Foundational rumblings

[Charles Matthews]

Over in the recondite if productive arena of WikiProject Mathematics,
fresh eyeballs have been looking over articles in areas that retain a
structure imposed up to five years ago, and not much liking what they
see. Basically there were POV forks introduced in areas, to calm down
edit wars, at a time when the "POV fork" concept was not so well
understood. I remember well the relief with which User:Kevin Baas was
given a sandbox for his treatment of tensors.

So now it doesn't all look so good any more. This cuts to fundamentals,
because mathematicians feel that the topic sentence in an article should
serve as a definition. For comparison, I looked at [[quantum field
theory]] for a comparison: reads "Quantum field theory (QFT) provides a
theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of
systems classically described by fields or of many-body systems." So it
tells you what QFT does, not what it is (unsurprising, with the jury
still out). The mathematicians' take is clearly limited to areas where
you can say definitely what something is (i.e. the domain of axiomatic
definitions).

That being said, there seems to be the scope for clarifying how an area
that is axiomatic should be organised according to our revered
principles of summary style (WP:SS). There are numerous instances, it
seems, where we have "menu style" in place of "summary style", i.e.
different treatments according to taste. The foundational issue does
seem to need addressing, and could cause quite some upheavals (such as
we have got out of the habit of living with). It could be that we now
accept articles with titles like [[introduction to string theory]], as
pedagogic stepping stones. But neutrality means, surely, that treatments
that are really "introduction to X from the POV of Y" are out of place,
or at least to be seriously deprecated.

Charles


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[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews@...> wrote:
> Over in the recondite if productive arena of WikiProject Mathematics,
> fresh eyeballs have been looking over articles in areas that retain a
> structure imposed up to five years ago, and not much liking what they
> see.

<snip>

Sorry to not run with the mathematics bit, but I wanted to respond to
the point you make about "fresh eyeballs" bringing in new ideas. This
is something that strikes to the heart of Wikipedia - it's
responsiveness in some areas and lack of it in other areas.

One of the points I make time and time again is that articles need to
stand and fall on their own merits. If a certain article, or group of
articles only stays the way it is because a "group" decides that is
how those articles should be, and they stick around to "defend" that
view, then there will inevitably be problems down the road as when
that "group" leaves, or sometimes even when one individual leaves
(this feeds into the issue of some individuals thinking they are
indispensable for a particular topic area or article), then the
structure crumbles unless the underpinning in policy and clearly
explained rationales is extremely strong.

That is why and good-faith new input from others should always be
welcomed, and instead of constant revertings and then (in talk page
discussions) making vague references to "previous discussions", what
should be done is to have a well-organised summary of previous talk
page discussions, so that people can be pointed to previous
discussions and sometimes even a FAQ of answers to perennial
questions.

That way the debates can move forward, rather then being repeated endlessly.

Carcharoth

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[stevertigo-2]

Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@...> wrote:
> So it tells you what QFT does, not what it is (unsurprising, with the jury still out).

Hm..  "Quantum field theory (QFT) *is* a claimed theoretical framework
for constructing quantum-mechanical models of systems classically
described by fields of of many-body systems."  "Alleged.." might work
too.

'Jury still out?'  For 80 years?  Maybe the folks working on String
Field Theory (SFT) can suffice as a kind of 'jury' on QFT?

> But neutrality means, surely, that treatments
> that are really "introduction to X from the POV of Y" are out of place,
> or at least to be seriously deprecated.

WWIN might be the actual place to say that 'Wikipedia is not a place
for introductory-level articles.'

It's a valid argument, even if it confronts our natural desire to
explain things, but is it another paradox?  Does our encyclopedic
constraint put a severe limitation on the educational potential of our
articles? Does the "sum of all *information*" limitation represent an
obstacle to explanationism?

If the subject matter is too high-level for someone, then the real
issue for editors is  that just stating its constituent concepts is
probably not enough for those readers. Well-edited topic-boxes serve
quite well to at least get a sense of the conceptual scope, and that
helps. What might work in such cases is maybe outlining all or most of
the prerequisite concepts in maybe a separate standard type of
"Prerequisites" section, which shows link-trees/branches/chains for
the main required prerequisites necessary for understanding most of
the subject. This might fulfill the "introduction" concept to some
degree, even if that kind of article "section" would be an innovation
as far as encyclopedias go.

WP:Concept deals with most of the rest.

-Stevertigo

WP:The real 'discovery' channel

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[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 5:15 PM, stevertigo <stvrtg@...> wrote:
> Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@...> wrote:

<snip>

>> But neutrality means, surely, that treatments
>> that are really "introduction to X from the POV of Y" are out of place,
>> or at least to be seriously deprecated.
>
> WWIN might be the actual place to say that 'Wikipedia is not a place
> for introductory-level articles.'

I don't think Charles was saying we shouldn't have introductory-level
articles. I think he was saying that if we do have introductory-level
articles, they need to not be skewed to a POV.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Make_technical_articles_accessible#.22Introduction_to....22_articles

> It's a valid argument, even if it confronts our natural desire to
> explain things, but is it another paradox?  Does our encyclopedic
> constraint put a severe limitation on the educational potential of our
> articles? Does the "sum of all *information*" limitation represent an
> obstacle to explanationism?

Explantionism?

I really hope that word doesn't catch on... :-)

Carcharoth

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[stevertigo-2]

Carcharoth <carcharothwp@...> wrote:

> I don't think Charles was saying we shouldn't have introductory-level
> articles. I think he was saying that if we do have introductory-level
> articles, they need to not be skewed to a POV.

I read it as if "NPOV tends to weed out introductory articles," which
are in a sense inherently 'skewed' by a newbie POV, and therefore wind
up being neither particularly encyclopedic, nor particularly helpful
as an introduction, and thus the trend has been to move them off to
wikibooks, delete them, or else leave them stale.

But yes, you could be right, and I might be misreading his point.

> Explantionism?
> I really hope that word doesn't catch on... :-)

Well, let me WP:EXPLAIN

-Stevertigo

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[Jay Litwyn-2]

"Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews@...> wrote in message
news:4AB356B7.3090306@......

> Over in the recondite if productive arena of WikiProject Mathematics,
> fresh eyeballs have been looking over articles in areas that retain a
> structure imposed up to five years ago, and not much liking what they
> see. Basically there were POV forks introduced in areas, to calm down
> edit wars, at a time when the "POV fork" concept was not so well
> understood. I remember well the relief with which User:Kevin Baas was
> given a sandbox for his treatment of tensors.
>
> So now it doesn't all look so good any more. This cuts to fundamentals,
> because mathematicians feel that the topic sentence in an article should
> serve as a definition. For comparison, I looked at [[quantum field
> theory]] for a comparison: reads "Quantum field theory (QFT) provides a
> theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of
> systems classically described by fields or of many-body systems." So it
> tells you what QFT does, not what it is (unsurprising, with the jury
> still out). The mathematicians' take is clearly limited to areas where
> you can say definitely what something is (i.e. the domain of axiomatic
> definitions).
>
> That being said, there seems to be the scope for clarifying how an area
> that is axiomatic should be organised according to our revered
> principles of summary style (WP:SS). There are numerous instances, it
> seems, where we have "menu style" in place of "summary style", i.e.
> different treatments according to taste. The foundational issue does
> seem to need addressing, and could cause quite some upheavals (such as
> we have got out of the habit of living with). It could be that we now
> accept articles with titles like [[introduction to string theory]], as
> pedagogic stepping stones. But neutrality means, surely, that treatments
> that are really "introduction to X from the POV of Y" are out of place,
> or at least to be seriously deprecated.

In "The Edge of Tomorrow", Isaac Asimov did a good treatment of
forks in mathematics. Three of them stem from variations on
Euclid's fifth postlate, which defines parallel. It's an excellent book;
alternates fact with tangential fiction.
_______
Quantum Mechanics, n.: The dreams from which stuff is made.




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