This page is within the scope of WikiProject Mathematics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mathematics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MathematicsWikipedia:WikiProject MathematicsTemplate:WikiProject Mathematicsmathematics articles
§ Assessment summary and list of fields does not provide a "list of fields", as the title claims, which fact seems to make the field parameter in the {{WikiProject Mathematics}} template useless or irrelevant. Comments?
I thought to add the field value Group theory to the Monstrous moonshine page, but would that be worth doing?
Should we have such an agreed "list of fields" for maths, and if so, might we populate it from the relevant Wikipedia Category values; or are these distinct concepts? What defines a field of mathematics, i.e. an area of mathematical activity - as distinct from a Field (mathematics) in algebra - anyway? Is "field" perhaps synonymous with "subject"? Can anybody point to an authoritative list of such fields, or even a useful one?
Or is the Wikipedia Category mechanism enough (even tho, I understand, it has its own problems!), and would the field parameter duplicate that? If so, is it therefore an irrelevant complexity we should remove?
So, editing the actual talk page for Monstrous moonshine leads to the discovery that the field parameter has already been given the value algebra, but that the template doesn't display the value, nor translate it to a Category value, thus: {{WikiProject Mathematics|class=C |priority=Mid }} gives the following display:
This page is within the scope of WikiProject Mathematics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mathematics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MathematicsWikipedia:WikiProject MathematicsTemplate:WikiProject Mathematicsmathematics articles
which all makes supplying a value for field rather pointless, I guess. (It also, rather strangely, translates class=C into does not require a rating.)
Could some clever editor change the template to display the field value, as it does the quality (class) and priority values? yoyo (talk) 12:15, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I also note that there is a list of academic fields article which includes Algebra under Mathematics, with Group theory within it in a sub-list. If we were to use this list, which level of information would be most useful to readers: the top? the second? or possibly both? yoyo (talk) 12:24, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
