Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ramanujan Machine


 * 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. Daniel (talk) 10:07, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Ramanujan Machine

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Notability Dermacct (talk) 18:06, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 18:15, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

 Delete. Four reasons:  The scientific topic of this article simply isn't a notable idea in Math or CS. This article is about a very specific symbolic regression/synthesis algorithm that is presented in exactly one peer-reviewed article that was published on Friday of last week. The only other publication mentioning this "Ramanujan Machine" is an arxiv pre-print has attracted only 9 citations in over a year (nb: that's a very low citation count, even for a preprint, in ML/AI). There are very few truly independent descriptions or discussions of this idea in the press or in the scientific literature. All of the press articles linked in the article are non-critical and they all even have the same narrative structure and identical figures. It'd be unsurprising if these articles are all based on the same template -- unfortunately not an uncommon practice these days. There simply aren't a large number of truly independent sources discussing the "Ramanujan Machine". The wikipedia article's original contents contained almost no details about the algorithm, but did contain PR fluff like "The project aims to inspire future generations of mathematicians". Stated simply, I think it's a low-effort article written as part of a broad push to hype up and advertise a paper. I would go so far as calling this article spam. In fact, the only additions to the article containing substantive details about the "Ramanujan Machine" were contributed by a user who agrees with deletion of the article... Even one of the authors of the related paper agrees with deleting this wikipedia page.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dermacct (talk • contribs)
 * Delete Going by the scholarly literature alone, it's at best too soon to have an article on this. One just-published paper isn't nearly enough to base an article upon. And even if we had peer-reviewed secondary sources establishing its significance, I doubt it would be due more weight than a few lines in an article like automated theorem proving. The media coverage is churnalism. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 21:03, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. With any purported scientific discovery, its actual significance and notability should be judged first by its impact on the scientific discipline in question, as evidenced by independent peer-reviewed published sources there. In this case, the only published peer-reviewed source is the Feb 2021 Nature article by the creators of the concept themselves, and so the source is not independent. There is some coverage from unpublished sources (blogs, preprints), and from popular media. The latter should be discounted at this point, IMO, and treated as WP:NOTNEWS situation. In the absence of independent peer-reviewed coverage, popular and conventional media are not in a position to evaluate the valudity and significance of scientific work. In this case it would appear that the existing popular/conventional media coverage is due to a well designed PR effort by the study's authors. Until and unless there's substantive coverage of the concept by independent published peer-reviewed sources, this seems to me to be a WP:NOTNEWS case. Nsk92 (talk) 21:15, 6 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete - I'm one of the authors of the paper. We didn't write this wiki page, and since it has technical mistakes I think that it is important to remove it. We do not want incorrect and misleading information published on the paper or spread via Wikipedia. This Wikipedia page is already cited in other posts as truth and that's problematic. Once some time passes and depending on the follow-up it gets, it may be relevant to reconsider a Wiki page similar to other analogous concepts like this one Automated Mathematician Georgepisha (talk) 21:21, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep I'm the creator of the article with no COI with it. Just because an idea is not accepted by experts does not mean it should be removed from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a scientific journal WP:NOTHOWTO WP:NOTLAB. Regardless how worthless/wrong a concept is it may still have encyclopedic value because of the coverage a subject is receiving. And this is the case here. The article meets WP:RS and WP:SIGCOV. Tabloids have been going gaga over it and it's one more reason why Wikipedia article must be available to present a neutral point of view. Experts can help building the criticism section further using reliable sources. Also, someone connected with a subject requesting deletion is not a vaild deletion argument. RationalPuff (talk) 22:14, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you. "Just because an idea is not accepted by experts" and "Tabloids have been going gaga over it" are both excelent arguments for deleting the article. Nsk92 (talk) 13:22, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * In reply to the statement Experts can help building the criticism section further using reliable sources: no, they can't, because those sources don't exist (yet). It's not Wikipedia's job to promote new research, however interesting it might be. We document research whose significance is already established. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 14:54, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

 <li>Nsk92 addresses the media coverage issue at length. "Going gaga" seems a bit over-stated. A few websites published slightly modified copy of the same article.</li> <li>The issue isn't whether the results are right/wrong. The issue is that the topic of the article is significant.</li> <li>A scientist agreeing that their own work is being covered too soon and is not due this amount of weight does strike me as an important consideration. Even if this person's opinion is not a valid deletion argument, the fact that it's the most credible source speaking in either direction is at least evidence that we don't have sufficient secondary sources.</li> </ol> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dermacct (talk • contribs)
 * Reaffirming my 'Delete judgement, addressing each of RationalPuff's points in turn:
 * For clarity's sake, please sign your comments with four tilde's ( ~ ), which automatically adds your username and a timestamp. In addition, you can use wiki markup instead of HTML; it saves on brackets. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 14:48, 7 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete. A recently hyped new work without evidence of ongoing and lasting interest, or serious independent scholarly attention, so all we have to go on is the hype. That doesn't make for an acceptable article. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:58, 9 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> 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.