de intentii corecte? Poate nu e corect formulata ideea, dar fie. --landroni 15:58, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Asa este. Ce se intampla? Parca toata lumea ar fi moarta? Oleg sa facem ceva--> hai la un bureaucrat sau vre-un steward! Domnu Goie 17:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I am traveling, so I can't answer fast. I don't know what to do about this Moldovan encyclopedia business. Nobody answered either at meta: meta talk:Requests for deletion or at meta:talk:Main Page. One could try Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrats which bureaucrats read for sure but I don't know how wise that is. I will think more about it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:54, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Oleg, in what sense would it not be wise? Finally, we still have to address a bureaucrat. --landroni 12:18, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know where the right place to post this issue is. I gave it a try though, see Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrats#The issue of existance of a language version of Wikipedia. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

So, there was at least one answer on Bureacrats Talk. I thought that you could start the discussion on Wikipedia-I mailing list with the same text. And there, maybe, a binding debate will happen. I hope you find the time to do this. Enjoy your journey. --landroni 15:04, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Replied at mo:User:Ronline/Propunere#Appealing to bureaucrats. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 08:54, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

please vote

Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of lists of mathematical topics Michael Hardy 04:27, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

My rfa

why do you say that you dont think I am ready for admin powers? --☺Adam1213☺|talk 06:14, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

• too few edit summaries (you could at least bother to put one when you nominated yourself)
• Not realizing that administrator powers are more than just the revert button
• Too few edits (under 200 from what I remember)
• resubmitting your candidacy after unanimous rejection one week ago shows that you are not mature enough yet as far as Wikipedia is concerned
• Such minor things as having a 7 line signature with a lot of ugly html code and numbers in hexadecimal (did you think of other people who will edit around you)?

More reasons are at your old nomination, which by the way should not have been renamed. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:24, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

What do you have against hexadecimal numbers? — JIP | Talk 07:22, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Do I have 16 fingers or what?

I don't have anything against hexadecimal numbers per se, but creating a very pretty signature which has horrendous html source (see the very top of this section) is a bit frivolious I would think. Again, this is minor, I had plenty of other reasons to oppose that person's candidacy. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:41, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I actually think Adam1213 copied his signature from mine, but went a little overboard. — JIP | Talk 09:02, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Shame! Back to plain text right now. Oleg Alex☺ndrov 09:24, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

What do you mean, "back" to plain text? My signature has always been like this. — JIP | Talk 09:27, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Neighbourhoods again

I'm going to try to edit again. --VKokielov 01:40, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Enjoy! :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:04, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Celestianpower is an admin

Thank you very much for your support - my bid (as you probably know) went swimmingly. I couldn't have asked for a better one. Thank you very much and I just hope I don't mess up! Ah, you're turn my maths saviour! I get my marks back really soon and I hope I did well - couldn't have done it without you! --Celestianpower ^hablamé 12:36, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

AfD

Hi R. fiend. Just a remark. According to Wikipedia:Deletion process, one should use {subst:at} and {subst:ab} instead of just {at} and {ab}. Not that it matters much, but I thought I would let you know. And by the way, a script discused at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Old can insert that text for you. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 11:26, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. How important is it that one does "subst:at" rather than just "at"? When I start closing AfDs I generally plow through dozens of them (I must have done something like a hundred for Oct. 6) and anything that speeds up the process is really useful. I don't want to violate guidlines, but if they're not that important guidlines, then, well...

As for scripts. Um, I'm not terribly computer literate, and have never used such things. I have a mac, as well, which means I find that things that work for some people do not work for me. Though that could be me, not the computer. I'd rather blame the computer though.

On another note, I'm working on a project and I need the help of a math person. I'm trying to calculate the margin of error in a random sampling of Wikipedia articles. The project is here: User:R. fiend/How many articles does Wikipedia really have?. Leave me a note on my talk page or the subpage's talk page, if you have a chance. Thanks. -R. fiend 14:59, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I am not really a statistician, and besides, doing that stuff would require more concentration and time than I have at the moment. I would suggest that you post your request at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. There should be people willing to help.

About scripts. Just take the text at Wikipedia talk:Articles_for deletion/Old#ABCD's goodies, paste it in User:R. fiend/monobook.js, save it, do a hard reload to bypass your browser's cache, as follows:

Mozilla/Safari/Konqueror: hold down Shift while clicking Reload (or press Ctrl-Shift-R), IE: press Ctrl-F5, Opera: press F5.

and then you are ready to go. That should help save a lot of typing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:51, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Analytic tableau

The tableau rules on the "analytic tableaux" entry no longer appear as they should. They should appear as

   X
 -----
   Y

rather than as

  X ---- Y

I am not expert enough to fix them. They were working properly when I put them in originally.

Please could you repair them.

thanks, --anon

I will look into that. I guess I screwed something up when editing. Thanks for letting me know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:53, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Re: Instantaneous frequency

You made a very subtle change at this article, replacing π with 1/2. You did not put an edit summary however. This is not good, as it is tiny changes without explanation which introduce a lot of errors in Wikipedia, and the rules at the edit summary page requires that you explain such changes.

May I ask that you write at tall:Instantaneous frequency why you replaced π with 1/2, and that in the future you use an edit summary when you make big edits and when you make small but subtle edits? Thanks, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:47, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

(I know that you are the originator of that article, but that is no excuse to not explain your actions however. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:47, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

you're absolutely right. once in a while i hit the Save page button realizing (too late) that i left out an explanation. the reason it is ${\frac {1}{2}}\$ instead of ${\frac {2\pi }{2}}\$ or $\pi \$ is because $f(t)\$ measured in hertz is the same as $\omega (t)\$ measured in rad/sec except that it is reduced by a factor of $2\pi \$. so it was a mistake that i made originally that i happened to see and made an on-the-spot correction. lately, my wiki-mind has been on the Bogdanov Affair more than anything else and i've been dropping the ball. r b-j 22:56, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Mathematics

I'm shocked a bit of your Dilettantocracy. You revert a version with a scientific definition of Maths from Webster. I used talk page a lot and I said many times recent version is fully unscientific. But I haven't deleted your unscientific pov, only moved down with 3 rows. My version is npov, yours not. So please instead of shouting to me about 3rv rule mmake impossible reverting the article to silly version. Thx. Gubbubu 10:27, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Please post detailed explanations for putting the NPOV and the original research tags on talk:mathematics. Otherwise the tags will be removed. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 10:46, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I wrote it on the talk page of the article (section "Definition" of mathematics). Please before you remove something, read the correlating talk material. Gubbubu 11:36, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

You can help by saying in your edit summary "Change this and that, see talk". :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 11:42, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I have written in the edit summary all times! Like these:

everting to Gubbubu's last Wersion, you can borrow short quotes from copyrighted goods if you give resources.

or this

everting. I used it and I even don't know what the hell is the resource of that pov "mathematics is the study of quantity, structure and change". Pls If U have resource, give it.

Would you read the Page History please before you mind with this business? Would you read please Talk Page before you say anything??? Gubbubu 15:46, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Going bananas

I think we're all going nuts. BWAKBWAKBWAK....:) --CSTAR 05:16, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Judging from where I am right now, I am most likely going kimchi, but you are right, all that quantum business doesn't do much to keep one sane. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:48, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Notification Bot

Notification Bot has some issues that I'm trying to iron out... See User:AllyUnion/Project board. I'm trying to figure out a good way to reduce the number of edits it has to performed, and whether it can do it in a timely fashion without overkilling the server or the Recent changes. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:43, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I took a look at the project you mentioned. Now, I don't write notification bots every day, but I don't quite see the problem. From what I see,

• There must be exactly one edit per notification (can't get away with less, and I don't know why you would need more).
• The bot should parse a bit in advance the list of notifications, sort them chronologically, and decide how to wiggle each of them by little so that there is no time instance with too many of them.
• If there are too many notifications in a given interval of time which can't be distributed in a sparse manner, it should sound the alarm.
• If a user wants too many notifications, he/she should be kicked in the butt.
• If the number of users of this service really goes up, nothing will help.

Did I miss anything? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 10:06, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

What if the user is on one notification list and another one? It would have to make two edits for those notifications. Also, what do you do for users who redirect across to different projects? --AllyUnion (talk) 02:09, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

To answer the first question. I guess one can start with a user, and make a hash (associative array) for that user, by reading all the lists containing that user, letting the hash key be the text of notification, and the value the time the user wants to be notified (in seconds, since the Epoch). Then, one could go through that hash in increasing order of time (sort the hash by value), and collapse together notifications (hash keys) whose time are close. After that, you could do the same thing you are doing now. This is just a guess, I know little about how you process notifications now.

Now, to make this kind of hash for each user, in perl one would first need to make a hash keyed by user, and the value for each key should be a pointer to the hash described right above. If I get more specific information about the notifications (such as all the notification lists, together with users and times for each), I could attempt to write a specific code illustrating this.

About your second question. I never tried to run a bot anywhere except the English Wikipedia, so I don't know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:06, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

List updater bot

Hello. The list updater is a very useful tool. I just tried it out for the first time "my" list, the List of numerical analysis topics, and encountered some features that I didn't understand. Firstly, finite element analysis is mentioned in the list, but the bot thinks it isn't, possibly because it is mentioned as "finite element analysis" and not as "Finite element analysis" (note the case in the first letter). Secondly, when I ran the bot, it emptied section D of potentially searchable categories; why? Let me repeat the most important bit: The list updater is a very useful tool. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:34, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

You are right about the finite element analysis, my bot should have upcased all the articles in the existing list before deciding what is missing. Fixed now.

About the second issue, that the bot refused to provide subcategories anymore, the explanation is that the wording in the category page changed a bit from what I remember it. (The wording "there are 110 articles in this section of this category" used to be "there are 110 articles in this category"). I think that is the only explanation, since I did not change my code in the last several days, and it used to work several days ago. I now adapted my bot correspondingly. It is great you noticed this, because I use the same code to detect new math categories when updating the list of mathematical topics.

I am happy you find the tool useful. Suggestions welcome. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 13:37, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Computer representation of surfaces

I am curious about your comment:

"One should not take for granted a parametrization; it is not always available, at least not globally"

Do you have an example of a computer representation of a surface where parameterization is "not available globally" ? I've written many computer programs involving CAD surfaces and haven't encountered this case. StuRat 13:02, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, in the article computer representation of surfaces you did not say that these are specifically surfaces which can be represented by a computer, your discussion is about a general surface. And what I am saying is that not every surface has a global parametrization, where a global parametrization is a one-to-one map from a 2D set to the surface which is smooth and covers the whole surface without overlaps. The simplest such example is the sphere, it does not have a global parametrization, one needs two pieces at least to cover a sphere. Same for the torus. A more complicated example is a torus with several holes, there you need at least as many patches as you have holes to cover the whole thing. Hope this helps. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 13:22, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok, now I see what you meant. I was considering adding a discussion of surfaces patches. What do you think, would that be helpful ? I could also add a discussion of surface faces/nebbing and skins/volumes, although I don't know if that terminology is unique to the CAD systems I am familiar with or universal. StuRat 13:48, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I know very little about computer graphics. You are on your own. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:27, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Nonexample

Hi Oleg,

I would prefer that MathBot quit changing "nonexample" to "counterexample" in Complete Boolean algebra. It's true that what the section describes would be a counterexample to the conjecture "all Boolean algebras are complete", but no such conjecture had been mentioned. Rather, it's an example of something that (in an interesting way) fails to meet the definition, showing that the definition is nontrivial. I didn't invent the word "nonexample" for that situation, and it's an excellent word I think, even if you don't see it every day. --Trovatore 17:38, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Quit? Don't you know a bot never quits? It is a bot, rather than a nonbot or even a counterbot. In our business quit is not an option. All is darn clear, it is either 0 or 1, with no lame nonchoice in between.

OK, OK, if you insist, for the sake of old friendship and all that. But you owe mathbot a dinner. A long strings of zeros and ones which, if viewed as a number in binary, would be transcendent, yet still constructible. And don't be stingy, you must have plenty of zeros and ones in that complete (or whatever) boolean algebra. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:08, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome

Thank you for your message of welcome. I will bear your other comments in mind. Figaro 00:05, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

List of mathematical topics (0-Z), again

I don't understand why you say it doesn't get updated because it is made of templates. It gets updated _because_ it is made up of templates. The shorther lists (A-C) for example are also made up of templates. The list itself isn't very useful and I haven't been able to load it myself in full. However the recent changes using it work beautifully and not too slowly. Please tell me about the speedy. --MarSch 11:11, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Trust me, I know what I am saying. :) This has been an issue for a long time. Unless from time to time you open List of mathematical topics (0-Z) and make a dummy edit, it will not show recent changes to the math articles added after the latest fake edit took place. Again, for List of mathematical topics (A-C) Jitse is doing a fake edit with a bot every day, and that's why it works. Something like that should be done for your bigger and fatter list, but I doubt it is worth the trouble.

About the speedy; come on, you know what speedy means. That was meant to be a half-joke, I don't plan to use speedy to delete a valid templated list (even if it is silly :) If you get bored with it, just make it a redirect to somewhere, or put a speedy tag on it yourself. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 11:21, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I already tried to have my script update List of mathematical topics (0-Z), but it timed out. Trust Oleg, he knows what he is saying, at least in this instance. :) -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:13, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Trust Jitse, he knows what he's saying. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:02, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I trust you both know what you are saying. I thought you had a speedy alternative Oleg, but alas. In the meantime I'm hapopily using this.--MarSch 11:18, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Why kill a normal word

The "bot" has changed the word "explication" to "explanation." "Explication" is a perfectly good English word. What is going on? P0M 04:32, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I was not sure that "explication" is a valid word, and I think "explanation" is much more used for the same purpose. Now that I checked with Webster's, seems the former is a valid word, but the question still remains, why not use "explanation" for it (I never heard "explication" in my more than 6 years in US). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:41, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Kind of agree with Oleg here (though I've had a couple run-ins with the bot myself). Unless you're using "explication" in some context where "explanation" wouldn't convey the same meaning, I'd go with the more common word. --Trovatore 04:49, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Anyway I added that to the reported bugs so far (Trov, I did not add your "nonexample" there because that was not a true bug, rather, a more subtle issue). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:58, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

You haven't added "wellorder" and its derivatives, either. --Trovatore 05:03, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Come on Trov, are you now gonna blame my bot for all the evils of the world? :) "Wellorder" vs "well-order" is a terminology disagreement, with different people using different versions, and, if you remember, Schneelocke thought in the same way as me, (incorrectly, if you wish). That is, my logged misspellings page is for things I misjudged or should have known better, and not for issues on which even human editors can't agree. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

If you will check Webster's New World Dictionary of the English Language you will see that it is not a perfect synonym for "explanation." Sometimes you need the other thing. P0M 21:02, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Re: the RFA rollback

What happened is a long and complicated series of events:

1. [1] Lapsed canadian self-nominates at the bottom of the list.
2. [2] User:Theresa Knott reverts because the nomination is not filled out.
3. [3] Lapsed Canadian fills out and readds nomination, again at the bottom.
4. [4] I revert to readd the nomination at the top.
5. [5] I move the nomination to the top, but Theresa Knott deletes the nomination at the same time.
6. [6] Carbonite sees my addition as a redlink, and removes it, but this places the nomination again back at the bottom.
7. [7] I re-revert to add it back at the top, because I wrongly assumed it was going to be restored.
8. [8] Carbonite ends up removing the nomination.

I agree, it is almost a BJAODN-like revert war, but it's a result of three admins trying to do the same thing at the same time. I'll try to be more careful with the button from now on. Titoxd^(?!?) 04:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your careful clarification. The result of the above "revert war" was that the Lapsed canadian never got it why you kept on reverting on him/her, and it ended up being discussed on the talk page (read: edit summaries are informative :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:54, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi. Actually, I was attempting to remove vandalism from User:Lapsed canadian, a user with about 10 edits who was posting a link to a non-existent RfA. At the same time Titoxd was also trying to remove (or perhaps move) the same link. We both had the intention of removing the same vandalism, but just got tripped up by each other. We only used the rollback button once each (although Theresa Knott also used it once to remove the same link), so I don't think it quite rose to level of a "revert war". Still, you point is quite valid and I assure you that I do reserve use of the rollback for vandalism only. Thanks and happy editing! Carbonite | Talk 10:21, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that the link Lapsed canadian was adding is still red Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Lapsed canadian. It was never a legit RfA. Carbonite | Talk 10:27, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, these things were not clear from the page history. Got it now. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 10:29, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you

Your comment on StuRat's talk page is certainly the catch-22. Everyone does it. I've read all of the A Series of Unfortunate Events books and have spent some time writing articles about main characters/books. Then the Mad Baron came along. He has not read the books and finds that a lot of the descriptions et cetera lack context to the extent that he starts to lose it. So, now, he's asking me about things he finds unclear and clarifying those in the articles. I have no idea what a non-reader of the series thinks like/reads the articles and I'm sure you are the same when it comes to certain maths/science-related topics. As everyone is in relation to their topic-of-interest. --Celestianpower ^háblame 09:27, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Right, one should not ignore suggestions/questions of people knowing less than you about a given topic, they can give valuable insights. But starting new articles on a topic one has fragmentary knowledge of is a bit overboard I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 10:05, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. The alternative is to only allow people with a PhD, or equivalent, in any field to start an article. That is how you get articles that are utterly incomprehensible to the masses. Wiki should be based on collaboration - just as a PhD can start an article and then have the introductory material added later, so can a novice start an article and then have a PhD add the in-depth theory. If forced to choose between the two, I would say the method that provides info to the broadest possible audience the quickest is the better of the two. It also seems to avoid the problem of having the article become "PhD-controlled", which then prevents the introduction of any language not written for PhDs only. (See my later comment.) I have yet to see a "novice-controlled" article which refuses to allow contributions by PhDs, except for the obvious case where there are two articles, one written for novices and one for experts. StuRat 14:23, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree (again) but the way I understand it was that he tried to add them in the articles proper but was promptly reverted. Have you seen the discussion on talk:Boolean algebra? I don't think it's too much to ask to be able to understand the gist of a topic by reading the first paragraph of its Wikipedia article. I'm in the right mind to speedy it under patent nosense right now, which it migfht as well be. --Celestianpower ^háblame 10:16, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

You are indeed right that math articles on Wikipedia need to be easier to understand. Not all articles, as some are too specialized to give a layman's perspective, but probably a good chuck. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 10:21, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

The goal should always be to make every article accessible to the broadest possible audience. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the goal of many, as edits designed to do so are reverted with an explanation such as "that simplification fails to account for every possible interpretation of quantum mechanics". In short, simplifications are required in an introduction to complex material to make it accessible, but some refuse to allow any simplifications, and thus refuse to allow articles to be made accessible. (If one could only discuss car engines by explaining the physics of combustion to the level of valence electron shells, then very few people would understand car engines.) StuRat 14:35, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Pi and e

Oh, thanks. I didn't notice they were subcategories. I just noticed that they were indeed irrational and figured they needed to be in that category (it was looking lonely anyway). DevastatorIIC 18:58, 28 October 2005 (UTC) Edit: Format and double post DevastatorIIC 18:59, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Salut

Salut Oleg, multumesc pentru sfaturi.

Stiu ceva matematica, dar nu sint chiar matematician.In orice caz, daca pot, o sa-mi faca placere sa contribui. Stefan Udrea 11:48, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Ok, thanks for the tips!

N. Vaughan Nivaca 23:53, 29 October 2005 (UTC)