62.98.166.30

Comments on recent additions

Some random comments on the recent editing at Principle of maximum entropy:
[1] summary "tutorial tone: "for example", "it is intuitive that", "which we did not have in the dice example", "should map to", "we can define", "if we knew anything of the geometry", etc."
[2] summary "per Wikipedia:Reverting#When_to_revert, reverted legitimate content without good faith effort to improve the article"

• When to revert says "If you see a good-faith edit that you believe lowers the quality of the article, make a good-faith effort to reword instead of just reverting it. "
  • I try to follow this advice, but from WP:BURDEN (which just deals with citations), I extend that to mean that an editor straying from the status quo or community opinion has the burden to convince. So I do make a good faith effort, unless I feel the fix would be too onerous, and it really is the original editor's responsibility to make the edit fit to print.
  • And it says "Similarly, if you make an edit that is good-faith reverted, do not simply reinstate your edit – leave the status quo up, or try an alternative way to make the change that includes feedback from the other editor."
• I note that the content has not been reliably sourced, so you should definitely do that.
• Be careful not to violate the rules here regarding copyright by cutting and pasting from somewhere.
• The source of my revert is guidance at MOS:PRONOUN, which says
  • "article should never refer to its editors or readers using I, my, we, us, our, or similar words"
  • I singled out a number of such phrases in my edit summary above.
  • As an exception, it allows for "the author's we found in scientific writing (We construct S as follows), though passive voice may be preferable (S is constructed as follows)", so you may find some justification for your edit in that.

What I've done
See User:Willondon#Not an improvement for what this edit summary often means to me. I've decided to revert again with the summary: "not an improvement per below; please revert or improve if you disagree", and I've started a discussion on the article talk page, giving the community (including yourself, of course) a chance to disagree with my reasoning. Please don't forget to source. Edits without sources are inherently very vulnerable to getting reversed. Happy editing. _signed, Willondon (talk) 19:53, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I wrote a page of general advice for covering mathematical topics on Wikipedia that may be helpful. XOR'easter (talk) 18:38, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

An excellent overview of the issues. As in many such "example" cases, I wondered if it hadn't been copied from a textbook or other reliable source. Which brings up what I see as a conundrum in these situations: if it says "Commutative means that changing the order of the operands does not change the result", and you want to add "for example, 3+5 is equivalent to 5+3", then technically, you have to engage in original research, or provide a reliable source and plagiarize without rephrasing. Of course, the sheer simplicity of the idea makes it something of a silly concern, but it's not clear how the concepts scale up. Oh, well. These are the puzzles that keep me up at night, so that all of the rest of life doesn't keep me up at night. Cheers. _signed, Willondon (talk) 19:17, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

---