User talk:JackSchmidt/Archives/2008/08

Outsider view
Thanks for that very helpful advice, Jack. Would you mind if I added it to the RfC talk page? It would be useful to keep the feedback in one place. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:27, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I mostly prefer just an informal note. I think you guys can totally work this out quickly and informally once the two of you speak the same language.  If you guys still need the RfC in a few days, then I'll copy it over (or you can if there is no internet while I am away next week).
 * Both of you are obviously trying to do the right thing, and both of you are obviously used to dealing with people whose behavior I can only understand as "psychopathic". I suspect that because of the communication breakdown (and because you both seem to be surrounded by people whose behavior is more or less impossible to understand), you have both just been forced to use your standard tools for dealing with the dispute.
 * Once you two manage to talk to each other as allies (in the same language!), then I think you'll be able to get rid of all the bureaucratic garbage needed to handle people who are less willing to be reasonable.
 * I left the note on your page instead of hers since you are the senior admin and can probably be more generous without losing face. She can't be "nice" to you, or it undermines her sanctions; you can be nice (which should actually further her goals, so be doubly nice) and it just means a day or two of writing in the external editor instead of on the article.  Especially for rewriting dead sections, that should basically be free for you in the short run, and in the long run will mean her sanctions keep your rewrites from being destroyed. JackSchmidt (talk) 22:47, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Do not encourage the spammer
User:Csmba is clearly a single-purpose account that was registered because the spammer had a difficult time re-introducing his spamlinks into Speech analytics.

There is a pattern of behavior where otherwise good-intentioned editors or administrators believe the first claim of victimization that they see without questioning or fact-checking. I hope that you have not fallen into that trap. In particular, I'd really like to see you review all of the following before aiding and abetting the spammer by restoring his clearly commercial content that is in turn clearly prohibited under Wikipedia policy.

To review:
 * 1) The spammer began by attempting to anonymously restore his spamlinks as Special:Contributions/209.77.216.34.
 * 2) The spammer figured out that he could "legitimize" his edits by registering as Special:Contributions/Csmba.
 * Note: Csmba is a single-purpose account, the person registered clearly is not interested in contributing to Wikipedia generally, but interested in advancing his industry's ability to sell products through Wikipedia.


 * 1) The spammer is adept at throwing out red herrings to "legitimize" his edits. Let's examine the claims:
 * In http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speech_analytics&oldid=227524164, the spammer claims that "Please check wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management for example to see it is valid to have a fair list of vendors", yet the list in Customer relationship management is not only sourced, it also contains companies that are notable.
 * In http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speech_analytics&diff=prev&oldid=227670710, the spammer claims that "You don't like the list? then imporve it, but there are TONS of simila toics, all give a list of vendors (CRM, Recording systems, PM...)", yet there is in fact no article for "recording systems" and Project management contains no vendor list.
 * In http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speech_analytics&diff=prev&oldid=228954262, the spammer claims that "vendor list adds to the content in a positive way. that is not spam." Yet, we have the Wikipedia policy What_Wikipedia_is_not that specifically states Wikipedia is not...a resource for conducting business.  Wikipedia is not the yellow pages.
 * In http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speech_analytics&oldid=229302536, the spammer claims "however, this is valuable information that enables readers to improve their understanding of the topic. again, look at similar concepts like ERP". Yet, Enterprise resource planning in fact contains no vendor list.

My unsolicited advice to you is that you should actually spend the time to verify the claim before acting upon it. Your reluctance to expend any effort in verifying claims of "victimhood" or reading and understanding What_Wikipedia_is_not does not help the spam situation.
 * -- DanielPenfield (talk) 21:22, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

John R. Stallings
OK, as you requested, I took a look at the stub you created and substantially expanded it. Most of the info I added concerns his mathematical contributions. It'd still be nice if an actual topologist took a look at this since most of what I know concerns Stallings' work in group theory. I did have some trouble finding biographical info. Stallings' webpage at UC Berkeley does not have CV type information and the formal departmental page regarding him does not have a lot of info either. There was a birthday anniversary issue, in 2002, of Geometriae Dedicata in honor of Stallings' 65th birthday. I looked up that issue but unfortunately they do not have a foreword or a biographical article about him there (most anniversary volumes usually have such info), just a note on the front page of the volume that the issue is dedicated to him. Pity. Since he did receive the Cole Prize in 1970, I'll look up the AMS Notices for that year in our library tomorrow. Hopefully there is some info there regarding his biographical data since they usually publish such info for all the major prize winners (at least they do that now). Since his 65th birthday conference was in May 2000, I assume that he was born in 1935. However, I'd like to find a direct confirmation for this. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 01:36, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Orbit space
Dear Jack,

I had a look at the article on group actions but it mainly deals with the group theoretical aspects of orbit spaces and actions. I was thinking of adding some topological aspects of the orbit space (when X is endowed with a topology and when G is a topological group), but I am a bit reluctant to add topology to what seems to be a purely group theoretical article. I think that there are a sufficient number of topological properties that orbit spaces posses so that it is possible to create a topological version of the article. Do you think that it would be most appropriate to create a new article on orbit spaces (in the topological context), or add the topological relevance of orbit spaces to the original article? I have added a comment about this on the discussion page of the article but could you please give me your opinion on the matter?

Thanks

Topology Expert (talk) 10:38, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Gelfand pairs
Hi, thenk u very much for editing the artical "Gelfand pairs". I have some requsts,

1. I diden't quait understud you exampale abut finet groups, can u plese add ditails abut it

2. you pot a reference in a diferent way then I put the othe references, I think that your way is beter, can you plise put all the references in this way

3. next time when you r erising somthing plise b more cerful, u write thet it is a good idia that captions shold b laconik, however when you erising information from a caption you have to make shoar that this information apiers after the caption, atherwise the articale bcome dificald to understand Aizenr (talk) 06:48, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * For 1, which parts are unclear? I think it has roughly three parts: eliminating "normal cores", rewriting the condition from "restriction" to "induction", and then just giving the examples.
 * Normal core: if (G,K) is Gelfand, and N is a normal subgroup G that is contained in K, then (G/N,K/N) is Gelfand because the trivial representation of K/N and K are "the same", and the irreducible representations of G/N are a "subset" of the irreducible representations of G (they are the ones that have N in the kernel).
 * Normal core 2: The action of G on the cosets of K has kernel the normal core of K, call it N. Then G/N acting on the cosets of K/N has trivial kernel, so we can embed G/N in the symmetric group on [G:K] points.  The image of K in this symmetric group is the stabilizer (in the image of G) of a point.  K/N contains no normal subgroup of G/N, since N is the largest normal subgroup of G contained in K. Conversely, given a permutation group G, the stabilizer K of a point is a subgroup containing no normal subgroups of G.
 * Restriction/induction: The multiplicity of an (ordinary absolutely) irreducible character A in another character B is written as [A,B], and one of your conditions was that [1,B] was at most 1 for every character B of K that was the restriction of an irreducible character of G. Using Frobenius reciprocity, I rewrote this as [P,X] where P was the permutation character of G on K (the trivial character on K induced to G) and X was the irreducible character of G that restricted to B.  I happened to know Thomas Breuer had worked on such characters at some point (his "possible permutation characters" code is very handy), so looked up his work.  In the introduction to the cited paper he (and Klaus Lux) explicitly say they are finding commutative Schur algebras (which are equivalent to one of the convolution definitions you gave above).
 * $$P = 1_K^G = 1\uparrow_K^G$$ and $$B = X_K = X\downarrow^G_K$$.
 * Examples: A 2-transitive permutation character is of the form 1 + X where X is irreducible, so [P,1] = 1, [P,X] = 1, and [P,Y] = 0 for all irreducible characters Y of G that are neither 1 nor X. If you are curious, it seems that many small examples of Gelfand pairs (where K contains no normal subgroup) are not 2-transitive, but most strong Gelfand pairs are 2-transitive.  Of course this is just from a selection of small simple groups, so the general results might be quite different.
 * All of this is standard for finite group theorists, but since most of the Gelfand pair article is incomprehensible to me (all those function spaces), I'll assume different fields use different languages. A good book that is a very thorough, but very gentle introduction to character theory is:
 * For 2: I might do this at some point. It takes some time though.
 * For 3: Yes, each section needs an introductory paragraph. When I started cleaning the article, I hadn't realized you were still working on it.  When you are "done", I'll restart the cleanup.  Basically, I'll make sure it fits the guideline WP:MOS, fix some WP:OVERLINK, and some minor WP:MSM.  I'll probably do all of the references that have Math Reviews or Zbl entries at that point too. JackSchmidt (talk) 12:48, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * For 3: Yes, each section needs an introductory paragraph. When I started cleaning the article, I hadn't realized you were still working on it.  When you are "done", I'll restart the cleanup.  Basically, I'll make sure it fits the guideline WP:MOS, fix some WP:OVERLINK, and some minor WP:MSM.  I'll probably do all of the references that have Math Reviews or Zbl entries at that point too. JackSchmidt (talk) 12:48, 27 August 2008 (UTC)