Wikipedia talk:Roadmaps for article titles

Method

I see two distinct, large issues that need to be attacked before we can get this started. John Reid 05:39, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Residence

Should M be a subpage of U or a subpage of J? The former may make it easier to M + N while the latter may be better at inviting participation from editors at J. John Reid 05:39, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Display

M not branch is not best displayed as a list; it is a small graph. Note that every B >> A must be shown, while we will also want (for efficiency) to transclude the same M onto C and D. Therefore, on M we need to show C + A, D + A, &c. Meanwhile, P is a directed, weighted graph.

How can we display this geometry so that it is (a) compact, attractive, and clear; and (b) accessible to anybody-can-edit? Obviously, image formats are out. John Reid 05:39, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Examples

This is very confusing without more examples. You give two at the top, but can you give examples in all the sections where you use letters? Carcharoth 20:17, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. I hope you wouldn't want me to to expand every expression into a verbose form; wouldn't that make it more confusing? Granted, if you want to work directly on the Wikiproject, you need to figure out the notation -- and if it's obscure, let's change it before we use it too many times. Symbols carefully defined at outset make it easier to understand what somebody is saying; they remove ambiguity.

Thing is, this is all an abstraction -- some would say, an abstraction of an abstraction. Discussion -- at this early stage -- is all about classes of things, not about the things themselves. Too soon to leap into actually constructing any map; first we need to figure out how.

As I see it, there are 3 general classes of thing with which we will be working: pages, areas, and maps. Pages are the things we wish to classify and connect; areas are the domains within which experts are to be found who may be of service; and maps are the results of our efforts. The overall challenge is to enlist areas to produce maps from pages.

U is a directed, weighted graph. By "graph", I mean network. By "directed", I mean that the connection B > A, as shown in M, is one-way. That is, if understanding of B is required to understand A, the reverse had better not be true. By "weighted", I mean that B > A may be more important than C > A. The short way to write this is B >> A.

Pages may (or may not) fall into one or more areas. We are able to think of, say, the set of all pages within the area of Football which is a subset of the set of all pages within the area of Sports. We can further say that, therefore, the map of the set of all pages within the area of Football is a subnet of the map of the set of all pages within the area of Sports. Using symbols, the entire last two sentences are summarized as: Sports ] Football therefore Sports/map ) Football/map.

So, primitive tools from graph and set theory will be of use here. I'd use standard notation but it's very difficult to produce the symbols with a standard keyboard. We don't need the more advanced tools because rigorous analysis will likely fail here; it's a human, social construct with too much "wiggle".

If you're math-adverse, you'll have a rough time with this. I help students all the time who have trouble with math but generally I find I need to begin way back, often with the Arabic numerals themselves. If talk of the quadratic formula makes a person's head spin, I wouldn't want to shove him into graph theory. The latter does not depend on the former but it's considered more advanced.

For an elementary problem in graph theory, please see Seven Bridges of Königsberg. This is, historically, the first problem in graph theory, giving rise to the discipline. Give it a read, come back, and tell me what you think. John Reid ° 07:16, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

While I don't understand graph theory as such; I can grasp the concept in Algebraic terms. x is a variable that is undefined. I think this might be easier for us (read me) to understand, with just a few more words in the description. I'll add examples to the original examples, and let me know if that'll work. CrispyDruid 19:11, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, in practice, I think it would be eaiser to move the definitions from the main page here to the discussion page, and add verbose definitions. That way, anyone who wants to help, can easily grasp how to read the notation, wich should help a great deal towards being able to use the notation. =) Is it alright for me to go ahead and do that? CrispyDruid 20:11, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

When a project -- any project -- is new, it makes sense to dump everything on one page. As it grows, we split off subtopics. I wouldn't copy the Terms and notations sections to talk but to a project subpage and expand it there. I'll let you do this, since you seem to have a good idea of the proper direction to take. John Reid ° 04:33, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Confusing but interesting

I think I grasp the general intent of this WikiProject, so I'm going to join and hopefully learn more about the logical dependancies you are using here. Maybe it can get off the ground and work in conjunction with the more active Disambiguation project, or perhaps due to the size it's more appropriate as a task force? Tyciol (talk) 16:12, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Confusing but interesting (2)

This essay seemed to have promise but has gone nowhere. I can't figure it out. A shame. Student7 (talk) 22:09, 25 September 2011 (UTC)