User talk:Mathsci/Archive 14

RFC guidelines

If you look at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct, allowing another section by the original creator of the RFC is allowed and in fact one of the suggested headings is even called "inside view". In addition, you should be wary of antagonizing Perusnarpk unnecessarily. You are in the right here, so there is no need to be overly aggressive about all this. More admins have weighed in on this issue, and I'm sure this will all be resolved soon. --C S (talk) 07:11, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I was unaware that new sections like this could be added, so I did this as a point of order. I do know that various administrators and two members of ArbCom are monitoring the situation. Please also see the latest addition by User:Perusnarpk to WP:BLPN. Cheers, Mathsci (talk) 07:32, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

The Plaintiff, in "distress", captures the sympathy of the judge and jury. Production of Trial by Jury with Sydney Granville, 1919

Although my distress was not quite as dramatic, I still appreciate your rising to my defense. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:57, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Notation for spaces of sections

Do you have any thoughts on selecting a different notation for spaces of sections in Differential geometry of surfaces? I notice that you are using $C^{\infty }(E)$ to refer to the space of sections of the vector bundle E, and $C^{\infty }(P,V)$ to refer to the space of smooth functions on P with values in V. I think the section might be clearer if you were to choose a notation that more clearly distinguishes between these two cases, perhaps $C^{\infty }(M,E)$ for the space of sections (although there is perhaps some slight risk of ambiguity even with this notation). Some authors use a script E for spaces of smooth sections, but the mathscr font is not available on Wikipedia. Some people use Γ, although that should perhaps be reserved for sheaves. siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 15:18, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Hello. Urghh ... I see what you mean. I'm just starting to prepare the section on forms on E, so this notation problem will recur. I don't normally like using Γ; I'll see if I can find a way of avoiding the clash of notation. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 15:48, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Liebracket.png

Image Copyright problem

Thank you for uploading Image:Liebracket.png. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the image. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. Sdrtirs (talk) 21:37, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

All you need to do there is put a free license tag on the image page. The image won't be deleted for a week. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:54, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I just copied the copyright tag from another image I created for the same article, if you look. I inadvertently forgot to specify the copyright when I uploaded it (oops). Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 22:08, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I removed a note that was put in the image caption on the article. The image description page looks fine now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:21, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I saw. Thanks. Mathsci (talk) 22:22, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Riemannian connections

Hi,

To continue with the discussion at user talk:Silly rabbit, I wanted to mention that one of the books you mentioned, namely Lawson and Michelsohn, calls the Levi-Civita connection "the canonical riemannian connection" on page 112, as opposed to riemannian connection defined on page 103 for an arbitrary bundle, for which torsion is not defined in general. Thus their usage is inconsistent with your proposal, namely calling the torsion free connection, the riemannian connection (as opposed to Levi-Civita).

I agree that there are many, many books on Riemannian geometry on the market. When I singled out the three books that I mentioned, I had in mind classic books whose updated editions have recently come out, proving that they are trend-setters in the sense that more people read them than other books. The book by Cheeger and Ebin that you mentioned is a great classic and both authors are my personal friends, but its recent re-issue does not contain any updates. Katzmik (talk) 09:37, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Katzmik. Yes, it's a fantastic book! I'm also quite a fan of all comparison geometry a la Gromov, whom you must also know. BTW I am not at present going to change anything in other articles to do with connections at the moment (there is a slight mess, but nothing serious). My present goal, with other editors, is to get Differential geometry of surfaces into a readable state for non-experts. It is always a pleasure to meet other mathematicians on wikipedia. Cheers, Mathsci (talk) 10:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. If you are interested in foundations please see my comment at Russell's paradox. Katzmik (talk) 10:50, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I have a somewhat peripheral question. If you would care to elaborate on the "slight mess" that you refer to, I can try to fix it. As one of the three editors (together with User:Geometry guy and User:Fropuff) responsible for writing the connection articles, I might be able to do things quickly and consistently. siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 14:55, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

can you e-mail me

I am in transit and may not reply immediately but would appreciate it, slrubenstein at yahoo dot com. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:59, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

An apology

I just noticed this, and I apologize immediately for it. I wasn't even aware I'd reverted your edit until someone had reverted mine, and I'm embarrassed that I pressed the wrong button. Again, I apologize for that: I have several tabs open at the moment, and was most likely going too fast. Very, very sorry. Acalamari 23:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your understanding. I think I need to take a break. Acalamari 23:31, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Phlegm

I am in transit and have spotty access to internet but I think that Phelgm bbears real investigation by other admins. Look at the history of his user page - it first comes into existence with a long list of articles he has deleted. His talk page is largely protests about his threats of deletion. Is he even an admin? Can he delete? At best this is a case of an extreme deletionist, at worst, there is something fishy going on and I think it would helpo for some other admins to check him out. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

User talk:Elonka/Questions

Although your reply to Elonka's answer is almost certainly on point, I deleted it, as the page is reserved to give Elonka a chance to answer questions. I think that should probably go in as another point at the RfC. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:00, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Personal attacks

There is no reason that anyone should have to be reminding you about this again - especially in relation to Elonka, you've been cautioned a number of times about refraining from personal attacks. Insulting someone's intelligence is completely inappropriate, much less actually calling another editor "stupid" [1]. Remember that personal attacks are not acceptable on Wikipedia, so please try to find a more civil way to present your viewpoints. Shell ^babelfish 00:01, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

"I'm sorry that Elonka is stupid." — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:03, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Shell Kinney is involved in an intense dispute with Mathsci (and myself) over Elonka's RFC and Recall. Mathsci was previously blocked, by Elonka, an action that has been questioned. That said, I hope all parties will refrain from calling other editors "stupid". Such remarks serve no purpose and are harmful to Wikipedia. I also hope that parties will not polarize their relationships along the lines of pro-Elonka and anti-Elonka. I look forward to working constructively with all of you. Thanks. Jehochman ^Talk 00:34, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Elonka's use of the words "lynch mob", unsupported by diffs in any way, to describe my activities on wikipedia seems to be an extremely offensive personal attack on me as an editor. Can you perhaps begin to understand that? After having made carefully sourced edits based on book reviews, off my own bat, and then having absurd "organised gang" accusations levelled at me by Elonka on Moreschi's talk page, I find it quite hard to find any other explanation for her behaviour, since she persists in her highly offensive accusations. Can you possibly understand what effect such baseless accusations have on an editor of long standing? Unlike you or Elonka, I spend most of my time on wikipedia adding quite tough mainspace encyclopedic content to this encyclopedia. You yourself have repeated Elonka's accusations on WP:AN/I (perhaps off-guard). Perhaps now that you have come onto my talk page, you can explain what evidence led you to believe I was a member of a "tag team"? I look forward to your reply. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 00:41, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I was blocked for just over an hour by WjBscribe (not Elonka). Mathsci (talk) 00:41, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

WJBScribe is a close associate of Elonka's. My mistake, sorry. Jehochman ^Talk 00:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

He mysteriously appeared on my talk page, along with Shell, during Elonka's mishandling of Koalorka's edits to European ethnic groups.Mathsci (talk) 01:01, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like tag team administrating. Same people, same agenda, appearing at multiple incidents, reinforcing each other, attacking any who disagree. Jehochman ^Talk 02:38, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

I would like to thank you for your tremendous contribution to differential geometry of surfaces and other geometry articles, and the many hours you must have spent on this. The fact of a small disagreement over a minor issue should not prevent people from working together. Katzmik (talk) 08:56, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure why you are so keen on adding unsourced discursive essays, which are often just small remarks. It would be extremely helpful if you could prepare a self-contained summary of section 7.2.1 in Berger's panorama on systoles on surfaces. There are are many more results on global differential geometry of surfaces to be found in standard texts which have not been mentioned in the article (e.g. what can be found in Willmore's elementary book on Differential Geometry). Mathsci (talk) 19:53, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced discursive essays certainly need to be edited, particularly if they can be reduced to short remarks. Let me know which pages you are referring to. As far as Berger's panorama is concerned, I find it admirable but I wish I had the time. I certainly did not mean the subsection on global geometry of surfaces to be in definitive form. Certainly a lot of material can be added, particularly if it is 50 years old or more. I personally would like to make one exception to the 50 year rule, namely Wente's tori. These examples of non-simply connected sufraces of constant mean curvature have several advantages: 1. they can easily be explained to a general audience; 2. they answer a long standing conjecture; 3. they really should have been discovered a century ago. Katzmik (talk) 08:48, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, the Panorama is certainly outdated as far as systoles of surfaces are concerned. The definitive asymptotic upper bounds are in the paper with Sabourau, while the definitive lower bounds are in the paper with Schaps and Vishne. Katzmik (talk) 08:51, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

parallel transport

Your current revision at differential geometry of surfaces is fine, except that I think it should mention explicitly that it is only in the case of surfaces that one can recapture the connection from the knowledge of the geodesics. Since after all this is an article about surfaces, their special features should be acknowledged explicitly. Katzmik (talk) 10:19, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Angle brackets

Please. Don't write

$<\Phi >\,$

when you mean

$\langle \Phi \rangle \,$

Michael Hardy (talk) 13:08, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

In html, you can use 〈x,y〉instead of <x,y> (although these may look nearly the same in some browsers). siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 15:47, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Oddly enough, I used \langle and \rangle in the TeX submission of my published work on this topic (omitted from the references). Michael Hardy missed some occurrences but I was grateful that he could make some of the displayed equations larger. Mathsci (talk) 07:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Pierre Samuel

I removed some rather surprising assertions from this article -- it occurred to me that you might be in a position to check whether they could possibly be true. Is he still alive, do you know? Richard Pinch (talk) 12:44, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll check up on him - I think he's still alive. The Scottish bio is probably correct, even about lady bodybuilders and friends of the earth. [2] I can confirm that the French can be as eccentric as the British, but in different ways. Cheers, Mathsci (talk) 16:15, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Glad to hear that! Thanks. Richard Pinch (talk) 17:11, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

User talk pages

A user can sometimes feel cornered on their own talk page. If you have an issue, you might use a noticeboard instead, and let uninvolved parties figure out what if anything needs to be done. I think users should be able to talk about Wikipedia to their professional groups and act as informal ambassadors. Unless there are incidents of outsiders being recruited to aid in edit wars or otherwise skew consensus, I think the community is likely to support activities that encourage participation and quality content creation. Jehochman ^Talk 22:30, 7 September 2008 (UTC)