User talk:Perfect Blue Sphere

Let's talk!

Infinity
Hi Perfect Blue Sphere, I noticed that you are a new editor and have made some, IMO, troubling edits in the Infinity article, so I reverted them, hoping to have a discussion here. These are my concerns:
 * While citations are the lifeblood of Wikipedia, there is no need to clog the arteries with them. Standard, noncontroversial mathematics does not require a citation for every fact presented. One or two references per section, if they are general enough, will suffice. The intent is to give readers a place to go to obtain more information, not validate every statement made. See WP:NOT for amplification of this point.
 * Not all points of view need be reflected in an article. Certainly, when there are differing schools of thought, the major viewpoints should be discussed from a neutral viewpoint, but this does not mean that every fringe theory deserves a place at the table. See WP:FRINGE.
 * Citations which are not publicly available are not acceptable. You say that you were able to see the paper, I tried and could not. It is not that I doubt what you are saying about the paper, but it must be verifiable by other editors and readers. Was this a primary source or a secondary source for the information? Primary sources are generally not acceptable. See WP:PRIMARY.
 * The abstract I did see had several flaws, chief amongst them was that I could not determine the date of publication. Is this a new article? Has it been around for a while? The journal was not a mathematics or a logic journal - was this peer reviewed? By whom?

I also noticed that you have a position at my alma mater (many, many moons ago) and I hope that you are enjoying it. I think that you will find that editing on Wikipedia is a very different experience than editing math journal articles, I know that it took me a while to adjust to the differences. The hardest part was not being able to use my own expertise in editing articles, but rather finding what I wanted to say in a reliable secondary source. I'll be happy to talk about any of the above and I hope that you will enjoy your editing experience. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 19:05, 17 December 2013 (UTC)