User talk:David Eppstein/2009e

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Link Reversion

Hi, Yesterday i spend half a day researching various AI and graph libraries that may be useful resources for wikipedia articles. i then went to the relevant pages and added links where it seemed useful and relevant (as well as researching additional links that seem particularly helpful). I noticed today that all my revisions were blindly reverted without any consideration or explanation as to how applicable they were to the project. For a while i was a bit confused as i had did some more research for resources that seemed useful to add. I understand, and encourage your effort to keep spam out of wikipedia (we all hate this). However your methods dont seem to take into account the content or if its useful to the page (in fact im not sure how your evaluating it at all). Id appreciate greater care before reverting such efforts. Im disapointed that my hard work (and in many cases a needed contribution to the article) would be treated this way. Either way thank you for your contributions to wikipedia. 98.23.60.15 (talk) 03:36, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:3RR Violation

I have been watching Johnson's_algorithm after you reverted my work. I see someone has re-reverted your objection and you have now reverted the same page 3 times in one day. Unless im mistaken you are in violation of WP:3RR. Ill revert your edit but if im mistaken regarding this policy then i apologize. I would be happy to continue this on talk, hopefully the other editor will join us and we can resolve this properly.98.23.60.15 (talk) 06:21, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Unreasonable Reverting

I believe that it was unreasonable of you to revert the addition of all of those links, I do understand that some of them may not be best suited for the external links section, but some are.

I re-added the dANN link that you removed from the Genetic Algorithm page, because there was no reason to remove it, it fits in there perfectly, that was a list of A.I libraries.

(talk) 06:21, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your input

I wanted to thank for your input on Johnson's_algorithm. It seems informed and helpful (i havent looked into the actual claims yet but will review them shortly). If your correct ill thankfully be making the appropriate fixes to the algorithm. I would welcome your input, review, and help on any aspect of this project, even if its just a quick look at some of our other graph algorithm implementations. If you have any further contribution or input please feel free to contact me through any channel you'd like. If not then let me just thank you for your input so far, much appreciated. - Debeo Morium: to be morally bound (Talk | Contribs) 19:43, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Paying to publish

  • Thought it would be better to continue here instead of at that AfD. Interesting, apparently things are very different in your field. In the life sciences, I don't know of a single open access journal that does not charge its authors. PLoS is a non-profit organization and they are partly financed by grants, but still they charge authors to publish. I wonder how the journals you mentioned get financed, after all, publishing costs money... I guess a large part of the difference is that authors in your field deliver manuscripts that are basically print ready. --Crusio (talk) 22:01, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
    • The manuscripts are delivered print-ready to the commercial journals too. So basically what one needs is some web hosting (that may be provided by the editors' institutions, or may be done through arxiv.org) and some volunteer effort to do the editing work (as all commercial journals also depend on). They either don't have print editions, or (in the case of JGAA) arrange with a commercial publisher to print a volume of collected papers every year with no charge to the journal and the publisher getting the profits from any sales of the printed volume. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:11, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Well, that's the big difference then. In my field, manuscripts are far from print ready. (Good) publishers also routinely proof-read manuscripts and correct citation errors, grammar, etc. It's one of the reasons I don't use PubMed Central. As an editor I already see enough haphazardly formatted manuscripts. As a reader, I want to see the final PDF... --Crusio (talk) 22:30, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Since the case in question is a computer science journal, I imagine their model is closer to the ones I listed. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:32, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Right. And they still charge... I understand the possible "vanity press" issue here now... --Crusio (talk) 22:36, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Your RSN Comment

A belated thank you for your contribution to the discussion at the reliable sources notice board as to whether info from a professor's university faculty/bio page can be admitted to an article. Your comment, at the end of this thread was the definitive response, in my opinon, and I certainly appreciate it. Ohiostandard (talk) 06:39, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome! —David Eppstein (talk) 06:57, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the revert at Function.

I am not sure what I was thinking... I felt a bit guilty about reverting Pooryorick, and somehow had convinced myself maybe he had a point. After a moments thought I see you were spot on as usual. Thenub314 (talk) 23:41, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome! I wouldn't worry about the mistake...I make as bad ones frequently myself. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:39, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:SPAM

Hi David, re this revert, edit summary "Undo. I think requiring that our sources themselves be sourced is too big an expansion of sourcing requirements.", I think you may have misconstrued what the text said. The section is not about sources used to verify article content.

"Further reading" sections are by definition for books not used in sourcing the article. My contention is that a book should only be added under "Further reading", "Recommended reading" etc. if there have been at least a couple of reliable sources out there that have referred to or cited that book. In other words, if something goes under "recommended reading", my contention is that the recommendation should have come from someone else than the Wikipedian (who may be the author or publisher of the book). There should be objective evidence that the book is recommended, or considered useful, by authors in that field.

Otherwise there is nothing preventing a non-notable author adding the isbn number of his self-published book to one of our articles, based on his conviction that it contains "useful and relevant" information. He should only be able to do so if other authors have agreed with him that his book is useful and relevant. I think that is reasonable. Do you see what I mean? --JN466 16:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I still think this is a very strong additional requirement on additional reading sections rather than a codification of additional practices. We shouldn't be harder on these than we are on external links. The two tests should be "is it reliable" and "does it add value", not "is it notable": notability is for article subjects. Of course the spammers are going to argue that it adds value, but that doesn't mean we have to believe them. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I agree with the principle that we shouldn't be harder on books than we are on external links; that is a useful way of looking at it. On the other hand, we do have WP:ELNO, and we have nothing comparable for books. --JN466 17:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Yet another self-styled expert

Hi David. Do you have any recommendation for dealing with Apis? He's been wasting my time at In defense of Connolley defending William Connolley's revert of a true paragraph about greenhouses while promoting the theory popular in conservative circles, that greenhouses don't exhibit the greenhouse effect, by advancing theories in direct contradiction to the two paragraphs following the second table of Planck's law#Percentiles.

User Talk:Ccrrccrr brought to my attention just now that Apis has been creating even worse problems at Low-emissivity, by reverting and re-reverting a paragraph that he (Apis) believes to be false because it claims that low-emissivity glass works by allowing solar radiation to enter the window while blocking room-temperature radiation from exiting the window. This would undermine the conservatives' theory of greenhouses, an apparent parody of which can be found at Conservapedia on greenhouses, which is blissfully unaware that less than .1% of the Sun's heat is at typical heat lamp wavelengths.

Were Apis correct I'd be really ticked off both with the company who sold me the Low-E glass I'm using in my home and with myself for buying their account of how it works. It's not cheap!

As it is Apis has yet to utter one true sentence about either radiation or glass, and moreover my Low-E glass works as promised, in accordance with the vendor's explanation of the relevant mechanism as near as I can tell.

Suggestions very welcome. This guy is a serious timesink! --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 07:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard may be a good place to take this. The editors there are experienced with dealing with this sort of nonsense. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:23, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Sigh, I would like to point out that what Vaughan Pratt is saying is completely untrue (I don't know if he is deliberately trying to mislead). If you are going to start judging people it would be nice if you took the time to look in to what's been said and done yourself first.
—Apis (talk) 08:12, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
(PS would be nice if you retracted this baseless accusation and revert here: [1] as well, thank you.)
—Apis (talk) 10:01, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't see why. Whether you don't believe in the greenhouse effect for political reasons or whether you genuinely don't understand that (letting sun in + protection from wind + not letting radiative heat out) is warmer than (letting sun in + protection from wind + letting radiative heat out), your removal of content from low-emissivity was wrong. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Please explain to me where I have claimed any of the above? What I object to is Vaughan Pratts (and yours, apparently) obvious lack of understanding when it comes to the greenhouse effect and thermodynamics. I'm more inclined to believe that you two are the kind of cranks you accuse me of being. Did you just take whatever Vaughan Pratt said for granted or do you genuinely not understand anything of what I have said?
—Apis (talk) 18:37, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Meanwhile this seems to have blown over. Sorry I left such a mess on your talk page, David, I should take better care by treading more lightly. One good thing that came out of it is that I now have a different understanding of real greenhouses than I did two days ago, based solely on radiation and thermal conductivity of glass, with convection relevant only to the exterior of the greenhouse, contrary to my former understanding (talk about being wrong at the top of one's voice, sorry about that too). This in turn is helpful (to me anyway) in understanding more quantitatively what makes the atmospheric "greenhouse" effect different from greenhouses. The physics is subtle yet very simple in the end, as per my attempt to explain it. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 19:21, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Godel's theorem/ Halting problem

You seem to be accusing me of doing OR in the proof I gave of the halting theorem and of Godel's theorem. Just to be clear, the proof I gave that for halting problem is this one:

Suppose there is a program "HALT(X)" which decides whether code X halts. Write SPITE to do the following:

  1. Print its own code into R
  2. calculate HALT(R)
  3. if the answer is "halt", go into an infinite loop. If the answer is "doesn't halt", to halt.

The proof I gave for Godel's theorem is this:

Suppose there is an axiom system S which describes a computer. Consider the program GODEL which does the following

  1. Prints its code into R
  2. Deduces all theorems of S, looking for "R does not halt"
  3. If it finds this theorem it halts.

These proofs are so not original, that to call it original research makes the encyclopedia into a joke, and makes laughingstocks of all the editors involved. I want you to understand your position: do you believe these proofs are original research? Do you believe they are correct?Likebox (talk) 01:23, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe that they convey the idea of the proof, and are not so far from what I've done when lecturing, but that they are very far from being rigorous proofs because of the need to formalize the programming language one is describing these programs in. I also believe that you've been somewhat tendentious in trying to push this material into the article against consensus. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:11, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Tendentious or not, these are complete rigorous proofs. Your idea that one has to specify the programming language to describe the algorithm is crazy--- nobody does this in recursion theory, and it would be a waste of time. All you are saying "it doesn't sound rigorous to me", which is unfortunate.
I seriously doubt that you have presented anything like this in your teaching. There is a significant pedagogical innovation in the presentation, which is to replace the fixed point theorem of Kleene with the equivalent and more intuitive statement "print your own code" for computer programs. With this switch, the proof of the theorem becomes obvious, and the only nontrivial thing to check is that a program can in fact always include a subroutine that print the entire program code into a variable. If you did not say "let a computer program P print its own code into a variable R" in your teaching (you didn't), you did not present it in this way.
The reason this way of stating things makes things easier is because the self-reference is moved from statements in logic to computer programs. Instead of saying "let a statement P talk about itself by talking about the deduction algorithm", which is painful to make precise, you say "let a program P talk about itself". The second is easy to make precise today, because it is obvious that a program can talk about itself. The notion of computation is also absolute and universal, and axiom systems are not.
Since this idea simplifies the presentation of Godel's theorem and related theorems in logic, it should be included. This is especially important because in the 1950s and 1960s proofs which involved algorithms were considered "low-class" proofs, and shunted to the margins of mathematics. This made the classical results of recursion theory needlessly obscure. My tendentiousness comes from having to argue about it, when it is obvious that there should be no argument. Either I will persuade all the people invovled that this stuff is OK, one by one, or there enough new people will come in to shift consensus, or eventually we will all die and the next generation will put in some proof like this.Likebox (talk) 23:33, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps, rather than saying that one has to specify the programming language, I should have stated that the supposed proof needs to be carried out in a programming language with a precise semantics (not true of most commonly-used languages). For otherwise, the halting problem is not even a well-defined problem: without a rigorous semantics, the same program with the same input might halt on some implementations and not halt on others. Your proof sketch sweeps this sort of detail under the rug, which is ok for conveying an idea of how the proof works but should not be confused with an actual proof. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:38, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

The proofs of all recursion theoretic theorems are carried out in english, because the translation to any programming language is an utterly trivial chore. If the semantics of some sophisticated computer languages are slightly ambiguous, the semantics of the machine language of an abstract RAM machine is not. Neither are any shorthand encodings of any machine instructions, like "C" extended to arbitrary size integers, or LISP.
The issue is not the code, the issue is whether a transparent explicit instructions for how to write a code is acceptable within mathematics. When proving theorems about programs, there is a question of whether it is acceptable to say "this program provably halts" etc. When you make statements about the operation of the code, it must be obvious when these are provable within arithmetic. This requires some discussion, I agree, but it is not difficult to make precise, and it is done in many places explicitly for RAM machines.Likebox (talk) 23:57, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Arrangement of lines

Many thanks for your remarks re. Configurations. -- Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:56, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome! —David Eppstein (talk) 16:24, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Nicholas Kounis

Nice work turning tripe into an article! The guy is somehow related to what seems to be called the "Kounis syndrome" so I possibly wasted server space by moving the article--I have the feeling that he might turn out to be notable, though I have yet to find any significant mention of him. Thanks again, Drmies (talk) 23:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm still not convinced the article is worth keeping but I thought we should at least give it a fair shot rather than leaving it in such a blatantly unkeepable state. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:58, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
My sentiment exactly. I wish that new editors would make it easier on us sometimes. There's plenty of talk of biting, and justly so, but at the same time, we do get a plate full of crap every now and then. Kind of like grading freshman composition exams! Which still is more fun than math! Drmies (talk) 00:21, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Günter Dörner

I noticed that this page was deleted by yourself for the sole motive that it was created by a banned sockpuppet. While I have no sympathy for sockpuppets, I almost created the page myself while attempting to transfer specific information that was contained in a more general article. I have read the content of the page and have double-checked it for sources, and I think it might deserve to be restored because the text was generally well researched material. I know certain people might object to such a restoration because the topic seems a tad controversial, but I find that such controversy would not justify a deletion in the first place, since Wikipedia already has articles on plenty of controversial subjects. ADM (talk) 23:27, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

If you want to create a properly sourced version, go ahead. The reason for previous deletion wouldn't apply again, because the WP:PROD deletion process can only be used once per article. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Undo a merge from October 12, 2009

Hi. On October 12, 2009, you merged "Billy Wilkins" to "Third Day." I know Mr. Wilkins and know that he has edited his own entry, deleting much of his notable contributions out of modesty. I know that not only is he a published author, songwriter, and musician in several bands other than just "Third Day." If you can undo the merge, I will personally make sure that all notable categories are added to his page. I will also update it with a picture, details of his history, and will cite all sources. Please give me a chance to do this, and let me know what you think.Underdog65 (talk) 14:52, 25 November 2009 (UTC) (talk) 14:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

There's not a lot preventing you from doing this yourself, except for the tendency of other editors to restore the redirect to Third Day unless your version makes it obvious that he is independently notable and sourceable. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:15, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how to unmerge the two. I went to the Third Day article history, chose "undo" on your previous edit, but nothing happened. Can you tell me the method I should be using to undo the merge? Thank you. Underdog65 (talk) 15:32, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Go to the Billy Wilkins article (which now redirects to Third Day but go to it under the Billy Wilkins name), look under the title where it says "Redirected from Billy Wilkins", and click there. That should take you to the redirect, which you can edit or undo the past edits of. But since the last attempt to undo the redirection, three days ago by you, was immediately reverted by another editor (not by me), you'll need your new version to be more persuasive about the independent notability of Wilkins: what has he done that published media have taken note of that's not part of his work with the band? —David Eppstein (talk) 17:28, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Matthew T. Dickerson

Hello! Your submission of Matthew T. Dickerson at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Materialscientist (talk) 08:19, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I quoted you

in an unflattering way at here somewhere. Just for your information. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 23:57, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

from uwe kils

hallo david, thank you.

we donated thousands of photographs and i editied thousands. i donated over 40 000 dollar anoumously over the years. it would be nice if you have the entry alive, so my grandchildren and former students could find me. i shut down all other accounts. you can cut it down to 5 lines no picture. it would be nice if the categories stay.

best greetings and good luck to wikipedia, which is the greatest on the planet (see my endorsements on user kils, my gallery there and my gallery on commons user uwe kils

http://web.archive.org/web/20010803121250/krill.rutgers.edu/uwe/

Professor Dr. habil.habil. u. k.

user kils Uwe Kils

DYK for Matthew T. Dickerson

Updated DYK query On November 29, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Matthew T. Dickerson, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Materialscientist (talk) 20:51, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Balanced prime

Thanks for weighing in at Inset number. For unclear reasons I typed 47 instead of 53 as second term into OEIS...Nevertheless, we do have a fair stub at Balanced prime and this name is uncommon, so I took the opportunity to delete it per the brand new speedy deletion criterion A10 that i actually opposed. If you have further comments on the article, the deletion or the CSD, let me know or comment at the appropriate talk page.--Tikiwont (talk) 15:08, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I hadn't been paying enough attention to know about the new criterion (I had sometimes deleted similar articles under R3, with a comment like "pretend I'd redirected this to the right place first"). In any case this looks like a perfect case for it. Thanks for handling this. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:25, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Tetrakis hexahedron

Hi David. At tetrakis hexahedron, you added some SA/Volume formulae, and I'm unsure if they are correct. For example, if the pyramids are height zero, a=1/sqrt(2), it degenerated into a cube with 4 coplanar triangles in each face, and ought to have the SA/V of a unit cube, i.e. SA=6, V=1. What do you think? I added some of my own edits, so feel free to adjust or delete as needed! Tom Ruen (talk) 21:20, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the SA/Volume formulae were already there, and I'm also unsure if they are correct. What I added was the formula for when it's convex and when it degenerates to a rhombic dodecahedron. So if you check and correct the area and volume formulae, that's a good thing. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:45, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

hallo from Uwe Kils

can you please vote again on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Uwe_Kils_(3rd_nomination). Best wishes Uwe Kils 15:49, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

  1. It is not a vote.
  2. I already expressed an opinion in that AfD and do not need to express it a second time.
  3. You should not be canvassing, especially in view of the whole reason this third AfD is being held.
—David Eppstein (talk) 16:58, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Marie Nyswander

Thanks for enhancing my poor efforts in this article. It seems the AfD has been useful. I wish someone would close it, though :) Fiddle Faddle (talk) 19:36, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it should be closed, but as a participant in the AfD I can't do much more about that. I do still intend to do more than I already have in expanding the article, though. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:47, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
I do like the point about minor minor academics being stupid enough to think that WP enhances their professional status that was made in the discussion. But I fear the nom is simply a drive by deletion nominator judging by his talk page, not a campaigner for a better encyclopaedia.
I'll do a bit more work in the Nyswander article myself in due course. It just seemed so blindingly obvious to save it quickly. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 20:00, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Marie Nyswander

Updated DYK query On December 12, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Marie Nyswander, which you recently nominated. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

⇌ Jake Wartenberg 03:14, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

GodfriedToussaint

Hi,

I noticed the account, GodfriedToussaint (talk · contribs) and I am wondering whether it belongs to Godfried Toussaint. It is wonderful to have another expert in computational geometry in wikipedia. Could you please contact Godfried by e-mail and ask him to verify his identity, so that {{Notable Wikipedian|GodfriedToussaint|Toussaint, Godfried}} could be placed in talk:Godfried Toussaint. I could have done this myself, but I think your request has more chances to be granted than mine. Twri (talk) 02:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Sure. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:43, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Unsurprisingly, it really is him. I added the banner to the talk page, and pointed him towards WP:WELCOME and WP:EXPERT. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

response to P Versus NP

re: Your addition to P versus NP problem has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without permission from the copyright holder. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of article content such as sentences or images. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. Specifically, the material you added appears to be a copy of http://www.labri.fr/perso/casteran/esslli2004/COQFILES/Light/demo.v which is not marked as freely licensed. Additionally, it is inappropriate for the article you added it to. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:12, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

If you found this information on an additional computer or at a website other than the website provided it was by a means [ON RECORD] not known to the poster I.P. address you commented. It was generated by a computable process.

Some computable processes bear striking similarities and may be governed by the language or programming method used to generate them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.237.150.235 (talk) 00:30, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Regardless, it was not appropriate for the article. And, by the way, what part of "I prefer you add your comments at the very bottom" do you find difficult to understand? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:37, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Can we do something about this (obvious) musatov sock? I'd say WP:RBI Pcap ping 00:09, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
I blocked that address for a month. That should be long enough that, by the time he comes back again through that route, it will be a different IP. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:49, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
By the way, User:Juicer701 seems to be yet another musatov. [2] might help finding these contributions. — Miym (talk) 01:23, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, he put a "(C) 2009 M. Michael Musatov" at the end of that diff. Pcap ping 01:32, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
That one I blocked indefinitely. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:24, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Pushing my luck here

Since you are a "TCS admin", could you have a look at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Denotational semantics. Thanks. Pcap ping 08:46, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Samuel Epstein

Just a note to say, nice work on that article, regards. Off2riorob (talk) 02:43, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:19, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Polanski petition AfD ... and discussion protocol

Seems we have a difference of talk policy interpretation. A personal opinion of the form: "I think they should be ashamed of themselves" is personal POV. It is forum chat. A personal attack on the subjects. Still suggest reconsideration of assumptions about what Wikipedia talk pages are for.

Note: User:Baseball Bugs will be happy to follow your example. Their comments at the AfD were preceded by this comment at BLPN. And they have copied this to the talk page of the Afd after I had collapsed it as inappropriate. (Youtube links to films as rationale for deletion of article?)

Now, if you wish to use your reputation and authority to support this kind of behavior, it is disappointing. But, it is, of course, your choice. Proofreader77 (talk) 07:00, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Dude. It is relevant because it emphasizes my position that the article should be deleted despite my agreement with it. "I agree with X, but X is opinion and doesn't belong in a Wikipedia article" is much stronger than "I disagree with X and therefore it shouldn't be in a Wikipedia article." As for authority, what? I am using no admin powers when I comment on an AfD. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:04, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Quote: "and appears to be here for the purpose of casting shame on the signatories. I think they should be ashamed, ..."

The opinion that the article is there to shame people for signing a petition who have signed the petition expressly to have their (famous) name associated with what the petition [says] is reason enough to negate your vote for logic error. lol

Now the fact that you don't see that the above is a problem, is problematic. Again I direct your attention to User:Baseball Bugs who is now on my radar (another blip has shown up). And the best thing I can tell you, if they are leaping to support you, perhaps you should ponder more carefully what you're doing. (smiling but not joking)

We may have to clarify our difference of policy position more formally at some point, but for now, of course, happy holidays. And free beer. lol Proofreader77 (talk) 07:23, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

And unfortunately you are now on my radar as well. Thanks for talking about me behind my back. You didn't even bother watching that clip, did you? It's Woody Allen making light of relations with 12-year-old girls. Sound familiar? That, along with marrying his stepdaughter, really makes his opinion credible, eh? In any case, the real problem with that petition is that it's undue weight. It's irrelevant. "Neutrality"? What are they using for brains? Switzerland is neutral in wartime. They're not neutral about criminal behavior, for heaven's sake. Unless it's your POV to try to make these actors look stupid. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:16, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Clique problem

Hello! Your submission of Clique problem at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Materialscientist (talk) 07:44, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I replied at T:TDYK. Rules are getting tougher and we require at least one cite covering every non-trivial paragraph. Harvard is fine if the "References" are linked to the "Notes", which is not the case for most of them. Regards. Materialscientist (talk) 08:21, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Your last sentence is gibberish to me. Harvard style citation explicitly means Author (year) in main text pointing to the references section without going through the notes. See Wikipedia:Citing sources#How to present citations and Wikipedia:Citing sources#Parenthetical reference. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:23, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, my mistake. I missed that you use double referencing, that is linking an author name in the text + "superscripted" numbered links. I don't know if such a mix of named and numbered refs is Ok with MOS (and commons sense). I can post as list of refs which are not superscripted, as I manually picked them off-line. Materialscientist (talk) 09:03, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
That mix is a deliberate stylistic choice. See, specifically, the sentence "Some articles use a combination of general references, citations in footnotes and shortened notes." in Wikipedia:Citing sources#How to present citations, which I take it you did not read when I linked you to it in my earlier reply. —David Eppstein (talk) 09:07, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Off course I didn't. I never use Harvard style on WP, but use it whenever possible in journal articles - there, such a mix is not allowed. Never mind - as long as I get to the source, its fine with me up to WP:FA level; I would prefer clicking once rather than twice though. Regards. Materialscientist (talk) 09:23, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Let me explain why I might sound harsh at T:TDYK (didn't mean it): (i) Yes, I hold you to higher standards; (ii) Yes, I was confused with refs - this is solved (iii) I believe DYK is a great tool to promote science, but, one has to leave a window for non-specialists. Even for a technical article, it is always possible to write an attractive hook and a popular introduction, leaving details to specialists. From my experience, this works (Oh dear I actually rewrote Gomboc though I know nothing about the topic). Sure, as a core DYK project member I try to improve every nomination, but it is all up to you - the present nom. is acceptable as it stands. Materialscientist (talk) 10:00, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

If I may interject myself, it may be easier to write a DYK hook interesting to the general public based on some application of the clique problem(s) rather than just its computational complexity. The last section from here discusses some applications. There are also some ghits for "clique problem protein", but I don't know much bioinfo to add anything about that. Pcap ping 10:36, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
The trouble is that the part about applications are in the parent article clique (graph theory) rather than in the article that has undergone the expansion, clique problem. DYK rules are that everything in a hook must be stated and sourced within the main article of the DYK. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:38, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

By the way

Is there a reason why maximum clique redirects to independent set? Pcap ping 10:38, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Historical reasons. It would be reasonable to change. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:38, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

File:Szilassi-polyhedron.gif listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Szilassi-polyhedron.gif, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. FASTILYsock(TALK) 09:21, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

File:Thue-number.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Thue-number.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. FASTILYsock(TALK) 09:24, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

File:Unit-disk-graph.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Unit-disk-graph.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. FASTILYsock(TALK) 09:26, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Pizza theorem

Hello! Your submission of Pizza theorem at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Dincher (talk) 00:03, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Clique problem

Updated DYK query On December 21, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Clique problem, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check ) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Materialscientist (talk) 11:42, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Pizza theorem

Updated DYK query On December 24, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Pizza theorem, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check ) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Materialscientist (talk) 03:43, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Pentavalent impurity

FYI. ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:32, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Elizabeth Keane

In History classes at school, Dr Keane was absent and the head of history said that Dr Keane had a meting with the Royal Historic Society. I have sources so restart the page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.6.214.13 (talk) 13:39, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Can you list souces that she is a Fellow of the RHS? That was the relevant question from the deletion. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:50, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
PS in case it isn't clear, I'm willing to restore it regardless. But unless you can add sources showing that she passes one of the criteria of WP:PROF, it would be likely to be deleted again. Fellow of the RHS might be enough, but some other membership category probably wouldn't. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:26, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
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