User talk:XOR'easter/2022a

Welcome (semi-) back

Was happy to see your sig on an AfD. Very sorry WP's been burdensome to you of late, but I'm glad you're not completely gone. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 15:40, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

AleatoryPonderings, thanks. XOR'easter (talk) 19:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

TFA nomination for Group (mathematics)

I have nominated Group (mathematics) to run as today's featured article for an unspecified date. I included you as a main editor for the article because of your participation in the article's FAR in April/May 2021. Editors may join the discussion for this nomination at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Group (mathematics). Z1720 (talk) 20:06, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Question

First of all, apologies for the previous comment. You are right on some of your takes, but perhaps it will take some time to convince you. If I replaced two Greek sources in the introduction with a different article from Kathimerini [1] and an interview on Greek Public Television (ERT) [2], would it be enough to help you change your mind about your vote? Again, apologies for the previous comment. Glucken123 (talk) 00:42, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your note; apology accepted. I am myself sorry for being less clear and more confrontational than I like to be. I really do appreciate your work in finding sources for this topic! With the latter source, the question is whether it meets the general standard of WP:INTERVIEW (which is an admittedly fuzzy area where reasonable people can differ). Regarding the former, it appears to be much more about Pythia, and whether it gives WP:SIGCOV to Yannis Assael himself is, I think, less than clear. It does seem like a promising source, albeit a brief one, but perhaps for the project rather than the person. Ultimately, making that decision comes down to a judgment call, and Wikipedia is not always consistent about which way the judgment goes. So much can depend upon the people who happen to show up! I am running out of time today but will try to return to this later with more thoughts. XOR'easter (talk) 00:59, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks pal. Sometimes it makes sense to find middle ground and take things slowly instead of rushing to conclusions. In regards to the previously mentioned sources, I do believe that Kathimerini's piece is certainly promising and there is one more on LipNet too, mentioning again Yannis Assael [1]. ERT (Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation equivalent to BBC) has interviewed him twice about topics completely unrelated to Forbes 30 under 30 [2] [3]. Would that do the trick, you think? If that also changes your mind, we might be getting closer to a weak keep and close monitoring of the article in the near future. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and thanks again for this. Glucken123 (talk) 15:41, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

It might be a few days before I have time to look deeply into this again (busy week for lots of reasons), but I'll try to clear a schedule spot for it. In general, I'd suggest looking for/emphasizing written sources rather than video ones, since written sources are easier to evaluate, particularly when there's a language barrier to be crossed. XOR'easter (talk) 20:02, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Note to self: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Glucken123. XOR'easter (talk) 23:43, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

A pi for you!

My watchlist is full of very old and dead AfDs, in one of which I found a delete vote from you with the rationale"WP:Wikipedia is not a place to Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V text from a PowerPoint slide deck." Made me laugh, shame its a redlink TheLongTone (talk) 16:06, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. XOR'easter (talk) 20:02, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks

I wanted to express my appreciation for your efforts to step in and break the log-jam before things really got out of hand. While I'm here: I find it weird to feel personal warmth towards someone who I "know" only through watching their edits to an encyclopedia, but nevertheless I have been saddened by the difficulties and frustrations you've experienced (as in your user-page edits) and I was very happy to see you semi-un-retire. (Don't know what that's worth coming from a random pseudonymous math person, but still felt worth expressing.) All the best, JBL (talk) 01:33, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Much appreciated, JBL. I have been trying to prioritize my time here by doing things that it really looks like nobody else is willing or able to work on, and getting affine symmetric group through the GA process looked like one of those things. Lately, I've been struck more and more by how our high-profile technical articles can be quite ... unimpressive. [1] I was doing some offline drafting in that regard, then got diverted by the FA review of speed of light, then got diverted from that by finding out that calculus needed the cobwebs brushed out. XOR'easter (talk) 02:30, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Lately, I've been struck more and more by how our high-profile technical articles can be quite ... unimpressive. Yeah -- if I had the time and patience, I would want to attack a group of articles like Pascal's triangle, Binomial theorem, and Binomial coefficient and really polish them up -- but it's intimidating in light of the amount of cruft and the volume of quality sources. I had a interesting and positive experience about a year and a half ago working with Sphilbrick to overhaul the beginning of the article Polynomial to make it more accessible -- I found it a lot easier working with someone else than by myself. (I haven't checked if our improvements stuck or if the article has begun moving back to a jumble, though.) --JBL (talk) 15:46, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Polynomial looks OK. There's an uncited sentence in "Notation and terminology": It is common to use uppercase letters for indeterminates and corresponding lowercase letters for the variables (or arguments) of the associated function. I've seen something like that in statistics, where $X$ might be a random variable and $x_{1},x_{2},\ldots ,x_{n}$ the results of sampling it $n$ times, but I don't recall seeing the indeterminate/argument distinction made typographically that way. Maybe it's been done, but is it "common"? XOR'easter (talk) 19:39, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Yeah seems pretty dubious to me as a matter of lived experience. Maybe it is common in communities that have to deal carefully with the difference between the polynomial and its function, or in France (it was added by D.Lazard Special:diff/583381506)? I think I'll nuke it. --JBL (talk) 00:11, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

No objection on my part. XOR'easter (talk) 00:19, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Calculus suggestions

Hi! I'm hoping to procrastinate on some work and was considering jumping in and trying to lend a hand at Calculus. Since you've been tidying it up so effectively recently, I thought you might have thoughts about the biggest problem areas/issues you're planning to address that it would be nice to have somebody take off your plate. If you think it would be more useful to have another pair of eyes on it after you finish some more cleanup, I will instead allocate that time to Newton's laws of motion, which I worry is decreasing how much our species knows about the way that things move at a rate of 150,000 views per month. - Astrophobe (talk) 23:23, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! Assorted remaining issues with the calculus article: the "further reading" is a disorganized pile of random recommendations, the "online textbooks" need to be checked to see if they're even still available, the section about integrating velocity to get position needs a careful going-over. Actually, the whole long "Principles" section needs close reading by someone other than me (I'm afraid that I've seen it too many times and have gotten too accustomed to it to be a good editor). I'm aiming for at least one citation per paragraph; even though it's all standard material and WP:CALC probably applies to some of it, it can't hurt to have pointers to good books. The last paragraph of the introduction doesn't really follow the Manual of Style, since it talks about things that the rest of the article doesn't go into more depth about. The "Applications" section is still not great; some of it, like the planimeter business, looks like random trivia that got shoved in without regard for whether or not it's significant enough to belong in a survey article like this one.

I've been working on a total rewrite of the Newton's laws of motion article, which I hope to finish in the coming days. I got diverted from that by the Featured Article review of speed of light, and once that was mostly sorted out, I noticed how calculus was in rough shape. XOR'easter (talk) 23:46, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you very much for the information. This is really helpful, and I'll see what I can do. I should be able to take a look at each of those topics in basically the order you mentioned them. And that is really good to know about Newton's Laws. I tried an incrementalist approach circa early winter 2021, and I wouldn't recommend it. I started getting bogged down in trivia and not really making progress on the page overall. I think the path forward in that page is a total WP:BB rewrite that is such an obvious improvement over the current page that it or something close to it becomes the new default. I don't have any drafts on the topic, but I do have ideas about what could be a good addition, so I'll prioritize other things until I see what you've written already. If it ever might be helpful to stick some material in user space or draft space and have someone else help build it before it goes live, please let me know. Otherwise I'll keep an eye out for whenever you commit those edits. - Astrophobe (talk) 00:07, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

@Astrophobe: One other thing to check: the article seems repetitive in places (like "Significance" overlapping with "Applications"). It would be good to have a fresh perspective on that, since I've mostly been trying to optimize the text locally, as it were. XOR'easter (talk) 20:52, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

@Astrophobe: A crucial question: should vectors have arrows or be in bold type? XOR'easter (talk) 08:07, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry for asking these questions and then doing hardly any work on the page --- I'm afraid a few things in my personal life unexpectedly flared up, just as I thought I would have a modest expanse of time for editing, and I haven't been able to get back to any content creation since then. But I want you to know I am planning on returning to this page and I appreciate all of your thoughts about where to start. - Astrophobe (talk) 22:44, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

About vectors: put me down as a vote for arrows. --JBL (talk) 00:40, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Astrophobe, JayBeeEll: I promise I haven't forgotten about this! It's just that everything else in life has gotten in the way of it. My draft so far is here. I'm mostly happy with the material starting with the Kepler problem. The earlier sections have been slow going for multiple reasons, not least of which is trying to write something for an unknown audience that is comprehensible without sounding like a textbook. XOR'easter (talk) 21:34, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Wow, it looks fantastic! Great work. How do you feel about other people leaning into your user space and editing? Frankly you would be completely justified in boldly replacing the existing page with this one at any time, because any problem this page has pale in comparison to the problems that page has, so if you want other editors to wait until it's live that makes sense. But if you're OK with edits to your user space, any ground rules? I've found tiny slivers of time for content creation recently (I wrote Storyboard P yesterday so I definitely don't have excuses for not adding incrementally to already substantial articles), although of course those are famous last words ... - Astrophobe (talk) 21:57, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Astrophobe: It's all a mess... I've got bits and pieces that I'm trying to incorporate, and a sense of what needs filling in, but communicating that plan is not much easier than just writing the dang article. Maybe if you have ideas, you can add them here or on the draft's Talk page, and I'll incorporate them in the (not unlikely) event they work better than what I've scribbled in my notebook.

I wanted to include the Kepler problem among the examples, which meant explaining at least a little about angular momentum and what a center of mass is, which is good because rotational analogues are important, but also bad because it means I need to write more. The big tasks remaining are, I think, to finish those first two subsections of "Rigid-body motion and rotation", to say more about projectile motion in the first subsection of "Examples" (Neglecting air resistance, a projectile follows a parabolic arc, etc.), to polish up "Work and energy" (which is necessary to make the connection with the Hamiltonian and Lagrangian formalisms later on), and to fill in the subsections on the first and second laws. Somewhere we need to explain at least a little about what a coordinate system is, how velocity is the time derivative of displacement, etc. XOR'easter (talk) 15:49, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

"Work and energy" done! XOR'easter (talk) 22:28, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Astrophobe, JayBeeEll: I think I'm happy enough with all the sections from "Work and energy" on. So, I guess, point out what you dislike the most about Newton's laws of motion#Laws, and I'll try to avoid it. XOR'easter (talk) 22:41, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

OK, I think all I have left to do is say what vectors are and what an inertial observer/reference frame is. And fill in the "..." about typical kinds of forces in mechanics problems. XOR'easter (talk) 02:43, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Since you have been kindly pinging me, I wanted to say that I think you're doing a really nice job and that I don't think I have much to contribute concerning physics articles, but if you'd like a read-over from the perspective of an academic mathematician at some point I'd be happy to do that! JBL (talk) 19:52, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks, JBL! I think that the draft ... might be done? Oh, doubtless there's fiddling to finish, but now it includes all the topics that I had wanted it to. There's a joke in the "Further reading" that I should remove to be all proper and serious. XOR'easter (talk) 00:12, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Eh, I decided to go ahead and make the update. I'm sure somebody will be upset, because people are always upset around here, but at least the writing itself was fun. XOR'easter (talk) 04:36, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Wow! I will try to read through it over the next few days (maybe while sitting on a dais at graduation?) and see if I can find anything to tweak :). JBL (talk) 17:17, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

I've done some more poking at the Calculus article, and I think what's there is better, though it's harder to say what is missing. Vector calculus, perhaps? I keep finding myself going into deep dives on historical matters like just how Leibniz's thoughts on infinitesimals changed over his career, which probably don't benefit the article all that much ultimately. XOR'easter (talk) 05:23, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Hello

I have recently removed some content with claims of "inventor" of EmDrive called Shawyer and I opened talk page discussion at that artcile. But seems to there is a lot of things what are promotional, fringe, self claimed, etc and needs further checking. Thank you. 79.101.168.170 (talk) 17:57, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Mars FAR

Hi, at the FAR for Mars it was suggested that you might know someone onwiki who knows something about planets and would be willing to look over this article, which has been improved considerably during the FAR. Alternately, you might be that person. Greatly appreciate any help you are willing and able to offer. (t · c) buidhe 23:10, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Causal loop

Regarding my revert on Causal loop, you might find this of interest: Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested/Archive_19#Spamrefs of Riggs, P.J. Cheers Adakiko (talk) 06:27, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Speaking of causal loops, shouldn't Heinlein's All You Zombies be mentioned? Adakiko (talk) 08:18, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Bell's theorem

Thanks for your work on Bell's theorem, it was an unholy mess and has already improved. I'm not sure merging Loopholes in Bell tests to it was the best decision, though; wouldn't it fit better in Bell test? Tercer (talk) 10:59, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I thought about that and was split on the decision. In the end, I went with merging the text to the higher-visibility location. Bell test is basically a list of experiments, whereas the text from Loopholes in Bell tests was about the concepts that some of those experiments were trying to address, so the latter seemed a bit higher-level. I wouldn't object to squeezing that whole section of Bell's theorem down and using Bell test as a repository for the details, but at the time, merging the "Loopholes" text into the main page to replace two subsections there seemed like the quickest route to a substantial improvement. XOR'easter (talk) 19:21, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, I've had a terrible week, and it left me not caring who I upset. So, I converted some notes I had on Bell-type theorems into wiki markup and swapped out the worst-looking sections of Bell's theorem. This is what happens when I'm beyond caring about drama. Maybe this will at least serve as a better platform for improvements, since what we had before was so jumbled it was hard to tell what to fix. XOR'easter (talk) 03:49, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Pi permission

Eating too much cake is the sin of gluttony, but eating too much pie is okay because the sin of pi is always zero. (But only if it’s a whole pi, or two pi, or three pi..) Happy pi day! Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 15:56, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Million Award for Speed of light restoration at Featured article review

	The Million Award
	For your contributions to bring Speed of light (estimated annual readership: 1,076,301) to Featured Article status, I hereby present you the Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:37, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! XOR'easter (talk) 18:12, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

My pleasure :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:40, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Featured Article Save Award 1

On behalf of the FAR coordinators, thank you, XOR'easter! Your work on Speed of light has allowed the article to retain its featured status, recognizing it as one of the best articles on Wikipedia. I hereby award you this Featured Article Save Award, or FASA. You may display this FA star upon your userpage. Keep up the great work! Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 01:57, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Precious

I'm fine with being background.

Thank you for quality contributions to articles about sciences, such as rescuing Speed of light for highest quality, for beginning Classical Electrodynamics (book), for knowing when deletion is a service, for So, you've decided to write about physics and/or mathematics on Wikipedia, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

You are recipient no. 2740 of Precious, a prize of QAI. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:19, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Comment

Hi there, kinda sad to see this [2] but ill make sure that theres a bunch of people who cares and were amazed at your work on saving difficult articles like Speed of light and etc. Hoping for the best. 210.213.212.172 (talk) 03:42, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

SPI

So I started to try to file and then I got lost in the maze of past reports. Does the following sound right to you? I think there are at least four potentially relevant past SPIs:

• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/QuantitativeGeometry
• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/UK-WK-ed
• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/EntropyFormula
• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/GoldenPi

The latter two did not result in anyone being identified as a sock or blocked; the former two both did, but were unrelated to each other. Of these, QuantitativeGeometry and sock InvestigateThis have edited Planck stuff, as did EntropyFormula (who has not been confirmed as a sockpuppet of anyone, and is unblocked). Maybe that would make QG the right place to file (with the assumption that EF is in fact the same person but that no one will care about an account that hasn't been used in 4 years)? --JBL (talk) 22:08, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, this is a bit labyrinthine. I think a new report can be added to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/QuantitativeGeometry, since EF was already mentioned there. I didn't pay that close attention to how much EF's writing resembled that of the QG socks, but the bits I quoted from EF, QG, and TS do read alike. EF at Talk:Planck temperature: But I almost start to suspect a small crowd of editors want to delete all I write as this has been the case so far. TS at Talk:Planck units: But what can I say, what should be on some wikipedia pages is now totally dominated by a small circle of very active wikipedia editors that back each others, block others, delete others. XOR'easter (talk) 22:27, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Ok I will give it a go. -- JBL (talk) 22:37, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Here's a similar-sounding remark from a QG sock at Talk:Squaring the circle: But yes we know how this ends, the little biased circle empty for good arguments, now work to block and expel people that have edited a page against their biased view. XOR'easter (talk) 22:44, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

'Deletion as a Service'

Yay. Excellent! [3]

on retirement

Only today I saw your last message about retirement, hope it would be just a sabbatical! You're one of the best editors I ever saw here, and I really hope you'll be better soon. Artem.G (talk) 18:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm glad that I made a positive impact of some sort. Unfortunately, I'm still used up and burned out. XOR'easter (talk) 05:29, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

June songs

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:37, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

RationalWiki paper

I'm putting this here so that you can delete it later if you choose. It's clear from your response that you did not bother to read the paper. Or you don't have experience reading academic papers, in which case I understand they can be difficult to interpret. Either way that means you should not be the one to cite it. SamuelRiv (talk) 23:23, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

If you can't refrain from making personal attacks, please do not post on my Talk page. XOR'easter (talk) 23:35, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

It's intended to be a substantive assertion and not an insult. You can't keep engaging in the article dispute if you refuse to read the paper, hence why I took my assertion to your talk page and not the article's. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:54, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

While, as a theoretical physicist, I do appreciate the comedy value of being told that I have no experience reading academic papers, I am now asking you: Please do not post on my Talk page. XOR'easter (talk) 00:56, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Mark Kamrath

I had intended to write a bit more for this article, but what I found reading reviews more closely is at times so superlative I think someone would level WP:PROMO accusations at me if I included it. So I think I'm done poking, but I did leave a quote from one of the reviews on the AfD if you're interested in reading it. -- asilvering (talk) 00:27, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for all your work on this! XOR'easter (talk) 16:01, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Speed of light scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for 2 August 2022. Please check that the article needs no amendments. Feel free to amend the draft blurb, which can be found at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 2, 2022, or to make comments on other matters concerning the scheduling of this article at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/August 2022. I suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks and congratulations on your work. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:09, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

TFA date changed to 16 August. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:05, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

The astronomy FARs

XOR, I'm sorry I got out ahead of you on the two other Astronomy FARs last night, distracting from the work at Planet. I have fallen so far behind, and just wanted to make sure I had weighed in on those, and regret the distraaction. I have to focus for a few days on finishing up at Palladian architecture, and then Darjeeling, as both are being considered for August TFAs, so I'll give you a break to work in peace for a bit :). Thanks for all you do .. Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:46, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Help?

I posted at Women in Red and David Eppstein suggested that you might be able to help me. Your page says "I am a physicist", which is exactly what I need! For Women in Red's year-long climate initiative and Women in Green's July editathon, I decided after much panicked thought to work on Eunice Foote. (Panicked because it must be submitted for GA review in this month and I have serious doubts about my abilities to understand the science.) As she was pivotal and the article was in pretty bad shape, I finally convinced myself to give it a go. While I am good at history, research, and women's rights, physics is way outside my wheelhouse or my confidence level to write about.

It's been slow going because I want the article to be accurate. There were lots of uncites passages, citations to blogs and and text copyvios. As her story was lost for nearly 100 I wanted to be sure that current writers were not regurgitating other recent work, so I meticulously backed up each modern secondary source with a primary source for the biographical sections. I have used scholarship to evaluate her discoveries, but the language used in many of those papers leaves my head spinning, so I want to be sure that I have 1) properly conveyed what the sources say, 2) not misconstrued anything, and 3) have included anything that is relevant. The source that is most baffling to me is this one. Any help that you can provide would be greatly appreciated. If you can't help, can you refer me to someone who might be able to help. SusunW (talk) 19:28, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. XOR'easter (talk) 20:19, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

I cannot even begin to say how much that means to me. I genuinely appreciate anything you can do to help. SusunW (talk) 20:22, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Please don't give up, I will help!

I wholeheartedly agree that a lot of broad-topic science articles need improvement right now and that the Vital science articles reassessment was long over-due. I'm more than willing to chip in and help you to performing these review, but I also think that you improving and saving all of these articles alone is not a sustainable solution and that a more systematic approach is needed. Currently, I'm rebooting Wikipedia:WikiProject Vital Articles and trying to get members to join in to improve these Vital articles, and written an essay on how to improve Vital articles with sustainability. I hope that my effort would alleviate your burn out somewhat and make your Vital improvement drives more fun. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 04:57, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Chocolate: the wonder cure-all

		A box of chocolates for you
		Your contributions to Wikipedia everywhere, but particularly at Wikipedia:Featured article review, are priceless. I hope you'll find a way to "soldier on" (as my best friend always tells me in times of adversity), and find joy. Meanwhile, over-indulging in chocolate does a soul good! Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:40, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Cheering up

Hi, XOR! I saw your latest updates on your userpage, hope you wouldn't give up! Your work on major astronomical articles is great, and though I agree that the planet is fucked, I still think that writing here makes the world a liiiitle bit better. (I'm naive, though I still think that creating a universal encyclopedia makes the world, and the internet, a better place.)

I try to avoid all hot topics - politics and pop-stars, and I think you do it too. If you'd like to distract yourself, I would appreciate if you'll look through the Asteroid article, which I tried to rewrite and prepare for GA. It needs more eyes than I have, especially from someone more knowledgeable in astronomy than me. Artem.G (talk) 19:30, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Seconded. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:30, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Thirded; I'm not super knowledgable about astronomy and physics but I will help out wherever I can (copyediting, suggestions, etc). However you decide to proceed, thank you for all your work. :) Ovinus (talk) 03:37, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Artem.G, CactiStaccingCrane, Ovinus: the Featured Article Review of "Planet" seems to have petered out. It needs attention, either to identify lingering problems or to declare that the process should be closed. XOR'easter (talk) 19:18, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Draft on Number theory of factorials

Greetings! I was just wondering if User:XOR'easter/sandbox/Number theory of factorials can be merged into Factorial or some other article? It looks like you put a lot of work into it and I wouldn't want it to go to waste. -- Beland (talk) 07:39, 29 July 2022 (UTC) ]]

I have no objection to it being merged somewhere; I vaguely recall that it seemed too niche to go into the Factorial article, but I have no definite plans or particularly strong feelings. XOR'easter (talk) 13:46, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

OK, I'm not sure what would be a better target, so I'll try that for now and see if any other editors have feelings or a suggestion for a better place to put it. -- Beland (talk) 20:21, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I agree with X that most of this is too niche to go into the main factorial article, which already summarized much of it more concisely in the paragraph on number theory in the applications section, with pointers to the relevant more specialized articles already detailing most of the rest of it. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:34, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: Do you think it would fit better in some other article, be a good starting point for a new article, or if we should just dump this content and leave readers to find such things in math journals and books and whatnot? -- Beland (talk) 20:36, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Putting it into factorial upsets the WP:BALANCE of the article, and plunking it down after what is essentially an extended see-also section also introduces a lack of overall organizational structure to the article. If some of this material is not covered elsewhere, but is significant enough, I think a better approach would be to create a standalone article for that and to link to it only briefly at factorial, the way other topics are briefly linked. But that requires actually digesting the material rather than just copying and pasting. What problem is fixed by going around clearing out other users' sandboxes? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:37, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

As something with a clear name to hang it onto, the material on Alladi–Grinstead constant could plausibly support a separate article, for instance. However, the only sources I found for that name were MathWorld, OEIS, and an unpublished 2014 preprint. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:44, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

The point of clearing out user drafts is to avoid losing useful but neglected content that editors have put time and energy into making, and to bring attention to that content by editors who can bring it up to standard. What would you title such an article? -- Beland (talk) 21:00, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

The obvious title is Alladi–Grinstead constant. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:08, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

That was deleted in 2017, which is what led me to creating the draft in the first place. Perhaps Multiplicative partitions of factorials? XOR'easter (talk) 21:52, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I like that title's broader emphasis. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:59, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Moved accordingly. XOR'easter (talk) 22:26, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Hurray! -- Beland (talk) 22:54, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I added a brief mention to factorial. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:39, 30 July 2022 (UTC)