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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Math Wiki:Guidelines page. | |
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Naming conventions[]
To facilitate inter-article linking, should we adopt "sentence" style page titles, where only the first word is capitalized (along with proper nouns, of course)? In other words, should we prefer Proof by contradiction over Proof by Contradiction? Note that the software automatically capitalizes the first letter (see axiom and Axiom), so a link to proof by contradiction would lead to the same page as the first link above, not the second. - dcljr 00:36, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
- That would be good. But is anyone actually interested in working actively with this wiki? What would be the goal, and how would it differ from Wikipedia and PlanetMath? Fredrik 19:54, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
- I've started to move pages to this new naming scheme. Fortunately, not that much needs to be changed at this point. - dcljr 08:17, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
BTW, I don't think the suggested "Category Proposition #" naming scheme for "unnamed" propositions is a very good one. Any attempt to number pages is pretty much doomed to fail — it defeats the whole ease-of-linking idea that is characteristic of a wiki. If you want to number things, put them on a single page; if you must split "unnamed" propositions off to separate pages, I would prefer an ad-hoc naming system based on an attempted description of the purpose of the proposition/lemma/etc. We can fix any poor naming choices with page moves, redirects, and merges. - dcljr 08:29, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
What is our goal[]
[Re: Fredrik's remark, "What would be the goal, and how would it differ from Wikipedia and PlanetMath?"] PlanetMath is way too cumbersome for most people to deal with (I'm speaking as a potential editor — I have an account there, but I don't know if I'll ever actually contribute anything). Plus, there's very little structure to it, so it's quite intimidating for readers, as well. The other relevant Wikimedia projects each have their own particular goal: to create encyclopedia entries (Wikipedia), dictionary entries (Wiktionary), textbooks or lesson plans (Wikibooks); or to reproduce previously published material (Wikisource). All of these projects have been enforcing increasingly strict policies excluding certain types of material that might actually be relevant to a general-purpose mathematics wiki (for example, mathematical tables got kicked out of Wikipedia then Wikisource). Of course, the idea is that each project should link to the relevant excluded material found in other projects, but cross-project linking is a low priority on most of the projects, and some things have a hard time finding a home. As it stands, this Guidelines page starts out discussing definitions, propositions and proofs. It seems to suggest that we start with a simple accounting of mathematical results (literally, a wiki of mathematics) and then add some simple supporting materials like problem sets, sort of like a study guide (not a full-fledged textbook — at least, not an introductory one). I'm not sure such a thing could be maintained without duplicating much of what Wikibooks is trying to do, but that's okay: we're not a Wikimedia project. - dcljr 11:00, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
- But see also Talk:Main Page. <g> - dcljr 11:16, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
- I agree with your reasoning, and I'm interested in contributing to this project. Perhaps we should post a message to the math wikiproject on Wikipedia to see if more people are interested. Fredrik 18:08, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Stuff deleted from Wikisource[]
I've placed a copy of the wikisource:Wikisource:Mathematics "index" page (from the English Wikisource, actually) at Mathematics:Deleted from Wikisource. Just so we can see what used to be over there. - dcljr 09:11, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Types of content[]
I started to add some guidelines on article content, but there are so many different kinds of content that belong on this wiki that I couldn't spin it into a coherent narrative (i.e., guideline). So here's some brainstorming about this issue. Maybe someone can help me whip it into shape:
- conceptual structure: branch, area, field, subfield, topic, subtopic
- logical structure: definition, axiom, postulate, proposition, theorem, lemma, corollary, proof, claim, conjecture, hypothesis
- mathematical things (grammar): object (noun), property (adjective), operation (verb), technique (adverb)
- educational: university, college, department, school, curriculum, subject, class, course, lesson plan, lesson, example, counterexample, illustration, figure, diagram, exercise, problem, homework, quiz, test, exam
- people/society: biography, photograph, bibliography, filmography, association, organization, institution, institute, society, journal, magazine, article, report, news, newsletter
- wiki: talk, user, project, image, template, help, category, forum
Like I said, this is brainstorming; I'm not necessarily arguing that all of these are distinct things that definitely belong here. - dcljr 03:31, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Part of speech[]
User:Braindrain0000 added to the guidelines:
- Article titles should use the noun form of a mathematical term if one exists. For example, "implication" (a noun) should be used instead of "implies" (a verb). This allows the article to focus on the concept rather than strictly the definition of the operation (i.e., "A implies b when..." should not be the first sentence in the article).
I'm not sure I agree with this. Since this isn't merely an encyclopedia of math (my opinion, anyway), we don't need to adhere to Wikipedia-like conventions about using nouns for page titles. I think our pages should reflect, as much as practical, the word forms that are usually used in mathematical writing (that way, links on words will tend to go to only the most relevant material). In particular, why not have a page called implies which defines that term, as would be done in a textbook? (I mean, as a book would define the word implies and not change it to implication for the sake of making it a noun... not that they would devote an entire page to it. ;) On the implication page, OTOH, we could discuss the concept of implication more generally. Other pages (named as appropriate) would address properties or rules of implication, or whatever else there is to say about the subject. In other words, I'm envisioning a more "fine-grained" approach than that taken at Wikipedia and Wikibooks. (See also my comments in previous sections on this page, some of which are relevant to this section, as well.) - dcljr 00:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)