Forum:Mathematics Wikia

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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)

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!

1. Is it possible to reference(view!) pictures from wikipedia too? Tomruen 18:53, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
2. 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)
3. 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)
4. 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)

1. If you want to use images from Wikipedia, you need to upload them here (to avoid stealing their bandwidth)
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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)

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...

1. This wiki(a) is pretty much whatever people want to make it (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.
2. 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 you're spending more time correcting other people's changes (/vandalism) than if you put it somewhere else that you have more control over.

Darn. I can't finish my response right now. Back later to continue... - dcljr 01:02, September 17, 2009 (UTC)