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July 12

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{{ContemporaryArtStub}}

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the stub template and/or category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was delete


Despite its name, it's not a stub template - not even in the grading Stub-Sense type. As such, it 's desirable to have a less confusing name for it. Note that a different template with this name has been previously deleted, back in December last year. Rename - perhaps to something like {{ContemporaryArtNotice}} - if it's needed at all (it's only used on one page). Grutness...wha? 11:33, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.

{{Logic-stub}} / Category:Logic stubs or {{Mathlogic-stub}} / Category:Mathematical logic stubs

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the stub template and/or category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was keep both


Unproposed, but well-populated... in fact, at first glance, this seems a perfectly reasonable stub split. Problem is, this concatenates three related but separate fields, mathematics, philosophy, and computer science... and one of those already has a stub type - mathlogic-stub - which almost all of the stubs in Category:Logic stubs should go into. As to size, the maths one already has 200 stubs, so upmerging that doesn't seem sensible. I propose renaming and rescoping this to Category:Philosophical logic stubs and {{Phil-logic-stub}} (or {{Phillogic-stub}}? Why has the maths one not got a hyphen???) and restubbing the maths ones and the one or two computer science ones. Another possibility would be keeping it as a parent of the maths one and emptying out the ones better fitting in the subcategory, though making this more specifically for philosophical logic would be my favoured option. Grutness...wha? 06:49, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

UPDATE - after discussion belowm, the third option of a reverse merge has been suggested, which sounds just as good, if not better. That would mean the deletion of the {{Mathlogic-stub}} / Category:Mathematical logic stubs pairing, so it is also now listed. Grutness...wha? 00:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This would be better than getting into a math v philosophical logic split. Both groups have a lot to contribute in ways and in areas that the other WOULD NOT SUSPECT.Gregbard 01:12, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment that does not prevent having separate math-logic and phil-logic stub types. If there's a stub article that fits in both categories, just add both stub templates to it; this is common and unobjectionable. --Trovatore 20:57, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"would not suspect"? This sounds like original research to me. Geometry guy 13:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Leave alone I have been working on developing Category:Logic. This includes the creation of a Portal:Logic and a draft of WikiProject Logic. I have been filling in all the gaps of a project including identifying the stubs, and populating the category. I have been in communication with some people working on mathematics and mathematical logic, and some pov issues have developed concerning overlapping content, concepts, etc. The big issues about which field is more fundamental, which is the foundation or subfield of the other, etc. I'm sure everything will progress civilly. However, if we could ensure that all relevant points of view have their access to the overlapping content, it will be best for the outcome. Putting mathematical logic under logic would not sit well with the ml folks, I would not advise it anyway, although I could make a case. Putting all of logic under math logic would also not be appropriate. There are many articles in "mathematical" logic that could benefit from attention by experts in "philosophical" logic. Although, I find those labels not helpful. Logic is a major subfield of philosophy. The prefix "philosophical" is no more necessary than it would be for the Wikipedia:WikiProject Aesthetics which may have similar issues with the "art" articles. We can also see the sub headings under Category:Philosophy stubs are consistent with this stub category.
I had not seen any process for creating stubs, and I also have not seen a process for any "approval" of the creation of a Wikipedia:WikiProject Logic. At this point is there a hesitation? There is a substantial draft at User:Chalst/WikiProject Logic proposal. Please advise, and let the stub category be for now. Gregbard 08:09, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is no problem with creating a WikiProject Logic, at least not as far as I am concerned. When you do, using {{Wikiproject}}, you will notice that it advises you not to create any stub templates without first proposing them at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals, as these are the people who actually deal with, use, and coordinate the stub system across Wikipedia. The same information is given at Wikipedia:Stub, at the top of the canonical list of stub types, and at the top of most stub categories. In fact, most Wikiprojects do not need stub types at all - they are far better off with talk page banner templates, with which they can grade all articles which fall within their project, not just stubs. Examples of these templates are {{WPBeatles}} and {{WPBiography}}. And when you consider that stub templates are not used by individual specific projects but are used by wikipedia editors in general, it becomes necessary not to have two conflicting stub types. We now have two clearly overlapping stub types. As I pointed out, most of the stubs that you have added to your new Category:Logic stubs should be in the existing, longstanding, and approved stub category Category:Mathematical logic stubs, which is used by both WikiProject Stub sorting and editors of mathematical logic articles. Contacting them would have almost certainly made you aware of the fact that such a stub type existed (and presumably before considering a new WikiProject you must have contacted other editors who work on logic articles), and proposing the stub type, as advised, would have guaranteed that you'd have known it. Creating a new stub category which overlaps considerably with an existing one creates a major headache for stub sorters, and also for editors looking for articles to expand within their specialist fields. As such, keeping both is impractical and counterproductive - leaving it alone is not, if you'll pardon the term, logical. Grutness...wha? 11:33, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well if that is the way it has to be then put all the math logic stubs into the new logic stubs category. The fact that the math logic category is "existing, longstanding" , etc. is what we call in logic an "appeal to tradition." It's not a good reason to do anything. I'm trying to organize around the concepts here. I'll go through the approval process for the stub category, but I'm afraid I may lose track of them if they are deleted or moved or whatever. I created the category distinct for a reason (a logical reason btw).
My whole point in moving forward with development the logic category is dealing with what I see as a math-centric wikipedia whereas many logical concepts are concerned. Many of these concepts are shared (like theorem), and up until recently the logical aspect had been absent or mitigated. So these stubs can progress with attention from either side under the more general "logic" category.
Any help would be appreciated. Gregbard 12:28, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"Appeal to tradition" may not be traditional in logic, but it is traditional in Wikipedia. Geometry guy 13:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've certainly no objection to it working the other way around with the deletion of {{mathlogic-stub}} and its category, a reverse merger, if you like. In many ways, that would make more sense - the only reason I didn't suggest that in the first place was the size of Category:Mathematical logic stubs. Even so, a combined stub category of around 300 articles is not oversized. I've amended the nomination here accordingly. BTW - the proposal page is only for stub types that have not yet been created, and adding comments on this stub type there will only split and confuse the discussion process of it. Grutness...wha? 00:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate this very much. My concern now, is that it may seem like stepping on toes, etc. The WikiProject Mathematics has been wildly successful. They are responsible for the progress heretofore. However, there is a math-centric bias, and this re-categorizing will be a long term benefit. I just hope that the philosophy people will make anything close to a showing as the math people in expanding these.

Be well,

Gregbard 01:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that merging them is a good idea. Mathematical logic is actually pretty different from the others -- and keeping it apart makes it easier to work with. The mathlogic-stub template is already pretty large, and if the WikiProject Mathematics creates some of the articles on the requested list it will grow larger yet. I'll toss my hat in with the above 'vote' to leave alone.
CRGreathouse (t | c) 03:18, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Opposed to mathlogic stub type rename/deletion. There are currently 150-200 article pages listed in the Mathematical logic stub category, and there are too few users/editors who are competent to edit or even review them, based on how long some of those articles have been stubs. Mathematical logic is a field requiring specialized mathematical knowledge at a philosophic/theoretic level to understand the often-cryptic language used, and from the standpoint of reviewing professors, mathematicians and math majors, deleting or renaming the category only serves to hide from them the included article stubs as candidates for improvement. These much-needed improvements include stub expansion to make those articles more accessible to Wikipedia users with less exposure to a college-level mathematics major requiring specialized emphasis in the field, a group that includes the vast majority of Wikipedia users.

I would oppose any Wikipedia action or policy that has a consequence of making any mathematics but especially any advanced or theoretical mathematics less accessible to the general using public as it would be against WP:ENC. The only possible benefit to come from article hiding on cat rename/deletion is that it would be easier for some of us to plant unverifiable information and original research on Wikipedia when it would be more appropriate to submit supported original research to an appropriate wiki journal at http://academia.wikia.com. Hotfeba 17:55, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that's what I was trying to say above when I wrote "leave alone". CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:37, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The majority of the articles in this stub type seem to actually be "set theory stubs", but that isn't a stub class so they are in the more general mathematical logic stub type. Very few of these articles are of the "general logic" persuasion; most are clearly mathematical. If there is desire for a logic stub type, there is no reason the few articles that overlap couldn't change type or be double-tagged. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:22, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, keep mathlogic-stub. This is just a maintenance stub category. It brings mathematical logic stubs to the attention of some of those likely to improve them. It decides nothing about the subsequent categorization of such articles. In other words, it excludes nothing. Charles Matthews 19:53, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep the logic and mathlogic stub and create a philologic stub. There is too significant of an overlap between the works of philosophical and mathematical logicians to simply segregate them entirely (e.g., the latter have published several proofs on the number of modalities in various systems of modal logic, which is a creation of the former).
  • Delete math, keep logic in the interest of a coherent project at WikiProject Logic. If we get into a math and phil split, it will not be helpful. They should be under one. Creation of a phil-logic cat will just deepen the divide. Both sides need to broaden their attention to the whole logic category.
This is consistent with the organization of other wikiprojects and their stub categories. Gregbard 12:41, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As I pointed out, few articles in this stub class are "logic" articles - they are mostly set theory articles. Set theory is part of mathematical logic for histroical reasons, but not part of "logic" in the broader sense. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:47, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The territorial attitude does not help the articles. It is not your place to say what is the "philosophical" logic. It's all logic, it all benefits from attention from both sides. This is an attempt to organize the content appropriately. I learned set theory in the philosophy department, so please stop it. The "math" people are just going to have to broaden their attention. Why is that such a problem? The divide is not helping. Gregbard 23:12, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is not for you, Gregbard, to be telling us, set theorists and other mathematical logicians, to what we should be paying attention. You are not our boss. This is a volunteer effort. Personally, I want to have nothing to do with "philosophical logic". As far as I am concerned, it is a waste of time and a pseudo-science. JRSpriggs 02:15, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There you have it. Does the word interdisciplinary mean anything to anyone around here? Gregbard 02:20, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
G: I don't know what exactly you mean by "logic" with no qualifier. Pure set theory is one of the four parts of mathematical logic. It is not a field of philosophy. You may learn it in a philosophy department, just as you may learn philosophy of mathematics in a math department, but it is still mathematics. As I said, a second stub type for logic stubs is fine - but most of the things classified as mathematical logic stubs don't belong anywhere else. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:27, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I propose to remove mathlogic stub category. Splitting certain articles like domain of discourse and predicate between the discplines of math, philosophy, computer science and linguistics leads to improvished articles and more stubs! Giving a more rounded, inter-disicplinary interpretation of such terms would definitely improve readability. Many of the basic terms like proposition, theorem, relation have in fact been borrowed from philosophy or linguistics when formal logic was being set up. Having separate mathematics articles for these terms tend to lead to definitions that are too formal and cannot be understood by the general audience. Putting these terms in the context of language in general would make the article more accessible.

I do not think that we need to fear mathematicians cannot find the mathematical logic stubs to edit. As for as I know, mathematical logicians are a distinct lot. They are particularly concerned about their subject and interested in philosophy and philosophical logic in general. I expect if they were to search for logic stubs to expand, they would definitely check out logic (if logic were to become the broad umbrella once mathematical logic is removed as i propose), if they cannot find their articles in mathematics. I do not think there is a worry.

In fact, not all mathematicians recognize the work of logicians as worthwhile mathematics. To see things in a positive light, I think the work of logicians have grown sufficiently large to form a recognizable discipline of its own. However, the work of many logicians are motivated by philosophy and having a broad category of logic would be to place all these work together. Interested mathematicians will still come and visit us.

I give an example. Plurality of logics is not well-managed now. Most articles just put some rules there which doesn't really make sense. If we recall, many logics were invented to provide a language to solve paradoxes in philsophy. Placing these logics (and their rules) in the context of these paradoxes would definitely improve the articles beyond stub size and make the logic be more sense. Then basic mathematical facts like soundness or monoticity can also be put there.

The last thing that a general logic category would be good for is that there would be a place to put the philosophy of logic articles. For example, logic construed as a methodology of mathematics and the epistemology of logic. If there were still the math logic category then these things would just be jumbled in the philosophy of math pages.DesolateReality 11:22, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Little of that comment has to do with a stub sorting method. Changing the name of the stub type doesn't make the article more or less interdisciplinary. If the desire is to move the "general logic" stubs to Category:Logic stubs then it will be necessary to create Category:Set theory stubs as well. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:59, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To illustrate, I went though Category:Mathematical logic stubs and moved all the "logic" articles to Category:Logic stubs. There are 126 articles left, and these are on mathematical, rather than logical, topics. I don't mind having the logical articles indexed as logic stubs, but it would make no sense for these remaining articles to be called "logic". — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:34, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment in response to DesolateReality As I mentioned far, far above, it is not a problem to have two different stub templates on the same article. When a stub article is both mathematical logic and philosophical logic, by all means give it both templates. But it doesn't make sense to throw articles that are mathematics, plain and simple, into a stub category with non-math articles. --Trovatore 17:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Linguistic digression The point here is that "mathematical logic" is not really logic. It's a collection of mathematical fields that have been historically associated with logic, and in which logical questions tend to come up more frequently than they do in the rest of mathematics. "Philosophical logic" is a back-formation (like "snow skiing") that can be useful in contexts where people might be using "logic" as a shorthand for "mathematical logic". --Trovatore 17:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep mathlogic. There would be no argument at all here if it were not for the historical anachronism that this branch of mathematics is called "mathematical logic". It is not a branch of logic, although there is a significant overlap. Gregbard seems to be on a mission here to transform the way that logic is viewed. This is not Wikipedia's purpose: here we report, we do not innovate. Geometry guy 13:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
IF there is an elimination of the mathematical logic stub type, then it would be logical for mathematicians working on "mathematical logic" to either create sections in those stubs that reflect the precise syntactic definitions typically required for mathematical rigor in mathematical proofs of logical properties within formal systems, or generate new articles X (mathematics) for every term X that requires a mathematically precise definition.
Examples would include Theorem and Theorem (mathematics), Interpretation and Interpretation (mathematics), and Model and Model (mathematics).
Generally, semantic arguments fail to provide sufficient rigor necessary for avoiding paradoxical results or adequately demonstrating the reaching of results in a satisfactory mathematical fashion. A careful cover-to-cover analysis of Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy ISBN 0415096049 would be instructive. Philosophically, paradoxical results may be interesting or even amusing; mathematically, they are absolutely frustrating or career-ending. In mathematics, a proof is only worth its ability to arrive at a reasoned conclusion by avoiding the semantic sleight-of-hand that may be permissable in a philosophical discourse on logic, where terms may be allowed to vary in meaning or remain undefined until it is fully necessary to define them for the sake of the argument. In mathematics, this delayed precision would merely open the door to allegations of inadequacy in the demonstration of an annotated proof. It can be hardly expected that a movement to make articles less "math-centric" would sufficiently explicate the precision required by mathematicians working with logic to make generalized Wikipedia articles usable for their work as researchers or educators.
As for the problem of "mathematical logic" being a collection of concepts mostly involving set theory, this is true in that any rigorous set theory (math) is generally considered to require a basis (math) in formal systems (math) using syntactic proofs (deductive logic), or it is likely to be rejected as not sufficiently rigorous for review. For any college-educated mathematician, considering a new set theory without also including syntactic mathematical logic expressed as a formal system as its basis would be like reviewing the classical literature canon without a concurrent inclusion of subject-verb agreement and paragraph formation: possible but potentially and most likely worthless. Hotfeba 00:09, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]


  • Comment The notion expressed more than once here is that "mathematical logic" isn't logic. That just isn't reasonable on the face of it. There may be some dissertation to be had from that view, but for the purpose of organizing an encyclopedia that view is obviously not appropriate. There is no field titled "logical mathematics." That is NOT because of a historical or traditional error. There is no 'mission' here, just a bunch of drama queens quite frankly. The only 'mission' is getting information about logic out to the public because the public needs it more than ever. I approached you guys diplomatically with a significant lapse in the theorem article, you begrudgingly included the material after much massaging of the language. It became obvious to you guys that this same type of lapse will cascade through 'your' precious category. Folks, I hate to say it but I was absolutely correct about theorem. Furthermore, your stellar WikiProject Mathematics appears to agree with ME about the rest as well:
Set theory: "It is (along with logic and the predicate calculus) one of the axiomatic foundations for mathematics"
also under Portal:Mathematics: The "foundations" category contains all the topics within the field of logic (which you guys just claim really are not).
It really is time to work with different disciplines. I find this whole exchange astonishing. I didn't propose any change to this stub situation, but now that it has come to a head we should do the right thing for the Logic WikiProject as a whole.
Perhaps we should rename it "Logic and Foundations of Mathematics" just to make you guys happy or;
have two stubs for mathematical logic and "non-mathematical" logic since that's the way you guys see things and that's all that really matters. Hey if that's what it takes WHATEVER.
I didn't come into this with a big attitude, but after seeing all the territorial backbiting and drama about upcoming edit wars etc, I'm left unimpressed with the level of ability to collaborate with anyone who doesn't see things the same way.
It would be nice if you guys had a religious conversion and just put he logical component in these articles YOURSELVES. But you could barely bring yourselves to admit the point on theorem. I think the point really did go over some heads. Now this proposal from Hofeba is to disintegrate these articles even further. Please see WikiProject Integration for why that would be a bad idea.
Be well, I hope we can work together. Gregbard 01:57, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There is no need to be so polemical. The only subject of this discussion is the stub tags. If you agree to having two stub tags, one for mathematical logic and one for "logic", I think everyone else does as well. Perhaps the discussion could be closed? — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:01, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.
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