User talk:Jfdavis

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I'll add that when you post to a talk page, as you did today to Talk:Homotopy groups of spheres, the convention is to put the newest sections at the end. I've moved it for you, so no problem. Glad to see another mathematics editor! Mike Christie (talk) 20:05, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Mike. This was a first for me. I have a question - how do I get the history page to refer to the discussion page (most entries on the history page have this little blue arrow.

Jim Jfdavis (talk) 20:22, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm indenting my answer using colons (another common convention, to help in reading conversations); you'll see how it's done when you edit this again. I also indented your comment above. As for links, there are two ways of making them. If you put a full URL in square brackets, like this: [http://www.google.com], then it comes out as just a number in square brackets, like this: [1]. If you want to make the link say, e.g., "Google", then you add that title after a space in the square brackets, like so: [http://www.google.com Google] which generates this: Google.

If you're trying to link to a page inside Wikipedia, however, there's a shortcut. You can simply put the title of the page inside double square brackets, like so: [[Sphere]], which generates this: Sphere. The page title is automatically used for the title of the link. You can change this by adding a pipe symbol and an alternative title, like so: [[Sphere|this article]], which will look like this: this article, and which links to the Sphere article. Does that answer your question? Mike Christie (talk) 20:57, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Not completely. On this page [[2]], for example, with regard to the line

11 May 2009 Myasuda (talk | contribs) m (75,353 bytes) (→Framed cobordism: avoid redirect) (undo),

how were the arrow, the link to Framed cobordism; and the words 'avoid redirect" generated?

Sorry, I misunderstood your question first time round. Those are generated automatically by the software when you edit an individual section. What Myasuda did was go to the Homotopy groups of spheres page and click the "Edit" link next to the title of the "Framed cobordism" section. When you do that you are only editing the text of that section. When you save your edit, the wiki software adds the link to the appropriate section in the edit history. If you want to generate a link in text you write to a specific section, you can do it the way I did it in this paragraph -- by adding a "#" after the page title and then a section name. Entering [[Homotopy groups of spheres#Finiteness and torsion|Finiteness and torsion]] would generate a link to the "Finiteness and torsion section". As for "avoid redirect", that's what Myasuda typed in the Edit summary box (below the text editing window) when he did the edit. It's a good idea to fill that in every time, because then the edit history page can give a better idea of what's been happening to the article. Mike Christie (talk) 01:34, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

February 2012

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, please do not add promotional material to articles or other Wikipedia pages, as you did to Novikov conjecture. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" are against Wikipedia policy and not permitted. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. Dori ☾Talk ⁘ Contribs☽ 10:27, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Borromean rings

I'm not sure you understand the issues involved in your edit there. Linking to "Unlink" doesn't help anything as far as I can see, since all three components are simple un-knotted loops, as is exactly also the case for components in a Hopf link, so the article "Unlink" does nothing to distinguish between the case of a Hopf link and the case of Borromean rings. And the only links containing less than 6 crossings are the 2-crossing Hopf link, the 4-crossing Solomon's knot, and the 5-crossing Whitehead link. By simple visual inspection, the Borromean rings does not contain either a Solomon's knot or a Whitehead link as a subconfiguration, so the Hopf link is the only one that's relevant... AnonMoos (talk) 18:41, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, but since the Solomon's knot and the Whitehead link are quite irrelevant, saying that if any loop in the Borromean rings is cut, then the whole thing falls apart is exactly the same as saying that no two loops are linked with each other in a Hopf link. That's the basic paradox of the Borromean rings which can somewhat baffle those who first encounter it -- no two loops are directly (Hopf) linked, but all three are still overall interlinked. Since that's what the Borromean rings are most famous for among the general public, it must be included in the lead section. If you can hit upon an improved wording, then that would be welcomed, but do not link to the "Unlink" article (which provides no useful clarification whatever in this particular context, as far as I can see).

I've never taken a topology course, but I have an undergraduate natural science degree for which I took a number of mathematics classes, and I've been a fairly active contributor to the Knot atlas, so I have a reasonable command of the basic issues (if not always of the theoretically-correct terminology)... AnonMoos (talk) 05:15, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

P.S. If the word "unconnected" in the first sentence is wrong, why did your edit leave it in place? AnonMoos (talk) 05:24, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Whatever, dude -- if you have such alleged mathematical prowess, then why don't you demonstrate it by PRESERVING information (instead of DESTROYING information, as your edit did), and not getting sidetracked on useless and pointless irrelevancies (as was the case with your link to "Unlink", which provided no useful or relevant information in the context of the Borromean rings article)?? I wonder why: 1) No one before you has ever objected to this sentence for years? 2) Drorbn basically never reverts edits I make to the Knot Atlas? You may have ten times the theoretical abstract rigor of Bourbaki, but unless you can express this rigor in a way which makes some sense to those with some general relevant background (but without specialist topology PhDs), then your rigor is not of much practical use in editing Wikipedia articles. AnonMoos (talk) 16:53, 25 July 2019 (UTC)