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Revision as of 19:44, 13 December 2006

Archives: 2003-2005

Chaos/Bios

Hi Gandalf, I wrote response to your question on my talk page Lakinekaki, I don't know how to put a date!

Hi Gandalf, I asked you a question on the chaos theory talk page, and will appreciate your answer.Lakinekaki 07:34, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Now, that is a reasonable action! I agree with your correction/clarification. Lakinekaki 16:23, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

All or almost all?

The words "almost all" added to the the article Mathematical beauty imply that there are areas of physics which do not have a mathematical basis. I am not aware that this is so: could you be more specific? If these two words were added to be careful not to overstate the facts, but on due consideration there are not any known counterexamples, they whould be best removed. Elroch 02:52, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Iraq

Hi Gandalf. I sometimes forget that the other guy can't see my body language or hear my nonverbals. It was quite reasonable for you to get what I wrote (about you not speaking for me) as unfriendly and aggressive. I'm sorry about that, because that was not my intention. It was meant to sound assertive but friendly. My skills failed me. Then to argue the interpretation in open forum (or at all) was not particularly good manners, so that's another wake up call for me. Thanks for the lessons. Go well. JackofOz 12:41, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Number theory

Hi. The second paragraph on the etymology is out of place - get into the general areas what number theory is about instead. Is it limited to integers? Is there no number theory about complex numbers, etc? They way the intro is stated it makes it seem as if NT is a misnomer for integer theory. Its just not clear on the generalities. -Ste|vertigo 14:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Go right ahead. Its an editorial issue, not a math issue - be explanatory. -Ste|vertigo 01:06, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Fibonacci prime

Are you even going to respond to my reply? You have been clearly wrong so far, and now suddenly cannot respond because you have no excuse for your mathematical inferiority, for which you now must realize. I did'nt want to become a wiki code guru, in fact Visual Studio is challenging enough, so do not impose your wishes that I conform to standards that do not exist, but only in your mind. The Fibonacci divisors section you created, should be moved back to the Fibonacci number page, except the GCD(Fp,Fn) part. This will be included in the Fibonacci prime section no matter what you think about it. Divineprime today

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Grave concerns about Bios theory and User:Lakinekaki

Hi, I see you also find reason to doubt the claims made by the author of this article. On the talk page I have listed my objections to the first paragraph and have also drawn attention to the fact that Lakinaki is not only apparently the sole author of this article, but is also in real life one Lazar Kovacevic (BSEE, University of Belgrade) of Chicago, who apparently is employed at the very organization which is actively promoting "bios theory" (sic)! I find this very troubling and am seeking comments on what to do about it. ---CH 05:46, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Fibonacci number

Hey, thanks for helping out with Fibonacci number! I hope you don't think I'm giving you a hard time; it's just that I've seen plenty of examples of people trying to link the Fibonacci numbers to unrelated things, even on Misplaced Pages. Melchoir 11:19, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Circular number

The source is already in the article. I also found the term defined in an encyclopedia from 1728, and numerous other dictionaries and encyclopedias since then. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-06-05 15:08

Re: Mandelbrot set

You wrote: I notice you placed a wikify tag on Mandelbrot set. Apart from the style issue that you mentioned in your edit comment, do you have any other specific reasons for tagging the article ? If so, perhaps you can list them on the article's talk page. Your concerns are much more likely to be addressed if other contributors can see exactly what they are. Thanks. Gandalf61 08:11, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Haven't seen any response to the above request. Personally, I can't see why the article merits a wikify tag. Unless you can explain your concerns, I think I may just remove the tag. Gandalf61 09:04, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't respond/was unclear, I haven't checked in a few days :P. I glanced over the whole article briefly, and I noticed things like the structure of the references section (which is non-standard), words in some sections that are bold (which shouldn't be), and headings that are of the wrong level (=== instead of ==). Again, sorry if I wasn't clear, I will repeat some of these things in the article's talk page (or I'll fix them myself :D ). Thanks for the messages and your interest! J. Finkelstein 16:54, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Blanking responses on Mathematics ref. desk

(Discussion moved from KSmrq talk)

I noticed you blanked out my response to "Proof?" on the mathemtics ref. desk. That seems very rude to me - how would feel if someone went around blanking out your responses ? A much better approach would have been to put your concerns on my talk page, and ask me if I would consider re-writing my response. I understand all about "do your own homework", but notice that my response does not give the questioner a full solution, because it does not give him the simpler equation that results from making the two substitutions - he has to work this out for himself. Gandalf61 15:50, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that too. First of all, KSmrq commented out your reply, he did not delete it. So he's not making it impossible for the interested user to read your solution, rather just delaying that event. I think that perhaps this mitigates the rudeness factor. I note that KSmrq has spent time telling answer-people not to post solutions, and telling question-people how to ask smart questions. He also tends to give long thoughtful educational replies to elementary level questions of the kind that I can't be bothered to answer. In fact, I look forward to reading KS's replies, even when I already know the answer. The point is, I think his refactorings make the help desk a better place, and he should be allowed some leeway. As for whether your reply was too close to a complete solution or not, I have no opinion myself, but I agree with KS's intentions in general. -lethe 16:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Gandalf61, I appreciate your concerns, and am very reluctant to remove any comments — including deliberately provocative and nasty ones — from a typical talk page. The guidelines for the reference desk are different, because its intent is different.

It is a juggling act for all of us to know how much to say and how much to withhold when the question has all the earmarks of homework. We do no favors to anyone by providing cut and paste homework solutions. We harm the questioner by teaching them that cheating is acceptable and works better than learning to understand and reason. We harm those who would prefer to offer substantive help and education by inviting a flood of more homework questions.

In this particular case, I felt that your post crossed the line. It went beyond teaching and assisting, though it did some of that as well. Also, it was premature, since it did not allow the questioner to try the previous suggestions and either succeed (good) or fail and return to ask for further assistance (also good).

As lethe points out, rather than deleting your post I commented it out with a remark about my concern. I do wish that you had done something to respond to that concern. For example, I would have been less troubled by a post that said only something like:

• "Try substituting x = a−1, y = b−1 to get a simpler equation in x and y."

That would be a hint that demanded more manipulation and insight. Instead you proceeded to solutions, leaving only a trivial backsubstitution. It's not quite a blow-by-blow proof (for integers), but it's so close as makes little difference.

Changing your words was not an option; you wrote them and you signed them. Leaving the words visible to provide a solution was also not acceptable. I don't see that a note on your talk page would have been better than leaving the note where I did, where you were sure to see it if you were interested.

I appreciate that you wanted to be helpful and share your insight, and I do not wish to stifle that impulse.

If you can suggest a better way to proceed in future (without leaving the answer visible), please do. --KSmrq 21:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Trigonometry

I honestly have no idea how I managed that, but I've put it back now. Sorry! Thanks for pointing it out! -- Vary | Talk 14:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Cohn's criterion holds for n=2

Please, do not remove my contribution to the article A. Cohn's irreducibility criterion. I've added the reference proving that the criterion also holds for n=2. If you cannot view the DVI file with the proof, you better convert the file to a PDF file with utilities such as dvipdfm, or download a DVI viewer program such as xdvi (for Linux) or windvi (for Windows).

Gandalf, I agree with 62.101's point about n=2, but I wonder if you would support moving this article to 'Cohn's Irreducibility Criterion'. See my note at . By the way, do you know if this was Arthur Cohn? If anyone has a cite for his original paper that could be added to the article it would be good. EdJohnston 01:31, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Midy's theorem

Hey, I was surprised to find that Midy's theorem is a bluelink at all, let alone so comprehensive. Thanks for writing it! Melchoir 17:51, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Rated Cohn's irreducibility criterion

Hi Gandalf, you have contributed to this article. See if you agree with the rating I put on it via . EdJohnston 17:04, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Prime triplet

Thanks for good edits to prime triplet and removing the clarification tag. It was the first article I created. I should probably be more careful to explain things which are obvious to me when I know the subject well. PrimeHunter 12:38, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

An alternative elementary formulation for Zeta function

Hi,

thanks for your comment on my post re Zeta function. We tried to get the result published in the AMS bullettin, but as expected it bounced within days of submission, with no reviews. Would you be able to suggest a journal that might be interested in publishing such a simple result?

Many thanks.

Riccardo Poli

No, sorry, I don't have any suggestions. Gandalf61 15:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Ref desk deletion

Of course I can explain, thanks for asking. I'm not removing comments because they're offensive—although that is a factor in how important it is to remove them—and that comment wasn't offensive at all. However, in my reading it was an opinion/argument of the user, and contained no information contributing to answering the original question. Someone asking what Hawking's religion is does not turn the ref desk into a free-for-all discussion on Hawking's religion. -- SCZenz 16:18, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to use my best judgement. Bear in mind that I can't read everything, and that I've not appointed myself the official censor of the reference desk. I'm just one user trying to do the right thing. I'm being insistent about it, when challenged, because the situation on the ref desk has been allowed to get out of hand; but my ultimate goal is for everyone to make reasonable decisions about what's appropriate and what isn't on their own. In the short term, I'm hoping that (time permitting) other users will also remove irrelevant discussion if they feel this is a good thing to do. If you haven't seen it already, User:SCZenz/Reference desk removals explains a bit of what I'm removing and why. -- SCZenz 17:22, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

All maintenance on Misplaced Pages is done by volunteers. On newpage patrol, sometimes crappy new pages are kept; sometimes pretty good pages get deleted while no one's looking. Sometimes vandalism is reverted quickly, and sometimes slowly. Is this fair? Maybe not, but it's the best we can do. Better to do the right thing sometimes than not at all.

As for your suggestion that we need an official process to handle off-topic posts on a very rare kind of page (namely, question pages in project space), I'm not so sure we do. My comment removals (except for point #5) are justified by the smallest common-sense leap: that the reference desk is very similar to a talk page, so the Misplaced Pages:Talk page guidelines about staying on topic are applicable. The standards on my page follow from existing policy and an understanding of the purpose of Misplaced Pages and the reference desk; just because you're afraid some people don't have the good judgement to do what I'm doing without making a mess, I don't think that means I should stop.

I'd like to say, though, that this discussion is a valuable one and your concerns are quite understandable. If many ref desk editors would really be comforted by "official" guidelines allowing the removal of off-topic discussion, I think I would be willing to work with them on it (although I'll have to think about it a little more). -- SCZenz 21:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Please see the discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk#The tone of the Reference Desk. User:Zoe|(talk) 18:36, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Friday's behavior

You seem to be as disgusted by User:Friday's biased, excessive "stalking" block of User:light current as I am. Would you support me, if I register a complaint against User:Friday ? StuRat 09:31, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with Friday's block of Light current (I have explained why on AN/I) but I would prefer not to escalate the issue at this stage. Why don't we first talk to Friday on his talk page, and see if he will agree to reduce the length of the block ? When he has calmed down a bit, he may regret his over-reaction - let's give him a chance to put it right. Gandalf61 09:57, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, are you willing to take the lead on this ? I personally have found him to be extremely stubborn and non-responsive to editor complaints, so doubt if you will have much success in working with him. StuRat 10:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Done - I have posted a polite suggestion at User talk:Friday. Gandalf61 10:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, let's hope he takes your suggestion. BTW, do you really feel a 48 block is appropriate, or is this just a "compromise position" on your part ? StuRat 11:04, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

It is a compromise position, which will, I hope, allow Friday to make some amends for his over-reaction without too much "loss of face". I see that opposition to the length of the block is building on AN/I. Gandalf61 15:31, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Ref Desk answer

This is just a very big thankyou for such a speedy and fab response! I wanted to find it so badly and right now it's downloading to go on my iPod. I thought it fitted so well there in the episode and now I'm really happy! :D Farosdaughter 22:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

No problem ! I'd just taped Torchwood, so I was able to rewind and check the song very easily. Yes, it did fit the story line really well. Gandalf61 23:02, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Rules for deletion

Would you care to comment on my proposed Ref Desk Rules for Deletion:  ? I would like to build a consensus on which rules should be followed. StuRat 07:33, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. Gandalf61 09:11, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. StuRat 17:53, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Rules for Ref Desk opinions ?

Would you care to comment on rules for Ref Desk opinions: Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk#Next_item_for_consensus_discussion:_Opinion ? StuRat 17:53, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. Gandalf61 11:57, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Opinions on Ref Desk template removal ?

Sorry to bother you again, but would you care to comment on: Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk#Opinions_on_template_removal ? StuRat 21:47, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

... and done. Keep up the excellent work, StuRat - it is a slow process, but it is definitely moving things along. Gandalf61 11:59, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but

APHRODISIAC is a street name for a specific brand of E, aka MDMA. I certainly hope you knew what you were doing when you vouched for the value of that question to the encyclopedia - by reinstating it, I would argue you are responsible for it and any answers it garners. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:53, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Change

Incorrect. Generally, new proposals are written on one page and tagged 'proposal', and discussed on its talk page. It is, of course, permissible to edit both a proposal and an already-accepted guideline to improve it; if we don't want something edited, we protect it. Please see WP:POL. (Radiant) 13:45, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

It is obviously rude and disruptive to replace and re-write a whole page while it is being actively discussed on its talk page, as Hipocrite did. Adding his new version at the top of the page is, I guess, slightly better as it allows both versions to be compared. Anyway, I have given my opinions on Hipocrite's version at Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk/guideline. Gandalf61 14:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

You are of course welcome to reword it. The point of creating guidelines is reaching a compromise. That, incidentally, is why the votes are counterproductive, since they block compromise. (Radiant) 17:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Be careful on WP:3RR

Gandalf, your reverts of the non-consensus edits of the guideline page have been appreciated. However, we need to be careful to avoid getting blocked for 3RR violations, so keep that in mind. StuRat 14:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, was not going to revert again. Have given my opinions on the new text at Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk/guideline. Won't do any harm to leave the new text up for 24 hrs, or until Radiant and Hipocrite calm down a bit. Gandalf61 14:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Please vote on attempt to delete new Ref Desk rules

Vote here: Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Reference desk/rules. StuRat 01:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Flame

Please take some time to read through the way Misplaced Pages creates policy and guidelines (WP:POL, WP:PPP, Misplaced Pages:How to create guidelines). You'll see that they are not in fact created by voting on motions, but rather through discussion. From that, I hope you realize that I wasn't throwing fuel on the fire, but attempting to turn the guideline creation back into proper channels; StuRat was simply going at it in a way that doesn't work on Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages is not the house of parliament, after all; if you want to make a guideline here, don't use parliamentary procedure. HTH! (Radiant) 17:28, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I stand by my comments. There was constructive discussion going on and you could have helped. Instead you got fixated on your "we don't vote" mantra and you just kept stoking the fire. Now Hipocrite has seen the merry blaze that you created and he has gone one better by throwing a whole crate of dynamite onto the fire. Everyone's hard work is blown to kingdom come, folks will retreat back to their trenches and the RD wars will simply continue. Both of you leave me unutterably depressed. Gandalf61 19:44, 13 December 2006 (UTC)