Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tensor of a quaternion


 * 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   redirect to Classical Hamiltonian quaternions. Fritzpoll (talk) 09:30, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Tensor of a quaternion

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Contested prod. This is a POV fork of Classical Hamiltonian quaternions by a single purpose account and his sockpuppets. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:50, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete - merge into Classical Hamiltonian quaternions (if not already there). Describes Hamilton's concept only. Koeplinger (talk) 01:34, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Redirection would be acceptable; I don't think we need the link, but it is not particularly harmful; tensor of a quaternion in the modern sense of tensor is not likely to occur. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:12, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This AfD nomination was incomplete (missing step 3). It is listed now. DumbBOT (talk) 15:33, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

*'''Can we avoid an edit war? Abstain from voting''' For the love of god, can we keep this article to avoid an edit war? The point of view fork argument is not a very good one, because this article is also linked from the main article. I propose that Hobojaks and Koeplinger reach some sort of agreement, where each compromises? If we don't reach a consensus here, it will be a long time before we have one again.Caylays wrath (talk) 00:59, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry apparently having a voice of reason in these discussions is inappropriate, didn't understand that before, user name calays wrath is retired from this discussion, as is user name hobo jaks. From now on I will be making comments only under the name Hamiltons wrath (talk) 11:00, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete and do not merge. Appears to me to be original research, making an obscure argument about semantics based on original sources that do not directly address the argument it makes (and cannot, because the argument seems to be about concepts that were deveoped after the sources it references), i.e. original synthesis.  Also self-contradictory: 'Hamilton did not [...] define a tensor to be "a signless number" [...] Hamilton defined the new word tensor as a [...] signless number'. JulesH (talk) 17:27, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * In our modern language, Hamilton considers two different codomains for his tensor function (in 1843, these distinctions were still being worked out); the range is still the continuum from 0 to (positive, if necessary) infinity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:12, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

*Abstain for now (Being a 19 century rhetorical device I can neither confirm or deny that I have already voted under a different user name) On condition that the meat puppet above does not have his vote counted I looked at his contribs, and he has never contributed to a mathematics article before. There is an entire section of my book Elements of Quaternions titled the tensor of a quaternion. That section alone is larger than the entire present article classical hamiltonian quaternions. Great material that was hoping that some of you mortals would discover at some point and add to the article. This was the original thinking of one of the original authors of the main article for which this was a long planned sub article. The article currently has some problems, but it is also contains the first efforts of our new quaternionist Septentrionalis as well as the first contributions of an administrator. I propose that we take Septentrionalis efforts as good faith efforts, and that we not destroy them because when an editors first attempt at something gets deleted they tend to get frustrated and not work on the subject any more. If you wanted to recruit a really good expert on this subject then I would suggest Tatarov, who was cruelly bitten the last time he attempted to contribute on the subject of quaternions. Tatarov posits in his pear reviewed published article that quaternions can indeed be used to formulate general relativity. This fact was recently vandalized out of the history article. To enlist his aid however Gentelmen I propose that we agree that he has permission to cite himself as a source. I by the way claim the same privilege.Hamiltons wrath (talk) 20:59, 19 March 2009 (UTC) Switching this account to my voting one, sorry for any confusion.Hamiltons wrath (talk) 15:22, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

*Note Deleting this article will break an uneasy truce agreement. I will view it as an act of edit war. I view this third attempt delete this article as deliberate vandalism. Proposing to delete it is trolling. This ongoing vandalism is unacceptable, and is being conducted by people who have not read any of the reference material being discussed. Their intention is to keep Hamilton's point of view out of Wikipedia entirely. They are all meat pupits who have never really contributed. Remember that in order to achieve consensus, I agreed not to move all material in classical hamiltonian quaternions article into the main article. This continued harassment will in my view violate this agreement. Further discussion with you people is pointless.


 * Lets see a show of hands, how many people participating in this discussion have actually read Elements of Quaternions up to article 214? How many people have actually read Lectures of Quaternions.  How many people have read even a basic decent book about quaternions from this time period?  You are proposing to move material back into a main article in order to introduce gross factual errors.


 * Perhaps we should assume good faith on the part of Septentrionalis and let him have this obscure sand box like region and let him work on it, instead of introducing gross factual errors into a main article. Is that his purpose, do delete the the entire article a sentence at a time, and to introduce factual errors into the article?  Why is he helping with an article he proposed to delete?  If he really wants to contribute material we should give him the chance.  I invite him to change his vote, in which case he could win an assumption of good faith, and help build consensus.


 * Remember when it used to say that tensors are positive numbers and when you add multiply or divide them you still get a positive number but when you subtract them sometimes you get a negative number called a scalar. If you are going to find some pretext to delete key statements from an article like this in a deliberate effort to destroy its logical consistency what is the point of even having an article?  So much analysis has already been deleted from the article so as to take it completely out of context, which again I view as deliberate vandalism.


 * Go head, I don't really care, but after you dump the some of the idiotic content in this article into the other article, please cut the other article down to single a paragraph. Thats the goal here for most of you, keeping Hamilton's point of view off wikipedia.  One last thing, everybody go back and read the consensus agreement that everyone agreed to about keeping the main article that this sub article belongs to.  Didn't we all agree that  Septentrionalis was a black hearted little troll?  He enjoys making trouble.  He will bring his same slash and burn tactics to the main article no doubt.  The main article does not cite any inline sources, except for the ones that I put there.  It is being run by people who are cool aid drinking believers in linear algebra, and is based on unreliable sources.


 * Go back to a pre-vandalized version of this article, and you will notice that I had long ago created a link to what was at the time an empty stub article, and had always intended to develop it further. I have some really good material to put in the article, just don't have time right now.  Notice that Versor, Bi Quaternion and a lot of other good sub articles were started as branches off this original article, deleting this name space


 * Hamilton, Hardy and Tait are reliable sources, as this edit war developes people will have to start reading them, and maybe that is a good thing, because as they do they will start to see that every thing in this article is verifiable. I might be willing to change my vote to again achieve consensus, but this is really the last straw, if this article gets deleted it my be a long time before a consensus is reached again.  So delete and declare war if you wish Gentalmen, you have sown the wind, you will reap the whirlwind. Hobo jaks is a retired user name no longer participating in this article.  From now on I am Hamiltons WrathHamiltons wrath (talk) 10:54, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

*Delete both articles merge into main articleHobojaks (talk) 18:03, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Changing user name in this discussion see talk pageHamiltons wrath (talk) 11:11, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I disagree; topic entry page (quaternion) should focus on overview and textbook understanding; historical article (Classical Hamiltonian quaternions on its origin. The work that still need to get done on the historical article does not warrant accusatory tone, "wrath", "crackpot" name calling, and other child's play here. WP:SOCK is a guideline, not an accusation. We've all made our point. Koeplinger (talk) 01:06, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * PS: Other than his/her brushy entry a while back, I'm supporting Septentrionalis views and effort. Koeplinger (talk) 01:09, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sadly you are supporting the efforts of a contributor with questionable motives. He submitted the article classical hamiltonian quaternions for deletion, when he did not get his way, he deleted some good analysis which would be absolutely essential for any reader actually wanting to learn about Hamilton's approach to quaternions.  You never addressed my second point, in my book Elements of quaternions I have a rather large section titled the tensor of a quaternion.  There is a lot of really great material in there that should go in this article.Hamiltons wrath (talk) 15:29, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The Classical Hamiltonian quaternions AfD was entered per anonymous request. The material is significant, by its historic influence alone. Personally, I like it as well and find it interesting; but in an edit dispute like the current, personal likings and interest become secondary here, and we must support the material through general significance. The Hamilton-centric view should fit perfectly into one article, which is why I don't think we need Tensor of a quaternion. I also believe that this perfectly positions the view as an "alternate". Not sure where your negativity comes from. If you want to change what the world thinks about quaternions, then the ball is in your court: You've got to prove it, which means work, publish, defend, etc. Looks like you've got the persistence and diligence to do so, and I hope that years of work (likely outside other activities that'll actually pay you money) will not be discouraging to you .... Koeplinger (talk) 00:50, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Correction: I am not using the term "fork" correctly, I meant more something of a counterposition. Anyway. Thanks, Jens Koeplinger (talk) 01:07, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I supported Keeping Classical Hamiltonian quaternions. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:49, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I looked at the sock puppet rules, and not really sure they apply here. First of all there are users commenting in this discussion that feel they are being stalked from article to article, and I don't think that users who feel they need protect their identity because they are being stalked can be excluded from participating in these discussions. Second the sock puppet rules don't apply to users who present contradictory arguments, but rather to users that just say me to, in order to make it look like their side has more support. Third this rule does not apply to users who type arguments in first person using the name of historical figures as a rhetorical devise, especially if the have been using these names for a while.Caylays wrath (talk) 01:53, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Note I just reverted Hamiltons wrath who removed a comment by Caylays wrath and altered the comment by Hobojaks. - Mgm|(talk) 10:26, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * User name Caylay's wrath is no longer participating in this discussion, I checked the rules on this an apparently having a voice of reason in a discussion like this is not allowed.Hamiltons wrath (talk) 10:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

After carefully reviewing the rules on sock puppets, which I still feel don't apply to users who feel they are being stalked from article to article by vicious vandalizing trolls, I am retiring user name hobojaks, and caylays wrath from this discussion. Sorry for any confusion, those participating in this discussion who are not meat puppets, drawn into the discussion are not confused. Give me a second to reflect the new user name with which I plan on voting in this discussionHamiltons wrath (talk) 10:35, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It is forbidden to remove other people's comments from discussions, especially deletion discussion. If you disagree with them or feel they should be discounted, simply add a comment to that effect underneath. Only the administrator closing the discussion has the power to discount comments altogether. - Mgm|(talk) 10:52, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry for any confusion, from now on I am only using User name hamiltons wrath in this discussion. I need to strike out that argument if you will permit me?Hamiltons wrath (talk) 10:55, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * As long as you can prove you are the same user, there's no problem. See your talk page for further information. Using your old account to perform the requested edits would be the easiest way to resolve this. - Mgm|(talk) 10:58, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Hamiltons wrath is no longer a 19th century rhetorical device, but a voting participant, wikipedia is so technical, sorry for the confusion, please let me strike out content that might cause confusion, I can then long on to any accounts you need me to in order to provide what ever verification you wish.Hamiltons wrath (talk) 11:04, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * redirect classical hamiltonian quaternions to main article classical hamiltonian quaternions is being ruthlessly vandalized. Main article should not exclude Hamilton's point of view.  An article should not exist to justify making a main article so point of view.  In order to achieve a consensus in the discussion on deleting the article classical hamiltonian quaternions, it was agreed that we could actually have the article.  This agreement was not honored.  Instead it ended up that classical hamiltonian quaternions was an easy place for people to vandalize.  Deleting this article is a symptom of this ongoing vandalism.Hamiltons wrath (talk) 11:22, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You are correct that Classical Hamiltonian quaternions could be considered a fork from the main quaternion article. This is justifiable through its historical focus, which is narrower than today's textbook understanding, and also differs in several points. Capturing differences over time is notable in itself, and a fork is a well-suited editorial tool for this. Hamilton, Tait, and their peers are certainly notables originators, so I don't see the risk of deletion, either. The Tensor of a quaternion article, however, is misleading as it writes about Hamilton's view only, which makes the material perfectly suited for Classical Hamiltonian quaternions that's already there. Koeplinger (talk) 00:50, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * not an edit fork I was looking at the rules on that and I must point out that the basic structure of this article was planned out long before this latest spurt of vandalism started.  There may be a problem with the content presently in the article, but not with the structure itself.  For me deleting this article is going to feel pretty much like the last straw.  I will take it as the sadly misguided efforts of one user, taken advantage of by someone with bad intent.  So one Septentrionalis you could change your vote to keep, help a little to convince me that your intentions are not malicious.User:Koeplinger I think you are a great guy, but you are sadly misguided about excluding Hamilton's work from the main article.  At one point I gave a little, so that we could all reach an agreement.  Deleting this article would pretty much do it for me, I changed my vote last time to achieve consensus, now don't you think it might be your turn?  Once consensus is lost, it is hard to get back, and it is going to seem to me, that this consensus was lost because people went back on their word.  So it will be fooled me once shame on you, but once this article gets deleted, me agreeing to things that I don't really believe in order to get consensus, and it will be almost impossible to convince me that Septentrionalis is acting in good faith.Hamiltons wrath (talk) 16:00, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - this discussion needs to be extended. Quite interesting for us nerds. :-) Bearian (talk) 01:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  MBisanz  talk 05:23, 24 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment There seems to be much controversy here. I recommend that we focus on finding sources for the introduction of the page, that is, the text: In mathematics, some thinkers believe there is a relationship between the norm of a quaternion and the tensor of a quaternion.  Some writers define the norm of a quaternion as having the same formula as the tensor of a quaternion, while other writers define the norm of a quaternion as the square of the tensor.  My response to this is "some thinkers/some writers"--who?  If this is not sourceable, I would say to Delete this page as it would be original research.  If it is sourceable, then I think the discussion should focus on whether there's enough material to justify its own page and keep or merge into the page discussed above.  As it is, my gut tells me this is original research just by looking at how it is written.  Cazort (talk) 16:07, 24 March 2009 (UTC)


 * note Technically Hamilton's book Elements of Quaterions is divided into different books, however the entire 11th section of Hamilton's second book is devoted to the subject of the tensors of vectors and quaternions.[] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.86.76.11 (talk) 20:16, 24 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment i think expert help needs to be requested, whilst the article is poorly written it may have potential if there are sources. --neon white talk 04:34, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. An unsalvagable self-contradictory mess, riddled with vagueness and pov. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:55, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * There is no such thing as unsalvagable as for as deletion policy is concerned. "vagueness and pov" are not reasons for deletion. --neon white talk 08:04, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with Neon white. How bad the article currently is is irrelevant to deletion.  ATD reads: "If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion.".  The discussion here should focus on whether this topic is notable.  The link added by the anonymous author above does seem to point towards this being a notable topic.  Are there other sources though?  In particular, are there any sources justifying the remarks in the introductory paragraph?  This seems to be key for me.  Cazort (talk) 14:51, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Direction of Traffic Flow Most of the people coming to this article are going to be coming from the main article, wanting to learn more about Hamilton's notation. They will be coming from the main article section about the norm of a quaternion.  So we need to have some really basic stuff, and introduce people gently to the point that a quaternion has a tensor.


 * Its notable Hamilton's thinking about tensors is notable, from not only a historical point of view, but very possible from other points of view as well. Tait wrote extensively on the subject of using quaternions to represent stresses and strains, before they really had the idea of a stress tensor.  In a three dimensional solid, since there are different stretching factors in the different directions, you need more than one quaternion.  See Tait An elementary treaties on quaternions[]  Perhaps just a little editing of the article might help to convince the skeptics?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.86.76.24 (talk) 01:11, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with Koeplinger. The article is riddled with original research / mistakes. The first paragraph sets up a controversy for which there are no sources. After stripping the original research, it comes down to "Hamilton and later 19th century mathematics defined the tensor of the quaternion q to be the quotient between the length of the transformed vector qv and the original vector v. This quantity is nowadays called the norm of the quaternion". I don't see why we need an article on that. It's enough to add this to Classical Hamiltonian quaternions. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:36, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * question Thank you for your opinion,Jitse Niesen however I was wondering if you had carefully read the citations to the entire section of Elements of Quaternions dedicated to the rather involved subject of the tensor of a quaternion? Also have you had a look at Taits work on representing stresses and strains using quaternions before coming to this verdict?  The present content of the article is not really relevant to this discussion.  For people who claim to have read the material that should be included in this article, here is a test question, how did Hamilton and all the classical thinkers define the tensor of a quaterion. Here is a hint, its notable but not how it is done on the main article on the subject.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.86.71.104 (talk) 18:55, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not here to play games or solve tests. Just claiming that it's notable does not convince me. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 22:17, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * reading might convince you Not trying to play games here, but if you actually read even a small fraction of the vast amount of material that will provide great source material for this article it might change your mind.  Your recent comment suggests that you are not willing to do the reading needed to make a qualified well thought out comment.  I take it that this means that you are also not willing to spend the time to go back and read the discussion for deletion for history of quaternions and for classical hamiltonian quaternions?  Just trying to clarify your position?  Also you said you were casting your vote in solidarity with Koeplinger, if he were willing to change his position in order to achieve a consensus would you be willing to do so as well.  Also I am really excited to hear that you are part of a large block vote, because Koeplinger is voting in solidarity with Septentrionalis.  Following this chain of logic, if Septentrionalis were willing to change is vote we would then get a chain reaction consensus.  Sadly Septentrionalis has demonstrated a lack of willingness to do very much reading on the subject, there is a ray of hope in that he is the author of the text you point to as being so offensive.  But time is up for that easy test question to see who has been doing any reading.  Now you will be able to read the answer in the main article.  Next test question, what is the tensor of an imaginary scalar, a bivector and a biquaterion?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.196.194.214 (talk) 00:38, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I did read parts of Hamilton's, Cayley's and Tait's books before I commented. I read the old discussions for deletion when they happened. I'm not casting my vote in solidarity with Koeplinger, I said that I agree with him. I had already answered your test question in my first comment (now it's my turn to wonder whether you read anything I wrote). You say that the text is written by Septentrionalis = User:Pmanderson, but I can find no evidence of that in the article history.
 * Hey it is really great that you are reading! That makes you just the type of guy we need to help out with that last section of the article.  It is not proposed by any means that the article should be limited to only Hamilton's nomenclature.  In fact while this branch from the main article has been planned since before these deletions discussions began, the motivation for starting to work on it now, was exactly as you have pointed out, a need to discuss the concept of the tensor of a quaterion, but not completely limited to only the 19th century.  Hence in this article, we could include other newer ideas as well as Hamiltons.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.86.71.98 (talk) 20:36, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Going back to the article under discussion, I'm afraid that the material you added makes it even worse in that it uses 19th-century language. I'm open to the argument that we need an article on the norm of a quaternion (which is the same as the tensor of a quaternion), but it should use modern language and the title "norm of a quaternion". However, we do not need an article on the concept of the norm of a quaternion explained in a language convenient for 19th-century mathematicians, and that is what you seem to want. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 14:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I don't agree that the article should be written exclusively in Hamilton's notation, but I do insist that Hamilton's ideas be included. Part of the trouble here is that not very many people actually adding content to the article.  Certainly other points of view besides Hamilton's should be included, that as we all know is one of the main pillars of wikipedia.  On the other hand, if work is not getting done on the last section of the article, I don't think it is really fair to single out one editor, for not working on that particular section.  This would be a great chance for you to help out here!  I am trying to be welcoming, and I apologize if I have not read all your arguments, I will look at them more carefully in the future.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.86.71.98 (talk) 20:42, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Questions All references are from one guy's book. Is he well known among scientists/mathematicians for his work?  Do they teach his stuff in any schools?  Has he won any notable awards for his work?  Has he or his work been used in a popular science fiction novel, film, cartoon, or comic book?   D r e a m Focus  19:10, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You mean that "Hamilton guy"? Thanks ... Koeplinger (talk) 19:31, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point. I know nothing of this subject, so I'll stay out of it.   D r e a m Focus  22:40, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Arguement on Notability Type on rocking IP address dudes! Looks like the arguements comming from IP addresses are much more convincing than those from other sources.  So to recap, this deletion discussion was started by a user who is harrassing the people who are actually generating content on the subject.  He appears to be gone for now, but apparently some new people are joining the discussion.  These people are welcome, but should start by going back and re-reading the discussion on deleting the articles classical hamiltonian quaternions and history of quaternions.  In these discussions we have already agreed that the subject matter being discussed in this article is notable.


 * Arguement on Structure The issue before us now is how to structure the material we have already agreed belongs on wikipedia. Just to fill some people in, Hamilton wrote a vast amount of material on the subject of the tensor of a quaternion.  Tait wrote 8 books on quaternions, and also wrote devoted a great deal of attention to the subject of the tensor of a quaternion.  Please go back and look at the structure of the article classical hamiltonian quaternions  The terms are carefully defined in the correct order, that Hamilton used to define them in Lectures on Quaternions.  So it starts out by explaining what the symbols for plus, minus, multiply, and division mean.  At that early state in that article before the term quaternion has even been defined yet, it is not good structure to have a vast section about tensors, that will overload people who don't even know what the definition of a quaternion is.  Having this sub article was a planed part of the structure of the subject long before the present article deletion mass insanity began.  This article is needed to support good structure.


 * Arguement to Keep based on need to discuss larger time period

Another user who has one of those fancy colored administrator tags on his signature has correctly pointed out that the subject of concept of the tensor of a quaternion, needs to be discussed not just from a single point of view, but from all points of view. This article would be greatly improved if someone would get to work on finding some sources other than Hamilton and his cohorts. These other points of view are vital and needed for this article. One problem with the article right now, is that not enough people are contributing to it, and the people who are are well shall we say, Hamilton fans. It is proposed that people with this point of view be welcomed in this article, but that we also work to get some other people involved. The online versions of books on Hamilton's notation and terminology is Ultra-modern. This has been the case for about two years now, since all these great old books have come on line and are viewable for free. Saying that Hamilton's ideas are 19th century, might have worked in the 20th century, but times have changed and now writers from the 20th century are also getting a bit dated. However, one reason for having an article on the tensor of a quaterion outside of an article devoted exclusively to thinking developed before 1901, and from a particular school of thought, is so that viewpoints other than those of Hamilton's and Tait's and the other writers of that particular time can be included. In these terms not having this article would violate a basic pillar of wikipedia, that all points of view must be included.


 * Arguement to keep based on vast amount of material on notable subject

Early arguments made before the present structure of the article was created for deletion are now moot! The growing section on the properties of Hamilton's T operator, alone are notable enough to justify this article. And there are a lot of properties, and identities that Hamilton proved. These should be written not only in Hamilton's ultra-modern notation, but where possible also in the various other kinds of notation that were used in the bygone era of the 20th century, which I have a pretty good source, that calls this the dark age of quaternions.


 * Problematic section The last section of the article is somewhat problematic.  It has a sad history as well.  It started in the middle of an edit war.  After loosing the battle to delete the article on the history of quaterions, an element within our community that wants to supress Hamilton's point of view, next deleted the entire article paragraph by paragraph, and replaced documented facts listed in cronological order, with a rather bias historography.  Not content with this they then broke the links from the history article to the article on Hamilton's notation, and broke the links from the main article on quaterions to the history article, leaving no way to actually get to the article on Hamilton's notation from the main article.  Their next step was be begin the same pattern of deleting paragraphs from the article on hamilton's notation.  Having deleted all of the text explaining that Hamilton's calculus is a different context from linear algebra, they next began do delete sentences from the core content of the section actually explaining the notation.  At that time the first section of this core content was the section on tensors.  The first tactic used was to take a sentence explaining that tensors being simply positive numbers could be added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided, and explaining that with all of these operations other than subtraction the result was another postive number, but that when tensors were subtracted it could produce another type of number called a signed number or scalar.  I have checked into this and learned that you can say things like 2 - 5 = -3 with out having to find a souce for it.

So as the harrasment continued, at one point a user who did a lot of really great work copied the contents of the section of the article about tensors into a new article. The harrasser that created this content then proposed his own text for deletion, but a really cool administrator actually worked on it a little and made it just a little bit less nonsensical.

To answer a really good question, the first lines of the problematic section which were written by an administrator, can be sourced. In fact the all that is needed to get page scans directly into Cayleys original writing on the subject is to go and copie the link from the article on classial hamiltonian quaterions. Tracing down the history of the other point of view might be a little more difficult.


 * Arguement on point of view fork. At this stage can someone please inform the people working on the main article that they really need to include another definition of a quaternion, as the quotient of two vectors. Point of view forks are cause by main articles that are point of view.  Having a main article devoted completely to some stale ideas from the 20th century, and excludes the greatest thinkers of the subject of all time, creates a structure problem that it is not really fair to blame on this article.


 * Test questions Sad to say but over the history of this discussion people have come here just to say me to with out providing very valid arguments. In order to be more welcoming, I suggest that we not count these non-cotributers unless they actually read some of the material discussed and demonstrate that they have a basic understanding of the material by answering simple questions.  Todays test question should be really easy.  If the tensor of a quaternion is the same as the norm, then since a biquaterion has a tensor, it must have a norm!  You can always divide to biquaterions unless their tensor is zero, which is true for all the elements of Hamilton's calculus.  If something has a tensor of zero it has an infinite recprocal.  So to get out of the clueless club, someone needs to explain why biquaterions are not a normed division algebra, and not use origianl research to do it, I am talking about actually citing a source here.  The page number in Lectures on Quaterions is 666 and a great first step would be to look and find an author who cites this page number from Lectures.

The other test question is if a Lorentz transform can be written as a biquaterion, and a biquaterion has a tensor which is all or in part imaginary, seems like this should raise a major red flag on the whole concept of lorentz transforms? Somebody some time must have thought about this, so coming up with a good source for this problem would also be a good contritution. A good place to look would be in writings from the 1920's when books on special relativity were written using quaterion notation.

Well so anyway, I think that with these as yet unanswered arguments, the only possible logical conclusion if we were to count the arguments, and not the me to, votes would be to keep the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.81.33.250 (talk) 19:22, 28 March 2009 (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.