Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/List of math draft pages

Draft:Divergent Mathematics

As noted “looks to be redundant with the main-space article Divergent series”, the distinction is not clear so I redirected it. —- Taku (talk) 20:58, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Plane normal form

As requested by Taku, here is a comment made in the draft by User:D.Lazard: Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:58, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

• Comment: IMO, this article must not be created: it is entirely based on a single WP:Primary source, published 6 years ago, and Scholar Google does not find any citation of this article. Wikipedia policy on primary sources says explicitly Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them. As secondary sources do not exist, this article cannot be created without breaking WP policies.
  In any case, the title is not acceptable, as the subject of the article is "Flats of matrix normal forms".
  Nevertheless, the result in this article is interesting enough for a brief mention in Jordan normal form. This mention could be something like The Jordan normal forms form a union of flats in the space of matrices. However the Jordan normal form of a matrix is not unique (because of permutations of Jordan blocks) and the flats may intersect (the identity matrix belongs to all flats of diagonal matrices). One of Arnold's problems (ref here) is the existence of a matrix normal form such that there is exactly one normal form in each similarity class, and the sets of all normal forms form a disjoint union of flats. This problem has been solved positively by Peteris Daugulis (ref here).
  Because of the lack of secondary sources, the technical details given in this draft do not belong to an encyclopedia such as WP. D.Lazard (talk) 15:01, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Keep redlinks?

In cleaning up the page, I've been deleting redlinks. All the redlinks I checked had been to explicitly deleted drafts, so I considered them as eligible for deletion per WP:REDDEAL. If there is some reason to keep these, let us know, and I will refrain from such cleanup in the future. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 17:47, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mark viking: First, this is a project page not mainspace article; so I don't think WP:REDDEAL applies. But, more importantly, the use of a list instead of categories to keep track of drafts is in part to maintain a list of red links. The deletion of drafts is automated and so red links do not indicate the drafts are no longer needed; they might need to be undeleted. -- Taku (talk) 18:08, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Ah, so you consider this to not only be for active drafts in process, but also potential drafts to be re-created? I have no problem with that. But before re-creating a draft, it would be best to check the reason for deletion. Not all are timed out. For instance, Formal differential geometry was explicitly deleted at AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Formal differential geometry, so re-creating a Draft:Formal differential geometry would nee to take the criticisms there into account. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 19:56, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Because of the automation, drafts that we still need still get deleted so, yes, the list should keep track of red links in my opinion (again that’s sort of the reason to use a list instead of categories). As for formal diff-geo, sorry, this was my mistake; I was unaware if that was deleted by an afd. I will remove it from the list. —- Taku (talk) 21:29, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I've just gone through all the redlinks and either dropped them from this list because they were declined for good reasons, or moved them into article space or article talk pages. -- Beland (talk) 19:14, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Ok. (To be clear, I didn’t mean to say all the red links must be kept.) I have readded two eigencircle drafts; even thought they are declined, I think the decline was wrong. Google tells me the topic does exist. —- Taku (talk) 05:54, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

I readded two more (the remaining red links do not seem worth keeping, at least to me). —— Taku (talk) 06:06, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Never mind on eigencircle. I did more Google research and I cannot find a use that is wide enough for Wikipedia to exist. I have therefore redirected the eigencircle draft. -- Taku (talk) 07:55, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, but I just can't believe that drafts which have been deleted on account of being completely ignored are drafts we "still need". Why build a memorial to forgotten cruft? At the very least, if drafts that no longer exist are listed here, they need to be labeled with the reason for their deletion. XOR'easter (talk) 17:21, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

If someone wants to keep a draft, they should actively work to make it ready for mainspace (enough to avoid six-month periods of inactivity) and then promote it to mainspace. We should not have project-specific exceptions to the rule that only actively-improved drafts can be kept. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:27, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Exactly. The purpose of this list was to help organize work on drafts so that we could have actual articles instead of clutter. That purpose is obviated if the list becomes an excuse to keep the clutter. XOR'easter (talk) 17:34, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

It seems the question is about the purpose of this list. The list is meant to keep track of drafts that the project would like to work on. It is purposely not the complete list of math drafts pages; in fact, I usually don’t add drafts that are quite hopeless. The reason to keep red links is that some red links are results of automatic deletion not because the drafts need not be worked on further. Hence, unless the drafts are no longer needed, it is helpful to leave red links as well. Red links should just be removed if they do not represent topics that Wikipedia should have but if they are clearly on notable topics, it is more productive to undeleted the drafts since, soon or later, we would have to have articles on those topics.

The case in point: Draft:Tomoyuki Arakawa. He was an invited speaker at ICM, which is often an indication that he is notable. So, it makes sense to undelete the draft and promote it to mainspace eventually. -- Taku (talk) 18:14, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Only if it is under continued improvement preparing it for mainspace. If you're not prepared to do that, then you need to keep it on some off-site personal storage, not in Wikipedia draftspace. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:06, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

I interpret this "you" as not me but as a pronoun referring to a general person. (The above draft was not started by me for instance.) As long as the project is willing to develop the drafts, I don’t think they need to move to personal storage. Nor they should; since people like me will not be able to develop them easily. My impression is that the Wikipedia community is perfectly happy With that. The 6-month automatic deletion is meant to deal with so many low-quality drafts that cause the maintenance issue if they are kept. It is accepted that the deletion is undone in the case when there are personnel willing to develop them if not in a timely fashion. —- Taku (talk) 19:42, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

In a sense, the list can be interpreted as a list of drafts that the project is committed to develop. (Hence, undeletion rather than removing the items make senses.) For some of mathematicians drafts, I do admit I am often uncertain about their notability, though. —- Taku (talk) 19:50, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

This appears to be you, specifically, not the project, as other project-associated people including me have contrary opinions. The 6-month period applies to you and to anyone else with similar positions in the project. It was specifically intended to prevent drafts from languishing for long periods of time without movement towards article space. If you or anyone else wants to maintain partial drafts of articles, for long periods of time without improving them, then they must be stored off-site. Repeated undeletion is not an acceptable solution. Off-site storage is easy (I have some 100 titles with material that I keep off-site in thought that I might want to use them later, for instance). Keeping a small number of drafts updated so that they don't fall beyond the 6-month window is also easy. Why must this junk be kept on-site without improvements? —David Eppstein (talk) 19:52, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

First, I don’t think it is allowed to move a draft started by editor X to the user space of editor Y. At least that would be controversial. So what you are suggesting is not doable. (In fact, I am not exactly sure what your proposal is.) As far as the purpose of the draftspace, there has long been a contention about its long-term use. I am not only one who has a view that as long as there exist editors who are committed to developing the drafts (and the commitment is not empty nor impractical), it is ok to undelete the drafts. The 6-month deletion is dirty but an effective substitute for case-by-case deletion. It is unlike an AfD. Finally, I don’t know why you say "junk"; the list here is specifically meant to collect un-junks. —- Taku (talk) 20:08, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

"Write your own drafts on your own computer" is a pretty simple proposal. So is "actively edit each draft on the list at least once every six months". XOR'easter (talk) 20:19, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

We are discussing not my drafts but drafts started by others. (Please read the thread!) In fact, I have not started drafts for ages and I don’t have plans to do that in the future (as I am too busy in my life). Some of my remaining drafts should be done soon. —- Taku (talk) 20:52, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Those proposals apply to all drafts started by anyone. XOR'easter (talk) 20:58, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

(unindented) That then seems to be a suggestion again the draftspace per se. My view (and I am not alone) is that the draftspace has a role in developing new articles and is a preferred from the wiki point of view: the development of materials happen on-site as opposed to the private spaces. So, I do believe editors should be encouraged from using the draftspace and should be discouraged from developing new materials privately. At least that’s my view. —- Taku (talk) 21:11, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

If you wish to change the procedure on deletion of six-month-unchanged drafts, this is not the place to do it. If you do not succeed in gaining consensus for changing the procedure, or do not make any effort at gaining that consensus, I see no reason for paying attention to any differences between your view and the consensus. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:24, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

It sounds like the project-wide consensus view is that 6 months of no activity is sufficient indication that whatever commitment there was in developing a draft has been abandoned to the degree that it is no longer worth hosting the draft on-site. There's no need to host documents on-wiki if either zero or one people are working on them, and if there are two people working or more people working on a document, that should generate edits more often than every 6 months. Otherwise, there are just people who have promised to work on the document but in practice aren't. -- Beland (talk) 01:13, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: My view is in line with a consensus of the Wikipedia community: while we delete 6-month old drafts, we also allow undeletion of them with the understanding that there is a will to develop them. Also, there is no consensus that an off-site development is preferred; I know editors like you believe that, but that's not in the policy or guideline (and I don't think there is a broader support for it). -- Taku (talk) 05:22, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Inclusion in a list like this doesn't indicate "a will to develop" anything on it, empirically speaking. XOR'easter (talk) 14:53, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Really? At least I always try to do something about the drafts in the list; and the drafts in the list do get finished somehow (promoted to mainspace or merged into the existing ones), if not in timely fashion. Maybe this criterion should be made more explicit; we should be listing only those we are willing to work on in the future. (Ok, mathematician drafts are an exception to this: I often add the ones whose notability I am not sure but then I usually do not request undeletion of mathematician drafts.) -- Taku (talk) 15:02, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Proposal

By way of having a concrete alternative to what happens now, here's a starting point for discussion:

When an an abandon draft is deleted, it should be removed from this list.

• Do not request undeletion just for the purpose of keeping the draft around in draft state, especially if you haven't made any substantial contributions to the draft. It's fine to undelete and keep on this list if you are actually going to promote the draft into article space within the next 6 months.
• If you feel the topic of a deleted draft is or might be notable, but you don't plan to work on it yourself, add a red link to Wikipedia:Requested articles/Mathematics and wait for someone to start from scratch or determine it is not notable.
• If you only have a little time, want to attract contributions from other editors, and don't want to lose the draft material:
  • Request undeletion.
  • Create a stub by stripping awkwardly incomplete or unverified material out of the draft. Live articles don't need to be comprehensive - they just need a good definition and at least one source that demonstrates notability.
  • Move the draft to article space.
  • Add a note to the article talk page that content in the edit history may be useful for future expansion of the article.

To keep drafts from being automatically deleted, you can either contribute to them occasionally or get a one-time 6-month extension by adding {{promising draft}}.

-- Beland (talk) 01:56, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

First, I don’t know if it is such a good idea to create local rules. If we do, it is probably simpler not to use the 6-month automatic deletion for drafts listed here. The procedure is mean to a large number of abandoned low-quality drafts that cannot be effectively dealt case-by-case. Also, I also request undeletion of non-math drafts on notable topics. How about them?

I still maintain if the topic of the draft is notable and there is a personnel planning to develop it, the undeletion is more productive than otherwise. (And in the current Wikipedia policy, that is an accepted procedure.) —- Taku (talk) 04:27, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't know of any other WikiProject that has a list of drafts and a rule that redlinks can't be deleted from it. So if you don't want local rules, this WikiProject can simply drop that rule, and let abandon drafts be lost. I propose the above to try to accommodate your desire to save this content instead, while satisfying the objection that repeated undeletion is unacceptable. If there are editors planning to develop a draft, you can use this procedure to keep it around in stub form with the incomplete material in the edit history, and I expect that will attract more contributions than something in Draft space. -- Beland (talk) 09:00, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Given the above discussion, it seems there is some dispute over whether consensus is for or against allowing repeated undeletion. We could have an RFC to determine that, and make a global policy rather than something only for this list. It looks like editors already automatically get a warning about not letting things site around indefinitely without working on them when their undeletion requests are granted. Making "repeated undeletion unacceptable" to me would either mean disallowing it completely (which doesn't sound all that helpful in building an encyclopedia) or doing so only if the author agrees to turn the draft into a stub right away, along the lines proposed above. -- Beland (talk) 09:13, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't think there is a consensus on whether repeated undeletion is acceptable or not. What happens is that an editor will get in trouble (e.g., some sanction) if he or she keeps requesting undeletion of a draft but never finishes the draft. Beyond that, there is no policy against repeated undeletion. A warning that an editor gets is about the content "that is not considered suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia". The drafts listed in this list do not fall into this category (as the list is meant to be selective.)

About the forbidden of removing red links. It's not that farm rule but, to repeat, the reason is that the drafts in the list are meant to be what the math project would like to work on, if not immediately. It follows that just because the drafts were auto-deleted, that does not mean they are no longer needed. Also, we can remove red links but I would still be requesting undeletion if they are still needed so red links would become blue (so removing them has little practical significance). I think the original contention by XOR'easter was that he doesn't understand the drafts that are not in active development need to be kept in the draftspace. David goes further that one should not use the draftspace at all. To be clear, he is not alone in that view, but that is the view I (and many others) do not agree with. -- Taku (talk) 14:22, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

The confusion (and this may sound strange first) is that the goal is not to deal with drafts that exist in the draftspace but to improve the coverage of Wikipedia per se; the list like this is and should be used towards that goal. This often gets lost in practice: too often, the goal gets narrower, to deal with the drafts pages that none of or too few people seem to care. But if you remember the ultimate goal, it matters little such a status or situation is at present. This, I suppose, is the reason why red links should be kept. -- Taku (talk) 14:45, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps the drafts in the list are meant to be what the math project would like to work on, if not immediately, but in practice, the list has ended up being filled with whatever drafts happen to get noticed and recognized as being "about math". The point of having a list instead of a category was to be more informative by saying something about the status of each draft. Instead, what we've got is attempts to telepathically signal that one deleted draft was hopeless while another should be recovered. Now it turns out that the existence of the list is actively misleading editors into thinking that content is ready for promotion (or that math editors will be willing to work on fixing up a broken draft once it is promoted). If this is how the list is going to be used, then I'm willing to admit that my "keep" !vote in the deletion debate was a mistake. XOR'easter (talk) 15:09, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

@TakuyaMurata: The exact text of the warning is:

as a draft that was deleted under CSD G13, the page has been restored upon request. However, the draft namespace, though it is intended to provide some breathing room to create and develop a page without the time pressure of immediate review, is not for the indefinite hosting of material that is unsuitable for inclusion in the article mainspace. Please continue to work on the draft so that it meets Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for inclusion and then submit it for review—at the least, prior to another six months elapsing.

All of the drafts on this list are not suitable for inclusion in the article mainspace in their current state. They need improvement to be made suitable, and the warning is asking editors to make those improvements before the next 6 months are up. In other words, to avoid multiple undeletions. My proposal boils down to doing as the warning asks, either by completing the draft as originally intended or turning it into a stub.

@TakuyaMurata: I don't see anyone else adding articles to this list (other than User:Sci4Alll, who added their own draft, but never removed it after it was moved to article space), so I don't think it's so much a list of "what the math project would like to work on", so much as a list of drafts you think people should be working on. The ones that get deleted are the ones no one actually is working on. I don't see anyone else requesting undeletion of other people's math articles (though I have undeleted some to try to break them out of the cycle of never-ending re-deletion). -- Beland (talk) 19:48, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

@XOR'easter and David Eppstein: If feelings have changed or we think it's a cleaner way to deal with the redlink controversy, did we want to do a fresh XFD discussion on this list? I'd still support redirecting to the category, and other than Taku, all the other votes seemed to boil down to "I don't use it but other people should be able to if they find it helpful".

Taku, if I'm correct in thinking you're the only one who is using this list to track articles you don't want to be deleted, everyone else can use the more up-to-date category, and you could still track drafts you don't want to be deleted with a list in your personal User space, or even just on your own computer. Though I think you would still anger other editors if you request multiple undeletions for the same article. A personal list would have the advantage of not incurring the overhead of other editors seeing redlinks, deleting them, and then having you revert the deletion and argue about it, which seems to be common. Or spending time pruning the drafts that have already been moved to article space, or second-guessing the 6-month auto-deletion. -- Beland (talk) 19:48, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

I would support userfication as this mostly seems to be Taku's private list, but probably this should be discussed at WT:WPM. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:55, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

The solution we seem to have ended up on at WT:WPM is to change the custom here such that red links are removed. -- Beland (talk) 01:39, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Complete algebraic curve

This may be a good example to help sort out what content should be left as a draft.

I moved Draft:Complete algebraic curve into article space because it looked like it was in better shape than many articles. TakuyaMurata moved it back to Draft space with the edit summary "A little too early to move to mainspace (several sections are incomplete)". Are the incomplete sections the ones I tagged with {{empty section}}? Plenty of articles have those, and would not seem to me to be a good reason to keep this as a draft.

If there are other sections that are awkwardly incomplete, could we just delete or comment out those sections, and publish the article anyway? The draft has already been auto-deleted after its 6 months ran out. No one has made any actual contributions to the content since June 2019‎ (TakuyaMurata is the only actual contributor), so I expect that if it is left as a draft, it will simply be deleted again in 6 months. -- Beland (talk) 02:10, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Most of its content is completely unsourced. It is not in shape to be moved to article space. That level of non-sourcing is typically cause for draftifying new articles, and should not be acceptable for promoting drafts. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:36, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

On top of that, the text that did exist wasn't even written in complete sentences. Conversely, given a rational map f from C to a projective space, ... then what? There's a (need to be clarified) note-to-self in there as well. XOR'easter (talk) 14:59, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

For this particular one, I am planning to expand it on coming days (already got a textbook from the library). For the others, they should also be finished not in years but in months, hopefully. Since, as I mentioned above, I haven’t started drafts for a long time and not planning to start new ones (not a good idea given my real life situation). So, at least, *my* drafts shouldn’t be around much longer. —- Taku (talk) 04:32, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

@TakuyaMurata: It's been over a month with no edits; this draft is over 1/6 of the way to being deleted. -- Beland (talk) 17:39, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Also, you said you weren't going to start any more drafts, but I see you have in fact started Draft:Lamp cord trick. Is there any reason not to publish that draft as a stub, so readers can start benefitting from it and other people can help expand it? -- Beland (talk) 17:43, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

@Beland: First, Draft:Lamp cord trick isn't my draft. I merely moved it from the requested articles. Second, as for the curve draft, I've been busy with editing the paper for the past few weeks (which is why I am not active in Wikipedia for the past few weeks). You are also welcome to edit the drafts too, if you are concerned. -- Taku (talk) 07:11, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

(Just so there is no confusion). I am not thinking of starting new drafts but that's just a plan: a plan can change. -- Taku (talk) 07:25, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

You didn't provide a chain of attribution for Draft:Lamp cord trick to the original author, which is a potential violation of copyright. That may mean it will need to be deleted unless you put a pointer on the talk page or in the edit history. You didn't mention, though, why you decided this should be a draft and not a stub?

If you are going to change your mind about starting drafts and not actually edit the drafts you said you were going to edit, then we've been relying on false or hollow assurances. My only concern is that these drafts not end up in a perpetual cycle of being deleted and undeleted, which annoys the admins who deal with that. If you've overextended yourself and simply don't have the time, you're welcome to put these into external storage. I just don't want it to be a surprise for you when deletion day comes, such that you feel the need to request undeletion again. -- Beland (talk) 07:41, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

@Beland: If you are concerned about particular drafts, you can also do something about it. If you feel you need some help from the others, many math editors are happy to provide help, me included. Also, I didn't say I am not going to edit drafts; I merely explained my real-life situation. (why hurry?) As for the draft (Lamp cord trick), in the edit summary of the first edit, I made the comment that it's from the requested articles; that's usually enough for attribution in Wikipedia. We usually don't include the names of the authors of the edits since that type of information can be extracted from edit history. -- Taku (talk) 08:02, 15 September 2022 (UTC) If your worry is that Draft:Complete algebraic curve is never going to be completed, I don't think that worry is necessarily. Since the topic is notable and there are enough references, the history tells us that the draft will be completed eventually. -- Taku (talk) 08:07, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

I got the impression you were going to finish drafts and not start them, and if that is true, we need not be worried about a proliferation of abandoned drafts. But the opposite is happening, even if you are using other people's work as a starting point for your new draft. That is why I am concerned that we are not on track to stop abuse of the delete and undelete process. I am not concerned about the draft content being lost.

I'm still curious why Draft:Lamp cord trick shouldn't be promoted to a stub? It seems like it has a reasonable reference? Why not just leave it as a requested article, if you don't have time to work on it and it's not stub-ready?

Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia requires a link to the source page in the edit summary, which you did not provide. There are a huge number of subpages of Wikipedia:Requested articles. Which one did you pull the draft from? I would suggest noting this on the draft talk page with {{copied}}. -- Beland (talk) 08:46, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Ok, in hindsight, I can agree that my edit was too terse: if you think more copyright info is needed, I can certainly provide that in the talkpage (and will do in a moment). The reason I added in the draftspace in mainspace is because I need to be sure about the notability or whether it can be merged into the other articles.

As for drafts in general, I think there is a difference in perception. I myself am not seeing "proliferation of abandoned drafts" nor any sort of abuse of the draftspace (the length of the list looks resonable). Also, I think there was a typo in your comment. If you are not concerned about the draft content, you don't have to do anything about it. In short, it seems like you just don't like the way I use the draftspace, but as far as I understand, I don't think I am using the draftspace in violation of policy or guidelines. If you think the policy on the draftspace needs to be changed, you can make a proposal to the community. I do find a deletion/undeletion cycle a bit strange but it seems that is the way the community chose, so. -- Taku (talk) 09:25, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

For example, I once saw a proposal to make G13 more like a proposed deletion, so that we can avoid unnecessary deletions. Perhaps that's the easiest fix? -- Taku (talk) 09:37, 15 September 2022 (UTC) I think it would help if you can provide some explicit tangible issues caused by the math drafts; e.g., there is an overwhelming number of undeletion requests or a number of drafts is too many in order to have an effective maintenance of the draftspace. My sense is that these issues do not exist. I cannot solve the problems I do not recognize. —- Taku (talk) 12:23, 15 September 2022 (UTC)