User talk:APH/Archive 1

Important pubs in medicine

Hello APH. You're doing an admirable job in trying to collate all important publications in a large number of fields. I am unhappy, however, with the links you're creating. Let me explain: you edited radiology, linking to an as-yet unfilled section in List of publications in medicine. This does not add anything to the information on the page. I can only guess that your intention is that someone will - one day - fill this section. My view is that until then, you shouldn't link to them.
Many articles have their "breakthrough publications" mentioned in the article body. Diabetes mellitus, for example, contains good references to a number of major publications in the understanding of that disease. I try to always find correct references for major scientific discoveries - they add legitimacy and informative value to articles.
Please do not take this as disapproval of your project. My only objection is against linking to empty sections. JFW | T@lk 09:07, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hi Jfdwolff,

Indeed, I'm putting these links, hopping that someone will add such publications.

The reasons that I'm forced to do it is that I don't have to ability to add the proper publications in every one of these fields.

I also not very thrilled from putting a link to an empty section.

What do you think of the following idea?

In every list of publications, I'll put the proper subtopics, many of them will be empty.

I'll put reference to the section in the list only for full sections.

In the rest of the topics, I'll put a reference to the list itself. That way people will not get empty section but a full list. Those interested will be able to fill the section and update the links. APH 07:29, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I'm sorry again for not talking on your "talk" page. Perhaps removing the HTML anchor tag will stop the spamblocker from engaging every time someone tries to save it.
You see, I'm in favour of a list of publications in medicine, but I also feel that excessive links cause clutter. Could you agree to a general link from the medicine page, and then only section links from those subfields where articles have been added? I still think this is the best way in the long run.
The list of publications is likely to get very long - every field as a large number of very influential papers. You might start off by looking at diabetes mellitus, where I've added some seminal articles to the "history" section. In principle, these can simply be copied to the list of publications! JFW | T@lk 15:01, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'll try to take care of my talk page. I think that links to the empty sections are the most important links. They are necessary to direct people that familiar with the field to the list, hoping that one of them will contribute to it. Why do you consider links from these topics (to the list and not to empty section) problematic?

I saw the list of papers at diabetes mellitus. I think that they should be added but personally I cannot say why they are important or what is their thesis. Can you take care of that?

The list can be quite long but the separation to topics allows quick navigation. Take a look at list of publications in computer science. This is the oldest and longest list and one can navigate in it quite easily. APH 09:44, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm getting more convinced that a list spanning all of medicine is inexhaustive. Medicine has been undergoing much more changes in that last 50 years than computer science has under the last 20. Any list of publications would be very long.

I understood from the beginning that in your view, "links to the empty sections are the most important links". I disagree with this. Links are there to provide information, no to solicit it (unless it is a red link like this one).

I can't promise when I'll sort out the diabetes links. JFW | T@lk 09:53, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Red links might be a good solution. Is there a way to create a red link to non-existing section in existing list? Computer science is much younger than all the other field in the list and that alone will probably lead to a lower number of important publications. I think that the more publications in a field, the more important is the list. Think of someone with some background in a field, wanting to learn about unfamiliar sub field. Such a list will be valuable to him.

By the way, can you write now in my talk page? APH 10:03, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

APH, I still believe such a list is important, but you'll have to be very selective about what goes on it.

Red links to sections are probably impossible.

Your talk page is still broken. You may have to delete some old comments that engage the spam filter (especially the [A] tag). JFW | T@lk 10:21, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I deleted my talk page contents. Writing there should be ok. Let's take some time to think about a solution to the links. APH 11:10, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It works

Hi APH, thanks for refactoring your talk page... JFW | T@lk 03:49, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I thought about the empty sections. The good thing with that problem is that it is actually temporary. We can solve it by starting adding publications to the list. I'll add the publications you mentioned as a start, without describing them. Do you know where more such publications can be found? Do you know other wikipedians that will be interested in contributing to the list? APH 05:30, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ugh, User:Ksheka may inform you of cardiology publications, and I will think about other possibilities. I agree that the problem is temporary, but it will be a tall order to identify key publications; this requires expertise. The discovery of AIDS or SARS, for example, have been the collaborative results of many different articles in numerous journals.

A resource that you may like is http://www.whonamedit.com - a site dedicated to medical eponyms. This site only mentions key publications of important doctors who have lent their name to a disease, but it may guide us in working on the medical publications list. JFW | T@lk 06:38, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I hope that I'll be able to talk with Ksheka and start filling the sections soon. APH 07:00, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Diabetes papers should go under endocrinology. There is no reference provided to the work by Frederick Banting and Charles Best; a quick Google showed:

Banting FG, Best CH, Collip JB, Campbell WR, Fletcher AA. Pancreatic extracts in the treatment of diabetes mellitus. Canadian Medical Association Journal 1922;12:141-146.

This needs inclusion in the diabetes article as well. The Himsworth reference in also crucial. JFW | T@lk 08:52, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I added these papers to the list. Are all of them important? Can you write a short description of them? APH 06:17, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The historical section of the DM article explains: Banting and Best proved the existence of the hypothetical pancreatic substance termed "insulin" by Sharpey-Schafer.

Himsworth noted that there are two main types of diabetes, the insulin-depleted (type 1) and the insulin-resistant form (type 2). Insulin resistance is a term and concept of his coinage.

Frankly, only these two articles are truly landmark articles in DM. I don't know the other important reference, namely the Minkowski-Von Mehring discovery that removal of the pancreas leads to diabetes (1889). JFW | T@lk 15:05, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I formatted these two articles (and even found a link to an online version of the first on). Can you help me a bit more? There are some publications under the recent studies section that I do not know where to classify. Can you take care of that? Thanks, APH 12:26, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Church-Turing thesis

In List of open problems in computer science you wrote, "Formalize Church-Turing thesis so it can be proved or disproved". This looks like nonsense to me. The point of the Church-Turing thesis is that it relates an informal notion ("effective procedure") with a formal one (Turing machine). So if you formalize it you destroy its content. You need to provide a reference showing that experts in the field really consider this an open problem, or else remove the section. Gdr 11:03, 2004 Oct 25 (UTC)

The reason that this is indeed the Church-Turing thesis and not the Church-Turing theorem is that effective computation is not well defined. A lot of effort was invested in proving the thesis.

In most of the cases, it was done by considering special cases of effective computation - grammars, recursive functions, etc.

I agree that that finding a good definition of effective computation is hard, that is why the problem is still open.APH 06:29, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

So which experts in the field consider the Church-Turing thesis to be an open problem? Gdr 19:15, 2004 Oct 31 (UTC)

As I wrote, the use of the word thesis instead of theorem indicate that the problem is open. I didn't conduct experts survey but I'll try to look up some references.APH 06:32, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It makes no sense to call it an open problem when it cannot be solved. It is more of a philosophical question than an open problem. Gdr 10:03, 2004 Nov 1 (UTC)

Once you have a definition of a efficient computation, the problem will be solvable (maybe even easily).By the way, did you notice List of publications in computer science? I think that you can contribute a lot there. APH 06:07, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

I will be very happy that someone will be able to use my work. I agreed to the public domain license. I'm afraid that I never wrote about U.S. states. APH 12:15, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Science pearls

The title of Wikipedia:WikiProject Science pearls is a bit confusing. What's the "pearls" all about? Good concept though, I'd like to see a similar project dealing with technology too. --Commander Keane 16:59, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

The science pearls is indeed a bit poetic name. I used first the name "list of important publications in..." but it was considered POV. Do you have any idea for a new name?

Creating such a technology project is a good idea. Why don't you add such list to the current project instead of starting a new one? APH 07:23, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I still don't get the references to pearls. Indeed, I think technology (I was thinking engieering but there's computing too, etc) would fit nicely into the project, if the name didn't restrict content to science. On a sadder note, I lack any creative power and am struggling to think of an appropriate title for the WikiProject. --Commander Keane 15:02, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

Pearls of wisdom are better when they've been accreting for decades and centuries, untarnished. My fortune cookie for lunch today said: One century's philosophy is the next century's common sense. I like your approach, but at the moment I have to make my own publications. In good time, I hope. Cheers, Daniel Collins 19:27, 12 September 2005 (UTC).

Category

Category. Do you plan to have a wikipedia category for all articles that are created as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Science pearls? --JWSchmidt 00:20, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I think that at the end we should have a tree of categories. We should create a sub category for publications in every area and sub area (mathematics publication, geometry publication). I don't know whether we should start with the categories now or whether we should wait until the list will become more stable. APH 07:29, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Science pearls

Thanks for your invitation, but I will pass. For one thing, I don't know that much about science. Best. Maurreen (talk) 01:40, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks for responding. APH 05:14, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Science pearls

Hi APH; you can put my name down as a contributor for the natural sciences publications...but I have to warn you, I can disappear for months at a time from Wikipedia if I'm busy with school/exams/etc.

As for the categories for each of the "list of publications in..." articles, it just seemed to me a bit like overkill to have the article in almost every subcategory of biology (for list of publications in biology). Anyway, see you around --CDN99 17:35, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Any help is welcomed. To which lists would you like to contrinute? I perfer that you will add your self to to list of contributor on you own.

I agree that the current use of categories is problematic.

See a close discussion too. Do you agree with this approach? APH 08:21, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

If the list is in the articles/book categories it seems logical. --CDN99 21:22, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Science pearls

I will also pass. I have serious reservations about this; you appear to propose a bunch of Wikipedians adding which books are kewl. At best, it will do nothing that cannot be done by History of Mathematics, combined with a category for influential mathematical publications (possibly combined {{otherarticles}} or a special related template which will permit quick access from one seminal work to another).

These articles are inherently PoV - for example, if I were to edit, I would remove Hofstadter immediately, and someone would disagree - and necessarily incomplete. I will consider whether my disapproval extends to an AfD nomination, although these seem to be, like Earth itself, mostly harmless.

The usual solution to PoV problems might apply, to make this explicitly a collation of various mathematicians' reading lists; would this be an acceptable amendment? It would require much more work than the present approach. Septentrionalis 15:31, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Since your claim are of general intrest I will answer you at the project talk page.APH 06:46, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Science pearls summary rq

Hello, if you write a good, short [2-3 lines at most], clear summary and request; I'll translate it and put on the huwiki Village pump, as probably others could to their home WP. I, for one, don't really get the point of it, but it's best when you write it and others decide for themselves. (reply on my talk page, thanks.) --grin ✎ 10:17, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

The science pearls project is an effort to identify to notable publications in biology, physics and other areas. Its final goal is help learning about the height science had reached and to allow access to the publications that led him to them. Your contribution is welcomed.APH 08:48, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Science perls

Hi,

Science perls is POV. It is debatable what is a science perl. It depends whom do you ask. In the current form it is not a very good idea. I think it has some potential re-worked and put into "history of ..." Kpjas 21:30, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Hey, this is just a comment; I think the purpose of science pearls is to make lists of publications that have completely revolutionized the field that they apply to. If we took the books/papers/studies or whatever resulted in the author(s) winning something like a Nobel Prize, I think that these publications would qualify as being "pearls." I co-authored a paper about protein deposition on a certain type of contact lens, but I think most people would agree that this paper is essentially nothing compared to a paper about a new treatment for cancer. If the majority of the science community thinks something is a pearl, is it POV to put it in a list with other pearls? --CDN99 21:18, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Kpjas, I think that the following discussion might make my point of view clearer. Do understand my approach or still consider the list to be POV? Please note that at the final stage we would use articles and categories instead of list, what will reduce the amount of POV even more. APH 08:41, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Re: Science pearls

Hi, I've forwarded your message to Wikipedia:Thảo luận. I suspect that there may be some members interested there, since the Vietnamese language edition is very strong in subjects like biology. Some of our members may be interested but may not be fluent in English, so I've offered to explain the project to them in Vietnamese if necessary. I myself am too busy to help out with the project itself, since I've just started my freshman year in college. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs, blog) 21:36, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for you help. Please offer those that are interested to address me directly too. I hope that we will be able to cooperate though language difficulties. APH 08:35, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

APH, would you be willing to write a brief summary of the Science pearls project for the Wikimedia Quarto? Cheers, +sj + 04:21, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I’ll be very happy to address the project at the Wikimedia Quarto. Would you like a few lines summary for the “Out of the projects” section or something longer? If only few lines are needed then I think that we should use that:

The science pearls project is an effort to identify to notable publications in biology, physics and other areas. Its final goal is help learning about the height science had reached and to allow access to the publications that led him to them. Your contribution is welcomed.

APH 07:33, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

List of pubs in philosophy

APH - Sorry for the delay, someone else left me a message, and I didn't notice your's. A problem with the wikisystem I suppose. Anyway, I took a look at List of publications in philosophy and the categorization system looks good. As I'm sure you've discovered, every philosopher has her own idea about what system is "correct" the current one will do. Personally, I didn't like the old one that much because it was so hierarchal. I'll try to improve the list sometime soon. --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 00:01, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

It seems that not only philosopher have their idea of the "correct" way. At least some of the arguments about the system can be fun. APH 08:27, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Links to the List of publications in philosophy

I noticed your message on the Wikiproject Philosophy about this list. I've linked the list into the mainstream of the philosophy material on the Wikipedia. It's in Portal:Philosophy and Template:Philosophy topics as "Bibliography"; and it's in the List of philosophical lists, List of basic philosophical topics, and the philosophy see also templates which are in turn displayed on several of the philosophy overview articles (with more to come). If you have any comments on how to improve the coverage/presence of the list on Wikepedia, I'd appreciate the feedback. Go for it! 00:59, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! You did a great job.

I'm afraid that I'm not very familiar with philosophy or with philosophy at wikipedia so I cannot offer new ideas. However, if you would like to discuss new ideas, I'll be happy to do it. APH 07:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

That's not what I meant. I was referring to the placement of the list. For instance, it is presented as "Bibliography" in the reference links section of the Philosophy Quick Reference Guide and on the Philosophy Portal, rather than by its title. Is that acceptable? Go for it! 20:44, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I've hooked the Philosophy Portal into every Wikipedia browsing directory/index/list I could find, so both it and the bibliography should have close to optimal presentation. Go for it! 20:44, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Publications seems more suitable than bibliography. I hope that your links will lead to further development of the project. APH 08:05, 11 December 2005 (UTC)