Forum:Mathematics Wikia

This forum is for discussing issues related to this wiki. See our other forums for questions about mathematical topics.

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Previous discussion[]

There's some previous general wiki-related discussion at Talk:Main Page. It will be moved here at some point, to reserve that talk page for Main Page discussion only. - dcljr 00:00, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

The first four sections below were moved from Talk:Main Page at 07:57, 1 November 2008 (UTC). That page has now been edited to direct users here or elsewhere, depending on what they want to discuss. Talk:Main Page will now be only for discussing the Main Page. - dcljr

What's the point?[]

So what's the point of this wiki? For people to post questions with solutions to them, or what? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Soapergem (talk • contribs).

Well I guess the answer has to be - whatever you want to make of it! At the moment, it's pretty inactive. The founder hasn't been around for a long time, and there isn't much here. It's just waiting for someone to take it under their wing and get it going. It should be possible to make this wiki cover all sorts of aspects of maths - from basic principles, to example questions, to help with problems, to interesting and fun aspects of maths... and I'm sure people can think of many ideas I can't. So please - jump in and see what you can make of the place -- sannse (talk) 16:29, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Please also see Mathematics talk:Guidelines for more discussion about this. - dcljr 11:54, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Since no one has been policing the obvious vandalism here and the founder (and only Bureaucrat) hasn't been around for a long time, I am interested in becoming an Administrator and Bureaucrat here. — Jeff G. ツ 17:05, April 29, 2011 (UTC)

Jeff: Why not make a request to adopt the wiki here? Good luck! — Spike Toronto 22:07, April 29, 2011 (UTC)

They seem to like attempts to engage the existing Bureaucrats and Administrators, as well as sustained editing for some days, so making such a request there now would be frowned upon. — Jeff G. ツ 04:21, April 30, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I’ve always understood that too. However, a Wikia staffer recently recommended to another editor with little more contributions here than you the same route. This was the only reason why I also suggested it to you. Thanks! — Spike Toronto 07:58, April 30, 2011 (UTC)

I made such a request at w:Community Central:Adoption requests#Mathematics Wikia. — Jeff G. ツ 15:12, May 8, 2011 (UTC)

It was granted. — Jeff G. ツ 15:50, June 3, 2011 (UTC)

common.css[]

Um, can someone with sysop privileges copy the contents of the common.css file from Wikipedia to our common.css file? I'm trying to do some table formatting, but because some of the styles I'm referencing are in the common.css file for Wikipedia, the formatting isn't working. --Braindrain0000 04:05, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia version is a bit excessive. Are you sure it's worth copying all of it here? I've copied just the "wikitable" parts for now. Is that what you needed? Angela (talk) 05:59, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. That was mainly what I was getting at anyway. --Braindrain0000 12:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Ongoing Research?[]

Is this wiki an appropriate place to collect ongoing mathematical research that does not have published sources to make it applicable to wikipedia? I'm on an email group collaboration on the [1]? Specifically I would suggest participates present their work here for evaluation by others. Tomruen 21:12, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Is there anyway I can add external links (to wikipedia) without triggering the spam protection!?!?!? Tomruen 21:12, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this wiki can definitely be used for that. To link to Wikipedia, just use [[Wikipedia:Article name]]. Angela ^talk 01:15, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Angela. A few more questions please, at your convenience! Thanks!

Is it possible to reference(view!) pictures from wikipedia too? Tomruen 18:53, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
ALSO, I tried a "#REDIRECT [[Wikipedia:<ariticle_name>]]", and it almost worked, but doesn't automatically redirect. Is this possible? Tomruen 19:10, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Also, I tried uploading a Wikipedia:VRML file, and it says "Upload warning ".wrl" is not a recommended image file format." (Not recommended seems to imply NOT allowed!) What formats ARE allowed? Tomruen 22:39, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
When uploading an image, the summary text does not seem to be added to the edit or discussion text. Is there a problem here? Tomruen 22:44, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

If you want to use images from Wikipedia, you need to upload them here (to avoid stealing their bandwidth)
Cross-wiki redirects are disabled. They're very confusing to people who follow what looks like an internal link and end up on a different wiki, sometimes without noticing. They're also harder to revert if created by a vandal. You need to use soft redirects instead.
For security reasons, the allowed files are only gif, png, jpg, pdf, odd, xcf, svg, and ico. You can link to files externally if you can find somewhere that allows VRML uploads.
The summary text seems to work normally for me. It won't show up if you're over-writing an older image, but should for new images. Where have you found this isn't working?

Angela ^talk 08:42, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Scope of math wikia[]

I am interested in contributing material on several undergraduate topics—I've contributed successfully to PlanetMath before but I'm frequently out of my depth, plus I like the wiki model and mediawiki itself more. One thing I want to get cleared up before I start is whether it's OK to add topics on (mathematical) computer science topics, like, say, Dijkstra's algorithm or A* search.

Cheers

C.hever 07:54, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Computer science topics related to mathematics would be fine.

Localhost00 16:45, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Well my first two articles are up (Prim's algorithm and its proof). Cheers

C.hever 07:26, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Template functionality broken?[]

Category:Wiki_maintenance is only linking to existent templates, as if they were non-existent. What's going on? --Jesdisciple (talk) 01:59, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. Only the templates most directly related to wiki maintenance tasks are listed in that category. Category:Templates is a more complete list. - dcljr 00:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

When a page attempts to transclude a non-existent template, it looks like Template:Non-existent template. The same thing was occurring for Template:Tl and Template:Maintenance_tasks (these are ordinary links), except the links were blue (and I think that was the only page which showed the problem). Whatever was causing it seems to have cleared up now. --Jesdisciple (talk) 12:56, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Must've been a momentary server problem. - dcljr 05:18, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

New skin[]

Hi!

Several months ago, Wikia released a new site skin called Monaco. The new skin features tools which make it much easier for visitors to find content and edit it. You can read all about Monaco here. As you can read on that page, while you will still be able to select Monobook (this wiki's current default skin) as the skin you personally use to view the site (via Special:Preferences), we are no longer able to support Monobook as a default skin for anonymous visitors. So, we need to change the default skin to Monaco.

There are a number of pre-built themes for Monaco. Check out how the homepage looks in Sapphire, Jade, Slate, Smoke, Beach, and Brick, and let me know which one you like best. In addition to those pre-built themes, you can build your own custom themes as well. Check out the custom themes on the Shaiya Wiki and the Diablo Wiki. You can learn about customizing the theme, menus and other aspects of Monaco here.

Take a look at that information, and let me know which theme you think might work best. We need to change the skin by Friday, October 31st, so I am here to make that transition as easy as possible. Let me know if you have any questions, or if I can help in any way.

Thanks! --KyleH (talk) 18:31, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

~~Hang on... - dcljr 00:29, 30 October 2008 (UTC)~~

I'd say my top choices would be Sapphire and Jade, followed by Smoke. Personally, I don't care for the other, darker themes. Hopefully the other admins here can weigh in on this before the switch (I've left messages for them). - dcljr 06:04, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I like the Sapphire, Smoke, and Slate. I would like to see a new logo in the upper left, should anybody be interested in contributing one.Localhost00 06:17, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I set the theme to Sapphire for now. If you would like to change it to something else, an admin can do that via the option at the bottom of the Skin tab in Special:Preferences. --KyleH (talk) 18:07, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Main Page discussion[]

As mentioned above, Talk:Main Page is now reserved for discussing the Main Page only. Because of the recent changes to the site-wide skin, we might want to consider redesigning the Main Page. - dcljr 07:58, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Logo redesign[]

I've also created a page to discuss redesigning this wikia's logo. - dcljr 08:18, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

That first edit (since deleted) was vandalism. I would like to see a more serious discussion there. — Jeff G. ツ 19:01, March 5, 2016 (UTC)

Calculator[]

How about a wiki-based calculator? This will be similar to the other online calculators out there, but this time not based on Java or JS but on the wiki format itself, i.e. using ParserFunctions, especially #expr. --koイsuru (talk) 11:50, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Some policy questions[]

I just joined math.wikia.org. This past spring I attempted to add some proofs to a couple of mathematical articles on Wikipedia, but editors there told me Wikipedia doesn't do proofs. So, I moved on. I then decided to write a book on differential equations and began working on Wikibooks. However, it has become obvious that Wikibooks has some issues with rendering technical books. Specifically, there is no way to auto-number sections in a way that works across multiple wiki pages. I have suggested some ways to fix that problem, but it will probably require the use of the Labeled Section Transclusion extension (which is stable) and also the development of another extension. Given past history, this isn't going to happen on the wikimedia servers in a reasonable amount of time (a request for string functions was first made in 2006 and they still don't have that extension installed and may never get it installed). So, I am once again looking for alternatives.

That brings me to the following policy questions. Is math.wikia.org an appropriate place for a mathematics book? This would be a reference text (a handbook), not a textbook. Secondly, what is the policy on mathematical proofs? One possibility (that would save me a great deal of work) would be to put the proofs on math.wikia.org. Unfortunately, these proofs are on fairly advanced topics (the orthonormality of the Associated Legendre Functions and the orthogonality of solutions to the General Sturm-Liouville Equation). So, just plopping them somewhere on this site would probably not be very useful. However, instead of writing a book, I could import some text on Associated Legendre Functions and the General Sturm-Liouville Equation from Wikipedia and then add the proofs. Is this something that would conform to math.wikia.org policy? Finally, if the book option is the best (in terms of this site's policy), what is the policy on developing and deploying extensions that support section auto-numbering on texts longer than a single article? Dnessett 22:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Here are my responses, which are largely Just My Opinion, since we haven't hammered out any firm policy decisions yet. And, despite the fact that I'm an administrator, I don't really have any more authority than any other editor around here...

This wiki(a) is pretty much whatever people want to make it — as long as it's related to mathematics, correct information, and, well, not "completely useless" (keeping in mind that any user might have to struggle a bit to convince other editors that their ideas are worth pursuing). So, yes, making a book here would be fine, as long as it doesn't interfere with other uses of the wiki (e.g., page title conflicts). As you pointed out, the way articles are named and linked to in MediaWiki makes it very difficult to make a self-contained book with nice "internal links" between pages in the context of a larger, more general wiki. Of course, if "all you want" is to write a math book, doing it purely in LaTeX (which is freely available for most popular computer platforms) is by far a better solution than dealing with any kind of wiki.
Proofs are fine (they're mathematics, after all). Only problem is, anyone can come along after you and alter the proof (same for every page, of course). So thinking you can "save work" by putting something here might be misguided: you might find yourself spending more time correcting other people's changes (/vandalism) than if you put it somewhere else that you have more control over. For the record, placing something in your userspace (like your Sandboxes) might afford it slightly more "protection" against other users' edits — if not de jure (stuff in your userspace is still licensed CC-BY-SA and thus subject to merciless editing by anyone), at least by convention (most legitimate editors will leave non-talk pages in other people's userspaces alone for the most part). See also the remarks about the user namespace at Mathematics:Namespaces.
The fact that something is very advanced is not a reason to not have it here; it just makes it harder to find other editors who understand it. See previous remark. (Actually, if all this wiki consisted of was legitimate mathematical content that has been removed from Wikipedia because it was "too advanced", "not of general interest" or "just a collection of raw facts", it wouldn't be a bad use for it. IMO.)
The fact that something is "okay" now doesn't necessarily mean that it will be okay forever. In other words, we can't guarantee we'll host something here indefinitely (especially if we start to work out actual policies for this wikia).
As for using Wikipedia content, now that Wikia has changed to CC-BY-SA and Wikipedia is dual-licensed, we actually share the CC-BY-SA license. Still, to comply with that license, you have to credit Wikipedia for any copied text (citing "adapted" information from Wikipedia is also a good idea). Adding a reference pointing back to the Wikipedia article(s) is sufficient. If an entire article is heavily adapted from a Wikipedia original, you might want to leave a message on the talk page saying so. (Wholesale cut-and-paste jobs, by the way, may be deleted by a disapproving administrator.)
Finally, as far as extensions go, you'll probably have to take that up with a Central Wikia staff member (User:Sannse and User:Angela are such individuals who have been known to edit this wikia).

I realize you probably know many of these things, but I figured I'd say them anyway, "just for the record"... - dcljr 04:53, September 17, 2009 (UTC)

How can I create a sister wiki of Mathematics Wikia in Romanian?[]

I try to create http://ro.math.wikia.com/wiki/Math_Wiki. How can I correlate it with Mathematics Wikia? Nicolae Coman 16:48, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

That would be great Nicolae! Only, I do not know how to tell you to do it. The best place to find out is to ask the same question at Forum:Support Requests at the Community Central Wiki. Once you have the new wiki created, then you can come back here and link this English-language wiki to it. Best of luck! — Spike Toronto 18:28, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer. I already created Math_Wiki in Romanian language. And another question: How can I modify the template of the page, in order to replace the letter W at the top of the page with an avatar, a mathematical symbol? Nicolae Coman 19:27, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

You might want to try asking at the Logo Creation Wiki. Hope that helps. — Spike Toronto 20:18, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

【1 paradox】Why 0.999... is not equal to 1?[]

Written in 2012

The current mathematic theory tells us, 1>0.9, 1>0.99, 1>0.999, ..., but at last it says 1=0.999..., a negation of itself. So it is totally a paradox, name it as 【1 paradox】. You see this is a mathematic problem at first, actually it is a philosophic problem. Then we can resolve it. Because math is a incomplete theory, only philosophy could be a complete one. The answer is that 0.999... is not equal to 1. Because of these reasons:

1. The infinite world and finite world.

We live in one world but made up of two parts: the infinite part and the finite part. But we develop our mathematic system based on the finite part, because we never entered into the infinite part. Your attention, God is in it.

0.999... is a number in the infinite world, but 1 is a number in the finite world. For example, 1 represents an apple. But then 0.999...? We don't know. That is to say, we can't use a number in the infinite world to plus a number in the finite world. For example, an apple plus an apple, we say it is 1+1=2, we get two apples, but if it is an apple plus a banana, we only can say we get two fruits. The key problem is we don't know what is 0.999..., we can get nothing. So we can't say 9+0.999...=9.999... or 1, etc.

We can use "infinite world" and "finite world" to resolve some of zeno's paradox, too.

2. lim0.999...=1, not 0.999...=1.

3.The indeterminate principle.

Because of the indeterminate principle, 1/9 is not equal to 0.111....

For example, cut an apple into nine equal parts, then every part of it is 1/9. But if you use different measure tools to measure the volume of every part, it is indeterminate. That is to say, you may find the volume could not exactly be 0.111..., but it would be 0.123, 0.1142, or 0.11425, etc.

Now we end a biggest mathematical crisis. But most important is this standpoint tells us, our world is only a sample from a sample space. When you realized this, and that the current probability theory is wrong, when you find the Meta-sample-space, you would be able to create a real AI-system. It will indicate that there must be one God-system in the system, which is the controller. Look our world, there must be one God, as for us, only some robots. Maybe we are in a God's game, WHO KNOWS?

More info, three other download points(written in Chinese): yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=780934 d01.megashares.com/dl/0LZix2o/the end of the world.rar localhostr.com/file/3LtuSLb/the%20end%20of%20the%20world.rar —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Selyrou (talk • contribs) 04:55, March 15, 2012 (UTC).

You are free to discuss your interpretation at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:0.999... but please read the associated article first. Philosophy is out of scope for this wiki. — Jeff G. ツ 12:38, March 15, 2012 (UTC)

2014 re-design[]

I like your wiki!How did you get it to look like that. — Supersonic414 21:48, April 22, 2014 (UTC)Supersonic414

Thanks! The re-design is the work of Fubuki風吹. You can ask him about it on his talk page. Thanks again! — Spike Toronto 04:25, April 24, 2014 (UTC)

Continuing 2014 redesign[]

To avoid having to post to multiple pages, I'll just post here. For those of you who don't know me, I'm from SpecOps, a division of the CommunityDevelopment team that specialises in front-end coding. That often means that we provide detailed CSS and JS assistance to communities in order to maximise the possibilities of the MediaWiki platform. If you like, I'm a graphic designer who's unafraid of a little coding. :)

Some time ago, I added this site to my list of optional projects — I get a small amount of time to work on projects of my own choosing, rather than ones that have been directly assigned from on high. I love communities that are trying to something a bit more serious with Wikia's tools — which is why I jumped at the chance to help design such sites as w:c:doping and w:c:tedxironwoodstateprison.

I see the Wikia platform as potentially of great benefit to educators and students — and at the same time I positively believe you can be a "fan" of, and build a vibrant social community around, mathematics. So with your help and input, we're going to try to make this place be as attractive as it possibly can be.

what I don't have for you is an exact ETA. I have a number of other projects that do have tight deadlines. And my "hobby" time on Wikia is about to be gobbled up by the return of Doctor Who in mid August. But something's going to happen here, quite soon.

Before it does, though, I have to note that what was a personal project of mine has also become an administrator request. That being the case, I can't really bypass the ComDev rules for requests.

So lets go through the checklist:

Requirement	Completed?
The requester should either be an admin or link to a discussion with an admin agreeing to the help being requested. If there are multiple active admins, they should all be in agreement with the help being requested.	Yes. I've received communication from the two admins who have been active in the last month. However, a part of the reason for opening this discussion is to hopefully attract comment from other admin — and indeed non-admin —— who have been active in 2014. If you have concerns or design requests, please make them known within the next two weeks!
The wiki should have at least one active admin, meaning he or she has made at least one edit in the last 7 days.	Yep, though I'm also counting personal messages from site admin as proof of active interest in this site.
The wiki should have at least 50 content pages. Stubs (pages listed at Special:ShortPages that are less than 200 bytes) should make up no more than 1/5th (20%) of all pages.	Definitely > 50 pages. However: according to Special:ShortPages, 193/871 pages < 200 bytes. That's 22%. If you keep the same total number of pages (871), then only 174 of them can be <200B to qualify for this redesign. You currently need to improve 19 pages, provided your total doesn't change.
The wiki should have a clear category structure to help readers navigate the site. Every content page should be in a category. (Special:UncategorizedPages should be empty.)	I think this is where the site has its biggest challenge. According to Special:UncategorizedPages, some 93 pages in namespace 0 (that is, regular articles) are without categories. There are also 144 templates without categories. Now, technically, organisation of templates isn't itself a barrier to getting a redesign, but that many unorganised templates on a wiki with less than a thousand pages at least implies that the category structure in general could use some improvement. The real indicator that there's not much organisation, however, is the fact that there are 276 categories without categories. That definitely means that there's no "clear category structure to help readers navigate the site". To fix this problem, just make sure that Special:Uncategorizedpages is whittled down to zero, and please show at least some progress in taming your templates and categories.
The wiki should not be in the middle of choosing new admins or any other upheavals. It should be a stable, friendly place.	Yep :) This place seems to be in the process of finding its community mojo again. :)
The wiki should be using the welcome tool, signed by the admin(s) (MediaWiki:Welcome-user should say @latest, @sysop or the name of an admin).	Seems to be set up fine.
The wiki should not use offensive language or include inappropriate images.	This wiki doesn't seem to have that problem.

Okay so there we go. This is not an effort to slow or delay your redesign. I've already worked on a few things on my local machine, and this project is, as I've already described, something that has a vague deadline — though certainly i see the value of trying for generally the time people go back to school.

However, I hope you'll understand that as a member of the ComDev team, I can't violate the very rules that I'm supposed to be upholding. More importantly, I hope you see these areas of improvement as things that actually will help the end user find greater value in this wiki. If you need any clarification on any of this, yanno where to find me. :) :) :) If you have any suggestions for things you'd like to see in the redesign, please be sure to put them below. — CzechOut 19:13, July 22, 2014 (UTC)

Greetings! I've looked at the two main problems you pointed out, and I don't think they will be too difficult to fix, although somewhat time-consuming. Of the short pages, many of them are simply vandalism, test edits, and blank pages and can be deleted. Most uncategorized pages and categories should be fairly easy to fix, since many new editors create pages without knowing what a category is or how to use it. I have begun work on these problems, although fixing them may take a while. --Dinoenthusiastguy (talk) 21:05, July 28, 2014 (UTC)

Greetings once again. There are now 162 (out of 862, so 19%) short pages, zero uncategorized pages, and 166 uncategorized categories. However, I am a little unsure what to do with the uncategorized templates. Many of them seem to be automatically created, and I have no idea what category they should be in. Are they all Maintenance templates?

As for specific requests for formatting, you may want to read the section below as well as contact Drakenkaul, as he pointed out a few issues with the wiki. --Dinoenthusiastguy (talk) 20:44, September 1, 2014 (UTC)

I think that's a lot of great progress! Categorising templates is simply a matter of figuring out good names for your categories. "Good" names tend to be ones which describe the functionality of the templates, or sometimes the location where those templates are used, such as with w:c:disneyfairies:category:front page templates. You may want to look at our template category structure over at tardis to get an idea of some good names for template categories.

By far, however, the more concerning thing left to do is tame your uncategorised categories. I basically think that number needs to be pretty close to zero in order for us to really say that you have a functioning category tree. The idea is to be able to navigate through the wiki by use of the category structure alone, and 166 fail points is rather a lot. Still, making sure a category tree doesn't dead end is pretty easy work and shouldn't take you too awfully long.

Again, this is seriously great progress you've made so far! — CzechOut 14:18, September 2, 2014 (UTC)

Talk[]

I am really sorry to edit here but I had no choice. You can delete it. Firstly, I didnt find the navigation easy to use. Secondly, I find no place to general discussions. Thirdly, I had a suggestion to make: Cannot there be pages made on mathematicians describing their contribution in field of mathematics and then categorise them into 'mathematicians'? Drakenkaul (talk) 04:37, August 17, 2014 (UTC)

The navigation is a major problem on this wiki, as there are many articles, as well as images, templates, and categories that lack proper categories. There is currently a discussion in the above section to redesign the wiki, but first we need to resolve the categorization issue (this redesign could help with the navigation issue).

The answer to your third question is yes. There is a category for that (Category:Mathematicians), and we do have many articles on mathematicians. However, they do need improvement, as many of them are just copy-pastes from Wikipedia. --Dinoenthusiastguy (talk) 22:27, August 17, 2014 (UTC)

I have an encyclopaedia on Scientists and mathematicians that details concisely about some mathematicians maybe that can be of help for a reference, I think?

Yes, about some templates I can create one. The Featured article template is a must I think cause it is more likely to make a person get involved into the wiki. (Curiosity is the biggest weakness of mankind-Well that is not really true but in the case of the internet, it is true. So with this thing in mind. I think you can attract users in a good way! So What d'you think?)

Drakenkaul (talk) 12:33, August 19, 2014 (UTC)

Both sound like great ideas! It would be great if we could have more content on the main page, such as recently featured articles and images and possibly a slider. --Dinoenthusiastguy (talk) 20:14, August 19, 2014 (UTC)

Manual of Style[]

Hello everyone! Lately I've been noticing a lot of people creating articles with very different styles, and I think we need some conventions on how articles are to be written, so I went ahead and created Math Wiki:Manual of Style. Of course, this is just my take on things and is very much open to evaluation, so feedback would be appreciated! --Dinoenthusiastguy (talk) 20:12, March 6, 2016 (UTC)

Vandalism[]

Hello everyone. It seems that a recent editor, User:Trepiricho111, has vandalised a lot of articles by uploading very inappropriate pictures. I am working to clean this up as fast as possible, but he has made a lot of edits. In the meantime, please be careful while navigating the wiki. --Dinoenthusiastguy (talk) 13:09, September 12, 2016 (UTC)