Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bowers style acronym


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was Delete with particular credence given to the cogent presentations by obvious mathematical experts like Arthur Rubin and the rebuttal of the keep advoocates.Blnguyen | rant-line 02:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Bowers style acronym
WP:NOT for things made up in geometry class. Prod'd by me, deprod'd. &mdash; Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:52, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Delete As far as I can tell, this article describes original research by Bowers that has never appeared in print. I do think that this is worthwhile mathematical research performed by trained mathematicians, but I don't see that it fits the mission and policies of Wikipedia. Bowers' web page is an appropriate place to share this research with the world (and by setting up their own installation of mediawiki, the authors could transfer these page to UniformPolytopeWiki without much difficulty).

Here is my assessment of the literature. I was unable to find Bowers' name on mathscinet. I was able to find some papers by Norman in the 1960s on uniform polytopes. There is a vague promise at http://hometown.aol.com/polycell/uniform.html that a book by Norman on uniform polytopes will be published by Cambridge press, but Google returns no other information on the book. There is no indication that the terminology here will appear in the book. That page claims it is currently “the only place in the world where you can find this information!” which supports the claim that the work on uniform polytope classification falls into the wikipedia original research category.

CMummert 17:05, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Johnson book is: Johnson, N. W. Uniform Polytopes. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000.--Salix alba (talk) 19:29, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Request I can't find that book in Mathscinet, or Amazon.com, or a interlibrary database named Worldcat, or on the Cambridge Press website.  Maybe I am not looking for the right book.   Do you happen to know the ISBN?    CMummert 19:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * No book by that title on Cambridge University Press web site. &mdash; Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 19:58, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * On May 9, Norman Johnson responded to a question of mine about hyperbolic tilings, ending with: "These data will also appear in my book Uniform Polytopes." From the horse's mouth, then, it ain't published yet.  Alas he didn't say when!  &mdash;Tamfang 17:32, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * For what its worth the book ref came from Mathworld . --Salix alba (talk) 18:16, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep. this stuff was apparantly not made up by the creators of the article in geometry class, but by Jonathan Bowers. I doubt User:Salix alba is Jonathan Bowers, so it's not vanity. Voortle 17:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment Everyone responding should read WP:V and WP:OR to familiarize themselves with the applicable policies, which say that unpublished research is not in the scope of wikipedia regardless of its correctness. The reason for deletion at the top of this page is not accurate in describing why the page should be deleted.  It should be deleted because it is not in accordance with the applicable policies.  Anyone who wants to keep the page must explain why the page can be fixed to respect the prohibition against unpublished research. CMummert 17:19, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment. We don't know it wasn't made up by Bowers in geometry class.  We know it was made up by Bowers, and I see no evidence it's used in WP:RS.  &mdash; Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 17:34, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete - apart from the inventor's own website this concept doesn't seem to have been taken up. 17:52, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete unless, prior to expiration of AfD, someone presents a reference to a published source meeting the reliable source guidelines, that confirms that these abbreviations have a reasonably wide degree of recognition in the field of mathematics. A Google Books search on sirco girco snic gives no hits; ditto Google Scholar. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:08, 14 July 2006 (UTC) P. S. If no such reference is provided, the "Bowers pet names" should also be removed from List of uniform polyhedra by spherical triangle. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose (I de-prodded and I'm not Bowers). First a little history about this article. As part of the Polyhedron pages we developed a set of templates to allow the same information to be repeated in various pages to eliminate mistakes with the many technical data on the polyhedra. For these templates we needed a short key to represent each of the polyhedra. Originally I devised my own system but another user User:Tomruen suggested that we use Bowers acronyms instead, which were a considerably more established system. So the templates were created and it seem natural to include the Bowers names in the various templates, for a while there was a lot of red links until I finally got round to creating the page. The names themselves probably have more relavance to 4D polyhedra or polyclora. Bowers has worked with the Uniform Polychora Project which also included Norman Johnson perhaphs the most significant figure in recient work on polyhedra. Bowers himself has discovered most of the know Uniform Polychora. His names offer significant advantages over long form names which become very cumbersome when 4D polytopes are considered. As an example of the spread of these names a couple of new Polychora have been discovered by Mason Green and he has used Bowers system for his names. In effect Bowers names are becoming the defacto standard for 4D uniform polytopes, also as discoverer of the polytopes I guess Bowers gets the right to name them. --Salix alba (talk) 18:53, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
 * ???? I'm not sure what four-dimensional polychora have to do with anything. The question is: do you have some good, verifiable source citations meeting WP:RS that shows that sirco, girco, and snic are in reasonably widespread current use today? Do current geometry textbooks that discuss the uniform polyhedra use them now? Why does Google Books, which at the moment is heavily weighted toward recent books, have 39 hits on "snub cube" polyhedra, while a search on "snic" polyhedra returns only the query "Did you mean: 'sonic' polyhedra?" The question that needs to be answered is not whether Bowers is a notable mathematician, nor whether Bowers deserves to have his nicknames accepted, nor whether they are good nicknames, nor whether they are likely to be accepted in the future: Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. The question is, are they currently accepted today as genuine mathematical terminology? Dpbsmith (talk) 20:33, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete WP:OR--Nick Y. 18:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:18, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Citations

A bit of digging using search term Jonathan Bowers polyhedra finds a host of links some of which include
 * Stella: Polyhedron Navigator now includes Bowers names.
 * Prof George Hart - Four Dimensional Polytopes credits Bowers and George Olshevski with cataloguing over 8000 ployclora. Hart's home page (Anyone who knows polyhedra knows of Hart)
 * Bridges Conference: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science Bowers presents a paper. Uniform Polychora, Year: 2000, Page Number: 239, Author(s): Jonathan Bowers
 * Bowers credited with several names in a glosary of 4D shapes
 * Johnson presents work of the Polyclora project at a workshop on Convex and Abstract Polytopes
 * Although the introduction of the term polychoron is fairly recent, it seems now generally accepted, as there's no serious competition 
 * Delete. Original Research. -- GWO
 * Delete Is Stellated truncated hexahedron a term you'd use frequently enough to justify a mnemonic? --Xrblsnggt 00:17, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Hey, I chat about stellated truncated hexahedra as often as I make jokes about Thulium&mdash;that is to say, never. The point is that whether or not these are frequently used terms, the latter has the abbreviation Tm, and that fact can be sourced to innumerable print books, starting with the dictionary, while Quith, apparently, cannot. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:44, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know what to make of this debate. The acronyms are ACTIVELY used verbally as much as in writing by members of a (nonpublic access) polyhedron email list started by Magnus Wenninger to promote collaboration in polytope research.
 * Bowers "invented" the names for the purpose of faster communication and a critical mass of active researchers, amateur and professional have supported the clarity of the notation. Certainly it would be good for a print published source for these abbreviations, and it ought not to be the place of Wikipedia to defend or promote these names any more than any others.
 * Myself I find them a little cryptic, and for polyhedra, prefer a numeric vertex configuration, and I wrote up an article on this notation, taken from a singular book "Geometric Foundations of Nature". It could be equally questionable to defend any specific notation over any other.
 * Others support the Wythoff symbol which demonstrates the symmetry and truncation form of a polyhedron. They're ALL helpful in different contexts.
 * For ME, my purpose is to be HELPFUL and do my best to cross-reference names, notations, indices, so these beautiful shapes can be appreciated (As I tried to do in the table list of uniform polyhedra.) Someone like Bowers, who has spend YEARS of his life carefully documenting these uniform polytopes, deserves recognition, even if a book is never published.
 * Keep - This notation is as valid as any other used to describe polyhedra, whether in a printed book or not. Tom Ruen 02:10, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
 * You can stop this debate dead in its tracks instantly by citing reliable published sources. The reliable source guidelines are not limited to print publications, but a nonpublic-access email list certainly does not meet them. If the members of that list aren't already using these names in papers, books, or other reliable sources, then the verifiability policy says they cannot appear in Wikipedia yet. Not everything that is true is suitable for Wikipedia. verifiability in particular is a core policy and is non-negotiable. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:25, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
 * But consider for an instance, subject to WP:IAR, that the whole world of polyhedra is not one where a lot of traditional publication goes on. People write software to visulise the polyhedra, distrubute the code and maybe write a manual, people write copious webpages on the subject, Hart mentioned in citations for one. People exhibit the polyhedra at various colaqula. They make a lot of discoveries and the word gets out. Probably the most extensivce bibliography is at much of the published work is old, or rehashing old material. Anyway Bowers does have one publication is a so called relaible source: Bridges Conference: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science Bowers presents a paper. Uniform Polychora, Year: 2000, Page Number: 239, Author(s): Jonathan Bowers. --Salix alba (talk) 15:38, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I believe the criteria that many would apply to these articles is that of mathematics, where publication ususally does occur.  This criteria improves wikipedia's quality, especially in mathematics.  The charter of wikipedia does not include publicizing new research. I cannot see why some believe that wikipedia is the correct forum to share the research on polytopes, rather than an independent wiki or a journal.   CMummert 15:52, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The criterion I apply is the verifiability policy. If "the whole world of polyhedra is not one where a lot of traditional publication goes on" than I'm sorry, but it is not a world whose knowledge is ready to go into Wikipedia. It is not infrequently argued that a certain article should not be subject to the verifiability policy because it is a subject area about which little has been published, but I see nothing in the verifiability policy that makes exceptions for such topic areas. If I'm wrong, please point me to the place that says this.


 * In effect, Salix alba is saying that this material should not be subject to the verifiability policity because it is unverifiable (using the word "verifiable" in the Wikipedian sense) Dpbsmith (talk) 16:39, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Delete per WP:OR and WP:V (cf CMummert and Dpbsmith's comments). Keep votes do not attempt to refute that the article violates these policies. --C S (Talk) 10:08, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.