Hillman/Archive2 |
= Nikolai Bugaev =
I have put the reference on your article 12:23, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
= Dennis Sciama =
Hi Hillman, I removed the claim that Sciama introduced the idea of 05:22, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
:Hi Reuben, I replied on the 07:20, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
= Re: General theories of relativity =
Chris -
I put some comments into . In a nutshell, I raise the issue of having that page deleted, and also approve of the idea of Wikiproject GRT.
About your statement of my being interested in alternate theories: Do keep in mind that most of that interest is quite self-centered, being focussed on my own alternative. I have learned a few things about the history of 04:34, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
= Wikiproject GTR =
It was somewhat surprising to find my name on a project I knew nothing about till I read the page, but, no I don t mind you putting my name on the list. It s a great idea to try and solidify and meatify the GR pages. I ll respond to your comments about class. of e/m fields ( 15:43, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
= Who is a notable mathematician =
I think the [http://www.genealogy.ams.org/ Mathematics Geneology project] is very valuable, but my first take on inclusion is that every biography of a mathematician in the Wikipedia should describe at least one major result or achievement of the subject (unless he/she is listed on non-mathematical grounds). I happened across several biographies listed in which I think violate this common sense rule: #Aleksander Malnic #Dragan Marusic #Tomaz Pisanski One of these people does have one or two preprints listed on the
:You do have a point, but speedy deletion doesn t involve discussion; it s just a matter of an admin pushing a :button (or not). If discussion is required as to whether they are notable or not, I would suggest opening a VfD :as per the description of criterion A7. Thanks, 01:19, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Done! --- 01:32, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
I d like to either delete the articles, or (if I am wrong and they have done something sufficiently notable for inclusion), to expand the biographies to explain or at least concisely describe their achievement.--- 17:02, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
:: A discussion at 17:58, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
::: Also, I think you did not quite follow the instructions at 18:08, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Oops! You are right, Oleg. I am trying to fix that right now (had to stop in the middle to try to fix a router problem, but I m back on it now). --- 18:47, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
::::The issue of non-notable biographies (in general) has come up a lot, but there are few rules; see e.g. . Generally, people are very tolerant to have articles on things that are not very important, like individual Pokemon cards and every name mentioned in one of the Harry Potter books. There is not even a consensus that we need a notability criterion at all. ::::You will have to give some evidence that these people are not notable. Counting papers at arXiv is not enough, as many mathematicians do not put their preprints there; MathSciNet is more reliable. The fact that other, more notable, people do not have a bio is also not an argument; that just means that nobody has written an article on them, but it is in itself not a reason to delete Marusic and Pisanski. I believe there is a discussion on Slovenian mathematicians somewhere, but I can t find it anymore, but there is a list of Slovenian mathematicians. ::::One final warning: Votes for deletion is probably the ugliest place on Wikipedia. -- ) 19:25, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
OK, this discussion has now officially moved to 22:06, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
:I think that the people above have probably said what I m going to say already, but just to reply to your question on my talk page, there are no guidelines for notability (and in fact it is not a deletion criterion; CSD A7 states assertion of notability , which is still fuzzy enough). Several people, myself included to a certain extent, believe that verifiability (via reputable sources) is sufficient to demonstrate encyclopedic suitability. Since there are likely several sources that can be used to verify the articles content (especially for 00:21, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
But J, this is what I can t grasp: are you really saying that the mere fact the you can verify that Mr. X played minor league for a particular minor league baseball team qualifies X for a biography That doens t make any sense to me at all: surely it is the nature and extent of X s achievements or other notable events involving X which do or do not qualify X Do see why I am truly having a hard time understanding your position--- 00:26, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
:I think you should apply the same principles for all mathematicians. It is unfair to delete only three entries from the list of 01:27, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
Hi, 193.2.67.50 from the University of Ljubiana, don t worry, nobody is singling out Slovenian mathematicians for anything! No, the VfD thing arose because whoever wrote the original articles (you) failed to provide any explanation of why these three are notable. Mathematicians generally lead very quiet and boring lives; the only thing which sometimes makes their lives notable is the nature and quality of their contributions to mathematical knowledge . But when I came along, the articles just said where X went to Gymnasium, noted some award no non-Slovenians who took part in the discussion had ever heard of, and stuff like that. Was it any wonder that I wondered who wrote the bibliographies and why
You are right, I checked the arXiv but not MathSciNet before starting the VfD. I think doing even that much was more than many members of the Cruft Patrol would have done! Statistics and informal conversations with my colleagues show that increasingly the arXiv is the universal clearing house for all math as well as all physics papers. Anyone not contributing preprints there will find themselves under-read, under-cited, and generally under-appreciated. So please, encourage Ljubiana mathematicians to submit their future preprints to the arXiv.
Earlier today I came across another example of the same thing: someone (not me) created a stub on Christopher Isham, with a tiny bit of boring biographical information but not a hint of why Isham might be notable. Sure enough, someone else came along, wondered who the heck Isham is and why he might be notable, and complained on the talk page. I happen to know a bit about why Isham is notable (why because I happened across his impressive papers on the arXiv! ), so I added just enough information to the stub to help the next guy along find information on Isham s contributions and verify that they are regarded as significant.
Some contributors to the VfD discussion finally mentioned specific allegedly notable results. Now we are getting somewhere! But the job isn t yet done--- those people should add this essential information to the articles in question, or in a few months or a year someone else will come along and have the same reaction I did. If the informaton is added before this happens, the end result of the VfD will have been positive. Fair enough No hard feelings
BTW, it seems you know algebraic graph theory, so I hope you will improve those articles and write additional ones on important missing topics.--- 17:09, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
= Useful tricks =
Here s another useful trick for you, a meta-trick perhaps: You can show a no-argument template with a link to its page using the template called template link .
It s not so helpful for templates with arguments, but that could be improved.
= Dragan Marusic =
Thank you for your analysis. It helps to have people who have knowledge in the area give the thumbs up (or down) on a person s qualifications. I appreciate your contribution to the discussion. -- 22:06, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
= General relativity stub =
Hi Chris. I was thinking of creating a GR stub template. I m new to the creating-a-stub business, but at page.
Actually, no need to collect a buncha articles; we just need to convince people at the stub sorting proposal area that it s worth having such a stub. --- 16:38, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
:Hi, M! Uhm... must be lack of sleep, but I don t understand. What is the rationale for a gr-stub , in addition to physics-stub To help us keep track of gtr stubs
:Something else I wanted to say (mumble, mumble) Oh yes! I moved article by discussing Killing vectors, maybe giving a figure like that in Hawking & Ellis showing some closed timelike curves, and adding some citations.
:I really need to start entering some of those promised solution articles. I am currently wrestling with whether it would be better to write a long article on RN electrovacuum, including precession, or to write an article on precession including derivation in RN or at least Schwarzschild.--- 16:54, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
::Hi Chris. Long time no see (btw, I ll send you my new e-mail address tomorrow). Yes, basically to keep track of gr-stubs so that we know exactly which gr articles need major improvements. To propose a stub for any topic, there should be sufficient articles worthy of stub-status . It s maybe a little picky to propose a gr-stub (especially when there s a physics stub), but now that you are here with your plethora of red links (hehe), I think it s worth having a more specific stub (at present, the consensus seems to be to call it {tl|relativity-stub}} - as this would be more inclusive). That s the first I ve heard about Gödel s fantasy; I was about to take that bit out thinking that it was kooky, but I noticed that it was you who entered it! So I left it.
::Maybe write about the RN electrovac and then and include some effects like precession (discuss it in a section). Derivations are always a little prickly on WP. I ve done a few: 18:26, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
Email; good, thanks!
OK, I agree about the stub, what exactly should I do to help Or have you already created the stub I found the template I mentioned, BTW.
Gödel-- just remembered one of my favorite Einstein quotations (from Thorne, I think). One November, someone who knew both AE and KG ran into Einstein on the street, who appeared quite exasperated. This time Gödel has gone completely crazy! Oh my, what has he done now He voted for Eisenhower!
RN-- thanks, those are excellent suggestions!--- 18:42, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
:Hi again, Chris. If someone wants to create a stub (as I do), we have to discuss it and get support from it at the stub sorting place (link given above). All I want is for you to go there and say that it s worth having a relativity stub. EMS and I have made our cases there; the more support the better. Better go now - got a class! Talk later. --- 08:32, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
OK, found it! I added some comments elaborating on the rationale for the stub in the context of the proposed WikiProject GTR. I have not forgotten the draft manifesto! I haven t been working on it but I hope to somehow find time to finish it in the next few days, at which point I ll put a message on your home page and EMS s home page.
BTW, do you know how to create a proper project page I take it there is some kind of formal process whereby we propose the project. We also need to try to recruit others. ErkDemon seems to be creating articles in 17:32, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
:I read your comprehensive rationale regarding the gr-stub - that s great, thanks. Creating a proper project page, umm..., I m not sure, but the page on 17:40, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
::I ve just created the (check it out) and 16:05, September 3, 2005 (UTC)
=What about an arXiv citation template=
Here s another suggestion, M: what about creating a citation template for draft for the desired appearance.
I recently came across a template for the Mathematics Geneology Project, but lost it! Have you seen this template--- 17:34, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
:Hi Chris, I am glad to see that you have come back. You asked me about creating an arXiv citation template. I m afraid that I never use templates for references, mainly because I m too lazy to look them up and because I do not care that much about uniformity between articles. However, if one accepts that templates for references are useful (and many do), then I agree that a template for arXiv should be created. I didn t see anything wrong with your suggestion. One think to keep in mind is the situation where a paper is published in the arXiv and in a journal, then both should ideally be mentioned. -- ) 11:35, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
:I just found at ) 18:06, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
=Thanks for the invitation - GR Project =
I ll help. I made more comments on my own talk page (we old guys can be heard muttering to ourselves all the time.) 07:36, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
Great. But the LLR link I sent was generic - you may have just noticed lower down on the page the announcement of the latest item. 17:28, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
= Re: E-mail =
Hi Chris. Yeah, I ll send it again tomorrow. If it s about the GR rewrite, I don t actually want to rewrite it, just tidy it up a lot. --- 17:52, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
:I still haven t gotten it! By the way, I might nominate 16:09, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
:: Hmm...e-mail, that s strange.... can t see what the problem should be - I ve checked and double checked that I sent it to the correct address. I ll try once again and post a message here as soon as I ve sent it. --- 15:43, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
::Just forwarded the original-mail to you, Chris. Hope it works this time. --- 14:16, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
= Solution to e-mail problem =
I read on EMS talk page that the e-mail I sent hasn t arrived. I can think of a better solution. I ll send my new e-mail address to Jitse and ask him to send it to you (in a few days - not today - as we have a holiday here for a few days and I don t have access to my work e-mail). --- 09:39, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
:Excellent! Thank you. I also should get EMS s email addy. Do you know what is going on with Pdn He left a message on EMS s talk page saying he is quitting Wikipedia over the Carl Hewitt thing. That turned out to be an awful mess. We need a much better way of handling this kind of thing without turning on ourselves like that.
:This is a difficult problem. We need cruft patrol, but handling people as stubborn as Hewitt calls for more patience than we collectively displayed (definitely including myself in this, plus EMS and Pdn; you wisely stayed out, as I recall). Handling cranks, who sometimes turn out to be even crazier (literally) than you thought, is even trickier, sigh. Anyway, I optimistically hope that I/we can get the hang of this and keep a lid on cruft and crackpottery by practicing the gentle art of persuasion. You may have seen that made Hewitt s latest article a relativity stub so you and EMS can easily find the article if you re curious. I completely rewrote the introduction, and then suggested in the talk page that since the article is merely a haphazard collection of quotations taken out of context, that he should move the article to his own user pages and call it a personal scrapbook. I hope Hewitt will take both my edit and my suggestion well. Time will tell--- 10:07, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
= Issues =
Chris -
I am curious whatyou know about the following: # In the spring of 2000, I was told by my professor in a GR course that someone had shown that the assumtions of local Lorentz Invariance and diffeomorphism invariance can only both be true for the Einstein field equations. What do you know about this Do you have a reference for it Has it been disproven I am asking because I mentioned it in one of the History of general relativity page, and JOke137 is challenging me on it. # is saying the Einstein in 1950 called for some modification of GR so that a global conservation of energy and a steady state universe would exist. Have you heard of this Thanks -- 18:46, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
:Hi, Ed, I don t know what your professor (name) was talking about, and you should definitely ask him to provide a good reference. Like Joke 137, my gut reaction is sceptical. Is it possible you misrecall what he told you, or that you misunderstood, or that there was some terminological confusion Or even that your professor didn t know what he was talking about :I don t know what JimJast is talking about either. I try to avoid obscure historical controversies, but I agree that it is important to try to keep history on Wikipedia NPOV and accurate. I asssume that you asked JJ for a citation to the paper in question and he did not comply I would guess that the first place to try to spot check JJ s assertions would be the biography by Pais. The collection of review articles Gravitation: Current Research , edited by Louis Witten (see the citations at the end of this biographical article) can be hard to obtain, but it has a very nice review by Goldberg on energy conservation circa 1962, so if he doesn t mention this alleged proposal of Einstein, I d tend to doubt JJ has his facts straight. You might also check the on-line review article on unified field theories by Goenner on Living Reviews in Relativity.
:Sorry I can t answer your questions off the top of my head!
:: No need to apologize. You would know about the proof my GR professor alluded to if it had panned out. (After all, it would be a great weapon against crackpot theories.) As for JimJast s stuff: You have hit the nail on the head. Once again, I think that it is safe to say that you would know something if it was real and of any signifigance. So I now know what to do with both items: Junk them. Thanks much. -- 01:21, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
:::Whoa, hang on, I didn t quite advise you to dismiss whatever they said out of hand. I advised you to demand they give you a citation sufficiently nonobscure for you to locate and obtain. True, I tend to doubt that they can do that, but I did say that I make little attempt to keep up with the historical side of gtr--- 00:12, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
:::: Chris - This is not a bad piece of advice, and I agree that your lack of knowledge about something is not in and of itself an adequate reason to remove it. However, JimJast s work was smelling more and more like original research, with Jim s shooting himself in the foot in that regard with his own comments. By the time I came to you, my goal was to ensure that I would not be removing a reference to something legitimate. So you were Jim s last chance, and as you could not vouch for his edits either, I removed them. BTW - It took some doing, but Jim now agrees that his edits were original research. (It seems that at least half of his ilk mean no harm, and are happy to back off once they understand the problem. However, the rest of that group are a real pain!) -- 05:00, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
:On another topic, I am thinking of returning to work on the 19:02, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
:: Then I gather that cleaning up that category is another project to consider. I will devote more time to this when I can. -- 01:21, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
= Dispute =
Hello - you asked me about some dispute, but I am totally lost. I think there may be two Hillman ID s around (obviously different in some way). The other page I encountered was more on computer programs. I am a pretty good scientist but a poor Wiki-navigator so I do not expect I will figure out what the disagreement is all about. Sorry 05:12, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Oh, I see - the other guy was Hewitt, not Hillman - both begin with an H . Sorry. I can t figure out what the Hewitt affair is about - he does not seem to work in relativity and I have no interest in his stuff on programming. Well, I see, now, he is adding silly entries - I ran into that stupid item on gravitational radiation from atoms. Actually I can t find the Project page and maybe I should just stick to various existing pages. I am having some discussions with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ems57fcva] which take up a lot of time. He believes Einstein said massive objects (free of forces) follow geodesics and this can be proved. I do not believe either - you can see some discussion on our pages. Also there is some problem with what I regard as misapplication of geodesic deviation. Maybe you can comment. I asked Joke137 but he has not replied. I can t imagine that neutron stars near coalesence and emitting grav. rad. follow geodesics (and who can define their centers of mass accurately enough, either). By the way I am most puzzled by your recent comment that other gravity theories yield gravitational radiation. The only one I can think of is Brans-Dicke and the omega there has been pushed pretty high. There is a clever fellow, however, Valerio Faraoni, who is pursuing it (he wrote a book) and a web search reveals a lot more. 05:32, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
= Christoffel symbols =
Hi,
Hope you are doing well. I ve been enjoying your comments and posts to various articles. Noticed your edit on Christoffel symbols. I should remark, I created the original version of that article, and can gaurentee correctness. I ve been watching it ever since, and am pretty sure all of the subsequent edits were correct. With one possble exception, one of the most recent edits (in sept) which I reviewed late at night while very tired.
Did you have some specific ideas for things you wanted to change I know the thing is mostly an almanac of formulas; I find these useful and handy to have around. Perhaps your plans would be better suited to splitting off the list of formulas into its own article, say, 05:32, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Hi, Wikiservice is too slow right now for any of us to do much reading or editing. (Just increased my wikistress level to 3.) Right now I can t even navigate to very many pages. Yesterday I flagged many articles as part of my attempt to thoroughly reorganize the gtr pages. As I vaguely recall, I didn t have any problem with what was said in that particular article, I just wanted to help guide WikiProject GTR members in revising that page to better link with gtr pages. If you dislike the flag, why not move my comments into the talk page for that article and remove the expert flag Please leave the relativity-stub for now so that other project members can find that page easily.--- 05:43, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
:Yeah; the wiki has been painfully slow all week. Re: the flag, I didn t know what it meant, and it looked ominous, so asked. I couldn t find a wikiproject GTR page; if you have one, you should announce on wikiproject physics. 14:04, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
::It needs more work first, but when the draft is in good shape this will become a fully fledged public project.--- 01:39, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
=Jack Sarfatti=
Nice work on your rewrite of the Jack Sarfatti article. I m going to remove the disputed tag on it now. -- 02:23, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
:Thanks! I just hope JS doesn t go ballistic when he sees it, though, that would be unpleasant.--- 02 :26, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
::I am warning all of you that you do not realize that you are all putting yourselves on a watch list as possible terrorists especially Chris Hillman who keeps replacing true facts with inacuracies smears and personal attacks.
::How dare you all call me the vandal when I am your victim and you are the vandals Talk about Orwellian double-think!
::Chris Hillman (PhD in math from University of Washington it appears) refuses to stop vandalizing the information on me on Wiki with his own inaccuracies. He accuses me, his victim, of being the vandal. The Wiki Board must stop Hillman s vicious campaign of misinformation against me. Hillman is using shocking Nazi-like tactics systematically deleting positive factual information and replacing them with same false smears and personal attacks. Why Hillman keeps doing this needs investigation in the light of a concurrent hate-mail campaign against me accusing me of murder, with stories similar to the charges against Ira Einhorn, from unsigned letters sent from Springfield, MO on Sept 17,2005. I shall add Chris Hillman s name as a possible suspect in my impending complaint to the FBI and the US Postal Inspectors.
:: Unsigned comment made on 16:45, 23 September 2005 by (see history)
Jack, please calm down, take a breath. I have no idea who Ira Einhorn is and I have nothing to do with any letters you may have received. Please discuss your objections to the article 23:59, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
:::Hello, Hillman. Here s my opinion of the dispute and my thoughts:
:::First, both nominated the article and closed it, takes away the importance of using the exact version specified on the VfD page.
:::Right now, I ve decided to protect the page, and warn from making more legal threats. Let me know what you think.
:::Thanks for your understanding. 00:25, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! I ve been reading the same pages I recommended to JS (in the talk page of the disputed article), and agree that this looks like a content dispute. Point taken about VfD. I have tried to tell JS I am willing to discuss this with him, and could probably be persuaded to make some changes to go some way towards meeting his objections. I ll do some more reading and consider a RFC (which I ve never done before).--- 00:32, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
:::: 01:50, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Good grief!--- 01:53, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
:: The following unsigned material was pasted in on 17:47, 23 September 2005 by to try to keep this page semi-coherent)
::On Sep 23, 2005, at 5:39 PM, Jack Sarfatti wrote to physicist/attorney Tony Smith:
::OK Tony they locked me out. I will inquire with the Attorney General of Florida on Monday and if Wiki is incorporated there I fill file a formal complaint that, if successful, can result in the loss of their tax exemption with the IRS.
::---end of message to Tony ---
::I think if you do not want Wiki s tax exemption removed by the IRS you had better not include any false information like what you have in there now and you had better not lock me out of correcting vicious smears of me by Chris Hillman and others out of their depth - that s what I think.
::If you do not want irreversible damage done to Wiki put in this approved version of the article or suffer the legal consequences. You are the vandals. I am your victim. Let s get this straight. Approved version is:
:: deleted
Sheesh, Jack. First of all, you haven t been locked out (if you had been, you woudn t have been able to mess up my user talk page like you just did), although the way you are acting, this is only a matter of time. (You made another legal threat just now after being warned by an admin not to do that.) Second, if you ll stop pasting junk into my pages, I was about to try to give you a tiny tutorial on how to sign and indent comments--- and where to put them. I have been trying to tell you that I am willing to discuss making changes with you at . Please note that an admin has locked the article, but not the talk page. Also, the article s content has not been offficially approved and you are welcome to describe changes you would like to make on the article s talk page. So please calm down, nothing has been decided permanently, and you can still be a part of the process if you will just stop making legal threats.
Suggestion: instead of pasting the version you d like to see into my user page or user talk page, why not create your own page, say by 01:18, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
P.S. Here is how to indent and sign: typing in this text:
:this is a signed comment---~~~~
gives this indented and signed comment:
:this is a signed comment--- 01:30, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Here, the initial colon indents the paragraph one tab, and the four tildes signs and dates the comment. Get it --- 01:30, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Hi, Jack Horner, I moved your message regarding the 07:16, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
= Recent disputes, JS, Pdn, etc... =
Yes, I noticed that Carl H - and JS - seem to be involved in some serious verbal fracas with you. I m trying to concentrate on getting the mathematics of general relativity article sorted (a LOT of organisation to think about), so I haven t much time to get involved in disputes right now. I suppose I could pop my head in now and then and say a few gentle words, at least to Carl H - though I m staying clear of JS !
Regarding 10:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
:Hewitt: probably not neccessary right now, but I ll let you know if I think you can help with something. John Baez already told me he wishes I d get back to math/physics, and of course he is right. Indeed, I have been delayed for days in further improvements of congruences, energy conditions, Bel decomposition, etc.
:PdN: yes, very unfortunate. I don t really understand why he made the comment for which EMS rebuked him, but he didn t seem to be himself that day. Maybe he ll be back bye and bye and hopefully there will be no hard feelings. Needless to say, if I d had any idea that was going to happen, I would not have asked him to comment on Hewitt s article.
:That other fellow: bleahghghgh, yeah, you should definitely stay out of that mess!
:Hmmm... hard to avoid the conclusion that I am batting -200 in my cruft patrol duties. Yuk. Must be a better way.--- 10:47, 25 September 2005 (UTC)|
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