User talk:CBM/Archive 11

Beta/NFCC

His edits were made in violation of his probation and I reverted solely on that. They could have been all edits that said "I Like Penguins", and since there were more than 25 and not proposed or approved, I would have reverted. - NeutralHomer • Talk • November 23, 2008 @ 13:49

Warning and point taken :) Also, if you wish me to "stear clear" of Beta, as Metros does, ask and it will happen. - NeutralHomer • Talk • November 23, 2008 @ 14:01

No worries, no offense taken on the warning. Sometimes they are necessary as a "smack in the face" when the people are going at it in these discussions. I understand how these discussions can become dramatic and testy at times....and I think I will sit them out because I think I am causing more problems then I am trying to help solve. - NeutralHomer • Talk • November 23, 2008 @ 14:14

Line article

Hi Carl. Can I prevail on you to take a position on the question I raised just now concerning the second sentence of the article on lines at the bottom of that article's talk page? If you agree with Tango I won't argue the point further. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 07:19, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

criticisms

Hi, The non-standard analysis page already has an interesting section on criticisms (mostly on Connes). Could this be added to Bishop-Keisler controversya.k.a.Criticisms of non-standard analysis? I don't mean for the non-standard analysis page to be shortened, rather for the AfD page to be expanded. It seems there is a sentiment at the AfD page that there does appear to be a sufficient amount of material here, and a number of secondary sources remain unexplored. Katzmik (talk) 16:37, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Help Request

I need help. My account is blocked, and I can not even edit my own talk page.

Ever since I created the articles on Sarah Palin's churches and pastors, people have been trying to have me blocked. They have deleted my edits, citing "unreliable sources". Examples of the "unreliable sources are CBS News and Times of London, and the content of these sources were deleted.

I was accused of canvassing, but it was a person I never contacted, so that accusation was changed. Then I was accused of sockpuppetry, that I was pretending to be someone else (Witchieanna). The entire contents of my computer was wiped out at exactly the same time as I was blocked for editing for sockpuppetry (I have receipts for trying to recover my data, etc., which failed). I was told that this was impossible to be connected to Wikipedia, and was just a coincidence , since I never gave my email address. But I had my email enabled, so that was not true, either. When witchieanna, who was supposedly my meatpuppet, threatened some legal action, and I agreed not to fight a subpoena and not to lie under oath, and I wrote to the person who was doing all of this to me that I would help and see them in the court that they were getting me dragged into. Then the sockpuppetry thing was blocked, since it was discovered that I was not witchieanna. Then I was accused of making legal threats, because I agreed to help by not fighting a subpoena and by not lying under oath. I was blocked for this being a legal threat. After it became clear that I was not making a legal threat, but was asking to be kept out of whatever was going on, I was accused of being a meatpuppet of Anna, and blocked again. When my contribution history was looked at, the reason for the indefinite block was changed to "Obvious puppetry of some kind", and my talk page was blocked so I could not even respond to what was said about me. Anna's pages were blocked so she could not respond either.

How do I find an admin who will respond, and explain why I am "obviously" involved in "puppetry of some kind". I am now being told that I am involved in "puppetry" because I sometimes go to the same internet cafe as anna, and because I know her. Is there a reasonable admin who can stop all of this from happening to me, and leave me out of whatever legal stuff is going on, which I have no direct knowledge of, and do not want to be a part of?

This whole thing started when I tried to write information about Sarah Palin's pastors and churches, using CBS and Times of London as sources, and the content was deleted on the grounds that they were not reliable sources. Jclemens even changed the link from the Times of London from its news page to its blog page to misleadingly "argue" that it was not a reliable source. I am baffled by the complexity, pettiness, and what would best be called fraud in order to censor information, if it was outside Wikipedia. Changing links to mislead in arguing to delete info on TImes of London is close to fraud and deceipt. And when I tried to get help, I was accused of being a meatpuppet.

I am not a meatpuppet, and I do not control or have any influence over any editors, or their actions.

What can I do?

User:Tautologist76.167.114.126 (talk) 17:11, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

0.999…

Hi,

Feel free to ignore this if you have better things to do. Katzmik asked me to talk to an admin before removing any of his changes. There have been enough reverts that it makes sense to try to sort things out before reverting. We currently make claims about what is, or is not an internal set and using Lightstone's article as the reference, which was published before the work defining internal sets. If you could comment on the talk page, it would be appreciated. I think that Katzmik (well he basically said) his edits are sanctioned by an administrator (I think he meant you, but I am unsure). Thanks for your time Thenub314 (talk) 14:34, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Administrators have no special authority in simple content editing like this. When I offer my opinions about an article, my position as an administrator is essentially irrelevant. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:26, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I understand, and this has been pointed out on the talk page. I simply feel while Katzmik feels his edits are approved by an administrator he will not stop to listen. But I will approach the matter as clearly and calmly as I can. Thanks again. Thenub314 (talk) 15:37, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to be back so soon. Katzmik recently reverted my edits at this page under the suggestion that his version is agreed on by you. You hadn't explicitly said this, you simply edited the section after him, so I was wondering if you'd care to comment at the talk page (not as an admin but as an editor.)

Thanks Thenub314 (talk) 16:18, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

unilateral titlechange by mathsci

Hi Carl, user mathsci has unilaterally moved Criticism of nonstandard analysis to a title of his liking. Please restore some order as per AfD discussion. Katzmik (talk) 08:08, 18 December 2008 (UTC) P.S. Note that he is already busy editing the article in accordance with the new title. Katzmik (talk) 08:09, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Peer review bot error?

Hi Carl, I will also leave a message on Geometry Guy's page since you are traveling, but Peer Review Bot did not run today and ran at an odd time the last time it did run. I can do the SAPRs and archive by hand if need be, but hopefully the bot can be fixed / turned back on. Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:57, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

They should be fixed now. My internet access will be sporadic starting tomorrow, but I should be able to check at least every 48 hours. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:26, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks so much - have a happy holidays and travel safely, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:42, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Happy holidays

Thanks for making 2008 an interesting and enlightening year for me; at some point, our paths have crossed and I've found your comments amusing, helpful or thought-provoking—I'll let you guess which!

Wishing you and yours a joyous holiday season, and happiness, health and hopefulness in 2009. I trust you'll enjoy this little token, a favourite performance of Baby, it's Cold Outside, for your holiday amusement.
Best, Risker (talk) 01:18, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

Wishing you the very best for the season. Guettarda (talk) 06:51, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

	<font=3> Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year! Ruhrfisch ><>°° 11:54, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

VeblenBot

Hi CBM, I was wondering if it would be possible for VeblenBot to generate a table similar to PERtable for semi-protected edit requests? Thanks for your time and happy holidays! §hep • ¡Talk to me! 03:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

User:WP 1.0 bot

WP 1.0 bot (talk · contribs) has a compromised password, I have blocked the bot and changed the password to prevent a vandal from stealing the account. I am emailing you the temporary password. MBisanz ^talk 21:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Peer review bot not running again

Hi Carl, Happy New Year - just wanted to let you know PeerReviewBot did not do the archiving or SAPR links today. Hope you are enjoying your travels and sorry to bother you, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:34, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

It also looks like VeblenBot is not running - peer review is too large and there were no notices, plus no new PRs have been listed since the 29th. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:33, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

And the toolserver is down, so I can't run your nifty tool for partial transclusion of peer reviews. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:39, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

The issue is that the bots are all running on the toolserver right now, and the toolserver is undergoing some maintenance. I will check again this evening to see if it's up yet. I'm sorry for the inconvenience; my home internet access is down right now, so I'm relying on toolserver until it's restored. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:18, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, again I am sorry to bother you. The toolserver worked to run your partial transclusion PR size tool earlier today. Happy New Year! Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:56, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Carl - VeblenBot is working and new reviews are being added, but Peer Review Bot is not adding the SAPRs or archiving yet. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 13:30, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

RFC at WP:NOR-notice

A concern was raised that the clause, "a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is verifiable by any reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge" conflicts with WP:NPOV by placing a higher duty of care with primary sourced claims than secondary or tertiary sourced claims. An RFC has been initiated to stimulate wider input on the issue. Professor marginalia (talk) 19:10, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

PR bot

Thanks for the update - will the bot now run about the time it ran most recently (1 UTC) or will it go back to about 10 UTC? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:52, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Video game articles by quality statistics

Hi, could you make something like User:VeblenBot/Economics/table:ECONOMICS for Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Video game articles by quality statistics? I recall asking you this about the table for the Economics WikiProject last year (here and here) and I was wondering if you could do the same for the Video Games WikiProject. Thanks in advance! Gary King (talk) 14:07, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Hitcount query

Appreciate all the work on version 1.0 and the bots. Have a simple query: On Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/SelectionBot you describe hitcounts as being daily page views but the ones here toolserver selected score v1.0 are massively high compared to grok, even taking into account the truncating. e.g. US is 1.4 million on the selected score and only 40,000 on grok. Are you sure you didn't mean monthly page views or have i missed something? Appreciate an answer when you get a chance, as it gives me even more motivation to improve arcticles if there are more people hitting the pages than I previously thought. thanks, Tom B (talk) 17:47, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the figures in the selection statistics are some sort of monthly number. Actually the code starts by computing an average daily hitcount and then scales it up by a factor of 30, if I remember correctly. I don't have the code at hand at the moment. It might be worth changing to just daily hitcounts for the next release; the use of monthly ones there was just an idiosyncracy in the code. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

thanks, i'll edit the project explanation to reflect this. (I think it sounds more impressive even though same thing i.e. 300,000 reading the article you've worked on (per month) rather than 10,000 per day.) Tom B (talk) 20:17, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Request for opinion

Hi, I and my fellow editors are facing a deadlock on a issue of removing/toning down few lines on 'Allegations of Human Rights violation against the Indian Army' under 'criticism of the operation' section in Operation Blue Star article, concerns include WP:NPOV, WP:SOAP & WP:V, the summary of dispute can be found at [1]. I would request you to kindly go through the article and please let us know your views/opinion at the talk page of the article so that npov, balance and undue weight concerns may be looked into and a consensual solution may be found. Thanks LegalEagle (talk) 05:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

User talk:WP 1.0 bot/Second generation#Status update?

Any idea when this might get off the ground? Happy‑melon 18:46, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia 0.7 release is my highest Wikipedia priority at the moment. Once that is completed, my the next item on my list is the second generation WP 1.0. bot. I'm sorry to say I don't have any exact timeline at the moment. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:56, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

PR bot error

Hi Carl, Peer Review Bot said there were no SAPRs to link just now, but I did them about 5 hours ago - see diff. Not sure what the problem is, thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:02, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure why they didn't show up, but I ran the script again and it found them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:15, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - I also could not see any problems with it - appreciate your running the bot again. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:40, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Does VeblenBot still check the size of WP:PR and WP:pr/d? I checked at random and the second was less than 1 KB from exceeding the limit, so I did the partial transclusion trick and got things back to a more manageable size. Just curious as there was no warning on the PR talk page, thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:37, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Chem names in infoboxes

A while back you adjusted the IUPAC name at Hyodeoxycholic acid. There's a discussion now going on about making such changes in this WP:CHEM thread. No other registered user seems to have word wrapping problems. Perhaps you could let us know what browser you are using? Thanks, Xasodfuih (talk) 23:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Carl, I got roughed up well in this discussion. I left some comments about sense and nonsense of searchability on Beetstra's page. Please take a look as a mathematician. What do you think? (my most recent points about lexical/grammatical properties, parsers, canonical forms etc and the sense and nonsense of such restrictions for what I believe is mostly associative search algorithms in ordinary search engines and a pre-parsed representation in chem engines anyway) Most important: is it a wild goose chase? If you are interested in gruesome humor you can read my other rants there too. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 02:01, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Frankly I thought that your aggressive approach was more likely to turn people against your arguments than it was likely to convert them. I changed one page with soft breaks ({{wpr}}) and wasn't aware that this was a significant issue with the chemistry project. I don't really have the energy to pursue it further. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:46, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

At least SOMETHING moved, after the witch sabbath. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 22:42, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Dates

Your recent edit to the VPT seems to have screwed up the dates a bit. Perchance related to User:CBM/dates.js ? --Splarka (rant) 03:49, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it seems that way. I thought the edit box was not inside that div; need to debug things apparently. I fixed VPT for now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:56, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

That part of the code I'm cribbing from makes more sense now. Thanks for pointing it out. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

No prob! ^_^. --Splarka (rant) 06:55, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Harvard cites

Thanks for your note, if I do this tagging exercise again I will look at restricting to footnotes only. Rich Farmbrough, 01:52 19 January 2009 (UTC).

Template val

Hi CBM,

I'm the original author of {{val}} and many of the sub-templates it uses. Somebody recently reported a bug in {{Val/delimitnum/real}} (See Template_talk:Val/delimitnum/real) and I have a fix that I'd like to apply. Unfortunately, the page is protected, so I no longer have access to {{val}} or any of the sub-templates. I noticed that you had applied the protection. Would you either apply the fix in the template talk page for me or, preferably, grant me write access to {{val}} and its sub-templates so I can continue to improve the template where needed without having to ask permission?

Thanks!

    — SkyLined {^talk_contribs 16:49, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll apply the fix in the template talk page. The reason that the template is protected is that it is used in over 2000 pages, and we routinely protect such highly-used templates. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:53, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not protesting the fact that it is protected. Because I have done most of the work on these templates, I feel I am in a unique position to improve them and I want to continue working on them where needed. It would be nice if I had direct access to them: having to ask permission is annoying, counter productive and discouraging. I haven't got as much time to edit Wikipedia and I'd like to spent as much of it as possible adding value to it, rather than having to ask if somebody could do so on my behalf, if you understand what I mean.

    — SkyLined {^talk_contribs 09:29, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Bot questions

Hi Carl, Peer Review Bot ran today but did not link the SAPRs for some reason. On Feb 1 it linked the last reviews from January, but there were none from February to link. I forgot to run the script on Feb 2, but did run it earlier today (Feb 3) - see diff.

Also, is VeblenBot still checking the size of wp:pr/d? Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I had misspelled February in my source code, so the bot was not finding the automated peer reviews (apparently the code is not 1 year old, so this has not come up before). This should be fixed now.

The size checking script somehow got disabled when I had to move all my bots to the toolserver and back over December. I have re-enabled it now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks as always - I really appreciate all that you do, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:21, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Halting problem

I'd like the halting problem article to be as clear as possible. What aspect of the present wording do you find confusing? I'm sure that some better wording can be found, it's just difficult because that particular sentence is too brief to be an actually "formal" statement. Maybe some more radical copyediting is needed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:43, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I see that you changed my formulation. The current one is wildly erroneous. It is simplified beyond reason. The one I formulated tried to formulate what the halting problem says: there is no general method that can be applied onto every program and for an arbitrary input decide whether the program stops or not. Read THIS! It should be in the references list. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 06:54, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

It was not I who simplified it; I wanted to find out what the problem is before I edited it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:17, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I see. Sorry for all inconveniences and sharp corners of mine! The talk page of the halting problem contains my criticism of the article, so let's keeping it there. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 13:12, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Chicago and Illinois project stats

Neither the WP:CHICAGO nor WP:ILLINOIS stats have run this month.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 08:48, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I don't know what the problem is but I will figure it out and fix it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:53, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Typo

Carl, I appreciate your presence as a voice of sanity on the ID images issue. There's a typo in your post here which may prevent it from being as useful as it could be. Perhaps you'd like to correct it. Best wishes, --John (talk) 16:46, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

re Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Removal of advanced permissions (proposed)#Neutral

I have created a Neutral section for those who agree with the premise but not the method, or some other aspect, which may be altered following talkpage discussion. Perhaps you would wish to review your !vote under the changed circumstances? LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:00, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Frequently viewed

Is there currently a way I can generate a "frequently viewed" list of pages for dermatology tagged articles, similar to what has been done at the mathematics project (see here and here). I started WP:DERM and am looking to get more stats/info regarding our pages. Thanks in advance. kilbad (talk) 00:04, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is possible to do. Unfortunately there is no easy way to do it; you have to download and process some of the article hitcount data (the same data that is used at http://stats.grok.se). Then you make a list of all the articles in your project, and get the hitcounts for each of those. Unfortunately stats.grok.se is not set up for bulk queries as far as I know, so I have always downloaded the raw data and dealt with it by hand. I can ask User:Henrik if he can set up a way for you to query stats.grok.se directly without having to download the raw data (which is very large). — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:02, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

stats.grok.se has an API somewhere... --MZMcBride (talk) 20:59, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Found it. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:02, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Initial context

I don't think the words "In the study of real analysis" succeed in telling the lay reader that mathematics is what the article is about. I've edited it accordingly. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

User:AltecCrog

This user has made several edits to pages owned by User:VeblenBot. If they are malicious, you might want to revert them. His pattern of editing is rather odd, I'm not sure whether he is a vandal or just an experienced editor using a new account for some reason. Brianyoumans (talk) 20:59, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

is this interesting?

[2] It describes an unusual notion of decidability. Thanks. 76.195.10.34 (talk) 09:02, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

A Class review

Since you seem to be an A class review regular, how about taking a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/A-class rating/Maximum spacing estimation? There another one on the Four color theorem (for possible removal). The nominator there seems satisfied with the recent changes, so it's not as pressing to look at it, but of course if you have the time, a look there would be appreciated too. --C S (talk) 04:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Your signature

Hi Carl, I have copied the style of your signature because I quite liked it. Hope you don't mind.

Another thing. I would be interested in helping with the development of the new bot if there's anything I could help with. I don't have a lot of programming experience but would be willing to learn, and I'm fairly good with templates now. Regards, — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

No, I don't mind at all if you use a similar signature.

The second-gen WP 1.0 bot has been lagging somewhat as my real-life workload increased since January, and the WP 0.7 release took much longer than I anticipated. If you're interested in learning the programming side, that would be wonderful, but it may be a lot of work.

I think there will be several areas where template work is required, or other non-programming work, when we convert to the new system. But before anything else can happen I need to iron out one last technical issue with how to handle articles that are renamed. If you're interested, I can let you know when I have a more concrete proposal. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:23, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

JSTOR

I see you have access to JSTOR. What is your policy in retrieving articles for people such as myself who do not have easy access to JSTOR. I could go to my alma mater or the local community college, but neither of those are convenient, as you can imagine. -- Avi (talk) 03:48, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I would be glad to obtain a reasonable number of JStor articles for you. Actually, the JStor terms of use explicitly permit this:

"(e) on an ad hoc basis and without commercial gain, sharing Content with an individual who is not an Authorized User for purposes of collaboration, comment, or the scholarly exchange of ideas;"

However, even if JStor did not explicitly permit it, I believe that limited, private distribution of copyrighted material for the purposes of nonprofit scholarship is permitted under United States fair use law. So please feel free to let me know if you need a particular article. I find email is the easiest way to handle these things. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:04, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

MSE

Hi.

Thanks for the copy-editing. The reason for the scriptstyles was that when the TeX is in-line, and some elements in a sentence have decorations and others do not, it becomes a mix of text and display styles. To wit:

"In other words, if there exists a ${\hat {\theta }}\in \Theta$ that maximizes $S_{n}(\theta )$, then ${\hat {\theta }}$ is the maximum spacing estimator of $\theta ^{0}$."

I made them all match the smaller text styles for æsthetic reasons. You think the mixed-size way is better? Thanks -- Avi (talk) 00:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

We must have different configurations somehow. Here is how that line above looks to me: [3] — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, I changed my settings and I see what you mean. The recommended way to force math to be shown as an image is to add \,to the end. How does this look?

"In other words, if there exists a ${\hat {\theta }}\in \Theta \,$ that maximizes $S_{n}(\theta )\,$, then ${\hat {\theta }}\,$ is the maximum spacing estimator of $\theta ^{0}\,$."

The \, is not shown as a space, it just forces the math to be shown as an image. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:06, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

But that goes against our MoS. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Typesetting of mathematical formulas where it says:

Having LaTeX-based formulas in-line which render as PNG under the default user settings, as above, is generally discouraged, for the following reasons.

• The font size is larger than that of the surrounding text on some browsers, making text containing in-line formulas hard to read.
• Misalignment can result. For example, instead of e^x, with "e" at the same level as the surrounding text and the x in superscript, one may see the e lowered to put the vertical center of the whole "e^x" at the same level as the center of the surrounding text.
• The download speed of a page is negatively affected if it contains many images.
• HTML (as described below) is adequate for most simple in-line formulas and better for text-only browsers.

If an in-line formula needs to be typeset in LaTeX, often better formatting can be achieved with the \textstyle or \scriptstyle LaTeX commands. By default, LaTeX code is rendered as if it were a displayed equation (not in-line), and this can frequently be too big. For example, the formula <math>\sum_{n=1}^\infty 1/n^2 = \pi^2/6 </math>, which displays as $\sum _{n=1}^{\infty }1/n^{2}=\pi ^{2}/6$, is too large to be used in-line. \textstyle generates a smaller summation sign and moves the limits on the sum to the right side of the summation sign. This code for this is <math>\textstyle\sum_{n=1}^\infty 1/n^2 = \pi^2/6<math>, and it renders as the much more aesthetic $\textstyle \sum _{n=1}^{\infty }1/n^{2}=\pi ^{2}/6$. However, the default font for \textstyle is larger than the surrounding text on many browsers. \scriptstyle makes the rendering even more compact by using a smaller font (it is the font used for subscripts and superscripts in ordinary displayed equations). The code <math>\scriptstyle\sum_{n=1}^\infty 1/n^2 = \pi^2/6</math> generates the even smaller $\scriptstyle \sum _{n=1}^{\infty }1/n^{2}=\pi ^{2}/6$, which should be approximately the same size as the surrounding text on many browsers. A drawback is that \scriptstyle is often ugly for expressions where a superscript or subscript appears in a superscript or subscript: The doubly-scripted characters will render at the same size as the singly-scripted characters, which is inevitably too large. Compare $\scriptstyle 2^{n_{i}}$, created with <math>\scriptstyle 2^{n_i}</math>, with $\textstyle 2^{n_{i}}$, created with <math>\textstyle 2^{n_i}</math>

If you plan on editing LaTeX formulas, it is helpful if you leave your preference settings (link in the upper right corner of this page, underneath your user name) in the "rendering math" section at the default "HTML if very simple or else PNG"; that way, you'll see the page like most users will see it.

-- Avi (talk) 03:31, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The problem with \scriptstyle is that it is much smaller than the regular text, on my browser at least. I can make a screenshot if you want one. Normally I would just let some of the math be images and some of it be HTML (by just using regular TeX). If that isn't acceptable, meaning that you want to force some of the math to be an image, you could use \textstyle (which the MoS mentions) but in this situation that has the same effect as \,. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:35, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

This is how it looks on my browser: [4]. Much more readable. -- Avi (talk) 03:41, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Are your preferences set as per the MoS suggests? -- Avi (talk) 03:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

They are now (since above). I think the main issue I am concerned about is the relative size difference between \scriptstyle (which is intended for subscripts) and \textstyle. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:53, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I found that the comparitive size between the inline HTML and the rendered PNG is most similar using scriptstyle, and on a monitor of at least 1024x768 it was readable. Do you still feel strongly enough to mind if I restore the script tags? Do you feel that perhaps this is something the larger WP:Math community should weigh in upon? Thanks for your advice and corrections! -- Avi (talk) 16:12, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Here is a comparison of scriptstyle and textstyle for me: [5]. As you can see, the scriptstyle is too small; the height of the lowercase and uppercase thetas should be larger than the x height of the font. The textstyle version has somewhat larger fonts than would be ideal. In general, I think it is better not to override the default fonts; it it is necessary to force math to display as an image then I think it's better to leave it at the default size. You may want to ask at WT:WPM to get other people's opinions. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:24, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I've asked for more input here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Using scriptstyle to make in-line symbols "fit". If I have misstated or misrepresented anything, please correct me. Thank you. -- Avi (talk) 19:03, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

edit summary

"Clearly a political move"—I believe you are right that it's not appropriate to say this. If you want to monitor the situation and remind all parties to cool it, if necessary, I'd be very pleased. The key flashpoints are WT:LINKING, WT:BTW, User:Ryan_Postlethwaite/Draft_RfC. The dispute doesn't seem to be getting any easier, and if anything has been worsened by the long, directionless ArbCom hearing. We are still unsure even what the scope of the hearing is, and the clerk's attempt to organise a series of RfCs is going to require a lot of luck if it doesn't implode. Tony (talk) 03:50, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 intersection stats

Hi there, Carl. I just finished updating the {{WikiProject Cape Verde}} template to use the {{WPBannerMeta}} template, and I activated one of its available hooks, the importance/quality intersections one. Then I went looking and found this discussion from June/July 2008, where you wrote that you'd update the WP 1.0 bot code to enable linking to those intersections from the statistics tables. Was it done? Is it necessary to select an option somewhere to activate the feature, if it was implemented? Alternatively, I see that the example in that discussion, Wikipedia:WikiProject Chennai/Assessment/Statistics has been updated regularly by Erwin85bot. If case the feature isn't yet available on WP 1.0 bot, should I ask Erwin to run WP Cape Verde's stats instead? Thanks, Waldir ^talk 13:22, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

For the time being, it seems like you will need to use Erwin's bot. The WP 0.7 release took much longer than anyone anticipated (it is in the final stages only this month), and my real-life workload has increased as well. The new WP bot is still in the works, but the dates have moved back. I'm sorry about the delay, but I'm glad to see that someone else has a workaround. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the reply. I'll contact Erwin, but should I request that the stats table stop being generated by the WP 1.0 bot first? If so, how, and also, will the other reports still be generated? Cheers, Waldir ^talk 14:46, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe that bots like Erwin's bot use a different location for the table than the WP 1.0 bot, so that it isn't necessary to turn off the WP 1.0 bot. The two bots simply operate in parallel. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:32, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks :) --Waldir ^talk 23:39, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I think it might be of interest to you: User talk:Erwin/Archive/2009#project stats request and Wikipedia:WikiProject Cape Verde/Stats. Cheers, Waldir ^talk 11:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

27

Hi,

I don't doubt that you may be ultimately right in removing the image, but... in your summary you say,

Wikipedia policy does not permit the use of non-free images such as this on articles such as this

"Such as this" is not very descriptive in either the case of the image or the article. I did think the image was appropriate (or I wouldn't have added it), and did include a fair-use rationale, so I've obviously missed a policy nuance (or blatancy) here that your summary is not specific enough to clear up. Can you clarify which policy is being violated? This will help me avoid making the same mistake in the future.

Thanks, NapoliRoma (talk) 22:40, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

The non-free content policy requires (WP:NFCC#8) that non-free images significantly contribute to users' understanding of the topic at hand. Since the topic of that article is the number 27, and the image is a screenshot from the Simpsons, it is extremely unlikely that the image contributes to the reader's understanding of the topic. The image is certainly relevant to the topic, but that is a much lower standard than NFCC requires. The fact that the image was used in what is essentially a "trivia" section weakens the NFCC case slightly more, because the things in that section are already tangential to the article.

If the image were used on an article about the Simpsons, instead of in a trivia section of an article unrelated to the Simpsons, then there might be an argument to make about the image. But that is not the case here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:09, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Peer review bot questions

Hi Carl, I have two questions about peer review bot.

1. I ran the semi-automated peer review for Australian handball as myself (not User:AZPR) at 5:04, on March 11, 2009, because it was the only new PR request and it is faster to just use the script and paste it in, than to log out, log in as AZPR, do it, and then log out and log back in as myself. Anyway, here is the diff (two edits, I had to fix my first edit). The problem is the bot found no SAPRs when it ran afterwards diff. I do not see any problems with what I did, but may be missing something.
2. I have mentioned this before, but would it be possible for the bot to ignore the semi-transclusion trick on peer reviews to save space? My edit summary is always the same: "Peer review is still open, just not transcluded to save space at WP:PR" (I paste it in) or I could mark the edit as minor, but often it seems a PR is a few days away from being archived, then gets semi-transcluded to save space and that resets the archive clock to another 14 days.

Thanks as always for all you do - the second thing is not urgent and the first may be my fault, but thought you should know. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:19, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I can't check these from where I am right now, but I will check them later today and get back to you. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:08, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, FYI I just ran the one new SAPR for today and also reran the one from yesterday (above), both as AZPR. If it does not link them in its next run, I will do it by hand. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:19, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The reason the review was not linked originally is that when you formatted the link by hand you added a space between the === and the [[. The bot looks for a specific pattern that does not have a space in it, which is generated by the SAPR script. So it did not recognize that header as a semi-auto peer review. When you redid it, the format was correct, and I ran the bot script to pick it up.

As for skipping some edits when determining whether to archive, I can implement that, but I'll need to make time to edit the code. I can probably implement it this weekend. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:47, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the explanation and sorry to trouble you. What is easier for you to code to ignore the edit for archiving? The summary or marking it as minor or what? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:12, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

For now I was just going to ignore the edits by PeerReviewBot itself. If more is needed, skipping all minor edits would be pretty easy. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:40, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

If it is not too much trouble, could you please make the bot ignore minor edits too? I just seem to be doing the partial transclusion trick a lot this month. I am off to do it next, in fact. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:51, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I updated the code to ignore minor edits and edits by PeerReviewBot. As an example of the new behavior, the script archived Wikipedia:Peer_review/Durham_University/archive1. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:30, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Thansk so much, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:37, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Your signature

Hi Carl, I have copied the style of your signature because I quite liked it. Hope you don't mind.

Another thing. I would be interested in helping with the development of the new bot if there's anything I could help with. I don't have a lot of programming experience but would be willing to learn, and I'm fairly good with templates now. Regards, — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

No, I don't mind at all if you use a similar signature.

The second-gen WP 1.0 bot has been lagging somewhat as my real-life workload increased since January, and the WP 0.7 release took much longer than I anticipated. If you're interested in learning the programming side, that would be wonderful, but it may be a lot of work.

I think there will be several areas where template work is required, or other non-programming work, when we convert to the new system. But before anything else can happen I need to iron out one last technical issue with how to handle articles that are renamed. If you're interested, I can let you know when I have a more concrete proposal. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:23, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, please keep me informed. I have some time on my hands at the moment, and would be happy to help out. You archive these threads quite quickly. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:03, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

One thing you could do is to figure out what is the status of the proposal to split GA/FA apart from the A/B/C/Start/Stub ratings. If this is going to happen, we need to figure out how to implement the rollover, which would coincide with the new version of the WP 1.0 bot. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:54, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

PERtable

Hi, is there any chance you could get VeblenBot to run on Category:Wikipedia semi-protected edit requests as well? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:07, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I created User:VeblenBot/SPERtable and put it on Category:Wikipedia semi-protected edit requests. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:55, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow, thanks that's great. I'll look at those templates and see if I can improve them. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:27, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

That would be great; thanks. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:43, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Belated reply

Hi CBM. A long time ago you asked me a question, User_talk:Henrik#Bulk_queries_against_stats.grok.se. I have now finally replied. :) Cheers, henrik•talk 08:42, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

decidability

This article [6] attributes an unusual concept of decidability to Tarski. Is it interesting? I'm thinking of linking it to the article about decidability and/or some related article. But it comes across as bogus to me. Thanks. 75.62.6.87 (talk) 10:04, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

No, I don't think it is very interesting as a concept of decidability. As Wells points out on p. 204, it leads to the strange conclusion that every r.e. set is "decidable" in this generalized sense. Of course, if we drop the algebraic varieties and just say that any set is "decidable" if it is the union of a countable sequence of sets each of which is decidable in the ordinary sense, then every set of natural numbers becomes "decidable". This is hardly an improvement in terminology. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:08, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I wonder what would have led Tarski to take such a view in the 1970's (I could understand if it were in the 1920's). Maybe he meant something different. Oh well. 75.62.6.87 (talk) 10:15, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Looking at p. 204 a little more, I couldn't see why all r.e. sets are included, but I didn't understand any of the algebraic variety stuff so I just sort of skimmed it. My interpretation in more conventional terms is:

1. Let L be the union of a countable family of recursive languages $L_{1},L_{2},\dots$ over some alphabet $\Sigma$.
2. Suppose there is a fixed, recursive "classification function" $f:\Sigma ^{*}\rightarrow \mathbf {N}$ which computes which of the L_k a given string x might be in. Specifically, $x\in L\iff x\in L_{f(x)}$. Example: say $\Sigma =\{0,1\}$ and for any k, all strings in L_k have exactly k ones (and some arbitrary number of zeros). Then f(x) is just the number of ones in x.

That means for any x, there is in fact a decision procedure for determining if x is in L: compute f(x) and then since L_f(x) is recursive, there is a Turing machine that determines x's membership in L_f(x) and therefore in L. And I thought this is what Tarski was getting at.

The reason I think it's bogus is probably obvious: we only assert that each L_k is recursive (a non-constructive existence statement that some Turing machine recognizes L_k). If M(k) is the number of states of the smallest such TM for a given k, it could be that M grows faster than any computable function. In that case I would say that there is no effective procedure for recognizing whether x is in L. Since the desire to define decidability came out of Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem which asked for an effective procedure, I'd say the a set like L doesn't qualify as decidable. But, I thought it maybe historically interesting (and worth mentioning in Wikipedia) that someone as famous as Tarski thought L was decidable. At this point, though, I no longer think I understand what Tarski was even saying.

Let me know if you have any more thoughts. Thanks, -- 75.62.6.87 (talk) 07:58, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

The thing on p. 204 is the sentence, "In other words, if we admit all finitely based pseudorecursive theories as computable sets of strings, then we have to accept all r.e. sets as computable."

Keep in mind that the author is not saying that all r.e. sets really are decidable; he is discussing the possibility of changing the meaning of the word "decidable" so that it refers to the r.e. sets instead of the recursive sets. I don't see the benefit to doing that, since it would not change the fact of the matter that there are sets that are r.e. but not recursive. If I redefine "even number" to mean "natural number", this does not actually cause 5 to be divisible by 2.

I also have no idea what this person is saying Tarsi said, and I have not looked up the actual quote. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:33, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I looked up Wells (2002) "Is There a Nonrecursive Decidable Equational Theory?", Minds and Machines v. 12 n. 2, pp. 301–304. That gave me a better sense (still not precise) about what Tarski was saying, but didn't convince me there is much substance to Wells' argument, which seems significantly based on an implicit appeal to Tarski's authority rather than the mathematical sensibility of the argument. Of course the papers are really philosophy papers, not mathematical papers, and so one expects the mathematical sensibility is not the main goal. And, perhaps, if I understood more about exactly how these equational theories are constructed, I might understand the argument better. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:51, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I thought the point being made about those theories is that for any k, there is a Turing machine that decides all the formulas with quantifier depth <= k. You may have to use bigger and bigger TM's as k gets larger, instead of having a single TM that decides all the formulas regardless of depth, but that's like the difference between continuity and uniform continuity in analysis. Contrast that with (say) the theorems of Peano arithmetic, where even the $\Pi _{1}^{0}$ fragment is inherently undecidable. But, I may have mis-read the paper severely and read my own preconceptions into it, so I'll have to look at it again, maybe during the coming weekend. 75.62.6.87 (talk) 08:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

There are no quantifiers at all. The situation is somewhat like the word problem for groups, except that this person is looking at some kind of algebraic variety instead of a group. So the set under consideration is just a set of linear equations. There is a set of initial equations and a set of transformation rules that allow you to derive new equations from old ones. The the question is, given an arbitrary equation, is it derivable from the initial rules?

The paper is discussing sets of initial equations so that for each n there is a decision procedure for equations of n variables, but the procedure is not uniform, and so there is no single decision procedure that works for arbitrary equations. Given that these "linear equations" look so much like words in a semigroup, it's not surprising (but still interesting) that there are initial sets of equations with that property. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:53, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

VeblenBot/PERtable

Hi
Concerning the table at User:VeblenBot/PERtable: It's a useful table, but I currently don't keep it watchlisted due to the timestamp edit noise every half hour. If the bot would only edit when there are actual changes to the category then I'd find it much more helpful, would keep it watchlisted, and requests would get a more timely response at least from me.
Could you consider throwing the timestamp out?
Cheers, Amalthea 02:45, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Using {{#time:}} would work. The edits purge the page (with a null edit) and it only updates (i.e., adds a revision) when there are additions or subtractions. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:09, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you have fewer pages on your watchlist than I do. I have ~1400 pages plus their talk pages, and so I use the revisions to keep the table at the top so I don't lose it. I put the count of requests there so that it is easy to ignore if there are not very many. I also use the continued presence of the page on my watchlist to make sure that the bot is still running; if there is a network error or something, the first sign I see is that that page is no longer updated.

Also, there are generally very few edits ot the user namespace, so if you have your watchlist sorted by namespace, like I do, it is even easier to ignore. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:13, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

No, I win with 2,752 pages (loads of them deleted or one-time vandals though). And I personally wouldn't mind "losing it" if there are no news. I think that's a difference in how we keep up with our watchlists: when I'm online and check for updates, I usually go from diff to diff and use NAVPOP to check out what's worth a look. When I had the table watchlisted, I kept looking at those timestamp updates since I don't look at the title before I let NAVPOP load the diff, and ultimately unwatched it again due to the low signal-to-noise ratio (and no, and don't have it seperated by namespace).
I would imagine that most people who want to respond to those requests feel similar. The part that lets you keep an eye on the status of the bot could easily be done by letting it edit a second page, which could also be used by your other bot tasks. If the timestamp is important to have on the table it could even be transcluded into the page, with bot-purges following the edits.
Amalthea 03:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I like the timestamps. Another strategy for dealing with large watchlists, apart from sorting (which I strongly recommend), is to put some of the pages in another page like User:CBM/Watched articles and use related changes. There is code in User:CBM/simple.js to put that link in my toolbox. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:42, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

OK.
Related Changes behaves the same way as the watchlist does, i.e. all the non-changes will show up there too. Also, I very much like having all the changes that interest me on one page which I can update and work through; I can already get the number of requests on a seperate page using parser functions.
Cheers, Amalthea 03:53, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Everyone has their own workflow. I may be able to interest someone else in making the sort of table you are looking for. I'll let you know if I can. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:22, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

New WikiProject

Hi, I've seen you around on the Wiki as someone who seems interested in the statistical trends. I've started a WikiProject at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editing trends to help catalog the various types of user research that have been created. If you would like to sign up and help fill in our files, it would be most appreciated. MBisanz ^talk 05:20, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

wiki as database?

I'm trying to think of ways of improving zeteo, so I'm wondering whether a wiki can be configured in a way that it is actually more like a (rigid) database, so I want to have several intertwined tables, such that users can edit the database items but not the database structure. Do you, by chance, know whether this is possible or have any other ideas about that? Thanks, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 17:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I would be hesitant about using wiki pages for that because the wiki has serious limits for amount of data that can be stored on one page. In practice, even a table (that is, the HTML kind typed into a wiki page) with 1000 rows can overwhelm the servers and cause a blank page to be returned. I think that other projects (maybe the French wikipedia?) use a system where different references have their own pages in a different namespace. But that has never taken off here.

One possibility for allowing people to edit zeteo entries is to have them sign up for an independent username and password on zeteo, but have the registration process give them a random string that they must include in an edit summary before the registration is complete. That way you know that they are who they say they are, but they do not have to reveal their enwiki password. That sign up process could be very automated. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:51, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I can't confirm that it's done that way on fr, but I found a proposal for something like this here. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:01, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I checked fr again, and it's the référence namespace, e.g., fr:Référence:Analyse fonctionnelle (Brezis). — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:04, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Hm. I know the French WP system, but I think that doesn't lead very far, because it is not really structured.

Probably I didn't make myself clear enough: I don't want to integrate the database in WP, but I'm thinking of something like this: whenever you create a [book] page, it only allows you to fill in certain fields, but the global structure of the page is predefined. There should be somehow one namespace "books", one namespace "authors" etc. I would also need a database-like way of querying the articles.

The main reason why I'm asking is that I don't want (and also I guess I'm not able) to write the whole wiki backbone myself (including article versions, user management etc.) Jakob.scholbach (talk) 19:35, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikis in general are pretty bad at forcing structure. I will look over the extensions to mediawiki to see if there is anything that could help. In general, some sort of custom editing interface (not wiki based) might be easier. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:04, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot adding redundant categories

Hello. Your WP 1.0 bot is adding categories that are already covered automatically by {{cat class}}, as seen on this edit. The bot adding them does not seem helpful to me and potentially a problem long-term, since the redundant category is now hardcoded and can't be changed with a template update. (Someone else reported this at User talk:WP 1.0 bot#Adding Categories but it hasn't been answered.) Hope that helps. — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 22:30, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

The bot has been doing this for a very long time. It keeps track of which category pages it has already edited, so it will not edit them twice. There is no reason to change these categories with template edits, and unless there is an actually pressing issue I do not plan to change the behavior of the current code. There is new code under development in any case, so the behavior may be changed there. But really I do not see any harm in the duplication. It would really be better for people to discuss these things with the bot operators before making changes to the assessment system. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:51, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

CfD nomination of Category:Sentential logic

Category:Sentential logic, which you created, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Cgingold (talk) 09:45, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 March 28#Category:Sentential logic

I would be very interested in your opinion, and I just realised that you created the category, so you should have been asked anyway. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:11, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

When I created the category, I put the intended scope at the top: "Sentential logic refers to the theory of well formed formulas in various logical systems that is an elementary part of mathematical logic." So I was aiming at a wider scope than just propositional logic. Apparently the category was renamed without considering this; I had to go through and recategorize articles such as atomic formula that are not related to propositional logic. But maybe the rename is a good thing, if the title was being confused with propositional logic. The difficulty is that there is no common term encompassing propositional and predicate logic, just as there is no term encompassing the basic parts of set theory underlying Venn diagrams. We now have Category:Systems of formal logic which is not quite right. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

My problem is that I don't know the distinction between "propositional" and "sentential" logic. But I see how "propositional" could suggest propositions and "sentential" could suggest a more inclusive reading including sentences in 2nd order. Yes, we seem to have a general problem with terminology in elementary mathematical logic. For some concepts we have several competing terms, and for others there is no term at all. --Hans Adler (talk) 03:01, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Many of the texts that use "sentential logic" use it as a synonym for propositional logic. I don't remember if I had a text that used it more broadly when I created the category, although I think I probably did or I wouldn't have used that name. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:23, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I have had a quick look at our categories and I cannot say they make a lot of sense to me. IF you look at [[Category:Systems of formal logic]] you will see that predicate logic and propostional logic are subcategories. If you look at the category sentential logic youi will see it is a sub-category of mathematical logic. Formal logic has an awful lot of sub-categories; is that useful? Who does it help? Is it useful to have seperate categegories for predicate logic and sentential/propositional logic. Looks a bit like categories for categories sake to me. Re "there is no common term encompassing propositional and predicate logic": is that term not "Elementary Logic" (or do you consider that exluding of sentential logic) --Philogo (talk) 13:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

"Elementary logic" makes sense but I have not seen it very often, and I think that if I used the term in conversation my colleagues would have to guess what I mean – it could be propositional and predicate calculus, or it could be the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem, or it could be the incompleteness theorems. What I don't know of is a well established term that includes systems of logic but clearly does not include their metamathematics. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:00, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Proposals

In an effort to make the proposals page easier to read, edit and archive, and after a discussion here we decided it may be a good idea to make a system like that at Peer review. I just wondered if you could help by creating some sort of code to make this work, so instead of showing the whole proposal, it could just be a subpage that is transcluded into the main page in different sections, such as Art, Sport etc. and also in order of the time that they were created. Can you help? DeMoN2009 15:34, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

You might want to look into the system they use at GA, which uses templates under Template:CF; this could be done without any new code. I'm sorry to say that I don't have time to write new code at the moment. If you do need something new, you could ask another bot operator to adapt my code to your needs. The code for PeerReviewBot is available on its user page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:49, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. DeMoN2009 15:08, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Semi-automated peer reviews

Hi Carl, I forgot to do the Semi-automated peer reviews two days in a row (sorry). My concern is that with the new month, the March SAPRs might be a problem now (not sure if the bot checks every time for PRs from the previous month or not). I ran all of the SAPRs as AZPR just now. Thanks and sorry for the bother, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:00, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

It does not usually check the previous month; only on the 1st of each month it checks the day before. I can make it check the previous month when I run it by hand, though. I ran it again just now and it picked up the reviews from March. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:12, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks and sorry for the extra work. I was a bit under the weather last night and just forgot to run the SAPRs. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:03, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Quantification article

Did you write the following part?

″“For some natural number n, where n is greater than 2, n is not the sum of two primes. Goldbach's conjecture is that this statement is false, that is, that every natural number greater than 2 is the sum of two primes.″

In its present form the statement is just a correct statement. 11 is not the sum of two primes. Maybe you want to change the example again.Chris Barista (talk) 15:55, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

You could also fix it without my assistance. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I have done so. Algebraist 16:02, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. In cases like this where the error is obvious, it's usually best to just fix it an move on. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:03, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Red links at User:VeblenBot/C/Wikipedia featured article candidates

The FAC page name format has changed now; they are appended with /archiveX, where X is a number, whether they are active FACs or not. So, the page is now full of red links; could you please scrape the page names from each FAC article's talk page so that the links work? Thanks! Gary King (talk) 15:58, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

No, the system that is being used to generate that page does not have the ability to scrape a number off the talk page – it just uses category links. There are several ways to achieve what you are looking for:

• You could set up a system where the active FAC pages themselves are categorized, and use that category list to make a list of active FA discussions
• You could get someone to implement a system similar to the system used by Peer Review.
• You could have somebody write a custom script that scrapes the talk pages and generate the list of active discussions. This is not as easy as it sounds.

I apologize, but I do not have the time to develop new code for FA in the near future. It's unfortunate that the FA subpage layout was changed without the necessary bot code in place to handle the change. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:11, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

To be more clear, there are two ways I could make the VeblenBot lists work without writing new code:

The active discussions to all be categorized into some category, and removed from that category when the discussions are closed. This is what the peer review people do

The template Template:CF/Wikipedia featured article candidates could be edited so that it uses an ifexists to detect the archive page (assuming no article has more than 2 archives at the moment, this should not exceed the maximum number of ifexists calls per page). This would not require anything but someone with knowledge and time to develop the template code.

— Carl (CBM · talk) 18:30, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review is getting full (Apr 05, 12:35 UTC)

The post-expand size of Wikipedia:Peer review is 2035141 out of 2048000 bytes (12859 bytes left). This is an automated message. -- VeblenBot (talk) 16:34, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi Carl, I have done the partial transclusion trick for everything larger than 9000 here and when I look at the page size on wp:pr/d (listed by date) it is down to 1220854/2048000 bytes. However, when I look at WP:PR it is much larger. Not sure what the problem is. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:11, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

The problem seems to be in User:VeblenBot/C/Language and literature peer reviews. It looks like it is transcluding part of WP:Pr/d plus the list of current peer reviews. I've manually deleted the two offending lines for the moment (diff), but presumably they will come back when the bot next updates the lists. Dr pda (talk) 21:31, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Found the underlying problem. Category:Language and literature peer reviews had been manually added to Wikipedia:Peer review/The Moon and the Sandals/archive1, causing both WP:PR and WP:Pr/d to appear in the category. I've removed this, so next time the bot runs everything should work OK. Dr pda (talk) 22:24, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

That seems to have fixed it - thanks again, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:19, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:FACL

Hi there. I've been away from WP for a while, but I believe the process for FAC has changed a bit, thus rendering WP:FACL full of red links. I think by default, new nominations now reside at /archiveX (for example, Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/British_Cypriots/archive1). Can Veblenbot be updated to accommodate this change? Thanks! BuddingJournalist 21:52, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

In order for that system to work, there would need to be some category that is put on active FAC archive pages and removed when they are closed, like Category:Current peer reviews. That would be a good idea anyway, because at the moment there are no categories whatsoever: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/British Cypriots/archive1. But otherwise there is no workable way for the list to know which pages are actually the active ones, because that list is generated just using category lists. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:28, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Thanks. I've proposed a small change at WT:FAC. Would that proposal take care of the problem? BuddingJournalist 02:06, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that would fix everything. And Gimmebot would be in a good position to fix the categories when it archives the discussions. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:07, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Yuremamine article

Hello,

The Yuremamine article seems to be locked. How is it possible to do some minor editing? I just left a comment on the discussion page. Two commercial sites have been added to the reference list, and they are not relevant. Also, the first paragraph needs re-editing; e.g. decoctions and other preparations of this plant are not called, "ayahuasca".

Also, I am not so fluent in this particular problem, and I am not even sure how I can receive your response.

Advance thanks!Jace1 (talk) 17:28, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

The page Yuremamine does not appear to be locked. Could you double-check and let me know exactly what message you get when you try to edit it? — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:01, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Carl. Perhaps I did not scroll down far enough to see the text body. In any event, this seems to be working for me now. I'll try to pay closer attention in the future.Jace1 (talk) 08:35, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Good_article_reassessment/backlog

I don't think the bot is working on this. I appears that recent additions are not being put in the list. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:37, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

The bot merely lists the contents of Category:GAR. I do not know if other pages should be included in that category, or why they might not be listed there, but the bot's list does match the category list. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:51, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

PR bot error

Hi Carl, Peer Review Bot archived an article here as no recent comments but it was too new. I undid the edit. Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:35, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I looked at the log file but I don't know why that was archived. I have increased the amount of log information that is kept; please let me know if this happens again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:07, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I did not see any reason either - I always look over the logs and check PRs I made comments on to make sure I did not miss any replies. I knew the article name from doing the SAPR and double checked, not sure I would have caught it if her name wasn't so memorable. Will keep a closer eye on things now. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:51, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I will see if I can improve the log page so that it includes a timestamp for the last reivsion of each page. In this case, the problem was that the system had no timestamp at all (but I don't know why). An improved log would make this more obvious. I can also try to make the bot detect this error condition itself. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:05, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Smiley Face Murders

I am sure I am going about this the wrong way, but I see some problems in the Smiley face murders article. There is an anonymous IP reverting unsourced information without regard to guidelines. While there are sources attached, they do not mention the subject included (Mike Flaherty). The only source mentioned Mike Flaherty is an unreliable source. I do not know where else to turn when it seems that the other editor is avoiding discussion and doing whatever he/she feels. I want to avoid edit warring. What is my next step? Angryapathy (talk) 17:43, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

It looks like the editor was already blocked on one IP address, so I semiprotected the page for 1 week. You can use that time to discuss the issue on the talk page. If there is a clear consensus of editors about the desired content, that helps a lot. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:50, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. Angryapathy (talk) 23:28, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Spring cleaning

Hi Carl, I have merged elementarily equivalent, elementary embedding and Tarski–Vaught test into elementary substructure to get a decent-sized article. I would like to rename the resulting article to elementary equivalence, but unfortunately this already exists as a redirect to elementarily equivalent (no other history). Could you do the move for me when you are back? Thanks. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:24, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

PS: Of course it's quite likely that you have a better idea, so that would be fine too. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:23, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I moved it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:10, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the move and the project rating. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:43, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Can I ask you for another move? I would like to move Boolean algebra (structure) to Boolean lattice per BRD, edit summary "move to synonym that doesn't need disambiguation; better reflects current article contents". Unfortunately the existing redirect has a formally non-trivial edit history. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:58, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't really mind, but there has been a lot of discussion in the past about the naming of these articles, so I left a note on the talk page. I can do the move in a couple days if nobody objects. Of course the move can always be undone, but I would rather be deliberate about renames. 20:27, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

That's fine. I trust your judgement in these things, and if I ever want an admin to do something reckless for me I will ask someone else anyway. ;-) Thanks. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:45, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

FAC

Hi there. The recent change to the FAC procedure (/archivex subpages) has left lots of redlinks on the update page. Is this something that's easily remediable? All the best, Steve ^{T • C} 17:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

There would need to be some category that is placed on open FAC pages and is removed when the FAC is closed (like Category:Current peer reviews for the peer review process). — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:54, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

PR bot early archiving again

Hi Carl, there has been a second premature archiving error here as Timeline of the 2007–08 South Pacific cyclone season has only been at PR a few days. I put this on the bot's page too - do you want such notices here in the future too? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:14, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I looked at the log files, and it's the same issue, but I still don't know what's causing it. I added some code to try to detect the problem and not archive the page, and increased the logging even more. So eventually I will get to the bottom of this problem. I prefer notes on this page, rather than the bot's page, for actual bugs in the software, and notes on the bot's page for errors with particular PR pages. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:18, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, I will report any more errors (if any) here only - thanks again for all the work you do, it is much appreciated. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:58, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Review and assessment of probability and statistics articles

Could you respond to this note? Regards—G716 <^T·_C> 00:23, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response—G716 <^T·_C> 01:57, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

User:VeblenBot/Economics/table:ECONOMICS

Hi-how do we get the category names updated to the current ones? Thanks, --Funandtrvl (talk) 04:03, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Nobody informed me the names had changed. I'll look into it, no later than this weekend. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't surprise me, I'm a new project member and have been doing a lot of clean-up. :) --Funandtrvl (talk) 20:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:Unreferenced

Hi! You might be interested in the discussion at Template talk:Unreferenced#Proposal to change wording. Thank you. ascidian | talk-to-me 15:11, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Fb team template

Hi. I would like to request for unprotect Template:Fb team template. I am working now on new template which will display teams locations on map User:Verwolff/football/Fb_map. I cannot finish until I am not able to put new variables into Fb team template. Hopefully you can unprotect this template for me. Regards.--Verwolff (talk) 21:35, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

It's done already. Don't bother yourself. --Verwolff (talk) 12:08, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, great. I have been away from the computer for a little while, so I am glad someone else handled it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Epic of Roy

I mean no offence, but it's been a while since I've been on wikipedia, and I just found that the Epic of Roy was deleted. It has your name on the deletion log, so i'm asking you, why? --Tiddlydum (talk)

The page Epic of Roy was deleted by someone else in 2007 as a cross-namespace redirect. The page Wikipedia:Sandbox/World's Longest Poem is clearly a marked in its title as a sandbox page, intended for testing. I deleted that page in 2007. There seems to be some agreement these days that pages like that are not what the project is intended for; see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Wikistory (2nd nomination) for a more recent discussion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:00, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Predicates

A quick question, is "(x = 1)" a legitimate predicate in first order formal arithmetical languages? or is there a need to include a quantifier for some reason, such as "∃y(x = y) & (y = 1)"

i am trying to edit some stuff about Boolos's short proof of godel's theorem and i see the following in in Boolo's original paper

∃y (y = (10Xk) & A (x, y))

why can't he just write A(x,(10xk)) as a predicate? Is it merely a matter of style? or am i missing something? Philosophy.dude (talk) 23:37, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't have that paper of Boolos available at the moment, and I don't want to misspeak. Could you let me know exactly what "10xk" is? One thing about that paper (which I have read) is that it is written in the sketchiest way possible, since the intended audience was very advanced. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:54, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

10 x K , as in 10 multiplied by k, where, the intended interpretation of the predicate, ∃y (y = (10Xk) & A (x, y)) in boolos' exact words is

"x is the least number not named by any formula containing less than fewer than 10k syllables."

And A (x, y) says (again in boolos' exact words

"x is the least formula not named by a formula of few than y symbols."

In his argument there are no replacement operations or anything like substitutions going on... (so it's not like the actual string "y = 10 x k" need to be present in the formula...

I think i understand boolos's argument in general but this is one subtitle thing i don't get.... it seems to have bearing on the truth value of things... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Philosophy.dude (talk • contribs) 12:26, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

If there is a constant "10" in the language, and a symbol for multiplication, then "10x" is a term, and so it would be perfectly fine to just say "A(x,10x)". One issue might be that "y = 10x" is intended to be an abbreviation for a longer formula, in which case people often write it the way Boolos did. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:34, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

thanks :) 74.77.21.249 (talk) 15:24, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

User:VeblenBot/Economics/table:ECONOMICS

When you have a chance, the red-linked categories at User:VeblenBot/Economics/table:ECONOMICS need to be redirected to the current category names. Thanks --Funandtrvl (talk) 22:46, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Request and a question

Hi Carl, I have a request and a question for you. I forgot to run the semi-automated peer reviews two nights in a row (I just did them but PeerReviewBot beat me by 7 minutes). There are 12 PRs without a linked SAPR, so would you please run the bot manually? I can do them by hand if you'd prefer.

The question would be a lot more work for you - I help out at DYK from time to time. There used to be a DYK update bot that was very helpful, but has not run for some time (it even had admin rights to update the Main Page). I know another user was working on a second bot, but that also seems not to have panned out. Your bots function so smoothly that I was wondering if you had the time and interest to write (or modify the existing script(s)) for a new DYK bot.

The tasks are to:

1. Take the hooks from the next queue every 6 hours and put them in the DYK section of the Main Page
2. Take the previous set of hooks from the Main Page and paste them in the archive (done in this order to catch any updates / error corrections while the hooks were on the Main Page)
3. Paste credits into the talk page of each hook's author(s) and in some cases nominator (if these are different)
4. Paste a notice in the article's talk page that it appeared as a DYK

There are already a series of templates for the hooks that standardize the author and nominator and article information. In the past two parameters have been adjustable by admins - the next queue to be used for an update (there are 6 queues, normally they go in order, but if there is a problem with a hook a queue might be skipped on occasion) and the time interval for the next update) this is usually six hours, but if there is a big backlog it may be adjusted to a shorter interval.

If you are too busy or have no interest I understand, but I thought it couldn't hurt to ask. I am not 100% sure I have mentioned all of the tasks / issues a bot would face, but I am pretty sure I have.

Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 10:33, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I ran the SAPR linker, and it did find 12 reviews to link.

I am currently over-committed in terms of bot writing; in addition to the final steps of the WP 0.7 release there is a major overhaul of the bot that makes the tables of assessment data for WP 1.0. I may be able to work on the DYK bot in the late summer or fall, but it will be a while. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:40, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks so much - don't worry about the DYK bot, hopefully by late summer or fall it will be fixed or have a new bot running. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 10:43, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I should have asked you sooner ;-) - User:Nixeagle has the DYK bot up and running again. One less thing to worry about, and thanks again for all you do, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:59, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Substitution(mathematics) synonymous with composition(mathematics)?

Boolos Burgess & Jeffry 2002:58 states "A first process is composition, also called substitution . . .", Enderton 2001 sends the reader to different places in the book for the different words (and I don't have the patience to wade through it, but he seems to be using substitution wrt logic and composition wrt functions), and Kleene 1952 does not use the word composition (only substitution, ditto for Goedel) nor does Sipser 2006. I looked up "substitution" here at wiki but didn't see it disambiguated re functions. What's going on? Thanks, Bill Wvbailey (talk) 18:30, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Usually "composition" is used when one talks about functions and "substitition" when one has a string and one wants to do a search and replace to change one substring into a second substring. For example if I substitute "BB" for "A" in "ACA" then I get "BBCBB". Primitive recursive functions are somewhat odd because they can be regarded both as functions (semantical) and as syntactical objects (when the function is identified with its definition). — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:46, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I was out on a bike ride and a random thought occurred: that all strings of written symbols e.g. mathematical equations, really require the use of "substitution" to change one string into another -- the operation of "string substitution" as in your example above. To trace the origin of the use of the word I did a bit more research: Minksy 1967:173 in a footnote states that "Composition is the operation of substituting function names for variables in other function names. A more formal treatment of this is in Kleene [1952] . . .". But as noted above, Kleene doesn't use the word (I double-checked). So I go to my trusty dictionary: "compose" comes from L. componere = com with, together, jointly + ponere to put. (This sounds more like "concatenate" than "substitute".) "Composite function" appears in Suppes 1960 (Axiomatic Set Theory), in Halmos 1960 (Naive Set Theory), in Saracino 1980 (Abstract Algebra: A First Course), but not in Reichenbach 1947 (Elements of Symbolic Logic). From this little survey I surmise that the use of "composition" came from the "incursion" of set theory into algebra (abstract and otherwise) during the 1950's. My point? I am uncomfortable with the composition (mathematics) article and the fact that substitution (mathematics), which is a perfectly good usage of the word and has historical significance, is not discussed anywhere . . . and the student leaves confused. Bill Wvbailey (talk) 19:36, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Ordinary mathematics is, from the point of view of a logician, very semantical and not very syntactical. Hence the focus on composition of functions rather than on substitution of strings. If you were to survey undergraduate analysis and abstract algebra books they would all describe function composition. But there are very few places where you would find substitution mentioned, and these would always be syntactical – for example, related to free groups or polynomials. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Bot

VeblenBot seems to have fallen asleep! Thanks, — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:17, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

PeerReviewBot also did not run earlier today, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:49, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. In this case I did already know about it; there is a situation with the toolserver that is preventing the bots from running. I spent some time on IRC earlier today diagnosing it with some mediawiki devs. I don't know when it will be resolved, unfortunately. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:04, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

The problem has been diagnosed but not fixed yet. I ran the PR bot and category update by hand (my local code is not supposed to be working right now so I have to check all the edits by hand). I hope the problem is resolved soon. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:05, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much for doing that - hope the problem is soon resolved, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 00:18, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Everything seems to be working again now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:04, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much - glad things are functioning again, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:19, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Bug report for Veblen Bot

For some reason Veblen writes File Talk instead of File on User:VeblenBot/PERtable. (Old revision of User:VeblenBot/PERtable.) Also could &redirect=no be added to the link to the request; it would save a click in the case that the talk page is redirected, which happens fairly often. Thanks, — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:33, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I made those changes, no problem. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:36, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks ;) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:14, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

artLine displayed instead of article name in first column.

When you get a chance... By the way, awesome job on the table in the first place. I hadn't realized it was only added in March. Thanks, Celestra (talk) 17:29, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, fixed yesterday. This was a regression related to a change to bypass redirects. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:35, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Peer Review Bot's edit

I am not able to understand the reason for this change.--GDibyendu (talk) 05:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

According to the log at User:PeerReviewBot/Logs/Archive, the peer review was closed because the article went to FAC. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:27, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

help: "Turing machine" and "Entscheidungsproblem"

I've seen that you have edited something in "Turing machine", and that you are inside "Portal:Mathematics". I've seen that

"Turing machine" belongs to Portal:Mathematics (and I think it's ok), but "Entscheidungsproblem" (that starts with "In mathematics, the Entscheidungsproblem...") "belongs" only to Portal:Philosophy and while I don't know if it's really related to Philosophy (or if it's an error), I'm pretty sure that it should be also into "Portal:Mathematics" and also, probably, some content of the page "Turing machine" -> Entscheidungsproblem can/should be moved in the main page "Entscheidungsproblem".

[and -yes I'm an italian- so *probably* sorry for some error in my English!]

Thanks, Ad88110 (talk) 14:03, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

user:Georgezhao

i am not sure if i register account name ‘georgezhao’ before, i want to Manage my global account, but find this user name 'georgezhao' used different password, i cannot remember which one to use. i faided to merge my english account and chinese account. could you please help me to figure out why?

it seems no people is using this account‘georgezhao’ , please help me to change my user-name 'gzhao' to georgezhao？ thank you very much。 66.7.131.199 (talk) 20:44, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Gamma boron discovery controversy

An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is Gamma boron discovery controversy. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion(s) by adding your comments to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gamma boron discovery controversy. Please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate.

Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 21:40, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Propositional logic or sentential logic?

See WT:WikiProject Logic#Propositional logic or sentential logic?. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Red links at User:VeblenBot/C/Wikipedia featured article candidates

Instead of leaving them as red links, could the dates please link to the article itself, so that the links are still clickable and useful? Gary King (talk) 17:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Propositional logic or sentential logic?

See WT:WikiProject Logic#Propositional logic or sentential logic?. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I think things would have worked out easier if I had chosen the other name when I created the category. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:16, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Red links at User:VeblenBot/C/Wikipedia featured article candidates

Instead of leaving them as red links, could the dates please link to the article itself, so that the links are still clickable and useful? Gary King (talk) 17:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Could you let me know which page you are using to view the list? — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:49, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

This one. But it looks like you finally fixed the links, anyway. Gary King (talk) 19:06, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Geometry Guy edited Template:CF/Wikipedia featured article candidates to have the template try to guess the archive number. This will work for a while as a temporary patch. The bot has not been changed at all. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:10, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Empty categories

Hi Carl, thanks to your good work to make VeblenBot's category listing so easy to use, we haven't been in touch for a while, which has saved many communications, although in some ways has been a pity, as I have always enjoyed working with you to make Wikipedia easier for others to contribute. Anyway, I've noticed on several occasions (such as GAR categories, and most recently at Category:Good articles in need of review) that VeblenBot can get stuck when categories are empty. Can you remedy this? Please let me know if further details would be helpful. Geometry guy 21:51, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

You're right, it's been too long since we ran into each other. I do need some more info about the category problem; I'm not sure what you mean by the bot getting stuck. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:49, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, when a category is emptied, VeblenBot keeps one article in the list: for instance Category:Good articles in need of review is currently empty, but User:VeblenBot/C/Good articles in need of review contains one article, Kevin Youkilis (19:17:48, 01/06/2009). Geometry guy 19:18, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

For some reason, I had explicitly told the bot not to upload an empty page. I have disabled that; please let me know if you see anything else that seems wrong. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:23, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. It may have been a case of the experienced lion hunting programmer leaving a known lion in Cairo to ensure the search algorithm terminates. :-) I will let you know if I spot any glitches as a result of your change. Geometry guy 20:19, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Frequently viewed.

I just found Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Frequently viewed which you created. Is it possible to have something like that created for WP:GERMANY? Agathoclea (talk) 10:58, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but it takes some manual work because every project is different. I am planning to publish the code I used, so that other people can adapt it to their needs. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:38, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - really looks like I need start to look into running bots myself Agathoclea (talk) 11:53, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Bot stuck

As reported on Oleg's talk, Special:Contributions/WP 1.0 bot shows nothing after 09:54 UTC, and the bot died halfway through its run through WP:GERMANY... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 10:59, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it looks like it ran into some sort of server error. I restarted it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:38, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Frequently viewed

Hi Carl, thanks for updating Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Frequently viewed/List and persuading Veblenbot to update the {{maths rating}}s accordingly. One question: I'd assumed the numbers at the end of each entry in the List are the hitcounts for the whole of the period January 2009 through April 2009, but they appear to be far too small — e.g. stats.grok.se reports 380439 hits for Standard deviation in April 2009 alone, while the updated List has "2. Standard deviation 25784". That's also much smaller than the figure of 538269 given in the previous version of the List for Feb 1, 2008 to Feb 23, 2008. Are the new figures divided by 100 or something? Regards, Qwfp (talk) 11:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

The number shown now is a daily hitcount. I rewrote the code that is used to generate the list, so the new numbers and old numbers are not directly comparable. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:33, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that sounds very sensible, maybe I should have guessed. Thanks for adding more explanation! Qwfp (talk) 11:49, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I suspect this bot edit has not done what was intended. The talk page had been blanked, so it has some excuse. This is just to let you know. -- Avenue (talk) 12:17, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that is certainly a bug in my code. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:22, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Re: Timestamp anomolies

Yeah, there are too many false positives from the import of old UseModWiki edits. Maybe a query like "if the rev date is Jan. 2003 but the rev ID is way above expected for that time" would get most of the edits I want, since the server clocks often seemed to reset in January 2003. Graham87 03:31, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that would be much more useful; it seems very ad hoc. I don't understand from MZMcBride the purpose of getting these revisions. If the server admins are going to fix these, they should be able to find the bad timestamps themselves. If they are not going to fix them, why try to list them?

If you know the C language, I would be happy to send you some simple code to parse the XML dumps, that you could use to look for the information you're interested in. — Carl (CBM · talk) 05:02, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I suppose that's a fair point; as a normal user, I wouldn't have any use for the edits. It was more out of curiosity than anything. I don't know the C language, but the more I think about it, I can see how hard it would be to find these anomalies using queries without false positives from articles like Wikipedia and George W. Bush, which have anomalous rev ID's for most of their early edits. Graham87 06:04, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

PeerReviewBot

Hi Carl,

PeerReviewBot has not yet run today - not sure if you knew. Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:04, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of base pages in the Wikipedia namespace needs an update

Do you know how to do this? (I found this and then posted it to the Wikipedia namespace, but I have no idea how it was created).

Please rebuild it.

(Or explain to the rest of us how, so one of us can do it).

The Transhumanist 17:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

What is supposed to be on that page? I can probably recreate it, but I don't know what the 0s are supposed to mean. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:05, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The 0s are useless, and shouldn't be on the list. The only thing that should be on the list are pages in the Wikipedia namespace that are neither redirects nor subpages. The Transhumanist 19:45, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AAllPages&namespace=4 is a low-tech solution. Putting .allpagesredirect { display:none; } in your css will hide the redirects, though you'll have to skip past the subpages yourself. —Cryptic 18:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

There are way too many subpages to make this worthwhile. AfD alone has thousands of subpages. The Transhumanist 19:45, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I put a list at http://toolserver.org/~cbm/data/wikipedia.base.txt . Do with it what you will. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:29, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Weird listings

CBM, please see this posting. Do you understand where these came from?!! Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 01:36, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

0.7 navboxes

Finally had a look at those navboxes as I think you noticed. I think they're looking good now, with the exception of the alphabetical index. This one is really difficult to use I think. I'm not sure how you decided to organise those pages - perhaps you've tried to get an equal number of entries on each page or something like that? I think it would be better with a separate page for each letter (or group of letters). — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:59, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I saw on my watchlist you have been working on the indexes; thanks. It's not something I really enjoy so I had left them very minimalistic.

The only place the letters are groups is in the navbox; the actual index pages are separate. The reason I grouped them in the navbox is that it had a maximum number of rows less than I needed, so I hacked something up to fit the constraints of the template. The best solution would be to make a copy of the navbox template and add more rows to it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:49, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not with you. I was trying to say that having a page of entries from History of South Africa to Klaas-Jan Huntelaar was a bit confusing and hard to use. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:55, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, I see. Within each letter, there were too many entries to put on a single page. So I had the script split up the pages if they got too big. I agree that the alphabetical index is probably less useful than the other two, but I think it complements them in some way. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:56, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

What about something like Aa - Ah, Ai - Ar, As - Az? That would be a bit easier to use. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:11, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see that it's much easier, but if you would like to recreate the pages that way I would not argue against it. I think they are pretty much equivalent. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:52, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Well I had a play with the articles beginning with A. See what you think. I won't carry on if you don't see the benefit. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:24, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that either way is fine; perhaps you should ask Walkerma for a third opinion, since I don't have any strong feeling about which variation is better. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:36, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I see the point (the other) Martin is making, and I agree. I don't know that it's worth you spending a lot of time changing it for Version 0.7, but I think for Version 0.8 it should be done as Martin suggests. I believe we'd talked about getting some professional design done for the indexes anyway, but this is one improvement we can see now. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 01:35, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so I won't do any more with it now. Please let me know if I can help with 0.8 though. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:27, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Peer review bot error

Hi Carl, I added four semi-automated peer reviews here but when the bot ran later it found nothing to link diff. It also did not archive anything, although that happens occasionally. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I diagnosed the problem as a bad interaction between my code and a change in Mediawiki that went live recently. I fixed my code and the pages are archived now. Unfortunately I had disabled the log so you won't see it there, but the pages really are linked now. Things should be back to normal tomorrow. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - I watch the relevant pages so I caught the update in my watchlist (even though it is not in the log). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 14:28, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot appears to be incorrectly updating assessment logs

Hi. WP 1.0 bot (talk · contribs) seems to be malfunctioning. It lists all tagged pages as newly added. (See here.) Regards, Goodraise 15:06, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

This seems to be a problem with the webserver configuration on the server where the bot runs. I have asked the server admin about it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:36, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

There was also this report on Metaphysics - is this the same issue? Or is it a problem that's entirely outside the realm of human understanding? Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 19:36, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what caused it. There was a change in Mediawiki that I had to adapt for this morning (it also caught PeerReviewBot). I ran the Shipwreck and Portugal by hand and they came out right. If this happens again, or any other bugs appear, let me know. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:21, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Possible renaming of Peer review

Hi Carl, there is a proposal to rename peer review at Wikipedia_talk:Peer_review#Renaming_.22peer_review.22_to_.22internal_review.22. My question is, would this be technically problematic with Veblenbot and Peer Review Bot? Or do you see any other problems or technical issues with a possible renaming? Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:50, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

No, there should be no problem. For the transition to be smooth, I need to be well informed ahead of time, and I need to be available the day the move happens, to update the bot. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:55, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I am not sure there will be a name change, but wanted to make sure with you first that there were no technical issues involved if there were a change. I will copy this to the PR talk page too. Thanks again, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:20, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Citizendium Porting

Hi. Since you created {{Citizendium}}, I thought you might be interested in the proposed WikiProject Citizendium Porting. --Cybercobra (talk) 20:54, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Help

Hi, I'm posting this on your (and other members of the Maths Wikiproject) talk as we need editors who are knowledgeable about Mathematics to evaluate the following discussion and check out the editors and articles affected. Please follow the link below and comment if you can help.

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Block_review_-_uninvolved_admin_request.

Thankyou. Exxolon (talk) 18:14, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot question

Please see my question over here. Thanks! ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:15, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Civility/Poll/Data

Nice work. How/where do you query the database? Ha! (talk)

You use your toolserver account, which requires an application process. Usually only people who do bot or web programming have them. There is a facility for people who do not have an account to ask for queries, which are usually done pretty promptly. Search for "query service". — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:32, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Ha! (talk) 21:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Policy assistance, please

A few years ago, you chimed in on Talk:Incidents at Six Flags parks regarding the exclusion of the victim's name as part of the article. This topic has come up again over at Talk:Incidents at Disney parks. Feel free to join in, if you could. SpikeJones (talk) 00:27, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

In this case, unlike the Six Flags case, the person in question was killed. I do not think there is as much agreement on WP about privacy of deceased individuals as there is about the privacy of living people. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:38, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

How so? That would mean that if the victim was injured, we wouldn't put their name...but as soon as they died we could? That seems like a conflict, hence the issue (and it has turned rather ugly in this case, as some editors' passions run high as they are reporting on the victim instead of the incident). In essence, since that conversation you and I had before, the standard in those articles has been to remove all names, regardless of victim status. It would seem inconsistent to protect some victims' names and display others, merely based on their life status. SpikeJones (talk) 02:35, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

(which would mean that we would then have to monitor whether the victim had finally died in order to put their name in. That's not exactly a good use of anyones time.) SpikeJones (talk) 02:36, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:51, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Funny. As another editor told me they were going to possibly report me for 3RR (even though they were doing the same thing, hmmm) and put it up for RfC, I just said screw it and posted the RfC myself. We'll see how it goes. Feel free to chime in if you choose at Talk:Incidents at Disney parks. Thx SpikeJones (talk) 03:34, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Category listing of subcategories

VeblenBot has suddenly started auto-listing subcategories as well as pages in categories, as shown in this diff. Maybe there has been a mediawiki or toolserver change. Is there a workaround? Thanks, Geometry guy 16:36, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it appears to be bugzilla:19640. I added an extra filter to my code to remove them, so they should disappear now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:10, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Carl - that's fixed it. It really is a moving target operating a bot in this place: my gratitude as always for your efforts and efficient responses! Geometry guy 19:32, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

might you please remove my name from your poll?

I have been informed that I appeared on your poll. I ask that you review the conversation at the bottom of this archived page] and then the discussion of my unfortunate block on the blocking admin's page. Other than that one incident, I have never been blocked for incivility... real or presumed... and I am uncomfortable with the erroneous impression my being on your list might give to editors not familiar with the circumstances of the block and its speedy removal. Thank you, MichaelQSchmidt (talk) 03:46, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I've told Smitty on my talk that his inclusion in that data is statistical only, for the purpose of the poll (which I assume it is) and I hope that satisfies his concerns. It would be of interest though to see the initial block time and actual block time (i.e. unblocking) in that list. After all, the whole discussion is about effectiveness of the civility policy, and quick unblocks often indicate its improper application. Or a nascent wheel-war, I suppose the name of the unblocking admin would matter too there... ;) Franamax (talk) 06:39, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Indeed he has. I do agree with him that if it were clearly indicated in that listing that certain of the included editors had those blocks after-the-fact speedily lifted, it might better show how application of WP:CIV can sometimes catch up the unwary as collateral damage. MichaelQSchmidt (talk) 06:51, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I simply made a list of blocks that met the criteria listed in the query. There is no presumption they are correct, and moreover the purpose of the list is to allow people to look through them to see whether they are correct. Once the overall civility poll is closed, I have no objections to the page being blanked. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:06, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Concepts and theories

Greetings Carl,

I have been working on a proposal for organizing articles about "ideas" based on the observation that they can inevitably be identified as either "concepts" or "theories." I had been working on a lot of belief systems, "-isms," "-ologies," and even some "-sis"es, putting them into "theory" categories and I observed that it helped immensely to diffuse many general categories. I was often left with articles about single "concepts." I have been putting some ideas at User:Gregbard/Concepts and theories. I think at some point you had proposed to make a "basic concepts in logic" (or math) category. I think this type of approach will help to make it possible to streamline other categories in the future. The whole thing is an ontological approach to categories.

I am no longer interested in keeping whole second paragraph at set (mathematics). I think the important thing is to ontologically identify it somewhere, and that is adequately achieved in the first paragraph with a wikilink to concept. The whole abstract object issue is sufficiently dealt with over in articles like idea, concept, and mental representation. I would like to create a category for all the fundamental concepts of mathematics as described at U:Gb/C&T, perhaps "mathematical objects." This is intended to be very limited to single concepts like "set." I had proposed to move category "abstract objects" to "concepts" because of your legitimate concerns but there was no consensus.

I also would like to know what you think about Category:Theories of deduction. There are a bunch of other potential members, but ones like "model theory" are different than ones like "intuitionism." Perhaps we need to differentiate with "metatheories of deduction?"

Be well, Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 22:18, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Switch to priority help

We've switched from Importance to Priority when describing an assessment. In doing so, our statistics no longer work. User:VeblenBot/Economics/table:ECONOMICS. Not sure how to correct this. Thanks Morphh ^(talk) 12:40, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I just had to update the bot script. It ought to be working correctly now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:49, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Note

Note that I am not James R. Meyer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.170.8 (talk) 09:32, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk pages are not intended for general discussion, they are only for discussion about writing the article at hand. There is a note at the bottom of that talk page, "This is not a forum for general discussion of Kurt Gödel. Any such messages will be deleted. Please limit discussion to improvement of this article." — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:14, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

CBM

I have been saying exactly what you have just said regarding balancing and analyzing multiple sources. There's a balanced way to write up a subject and it can be done only when the subject is fully understood. Somebody who doesn't understand the subject can scupper an article simply by quoting from specific sources. Can you please look at my last edit to centrifugal force on wikipedia. I would like to hear your comments on the issue of the balance of usage of sources. Administrators are talking about having me blocked. It is important that somebody with a mathematical background who is not involved in this dispute can supply an opinion on the arguments surrounding the balance of usage of sources in my last edit and the subsequent reversion by FyzixFighter and the reasons that he gave. David Tombe (talk) 00:27, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I thought about commenting on the specific situation, but I don't think I know enough about the physics literature to say anything worthwhile. Also, I unfortunately don't have the time to review extensive talk page discussions, since I have a flight early tomorrow morning. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:44, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Ping

You may want to watch User:Dinoguy1000/Assessment category RfC for any changes we may need to do... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 20:05, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, I will try to keep an eye on it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:03, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

PERtable of move-protected articles

Hey, I put an {{editprotected}} tag on Talk:Simon_Sheppard_(far-right_activist) because it was indef move-protected. But on the table, it shows up as "Not protected" on the protection level. Is that by design? -shirulashem^(talk) 01:29, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, because the article isn't protected from editing, so no editprotected tag should be needed for it. Request moves at Wikipedia:Requested moves. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:34, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Gotcha. Thanks. -shirulashem^(talk) 12:16, 20 July 2009 (UTC)