Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Collaboration of the Month

for non-mathematicians

A mathematician who wants to look up something related to mathematics is going to go to mathworld.wolfram.com -- which, BTW, needs a Wiki article. For this reason, I think math articles should begin with an introduction for non-mathematicians. That is, the article should NOT begin "Let W be a differentiable manifold... ." I've added "Introduction for non-mathematicians" to several math articles. Others who are confident of their ability to explain mathematics to the intelligent layman may want to do the same. Rick Norwood

A mathematician who wants to look up something related to mathematics is going to go to mathworld.wolfram.com"

Not always. Some wikipedia mathematics articles are distinctly superior to their counterparts on mathworld. See for example cumulant, Faa di Bruno's formula, errors and residuals in statistics. Admittedly, I am the principal author of those; that's why they come to mind for me. There are many others. Michael Hardy 01:12, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree that Let W be a manifold ... is a bad first para. It may be a good second para. But I agree with MH about WP as compared to MathWorld. We are for example incorporating material from PlanetMath. Charles Matthews 11:53, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Outdated

This is seriously outdated, someone wants to keep it up to date? else it should be proposed for deletion Elfguy 13:11, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• If I remember I will do this tommorow. It was previously link on the COTWs template which is why it wasn't put under the non-active template. Now that I've linked it to the page I thought we could give it a little while to see if interest grows otherwise it will be placed with other inactvie collaborations. Falphin 01:24, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Also, these pages don't get vfd, as they are kept for historical interest. Falphin 01:35, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Non-stubby articles

I don't see why the COTW article should exclude non-stubby articles. Many of our existing math articles have a great deal of content, but are nearly impossible to read or use because they are poorly written and/or poorly organized. I have personally been tempted to improve many of these articles but then backed away when I saw how much junk I would have to read through and edit in order to improve the quality of the article. I suspect many other authors feel the same. These articles would greatly benefit from a collabrative effort. I say we should improve our quality before adding more quantity. -- Fropuff 04:42, 2005 Feb 11 (UTC)

Rules changed; non-stubs allowed should they be very disorganized/just plain bad. ral315 05:23, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

What about getting good articles up to featured status? --MarSch 11:39, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Great idea. Here is a list of articles that have featured standard now, to model other articles on:--Fenice 13:41, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Ackermann function · Algorithm · Fractal · Infinite monkey theorem · Margin of error · Prisoner's dilemma · Regular polytope · Sudoku · Trigonometric function

Thanks --MarSch 15:56, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Some mathematician articles

Recently I added Nicholas Mercator — I was able to locate precious little information on him, but haven't marked it as a stub because I'm not sure if there is much more to say. I read about him on this excellent page which gives descriptions of many mathematicians we lack articles for:

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/17thCentury/RouseBall/RB_Math17C.html

I think it'd be cool if we had articles on each of them (but of course remember to not write anything too similar to this page, and find additional material if you can.) Deco 06:29, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Any action?

Shouldn't the new article have been selected by now? I just came across this CoTW, and it seems interesting, so I'd like to get involved. Apparently not too many people are paying attention to it? I don't want to change the page without discussing it since I haven't been involved in this project and could be missing something, but I'll go ahead and do it in accordance with the posted rules tomorrow, unless someone posts telling me why it hasn't been changed. -- Zarvok 08:30, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Action taken

Well, I changed everything over to Tensor, which won the tie at 3 votes by being the first to have been nominated. I tried to update all the pages that needed to be changed to reflect this, but may have missed some, who knows. I only gave the article a week and 2 days so that we can keep the rollovers on a monday, which seems to make sense. (Also because it seems to me that picking big unwieldly articles instead of small articles to which it is easier to add info and make big changes seems silly in the early phases of the math cotw project). At any rate, hopefully I applied the rules correctly and changed everything I needed to. Let's fix up this article! Zarvok | Talk 08:52, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

unfortunately tensor is closely linked to several other articles and is the unwieldiest mess I've found. --MarSch 11:41, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Votes

being that this is being relaunched, so the number of votes to keep the artical around be reduced to 3 until this becomes more popular? --ZeWrestler 20:25, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Yeah, I would say. At the rate this one is going it will be under the historical category in a week. Falphin 21:58, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Weekly or fortnightly?

I see that it returned to a weekly schedule. Why? I don't think this is a very good idea as this collaboration is attracting few contributors at the moment. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 21:10, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's possible to become fortnightly, but title change will be necessary by then. Deryck C. 02:39, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm seeking more opinions about the 7 or 14 days issue. Deryck C. 12:17, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Dead

Is the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week dead? If no-one objects I'd like to get it up and running. I think it's a really nice feature. If nobody responds in a few days I think I'll take it upon myself to get things moving, but I assume somebody else used to be in charge of this?

Meekohi 15:40, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd be happy if you revived this. I am sure there are many people who are interested, and I think we need a Mathematics Collaboration (even though I myself probably won't contribute much text).--Fenice 17:10, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this page is long since dead. Multiple comparisons has been the COTW since 18 September 2005. User:Ral315 started this page together with Portal:Mathematics, but he appears to have abandonded both long ago. I recently took over the maintenance of the portal page, but I haven't had the ambition to do anything with this page. It appears that User:Deryck Chan was the last person taking any sort of responsibility for this page. You could ask him if he has any intentions to do anything here. But as far as I'm concerned, you are more than welcome to take over. -- Fropuff 17:14, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

MathsCOTW: Put on article/talk page?

It seems to me that putting {{MathsCOTW}} on the main article page is more sensible and visible. Any opinions for/against changing the rule that it should be put on the talk page instead? Meekohi 15:19, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The main point is that the article page should be just that: an article, not a place for discussing editing issues. See Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. The talk page is the appropriate place for listing editing notices such as {{MathsCOTW}}. Yes, it is less visible there, but I think that's the way it has to be. -- Fropuff 15:39, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The issue has been raised again by Oleg Alexandrov on Wikipedia talk:Collaborations. You might be interested in taking part. Pruneau 00:35, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Version 1.0 core topics

Hello. I'm part of Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics working toward a release version of Wikipedia (on paper or CD).

If you're interested in helping, these are some related articles we plan to include:

• Mathematics
• Algebra
• Arithmetic
• Geometry
• Trigonometry
• Calculus
• Statistics

If you think any of these are ready, please let us know. You can see our proposed initial quality standards or learn more about the overall project.

Thanks. Maurreen 04:18, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Biography

Let us know if you happen to pick an article on a person and we'll alert our members! plange 06:00, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

A suggestion

I believe that MCOTW should be done monthly (or possibly even bimonthly) because of the very few contributors. False discovery rate has been MCOTW for over a month now!!! Sr13 20:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

That's a good idea. I also think more people would be attracted if they thought there was more time. --C S (Talk) 13:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Page title

I support the change from colaboration of the week to colaboration of the month. However I think that it should have a fuller name Wikipedia:Mathematics Collaboration of the Month or Wikipedia:Mathematics Collaboration with WP:MATHCOTM as a redirect. As I understand it the WP: suffix is a virtual namespace restricted to redirects to pages in the Wikipedia: namespace. Technically this page is still in the (Main) name space. It might also be looking at Help:Moving a page as its probably better move the page using the move tab than a cut and past move, which does preserve the edit history. --Salix alba (talk) 08:16, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, new here;), but it's fixed now I think.--Cronholm144 08:45, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Nice one, it does take a bit of time to get use to all the wikipedia conventions. --Salix alba (talk) 08:59, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Month?

Methinks that its been far more than a month. It seems more like Collaboration of the Half-Year. --pbroks13^talk? 05:30, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The current one is group (mathematics) which started in October. but a lot of people seem to be working hard on it in the past weeks. I think it's better to change the name of the project to "Mathematics Collaboration of the Moment" or "Current Mathematics Collaboration". --C S (talk) 02:32, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Or perhaps it's better to keep changing the collaboration each month (or quarterly if that's better) so as to bring big improvements to more math pages. If one changed the collaboration right now, people who had been extensively contributing to the group theory article would probably still maintain their interest in improving that article over time, while the other participants of this project, some of whom probably weren't working on the group theory project or have decided they've contributed all they can to that article, could move on to a new article. Most articles need at least some improvements that require just some attention not necessarily in-depth knowledge. If people knew that there would be a new collaboration each month, maybe they'd show up to this page at the end of each month to vote for the article they're most interested in. Basically, I think that even motivated people need outside motivation sometimes, and there's nothing like a deadline to motivate (and I'm speaking here about motivating people to make a decision on the next collaboration). RobHar (talk) 15:49, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

This sounds good in theory...but I note it's now going on two months on the latest COTM. I don't think there's enough interest or motivation to sustain a new collaboration every month. --C S (talk) 09:33, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

That may be true, but I'm not sure that it can be deduced from the present situation. The previous COTM went on for like 9 months, and then was changed to a new collaboration of which I've basically been the sole contributor. So really the evidence suggests more like there's not enough interest or motivation to have any new collaboration at all (I think there were still some participants on the Groups article (they're bringing it to featured article), and maybe no one was interested in Algebraic number theory, so that could explain that). But I don't think the recent experiences say anything about a new collaboration each month. Perhaps the stated goals of the COTM are too daunting "to have a featured-standard article by the end of the month". There are a lot of math articles out there that could really use any sort of help, especially collaborative, and maybe we could redirect the aim of the COTM to simply be improve the articles quality as much as possible during the month. Also, you seem to say my previous suggestion was good in theory, but then didn't amount to anything. But actually it was never implemented. So, I think that either we can assume people aren't interested or motivated, or we can contact the people that have signed up as participants and ask them what they think about my two suggestions (1. Make the COTM change every month, 2. Change its stated goal to simply improving as much as possible during the month.) and if they have any suggestions of their own on what might make them and others participate. Thoughts? RobHar (talk) 15:26, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I think it is important to have reasonable goals (FA is way too much in a month, even GA is quite a challenge in that time). Also, it is important to check the challenges that will show up beforehand. It may also be a good idea to ask people what the can/want to contribute, both in terms of time and content. It seems a common problem that people would like to have an article improved, but not by themselves. The COTM page should gather willingness to contribute, not so much wishful thinking of what could be done. (I'm sorry I could not contribute to number theory, even if I supported the nomination, but as Rob I'm pretty much on my own with the group topic). Finally, any collaboration that actually happens might wanna report its little steps to the WPM round table. This could interest other people at a more advanced stage of the undertaking. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 15:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Some good points. In view of your penultimate point, perhaps we should say that voting for the new COTM should not be done based on which article deserves it more, but rather should be a statement of which article the voter is willing to contribute to (as opposed to now, where it is merely mentioned that one "should" contribute). To view the voting more as a sign-up sheet, then a voting procedure. Then when a nomination reaches a critical mass, it can be promoted (as long as the previous collaboration has been going long enough), and the people signed-up can be contacted to kick in gear. RobHar (talk) 16:22, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

End Group!

I am tired of waiting for someone to change the cotm. I am changing it to algebraic number theory. If anyone has troubles with this, post below and I will change the article back. Indeed123 (talk) 21:20, 21 July 2008 (UTC)