Talk:John Rainwater

A fact from John Rainwater appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 1 April 2012 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that a University of Washington fake mathematician created as a student prank became the author of several well-received papers in research journals?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2012/April.

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John Rainwater is immortal[edit]

Rumors of Rainwater's demise are unfounded:

Where does John Rainwater go from here? It would be a shame if he were to die. [...] It is to be hoped that someone will be able to help John Rainwater carry on, so that in the future people won't ask "Who killed J.R.?"

Quoting from Phelps (2002) ( Kiefer.Wolfowitz (Discussion) 17:33, 2 April 2011 (UTC)). 17:03, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Coda[edit]

This very serious comment responds to the change in assessment status from "living=yes" to "living=no"! Kiefer.Wolfowitz (Discussion) 14:35, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We don't really have a code to indicate a pseudonym of living or non-living people. Perhaps a note to Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography would help. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:32, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Done! Kiefer.Wolfowitz (Discussion) 15:54, 3 April 2011 (UTC) 17:01, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification[edit]

Currently the text is a bit confusing and it's hard to figure out whether he was fictional or not. The infobox and categories present him as a real prototype, yet the text suggests he is fictitious. Brandmeister^talk 21:36, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. I have trimmed the infobox, removing birth date and nationality and residence, for that reason. I think the whole infobox should go, actually, unless it can be altered to show immediately that Rainwater is fictitious. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 00:31, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can learn by recognizing confusion, if you want to know the truth and can be honest about being confused.

Removing an information box is less drastic than an auto-lobotomy, but does suffice to remove the irritation about confusion.

Perhaps you can contact Math Reviews and ask them to remove the "confusing" entry about John Rainwater?

Kiefer.Wolfowitz 10:05, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Math Reviews and wikipedia are different publications (using the term loosely) and have different standards. What is done by one doesn't necessarily weigh on what is done by the other. A similar debate, by the way happened at P.D.Q. Bach, another article about a fictitious person who has done real work - albeit humerous rather than serious. IT once had an infobox and, after much discussion, no longer does.

Do you think Nicholas Bourbaki should have an infobox with a "birth date" and the like? (I see that Peter Orno does have one, with the same silly, IMHO, "born" and "nationality" listings.) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 10:55, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Phelps discusses his moment of creation, and life. I don't want to debate your OR or discuss whether you were confused by an infobox. Tough. Life is confusing if you have a brain.

Since you have so much to add to Wikipedia here, I suggest you render similarly sage advice as to whether "Yes album covers" should be recategorized as "Yes (band) album covers".

Kiefer.Wolfowitz 16:43, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that was helpful. (I'm also indenting your comment an extra space, so it's not lined up with mine and doesn't confuse - sorry, that word again - anybody.) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 17:13, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry David, I'm irritated that the Peter Orno DYK was not on the April Fools page. This article and PO's were always paired, and this has meant that a year's efforts were wasted on PO, mostly because of inane busybody objections by persons who don't know what they are talking about, especially when they think they do. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:44, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, you lost me. DYK? PO? I seem to be acronym-deficient. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 01:25, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bourbaki et al[edit]

To serve the casual reader who stumbles across this article, I would like to add in the introduction a short reference to Bourbaki and the fact that this weird process (fake person does real mathematics) is not unique, because I think that is surprising to non-mathematicians. Any objections or thoughts? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:46, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea, if it's no more than a short mention. The article's already in Category:Pseudonymous mathematicians, which demonstrates the phenomenon. Ntsimp (talk) 16:16, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bourbaki has been a collective pseudonym of the leading French-writing mathematicians in the world, where John Rainwater has been notable but much less important. Bourbaki was mentioned briefly by Phelps, as noted in the article. Thus, a short note of N.B. in the lede is plausible. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 16:32, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]