User talk:Jitse Niesen/Archive15

RQ

See daviddoria's talk page for the rest of the discussion.

I just thought that it is nice when you are looking for RQ that you can find an algorithm that will do RQ, not QR. It's fine if we just make a section about RQ in the QR article, is that ok with you?daviddoria (talk) 21:18, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Would you mind looking over what I did to RQ decomposition? daviddoria (talk) 15:08, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

DO NOT remove other users' comments

... as you did here Zero sharp (talk) 22:06, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

My guess is that this is an example of the edit-conflict bug. In certain circumstances the server gets confused and doesn't issue an edit-conflict exception when it ought to. --Trovatore (talk) 00:15, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, I did not intend to remove Michael's comment. This happened as follows:

1. I checked my watchlist which includes the article continuous function, saw that its talk page was changed, and clicked on the diff link
2. Then I was distracted for an hour. During this time, Michael came along and added his comment.
3. Then I looked at the diff and decided that I wanted to reply. The edit link brings up the revision from before Michael added his comment, I added my comment, and saved, unintentionally removing Michael's comment.

The software does not give a warning, so what I should have done is to check whether the talk page was edited in the mean time. However, I forgot; and embarrassingly, this is not the first time that it happened.

Zero sharp, thanks for fixing it. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:37, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, when I think about it, that can't be right. The edit link would have brought up the current revision, including Michael's comment. So I'm afraid I don't know what happened. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:26, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Hey Jitse - sorry if I was brusque, I didn't mean to come off that way. Zero sharp (talk) 22:40, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry about it, it doesn't bother me. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:59, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Arithmetic Functions

Hi Jitse. Thanks for your comments on Gandalf61's talk page. I can see now that copying things (almost) word for word is against copyright rules. I thought that by referencing it with a blue box it would make it okay, is that not so?  Δεκλαν Δαφισ   (talk)  12:14, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

No. If you copy word for word, you have to put quotation marks around it. If you paraphrase, you do not. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:01, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Nasty Admins

Jitse, if I were to want to bring an admin's incivility to attention. What would I have to do? I've made changes to an article which go against the admin's personal opinion, but I have backed it up with WP guidelines and common sense. He has resorted to insults and name-calling, saying that I am "pathetic" and "obsessed". The admin in question is Physchim62, the article is International System of Units. The important page is the discussion page. His edit summary for his comment about 18 edits was "pathetic".  Δεκλαν Δαφισ   (talk)  14:09, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The discussion article seems to have grown greatly since I wrote the last post. Basically posts by US editors not wanting British spellings (please feels free to read the page to see). The nasty comment in question was "What you mean is that it's taken you eighteen edits to do that (plus one bot edit to restore the interwiki links that you happened to delete along the way). That is not anything to do with WP:ENGVAR, it's simple obsession, and I feel personally sorry for you. Physchim62" His edit summary was "pathetic". I don't ask, or expect, that you get directly involved, but I want to know where to report this. This is not admin behaviour. I mean, even if I were to be obsessed (which I'm not: just read my reply to his comment), so what?! Is wanting to get Wikipedia, and one's posts on Wikipedia, up to a high level pathetic?  Δεκλαν Δαφισ   (talk)  22:02, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you again. He has since apologised for his nasty comments, but I would still like to know what to do if admins start being nasty and start throwing thier weight about.  Δεκλαν Δαφισ   (talk)  22:31, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether the user is an admin or not; all users are supposed to be civil in our treatment of each other. You can try Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts to report incivility. However, in my experience the most productive approach is to ignore it.

If an admin uses his administrative privileges (e.g., deleting or protecting pages) incorrectly, you can report it at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:14, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

conicl combination

Sorry, I cut and paste the formulae from convex combination and forgot to remove an extra condition. Twri (talk) 14:39, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Re deletion of "Alexander R. Povolotsky's problem 1"

Please see my thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page. Apovolot (talk) 02:12, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

less manifold destiny

Hi, Concerning your recent deletion at manifold destiny, I would like to bring up again the possible deletion of the section on reactions from the mathematical community. Personally I find this section inane. I have objections to just about every item there. To give an example: Birman is in the same department as John Morgan. The tensions between the Morgan-Tian team, on the one hand, and Yau, on the other, are well-known. This alone would be enough to make Birman's comment irrelevant. Furthermore, she is certainly a respected mathematician, but her exceptional notability is yet to be established. In addition, her comments about peer review and refereeing miss the point entirely, in my view. The whole point is that technically speaking, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Yau's announcement that his students were the first to publish a complete proof. This was, in fact, correct. If there is anybody who knows anything about the subject, it is Yau himself, and so no objections could be raised to the publication of their long paper on the grounds that it was not refereed properly. I have saved my main objection for last course: Birman was once president of AMS and surely is well-connected there. That the Notices should publish a letter from Birman proves no more than a petition at a blog page. Katzmik (talk) 14:17, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll comment on the talk page if I find time. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:02, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Infinitesimal calculus

Hi,

As per your deletion at limit of a function: what is wrong with having a disambiguation page under "see also"? An alternative would be to include both calculus and non-standard calculus. Katzmik (talk) 10:58, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it's better to include them both if you think both are useful. Feel free to put them back in. I'm not sure calculus is useful since it's already linked prominently in the first sentence, but others may differ. I should perhaps have thought a bit more about it before deleting the link; I assumed it was a mistake. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:02, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the clarification. Actually there is a bit of a controversy going on over the limit pages right now, so it is perhaps best to refrain from edits at the moment. Katzmik (talk) 09:52, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia's Expert Peer Review process (or lack of such) for Science related articles

Hi - I posted the section with the same name on my talk page. Could you take part in discussion ? Thanks ARP Apovolot (talk) 21:32, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

User: Shotwell suggested (on my talk page) "I would endorse a WP:EXPERTADVICE page that outlined the wikipedia policies and goals for researchers in a way that enticed them to edit here in an appropriate fashion. Perhaps a well-maintained list of expert editors with institutional affiliation would facilitate this sort of highly informal review process. I don't think anyone would object to a well-maintained list of highly-qualified researchers with institutional affiliation (but then again, everyone seems to object to something)."

We could start with that if you would agree ... - could you help to push his idea through Wikipedia bureaucracy ?

In my view people nominated as "expert reviewers" should be willing not to hide under the veil of anonymity. They should be able to demonstrate some level of the verifiable accomplishment / recognition in the domain of professional science . BTW, I do not see any reason why the anonymity of editors on Wikipedia is considered to be a "good thing". Above is my general opinion, so please don't take my statement personally. There is obviously a choice given for everyone in Wikipedia either to act "in open" or to hide behind meaningless assumed pseudonym and I accept this situation. BTW, I do understand current Wikipedia concept that in order to produce good Wikipedia science article, one does not need to be a professional scientist ... - that is fine with me ... But I propose to have (at least optionally) ability to review/qualify such article by the professional scientist. Cheers, Apovolot (talk) 15:23, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

uniform continuity

Hi, an interesting problem emerged at the talk page: can one give a pointwise definition of uniform continuity, say on R, in terms of some larger extended domain? See talk page there. Katzmik (talk) 09:51, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Kevin Houston

Hi, Thanks for your invaluable quote, see new page above. Your edit at ghosts is great. Matthews does not seem to happy with the page--you can comment at his talk page where we had a brief exchange. Katzmik (talk) 12:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

PrimeFan - Del arte case

The evidence here is overwhelming that these are all the same person. I'm unblocking User:Del arte, which seems to be the real master, to time served with a warning not to sock again. I advise interested parties to watch the IP range and articles related to this case. I am also renaming Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/PrimeFan to Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Del arte and retagging the socks. This decision was made in consultation with other checkusers and a member of the arbcom. — Rlevse • Talk • 17:11, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping me informed. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I notified all who commented on my talk page about this. — Rlevse • Talk • 11:10, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

"redacting" personal attacks?

Thank you for your message to my talkpage; I did not "redact" a comment, I removed a personal attack by one editor on another, one which had already been removed once (the editor being referred to) and which had been reverted. This I did within my competence as an administrator and noted the purpose for the removal in the edit summary. As the original author had previously re-instated the edit with the attack unchanged I concluded there was no benefit of requesting that they reconsider their choice of phrasing - which, since it was an opinion on the person holding (a) certain viewpoint(s) rather than the merits of the viewpoints itself, would have been unlikely to achieve the standards of civil discussion that are expected of editors.
Further, as the removal of the uncivil comment was to defuse or reduce a sensitive situation, it would appear to me that highlighting that content was removed in an area may pique the interest of other parties, in turn leading them to review the history and discover the nature of the removed content; that is, the personal attack. It may be, on that basis, that your "note" in the body of the talkpage may be considered as underpinning the comment by bringing notice to it and - unless you can find one or more reliable independent third party sources to substantiate the claim - I ask that you consider removing that edit from the text.
I do not edit physics, or any of the science related, articles (as I prefer to leave that to the enthusiasts and knowledgeable) but generally do admin work including removing vandalism, disruptive editing, personal attacks, and the like. In all cases I do not note within the text that I have redacted the comments made by editors in violation of policy; it would be asinine to direct attention to inappropriate content, otherwise it would be perverse to remove it - and I am astonished that someone with your experience should think otherwise. I should be grateful if you could point me to the policy or guideline that notes that evidence of disruptive editing should remain on the effected page; I believe I have missed it. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:03, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Nekhoroshev

this is to confirm that Nikolai Nekhoroshev passed away 18 November 2008 at around 2pm the official obituary will be published in the Russian math journal "Uspekhi" Sadovski (talk) 18:11, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

"Without discussion"

"Michael's unblock without discussion was very very wrong and, notwithstanding the huge respect I have for the work he does, I will support Orderinchaos in bringing it to the ArbCom if it happens again." The key words here are "without discussion".

I agree that the key words are "without discussion". The block was done without discussion, while a superficial appearance was created that there was discussion. The notice purporting to explain the reason for the block was put at the bottom of a discussion. I read the discussion and said that it doesn't add up to a reason to block someone. Then I was told that the reason for the block was not related to the discussion. My objection to the block is that it was done without discussion. Why is my unblock objected to on those grounds when the same reason—that it was without discussion—is not considered valid grounds to object to the block? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:29, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

The difference is that when an admin unblocks (or, more generally, undoes any admin action) he goes against the wishes of the blocking administrator. In this particular case, you went against the blocking admin and the two other admins that had commented on the unblock request (Ice Cold Beer and FisherQueen). You might not have noticed it, but opinions have hardened considerably on this. See for instance Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sarah Palin protection wheel war#"Wheel warring". -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 22:00, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Boubaker polynomials

Dear friend. Please let the first refernce be deleted because according to WP Notability rules : Extracted fron WP RULES For Polynomials and Special functions :

NOTABILITY RULES IN WP:

[1]. IHave they been the main subject of (at least two) published papers, or chapters in a book, or an entire book about this sequence? 
[2]. Are they cited in MathWorld or PlanetMath ? 
[3]. Are they cited in in the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS)? 

Do they have a demonstrated (and/or) published expression?

As the polynomials, on which we are working fulfill these rules; there is no need to refer to the polynomials author works! is there !? Luoguozhang (talk) 22:16, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

你好。It looks like you may be misunderstanding what references are for. Notability is not the only rule, and it's not even the most important rule here. One of the really important rules is Verifiability, which basically means that everything we write in Wikipedia must be derived from published papers or books. For instance, the article on Boubaker polynomials starts by saying that they were introduced to solve a heat equation. Where can we check that this is true? In the original paper. That's why there needs to be a reference there.

On the other hand, references are not needed to satisfy the Notability rule. For that, it is enough that the reference exists; it does not need to be mentioned in the article. That is also why Plclark on your talk page says that he'd rather have the links to PlanetMath deleted. I agree with him, the links do not add anything to the article. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:34, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

That is Ok, but when the WP cites planetMath as a reliable, independent and verifiable source, you can not say the opposite and one can cite it normally. All the other similar articles cite refernces ... this is what one can easily notice .. 41.226.92.18 (talk) 15:09, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Boubaker polynomials

Thank you for hints and advice... please feel free to correct and enhance the paper. Thank you for all. Luoguozhang (talk) 15:12, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

de Sitter relativity

Thankyou for your involvement in recent issues. I have merged Talk:De Sitter invariant theories‎ into Talk:De Sitter invariant special relativity‎. Delaszk (talk) 14:07, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I hadn't realized that there was another talk page. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 14:29, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Branch point

Dear Jitse,

What you said on Silly rabbit's talk is wrong. A holomorphic function can have a branch point. For instance, 0 is a branch point of the function taking any complex number to its 1.5th power (just a random example from the top of my head).

Topology Expert

See article on holomorphic function (I think that we are following different definitions here). It depends on whether you want 'smoothness' or just differentiable. That function is certainly not twice differentiable, but it is one-time differentiable.

I think that if you require smoothness, then you are right (no smooth function can have a branch point) (I have not verified it completely though). But what silly rabbit wrote: the function mapping a complex number to its 1.5th power is not a function; is wrong. Anyway, I am still not convinced that my definition is wrong. I am waiting for silly rabbit's response...

Topology Expert (talk) 19:15, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

See exactly where in the article on holomorphic function? Did you read the second sentence in that article? Any function that is once complex-differentiable is smooth (infinitely often complex-differentiable). I suggest you get yourself a text book on complex analysis, read that, and return to the article on branch point afterwards. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 21:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, what I have said is wrong and I agree that I have never really learnt complex analysis properly. I am sorry for this. But you don't have to phrase your comment in that way. I am very offended and would appreciate an apology.

Topology Expert (talk) 21:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

TE I think you have misunderstood Jitse here. I can assure you he is a very nice guy and I am sure that he meant no personal attack, nor did he mean to offend. I think he was trying to suggest that you shouldn't try to edit outside of what you know, especially not without consulting appropriate reference works. This is good advice. Paul August ☎ 21:55, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

A question

Dear colleague J. Niesen

I am K. Duvvuri from Indian Univesity, I am working on Special Functions. I saw your works and contributions..

Please can you help me (help or hints) concerning two items:

- the existence of an exponential generating fonction to the Boubaker polynomials (see page :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boubaker_polynomials)

- the eventual ANALYTICAL expression of the reoots of these polynomials. Please answer here, in my talk page or in my email: [removed]

Thank you for help. Duvvuri.kapur (talk) 09:56, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Real number

This is repeat vandalism from a single long-term vandal -- if you don't semiprotect, he comes back and does fake move vandalism (making a token edit and leaving a vandalistic edit summary). NawlinWiki (talk) 18:26, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. I trust that with your experience you know best. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 22:10, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Mohamed El Naschie

Could you please explain why you restored the article Mohamed El Naschie that I deleted some months ago? Cheers, Jitse Niesen (talk) 21:56, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Honestly? I have no clue. I was on Wikipedia for a few minutes that day, and I don't remember undeleting that article - I'm sorry if I've caused offense, but I have no recollection of doing that. I'm going to change my password right now, just in case. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 16:53, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Keyi's edits at P. M. Pu

The fellow is giving me a hard time there. Could you please comment? Katzmik (talk) 11:00, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Sure. But it seems to me that Keyi is making some valid points. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 19:27, 30 December 2008 (UTC)