User talk:Jitse Niesen/Archive10

Use of national/country flags in biographical articles.
Hi Jitse,

I made a couple of minor edits to the Carl Runge article, specifically on the infobox. After making the changes I performed a quick review of previous edits. I noticed that previously, 30th March, you had made an edit removing the German flags. I've partially reverted my edit so that flags I reintroduced are no longer present - apologies again for making this edit without going over the history or discussing.

The principal reason I am sending you a note is that there is an active discussion going on to define a guideline for the use of flags in biographical articles, and in particular within infoboxes. The current working essay is here. Two relevant elements on the talk page are (older) here, here and (almost current) here. Just noting in case you would like to become involved.

I've been editing in Wikipedia for under a month, principally infoboxes and minor categorising of biographical articles related to mathematicians. Prior to noticing your comments on Carl Runge I had assumed, from viewing other articles, that small flags should be used in both residence and nationality fields within any infobox. A quick check of two scientist featured articles does show their absence: Charles Darwin, but also their presence: Isaac Newton.

Apologies again for inserting an item you had previously removed on the Carl Runge article.

Regards, Asperal 23:36, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

PS I agree that the noble prize icon is confusing, I didn't work out what it signified for some time until I looking at Einstein where the prize description follows immediately after the icon.

PPS Happy for you to post any reply here.


 * The whole flag issue is not that important to me, so I don't remember your inserting the flags again (perhaps I didn't notice). It's not a big deal. Thanks for the heads-up though; I might comment on the proposal. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 19:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Integral
Could you keep an eye on the brewing edit war with Loom91 at integral? He's now done the same excisions repeatedly (and not just to me), and I think you can see my patience is in short supply. (I'm usually so polite; well, usually.) I'd like to be able to concentrate on implementing my few remaining thoughts for the rest of the article, not arguing and certainly not warring over absurdities like "the fundamental theorem doesn't belong in the lead". (By the way, it is nowhere explained in the article!) I've rebutted his latest charges on the talk page, as an easy place for you to get a sense of what's up. Sorry to trouble you; I'm sure you don't like head-butting any more than I do. Thanks for anything you can do.

Aside: This is my first serious contribution to a COTM, and it troubles me that I've done so much alone. I was kind of hoping for a party, of the "many hands make light work" sort. As it happens, I spent a lot of time designing, researching, and computing pretty pictures and examples. You'll be happy (?) to know I invested special care in expanding the numerical quadrature section. But I think I'm going to sit out geometry, this month's project, partly from burnout and partly because I'm too close to the topic and partly because it is constantly vandalized. --KSmrqT 13:13, 5 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Heating up. And JRSpriggs has had prior nasty experiences with this same user. --KSmrqT 14:08, 6 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I commented on the talk page. I'll see whether I have time to go through all the discussion; it's an important article. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 19:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks.
 * It is an important article. That's not enough to attract editors. :-)
 * Although last month I tried to help Cronholm bring in more contributors, I quite understand the aversion. For the many who were forced to take calculus, and for the few who are forced to teach it, it's a topic they'd rather avoid. There is a cottage industry in calculus books; it's amazing how many have been written (and how few written well). Why waste time replicating (a fraction of) that on Wikipedia, when so much is freely available, including web sites and courses galore? Honestly, we edit for enjoyment as much as for public service, and I won't fault anyone for preferring to write on, say, Betti numbers or Gromov-Witten invariants.
 * Happily, working on integral brought me in contact with Bulirsch and Stoer's "Numerical Quadrature by Extrapolation", awakening my understanding and appreciation of rational interpolation as an alternative to Romberg's polynomial interpolation — just to cite one example. So my "public service" is accompanied by moments of personal enjoyment as well. :-) --KSmrqT 00:19, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The conflict continues and I can't deal with it any more. Please intervene. I have also posted at WT:WPM. Cheers--Cronholm144 12:38, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Invite


Gregbard 07:14, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Undelete request
I'm not sure of the protocol for this: Can you undelete Code2000?

Although there was an AfD with almost no participation (who knew?), and all that on one day, we depend on being able to point people at this font. With 75 linking pages, so do others. Yet the nomination claimed it was not notable, presumably based on deep ignorance. I politely asked Sr13 to undo this a few days ago, but I have not even had the courtesy of a response despite much other activity.

Thanks. --KSmrqT 23:36, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I think you may need to go through WP:DRV. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:58, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I have posted a DRV request, since Sr13 eventually got back to me with the same reply. A helpful comment there would be appreciated. (Given the information I provided in my request, the first two responses had me shaking my head in bewilderment; I think you'll see what I mean.) Thanks. --KSmrqT 06:36, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Disruptive edits at Calculus
Hi Jitse, I think it's time to take an administrative action against the anon editor who ruminates on his half-baked ideas about what does and doesn't constitute Calculus, and keeps pushing for insertion of dubious (and irrelevant) material into the article. If in the beginning it had seemed as if (s)he were seduced by an alternative approach that promises to rebuild all of Calculus on a new foundation (or rather, without the old foundation, the limit) and tried proselytizing (without seeming to have a deep enough understanding of calculus to accurately judge the accuracy, let alone relevance, in my opinion), in the last few days his/her behaviour has shaped itself into trolling. Do we have to keep writing polite rebutals, which only lead to escalating the tone of the discussion on the other end, or would it be better to simply give him/her a warning, followed by a ban from editing? Cheers, Arcfrk 23:01, 4 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. If the editor persists in this behaviour then a stuff warning and, if that does not help, a block may regretfully be necessary. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 05:28, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist mysteries
Jitse, could you please comment on how the personal watchlist works? For some reason items keep disappearing from my watchlist. For instance, your edit at Bolza surface appeared on my watch list, but only for a split second, and it is not there anymore. Katzmik 11:15, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Answered on User talk:Katzmik. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Buffon's noodle
I'm not sure Buffon's noodle was a joke. The fact that the expected number of crossings remains the same if you bend the needle (although the probability distribution of the number of crossings changes) is actually useful in geometric probability theory (see Klain & Rota's Introduction to Geometric Probability). I'm not sure it merits its own article, but perhaps there should be a redirect and merge. At any rate, I know I've seen the term before, although I don't remember where. Michael Hardy 19:36, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It is a joke, but it's a joke that was made by academics in the first place. Have a look at this Google search. DavidCBryant 22:12, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the correction. I should have read beyond the first sentence, which said that it was called after a goalkeeper. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 00:38, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Unblock request
The problem with SundarBot has been fixed and what's running currently is the latest version of pywikipediabot from svn. Please lift the block so that the bot can run. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 07:48, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Ignore the request above, Violet has unblocked. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 07:59, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Some Advice
Hey i noticed you blocked user 68.249.7.171 for vandalism. I was the one who warned him (and reverted) all of his vandalism. But i was unaware of how i could report him. Can ya let me know so i can report these individuals in the future? Also did i go about warning properly? Debeo Morium 08:52, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Nevermind, just saw your answer on arthurs talk, thanks Debeo Morium 08:53, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Random Smile!


WarthogDemon has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy editing! Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message. -WarthogDemon 00:44, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Uhhh
It was a slip of the tongue. And right now after those "big" words... well, you could say the same thing. Sorry. But did learn a lot about no wiki.--Angel David 19:56, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Weighted variance
I'm not so sure that such a detailed computation belongs in an encyclopaedia, but that's another matter. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:07, 28 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I've cleaned up the section. Let me know if you like it better. --vossman 17:07, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, that's much better. I have one question remaining: why is XXX the correct generalization of 1 / (N&minus;1) for the unbiased estimate? If you can't answer this, it's fine. Oh, and the Python documentation is probably not the best reference, but I guess you also realize that. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:01, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I got it from that python reference, but I've been using in practice and it definitely gives a reasonable value for all the cases I've tested. To get the correct equation you'd have to go through the expectation proof which is easier to confirm that derive. --vossman 04:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

System of linear equations
I think you did an excellent job on system of linear equations (but what is a flat, in the sentence "the flat for the first equation can be obtained by &hellip;" in the last section?). It may be a basic topic, but those are often the most difficult articles to write. Thanks very much. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 07:49, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks &mdash; it's the first time I've done any work on a major article. By the way, I've now added a stub on flat (geometry). Jim 20:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

zeteo tool
Hi Jitse, I replied to your bug report with the zeteo reference tool here. Jakob.scholbach 16:35, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey, are you knowledgeable with MySQL? Actually I was working on the problem you reported on the here, and I have some trouble overcoming the following error:

INSERT INTO table_0 SELECT books.id,books.authors,books.title FROM books WHERE INSTR (books.title, 'test')

gives me the error "#1305 - FUNCTION myDB.INSTR does not exist", whereas

INSERT INTO table_0 SELECT books.id, books.authors, books.title FROM books WHERE books.title = 'test'

or just the subquery

SELECT books.id,books.authors,books.title FROM books WHERE INSTR (books.title, 'test')

work properly. I'm not that much of an expert in MySQL and on some forums, nobody told me how to fix this... Thanks. Jakob.scholbach 19:15, 9 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I don't know that much SQL. I think you cannot have a space between INSTR and the left parenthesis, but that doesn't explain why your last example work. So I guess you're on your own. :( -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:51, 10 September 2007 (UTC)


 * If there was a barnstar for fearless remote-debugging, I'd award it to you! It actually was the space before "INSTR". Weird! This is the first language I meet which is sensitive to spacing. Thanks. Jakob.scholbach 20:33, 10 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The other bug you reported last week is now fixed. Jakob.scholbach 20:27, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

another question
Hi Jitse,

I have another question for you. I'm adding a feature which gives a list of websites where a user could find more appropriate information/the full article etc. What are notable online sources for references you are using? (Currently I have books.google.com, digizeitschriften.de, archive.org). Thanks. Jakob.scholbach 21:28, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Articles can be found on arXiv (which has an associated template), CiteSeer and JSTOR (JSTOR needs a subscription). MathSciNet and Zentralblatt MATH (both need a subscription) give a summary and a link to the article. And Google itself and scholar.google.com are also often useful. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:48, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi
Jitse, thanks for adding to the list of linear algebra references. I'm glad that you like the article.

By the way, I'm sorry to be picky about the formatting. I'm new to Wikipedia, so I'm still fighting the urge to be possessive about things that I write. ;-)

Jim 03:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I never thought you were too picky about the formatting. I just wasn't sure what to do about it and whether it would be better to put the URL elsewhere. And picky is good; details are important. Possessive is dangerous, but it's important to care about the things you write because otherwise articles may degrade over time.
 * The list of linear algebra references is an interesting solution, which I've never seen before, for a common problem (how to make "basic" knowledge verifiable). It might be challenged as violating What Wikipedia is not, but I think such a challenge won't be successful. I'm not so sure though about whether to include all advanced text books. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 03:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Note on non-math
Hi Jitse. Thank you for removing International Journal of Ecology & Development (IJED) from the statistics journals category where it did not belong. And a note. I think you run into this journal via the current activity bot. In that case, since the article was not about statistics (so neither about mathematics), I think it is good if the article is also removed from the list of mathematics articles. (The bot does not do that automatically.) Thanks for looking after the math articles. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:34, 15 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'll try to remember that. See you, Jitse Niesen (talk) 07:04, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Reducibility
Per your treatment of Algorithmic reducibility as a redirect, I took the liberty of doing the same for the term Polynomial reducibility which was an undefined link in the deleted article; somebody can do justice to that article topic later if needed. Hotfeba 18:01, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Structural equation modeling possible copyvio
please don't subst the copyvio tag, as you did on Structural equation modelling. It just confuses things. But thanks for flagging it! (and apologies that it takes *forever* before someone follows up...) --Alvestrand 15:23, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * but could I ask you to take a second look? I don't have access to the article you pointed to, but Structural equation modeling (one L) has such a long history that it's possible the author you quoted was citing Wikipedia, not the other way around... --Alvestrand 21:46, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for going though the copyvio page, and also for the hint on not subst-ing the tag. I saw something went wrong, but it didn't occur that it was my mistake. Ouch.
 * Good catch on finding the article with one L. Impressive. But this makes it rather mysterious. One of the sentences which is word-for-word and comma-for-comma the same in the Wikipedia article and the published article is "SEM encourages confirmatory, rather than exploratory, modelling; thus, it is suited to theory testing, rather than theory development." This particular sentence arrived in the Wikipedia article during a copyedit by User:Pgan002 on 26 April 2006 (diff); it used to read: "SEM encourages a confirmatory, as opposed to exploratory, approach to modelling." The published article was submitted on 31 March 2005 and accepted on 29 August 2006. The latter date is when Springer will have received the copyright, so I don't think we're doing anything wrong. The information flow may well have gone the other way, but I'm not sufficiently convinced of this to complain. So I'll leave it as it is. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 06:55, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism - please intervene
Hello Jitse Niesen. As you are administrator, who is active in Bosnian War related topics, I am asking you to intervene in Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia article. There is a user: LAz17, who imports WP:NOT material into the article, political promotion (section called: "Current Situation"). I was trying to discuss with him, but he doesn't want to listen. You can see the whole dicussion here (not too long): Talk:Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia. When I tried to explain to him that Wikipedia is not place for promoting political ideas, he insulted me saying: "It's because you are a pro-Bosniak nationalist who hates the thought of the Croats having a third entity, so you do not want this to be shown on the page." which is totally not true, because his material is not even related to Herceg-Bosnia, but to so called "third entity". Herceg-Bosnia stopped to exist in 1994. Please help to improve Wikipedia. Many people, just want to misuse it.The Dragon of Bosnia 06:10, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Interpolation_example_linear.png listed for deletion
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Image:Interpolation_Data.png listed for deletion
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