User talk:Charles Matthews/Archive 9

Authentic Matthew
Thanks! I am in over my head. Any more help on how to deal with the situation? --Melissa --Melissadolbeer 08:03, 16 July 2005 (UTC) Authentic Matthew

Melissadolbeer has opened an RFAR on the matter. 09:25, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Vril and Sam Spade
Hi Charles, I'm looking for help in obscure corner in the Wikipedia. Sorry for bothering you, but I have the feeling I need (at least) the advice of "senior" editor and admin.

In the Vril article, nonsene gets added again and again. The recent bunch can be seen in this diff. You see, Nazi scientists developing tachyon drive flying saucers, Aldebaran aliens, Canaris suporting the Vril secret society and all the stuff.

This would be easy to handle, if not User:Sam Spade heavily defends all this bogus. I'm clueless on his motives. I cannot see why some obscure websites should be included as POV about Third Reich (military) history.

To my best knowledge, whereas the Thule society did really exist and is documented in mainstream history literature, there never was any Vril society. All the talk of Vril society and their fantastic flying saucers is recent, most likely an invention of the internet age.

So, I'm asking you, how I should proceed, both formally and in content.

Regards, Pjacobi 12:23, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)


 * OK, my German is not so great, but I have looked at the version on the German Wikipedia. Is that basically correct, in your opinion? Charles Matthews 14:41, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Yes, the German article is fine with me.
 * Also note that Friedrich Wilhelm Haack, who is a lutheran church expert on sects, occultism, etc, did some books on the links between (neo-)nazism and paganism as well as occultism and he covers the Thule society but not the Vril society. From this I deduce that this society was unheard of at the time of writing of his books (late 60s - early 80s) and clearly not linked to historical nazism.
 * Pjacobi 18:35, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)

New Mathematics Wikiportal
I noticed you've done some work on Mathematics articles. I wanted to point out to you the new Mathematics Wikiportal- more specifically, to the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week page. I'm looking for any math-related stubs or non-existant articles that you would like to see on Wikipedia. Additionally, I wondered if you'd be willing to help out on some of the Collaboration of the Week pages.

I encourage you to vote on the current Collaboration of the Week, because I'm very interested in which articles you think need to be written or added to, and because I understand that I cannot do the enormous amount of work required on some of the Math stubs alone. I'm asking for your help, and also your critiques on the way the portal is set up.

Please direct all comments to my user-talk page, the Math Wikiportal talk page, or the Math Collaboration of the Week talk page. Thanks a lot for your support! ral315 02:53, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Southwold etc
Hi Charles,

Jim here, from Stradbroke Road, Southwold. Not quite sure if this is the correct wiki-etiquette to employ in contacting you, but it should at least work. I hope all is well with you and yours. Drop me a line when you can: jb8764@student.open.ac.uk.

Cheers,

Jim (& Rose)


 * Well, glad you made it all this way. You caught me in the middle of talking to someone about the dull topic of categories (see my contributions if you like - today's big addition was a long list of books by the pulp writer William le Queux, which is pretty embarrassing. Best to both of you. Charles Matthews 18:41, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Euler angles
Hi I just saw your miserable experience over in Euler-angle land. Tis a pity, since one of your earlier drafts was a much better article. The current article is written kind of as an "euler angles for ninnies", whereas the earlier drafts were much more in line with professional academic standards. It scares me to think that this could happen to one of my articles :)

I'm wondering whether the solution might be to fork the article into two: one that is a simple, plain-language article, targetted to a grade-school / high-school level, and one for college/professionals? I mention this only because there are a number of articles that sit on the border of these two groups, and have been or potentially are vulnerable to these border clashes. I'm thinking that it might be time to establish a policy on this. But the policy would need a set of conventions: naming conventions for the articles, and the 'recommended' way that each of teh two articles should refer to each other. Thoughts? You'd seem to have the power to institute such a policy.


 * It's generally better to have a single article, with different treatments if required. Charles Matthews 13:53, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

User Rudchenko's Weird Physics Pages
Hi, I was looking after the hadron article, and found a bizarre edit by user 194.44.210.6 (the same guy as Rudchenko?). Following back through that user's contributions I found a dizzying set of gibberish articles: Gluonic vacuum field, Quantization of the pionic interaction, Extended Yukawa potential, W-field, Coherence condition, etc.

I'm pretty well acquainted with the field in question (field theory and QCD), but I couldn't make heads nor tails of this stuff. There are certainly sentences and equations in these articles that look like good physics, but most of it (the titles for example) seems to be pure gibberish. A google search on any of these terms pulls up essentially nothing. It's hard to tell whether there's anything worthwhile in the articles, since it's clear the author is not a native English speaker. My gut feeling was that the whole set should be deleted, since they're incomprehensible even to experts, and thus useless to the average Wiki reader. But I noticed you tried to clean up the Coherence condition article, so I thought I'd ask for a second opinion.

Xerxes 16:46, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)


 * Well, I don't think hasty deletion is the way. I assume this is a Ukrainian phyicist contributing. His English is not good, clearly. What he is up to is explained, for me, in one of the articles that refers back to about 1920. That means that no amount of QCD background is really going to be adequate: the whole way of addressing the field theory problems is different.


 * So far I have just concentrated on tidying up the English. I have seen nothing there to indicate this is incompetent as theoretical physics, so I have been suspending judgement. Charles Matthews 13:51, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Most of these pages have now been listed on WP:VFD. Paul August &#9742; 03:22, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

Unusual edits to Many-worlds interpretation
Someone (who now apparently has a user name) keeps adding several sentences to the article Many-worlds interpretation which claims that "life is quantum quackery". I have reverted this several times, and I believe there is the so-called 3-revert rule which as far as I can tell applies in any situation. What do I do now. Arbitration? CSTAR 19:52, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, I have now reverted, and others have reverted. The good advice is definitely to stay within the 3RR. If the user reverts often enough he/she can be blocked. Charles Matthews 19:59, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Fortunately, the activities of User:Aero66 seem to have subsided, fpr the moment at least. Initiating and completing a process of Arbitration/Mediation seemed very daunting and time consuming. CSTAR 14:47, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

discussion at WikiProject Mathematics
Hi Charles,

I initiated a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics about whether to put periods at the end of formulas if the formula is at the end of sentence. So far, we have a wide range of opinions, from "don't", to "either way, even risking inconsistency in an article", to "do". Would you comment on this too? So far, I saw this wide range even in individual articles, where some formulas at the end of sentence have period, some don't, some have it before, some have it after. What do you think? Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 17:22, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I did, about two minutes ago. I think you are right about this. Charles Matthews 17:24, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Unsolicited Interjection: I am probably one of the worst offenders, although I do believe periods should be placed ar the end of formulas if the formula is at the end of sentence. My inconsistency reflects personal sloppiness rather than any ideological preference.  CSTAR 18:07, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * It's just a format issue; but it seems to be best at least 95% of the time. Charles Matthews 18:08, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I forgive CSTAR with one condition: would you say on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics that you agree with period at the end of sentence? :) Oleg Alexandrov 18:12, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

New Mathematics Project Participants List
Hi Charles. In case you missed the discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics, I wanted to let you know that I've converted the "WikiProject Mathematics Participants List" into a table. It is now alphabetical, includes links to the participant's talk page and contribution list, and has a field for "Areas of Interest". I thought you might want to check and/or update your entry.

Regards, Paul August &#9742; 20:52, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. Charles Matthews 22:18, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Charles,

I was wondering if you can help me with understanding how Brownian Motion is applied to the financial markets. I am interested in this theory and would like to know more, thanks

Chris Bounds, 2 April 2005, wallstm5@hotmail.com

You could look at Black-Scholes, which is directly about this; probably other articles in Category:Financial mathematics, Category:Stochastic processes also. Charles Matthews 20:54, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Re: Charles Trevelyan
Sorry about that. The page is actually an amalgamation of previous facts on the original page as well as some extra content. - Master Of Ninja 14:50, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

javelin argument
Hello Charles. i'm new in wikipedia. i wrote the "javelin argument". i put a link to the "javelin" page. i can't find it there now. did you erase it? i didn't find anything in the discussion page... i found out about you in the history. Will you be so kind to explain to me how does this system work? (in short of course). the revised article is better, but has no connection with the "javelin" article. Also, is it right to say "..to support that idea the universe or space is infinite.."? in grammar, i mean. isn't it better to say "..to support the idea that the universe or space is infinite.." ? My English are not so great, i'm afraid. Please answer me here or in my talk page. see you.--Arberor 15:01, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Welcome. There is in fact a link to javelin, in the quotation. Charles Matthews 15:43, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I've made some small changes also. Charles Matthews

Speedy deletion of Papoose
Hi Charles,

While closing speedy deletions from the WP:VFD page, I noticed that you closed Papoose at Votes for deletion/Papoose due to it being a vanity page, according to the deletion log:
 * 19:24, 20 Mar 2005 Charles Matthews deleted Papoose (vanity)

I believe that vanity is not a valid candidate for a speedy deletion according to WP:CSD. If you agree, please undelete this article so other people can properly vote in the five day voting period on this article. Just to let you know, I've closed your other speedy deletions before this one as valid speedy deletions. Thanks, Deathphoenix 15:20, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Think you should also take into account that it had an actual photo of what was presumably a real child. If only for child protection reasons, I thought it should be off the site as soon as possible. Charles Matthews 15:39, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Admin?
Oleg, I'd be willing to nominate you as an admin, if you are interested.

Your time here is longer than 3 months, and you have over 4000 edits, so most people would be satisfied. There might be some reason to wait a few weeks longer - 4 months is better, in a sense.

Anyway, what do you think?

Charles Matthews 14:16, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi Charles. Well, I am surprised and flattered. Thank you for your offer. I thought about it very carefully. I woud say, I feel that I will have to decline it, and I probably will not change my opinion for at least three more months. This for several reasons.


 * First, the big number of edits you mentioned is partially because I have been doing many really small edits, and partially because recently I have been shamelessly employing a bot to do work for me with minimal or no user interaction.


 * My second reason is that I still feel I am learning to play by the rules, here, so I do not feel comfortable or ready having more responsibilities.


 * My third reason is that I am still learning how to balance Wikipedia with other things in my life, and this makes me feel a bit ambivalent towards commiting myself more to Wikipedia.


 * But I do appreciate your offer, and I leave the options open for considering it at a later time. Thanks a lot! Oleg Alexandrov 17:55, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK - keep up the good work! Charles Matthews 18:27, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

re: speedies
That's fine. If I'm in the wrong, feel free to correct my mistake. Inter\Echo 17:42, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

User:Pcpcpc
Please note I have had no contact whatsoever with this person for ages, neither to my certain knowledge has Bishonen yet now this has yet again appeared out of the blue. Are we supposed to ignore him while he slanders ud around the site? Or is finally an administrator going to remind him of common courtesy and manners? Giano 14:29, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I think it is the equivalent of a child putting his fingers in his ears. If you can, don't pay it any attention. Charles Matthews 14:33, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I wonder when your time to be listed will come, it can't be far away! Giano 14:44, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hello/Efrons dice
(William M. Connolley 09:10, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)) Hi Charles... long time no see and such. Thanks for copyedits on ED. A concept (the dice, not copyediting...) I hadn't run into until someone casually mentioned them yesterday...
 * BTW if I wasn't so incompetent (got the wrong date of the London meet-up) I might have invited Jimbo Wales to Cambridge on his visit to the UK - something I mentioned to him when he was last here in December. The weather might be better in another season. Charles Matthews 09:14, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * (William M. Connolley 11:05, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)) I'd like to go to a meet-up; children intervened last time sadly. If he came to Cambridge we could take him punting…

Persistent speedies
Kudos for getting on the speedy deletes so fast (John mckearin came right back and was deleted again). I noticed you got Jim Smyth but not its Talk page. I didn't realize talk pages could be orphaned - do they get cleaned up eventually? David Brooks 18:25, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good question. I guess that's somewhat random. Charles Matthews 18:27, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Never let it be said that we wikipedians don't have rules for things. Here the rule is that the deleting admin is supposed to look at the talk page and make a decision whether it should be kept as useful in case of future re-creation, or deleted. Well that's the theory, in practice it is somewhat random. Pcb21| Pete 13:16, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The_Advanced_Wikipedian
(William M. Connolley 12:48, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)) I think we need your poetry skills: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Advanced_Wikipedian

Humor it may be - is it humour? Some further wit could be applied, let alone scansion and those things. Charles Matthews 12:51, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Help
Hi, You left me a message: ''Please don't remove links, such as you have been doing with reciprocity law. It is not a constructive approach. I am going to rollback.''

The problem is that [reciprocity law] used to redirect straight to [Quadratic reciprocity]. But in photography and holography there is also a reciprocity law. I turned the redirect into a disambiguation page, but noticed there was 4 or 5 pages math page that pointed to it. I went to each one, and in all the cases they had a link to [quadratic reciprocity] and to [reciprocity law]. I have no idea what the reciprocity law in math is, and didn't want to attempt to do a write up on it, and I didn't want to leave it pointing to the disambiguation page, so i removed the link.

What would your suggestion in the future be?

Thanks for your time Johnflux 18:37, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Better to use a dummy link like reciprocity law (mathematics). If you pipe the link like


 * reciprocity law

then nothing gets lost and anyone looking into that red link will be alerted to the issue.

Charles Matthews 18:41, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Will do that in the future. Sorry :) Johnflux 19:10, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Equivalence Principle
Charles -

Just to let you know - I reverted your changes from the Equivalence Principle (EQ) article. I thank you for the redirect from Principle of Equivalence, but there are nuances about the EQ that seem to have escaped you. Please see my points in the discussion for the EQ page.

--EMS 03:51, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK - once I do a merge like that, I'm happy for others to sort out how the page ends up. Charles Matthews 08:36, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

RfA thanks
Thank you for the vote at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Henrygb2. It has made my week. --Henrygb 01:57, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ousmane Issoufi Maïga
Sorry, I didn't know you were working on translating that page til I got to the edit conflict screen, or I wouldn't have done it. I replaced your translation with mine - for no better reason that that I had finished it by then. You can revert to your translation if you like. --Diderot 12:06, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Holistic science
Just a note to say I'm thrilled with the improvements you made to the holistic science article today. --Smithfarm 18:04, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, thanks. I wasn't really trying to change much; but I suppose I couldn't really help adding a few bits. Charles Matthews 18:07, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

hardworking families
Please reconsider your vote for the article hardworking families; I have expanded it a bit more. Cheers. – Kaihsu 14:16, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid that such an article has a basic flaw. Can one define a hardworking family? Is it a dual-income family, which one could define? No - that's not it. If this material has a place, it is somewhere in with tax and benefits policy.
 * Charles Matthews 14:20, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Ah. Indeed, no one can define what a hardworking family is.  But one can define what the phrase 'hardworking families' is – a rhetorical device (codeword).  That was what I wrote the article for.  It has more to do with the study of rhetoric than with families. – Kaihsu 15:55, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC)
 * But that's why it can hardly justify its place as an article, under that title. It's populist rhetoric. Compare for example ownership society, a comparable thing from Bush 2004. There eventually the article got hacked into shape, because one can say, at least roughly, what it's all about. I just can't see it, for this one. Charles Matthews 16:01, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Category:Mathematical methods
Hi Charles. Do you know what articles are supposed to be in Category:Mathematical methods? It seems that you created this category some time ago. At the moment, it has Category:Algorithms as both a subcategory and a supercategory, which is certainly not right. I hope all is well in Cambridge. Best wishes, Jitse Niesen 18:58, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Good question. It should probably be deleted now: anything in it should go somewhere in the Category:Applied mathematics or Category:Operations research. Charles Matthews 19:06, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the category should be deleted, so I listed it on Categories for deletion. -- Jitse Niesen 20:47, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My sincere apologies....
i'll steer clear of that page from now on... I just don't understand why he made all those edits one after the other. I haven't seen that many edits from a single anon. user before... and combined with the spelling, I jumped to the conclusion that it was a vandal. Is there any way you could post a warning about that... or do you already have one up and I didn't read it? Again, I'm sorry... and just let me say that it was the first (and probably last) time that I'll revert revert back THAT far. It might also help if you put up something on the article saying the same thing that you did on my talk page... about major work currently being done on the article. Chances are I wouldn't have reacted the way I did if that had been the case. Still, that's no excuse for what I did. if you can, let that editor know I'm sorry... and I hope that I do NOT hear from you again in THIS manner... because it'll mean that I've screwed up somebody else's hard work again. (Needless to say, I do not find any pleasure in doing such things...)

Sorry about that... forgot to append my "sig." --Chanting Fox 21:41, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just removed my "vandalism report," and I don't think that the fact that I deleted it is going to be a problem. I created it, I'm the only person who posted in regard to it, so I can delete it without having to ask permission. Hope I didn't do something wrong again... but just thought it would be a nice thing to do to show I'm sorry.--Chanting Fox 21:51, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Kyle Riabco/Kyle Riabko
I think our edits stepped on each other. It appears that this artist's name is actually "Kyle Riabko", see and the Google search. The redirects resulting from our simultaneous edits are kind of a mess. Since you're an admin, can you straighten this out? Thanks! FreplySpang (talk) 20:25, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Minor maths stuff
Hi Charles. I see you are a senior editor and maths type person. My poor 1 no longer prime page is really getting it in the neck, 1st by someone else (marked for deletion) then a succinct redirect by you. I created the page to fully explore why 1 is no longer considered prime, the point being that it used to be considered prime. While I was expanding the stub more you did the redirect so please look again. I know humour has no place in maths but please humour the dig at mathematician's egos that I put in there. The truth is I have no idea why it REALLY took place since people did and do think its prime.

Please see the Goldbach's conjecture discussion page as I mention this there (I did a little edit in the origins section pointing to 1 no longer prime) and perhaps you can make sense on what look like typos to me.

Also you made unique factorization redirect to unique factorization domain without actually saying what it is. I added the first paragraph for clarity. Please see the discussion page of UFD for a couple other possible issues I spotted.

Cyclotronwiki 01:33 27 April 2005 Taipei

1 no longer prime is too discursive to be a good WP article. 1 shouldn't be taken to be a prime because it would break unique factorisation; and everyone agrees. Charles Matthews 17:40, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it could be a large page if not controlled but its an interesting piece of mathematical history trivia which is why I created it. If we take another meaning of discursive as in "proceeding to a conclusion through reason rather than intuition" it would be good to see who this everyone is, who opposed, their various positions, and most importantly, something I still want to know, WHEN was this all decided? Cyclotronwiki 01:48 27 April 2005 Taipei

I suspect this was all settled between Euler's times and C. F. Gauss's Disquisitiones Arithmeticae. By 1800, that is. Probably the Legendre book on number theory was the turning point, but I can't be sure of that. Anyway systematic books on number theory were seen in the 1790s, and having 1 a prime rapidly gets very many things wrong. Since Gauss apparently first proved uniqueness of factorization, he can't have been using a bad definition to do so. Charles Matthews 17:53, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well I suppose so. Its good to get this info together (perhaps under one article ;) Anyways nevermind hunting down this 1 article, what about the other questions I posed on the discussion pages of Goldbach's conjecture and UFD. I know its late for me but those issues dont make sense. Cyclotronwiki 02:06 27 April 2005 Taipei

Template:Numbers
Wondering if you could please help/comment on Template:Numbers, what should it contain, how best to organize, etc. Its intent was to list numbers with their symbols, in a kind of hierarchy. TxInAdv, -SV|t|add 20:46, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

reductive dual pair
Some time ago you inserted reductive dual pair as an empty link into my newly created article dual pair. Just in case this was meant as a subtle hint for me to create the article, I have to say I have no clue what a reductive dual pair is. MathMartin 21:38, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's a Lie group concept, investigated by Howe, in representation theory: a pair of subgroups in a larger group with a certain property. Charles Matthews 19:30, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

NPOV
Hi Charles. Thanks for your note on the Talk:Heckler page regarding when a NPOV tag should be used. I have been looking for guidance on this in Neutral Point of View and NPOV dispute, but can't find anything indicating that the tag should only be used if the issue has already been discussed on the Talk page. Could you point me in the right direction for anything in the way of policy or precedent for this? My original reasoning for putting a NPOV tag was to raise this issue to a wider audience sooner rather than later but if that goes against policy/precedent then obviously I'll need to re-think. Cheers TigerShark 12:29, 2 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I would say the point you raised would naturally come under . Charles Matthews 14:03, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

List of mathematical topics
Hi Charles. Jitse and me are having a discussion about the List of mathematical topics on my talk page. I wonder what your opinion on some of those things are, in particular, about making a "master page" containing all the article titles listed in List of mathematical topics. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 15:33, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Mark Gempeler
-- All the best, Nickj (t) 01:06, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Andrea Echeverri copy/paste move
Hi there. I just saw a notice to fix a copy & paste move at WP:RM regarding Andrea Echeverri. Articles need to be moved using the move button in order to retain the editing history, otherwise we violate the terms of the GFDL. If you can't do a move then just request it at WP:RM and an admin can do it. Cheers, violet/riga (t) 15:12, 15 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I suspect this is a misunderstanding on User:Fibonacci's part. I would not move by copy-and-paste, I think, under any usual circumstances. Charles Matthews 15:19, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

bath moved to Bath
Thanks...Bbpen 18:47, 17 May 2005 (UTC)