Talk:Main Page

Ads / donations
Is the hosting fee still at the level of 120 US $\$$ /month? Provided that I pay the hosting fee, is it possible to make this page ad-free? --Mathmensch (talk) 10:41, 27 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm seriously concerned that it's that much. I was of the opinion that it was about $\$$50 a year. --prime mover (talk) 19:08, 27 October 2014 (UTC)


 * The less, the better. But please answer! --Mathmensch (talk) 15:59, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Have you tried AdBlock? --prime mover (talk) 07:24, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Milestone
See how close we are to the 12,000th proof on.

I am going to hold off adding the final stub lemma from till after someone else has posted something up to give us something landmarkworthy. --prime mover (talk) 20:56, 28 October 2014 (UTC)


 * A close call. --prime mover (talk) 23:03, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Four tildes
Dear members of the proofwiki,

I would suggest that somewhere below the edit box, a button is included which produces four tildes if you click it. In this way, one could save some time; especially on some laptops (like mine) where you have to press the respective key twice in order to get a tilde. Pressing one time is reserved for something like ñ. --Mathmensch (talk) 15:59, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Hmm, there used to be an edit bar that included exactly such a button (at the top of an editing window IIRC). I have disabled it, I think, but if it's gone for everyone that's something to look into. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 19:05, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


 * No, it's there for me. --prime mover (talk) 20:28, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Oh it's there for me too. Didn't know this design. Sorry. --Mathmensch (talk) 01:38, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Clock reset
The clock seems to be about 8 minutes fast -- any chance of a reset? Thx. --prime mover (talk) 23:13, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I installed an ntp server, should keep the clock synced from now on. --Joe (talk) 00:02, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
 * That seems to have done the trick. Good job. --prime mover (talk) 01:21, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

"Help" link in menu on LHS
I have just noticed that the "Help" link that appears on the left hand side menu takes you completely off-site and you land on a generic MediaWiki page. What does anyone else think: is this a good idea or would it be better to keep the users within ? I don't know what the legal requirements are here, are we supposed to pass control to MediaWiki from here or what? --prime mover (talk) 21:17, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Examples of Metric Spaces
I have been through my copy of and added all the examples of metric spaces that he mentions (sometimes just in passing: "Likewise there is an $L^p$ metric analogous to the metrics in Examples $2.2.9$ and $2.2.11$ and a space $\ell^p$ analogous to $\ell^2$ for any integer $p \ge 1$."  His treatment is not very rigorous and (for reasons of scope) incomplete -- so there may be some inaccuracies which will need to be addressed.

In particular I have tried to refactor the page and category structures so as to nest special cases of more general metrics and metric spaces into a more enlightening form. There is considerable room for improvement here (particularly in the area of Definition:Lp Metric and Definition:P-Sequence Metric which (see above) get a cursory mention in the above.

Any attempt by someone particularly knowledgeable in this field to consolidate this area will be warmly welcomed. --prime mover (talk) 07:51, 22 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I think it would be advisable to look beyond these metrics and make use of the norms instead. Currently Definition:P-Seminorm and Definition:P-Norm are not in line with one another, but I can see merit in a subpage for Definition:P-Sequence Norm (seminorm and norm are identical for sequences) once Definition:P-Norm is updated to discuss general Lebesgue spaces. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 08:43, 22 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I would counsel against replacing the existing pages with those that use the language of norms instead. It can be very forbidding to a learning mathematician trying to understand metric spaces and the general context into which they fit to be presented with a sea of $\Vert x_j^p \Vert$ notation in such an abstract setting that the basic simplicity of what is being stated gets lost.


 * The same thing happened with the work on polynomials. The initial pages on polynomials were replaced by definitions of such abstract complexity that the entire concept was buried under a colossal weight of complicated abstraction -- and I never was able to restructure the pages so as to adequately present the underlying (basically simple) notions.


 * In short, I agree with your above paragraph except for the word "instead". As for bringing the page Definition:P-Norm into line, my view is that whatever source work can be found, with this concept explained in detail, should be mined for how its exposition is applied to the specific "real number line" case. Only then can these concepts really be grasped and put into context. --prime mover (talk) 08:58, 22 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Further to this, having got to grips with where the Norm pages are going, I offer up this comment by Sutherland (op.cit.):
 * For applications in analysis, metric spaces have a strong rival in normed vector spaces. The latter are particularly convenient for generalizing differential calculus and for handling linear problems in general (see .
 * Thus I understand it is accepted that there are two approaches to this field of mathematics: one which uses metric spaces, and one that uses norms. I really don't want the one to replace the other. --prime mover (talk) 09:05, 22 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Ah, indeed. I have never done much with metric spaces, and quite the contrary with normed VS's and other functional analysis; probably the reason for my focus. Then it will just be the task of to build suitable bridges between these platforms. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 09:14, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Slow response
It's been going very slow again tonight -- several seconds to load each page. Sometimes it's better than others, but I'm finding it in general a lot slower than usual

It may of course be a local and/or transient issue, but I'm raising it in case there's a systemic reason for the go-slow. --prime mover (talk) 22:13, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I cleared the php cache and tweaked some server settings that might help, let me know if it keeps happening. --Joe (talk) 19:10, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Many thanks -- it's up to its usual speed again now. --prime mover (talk) 11:00, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Archive Templates and general Refactoring
I have built a template  for talk pages, which is available for anyone to use. I used this as the basis of the  refactoring which now has a from/to date range field. Similarly, there is a  which tidies up the link to the archive page from the main page. Finally I have added  and   for a standardised look-and-feel for the list of those archives in a standard style.

In this way I have encapsulated a lot of the raw html from the pages themselves, allowing the source code to be cleaner.

Enjoy. --prime mover (talk) 13:04, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Another tidy-up
I have spent the weekend going through all the "named theorems" and adding a link on the mathematician whose name it is to the subfolder containing the theorems specific to that mathematician.

While I was about it, I created subfolders for all the named definition and axiom entries accordingly. Yes I know, a fair number of them are empty -- but there exist definitions named for those mathematicians so they should not remain empty for ever.

Also note that I have added any missing mathematicians that I have found whose named theorem or definition exists already in the database. Many of these are stubs only, as I wanted to get this particular tidy-up job done and not get bogged down in the detail. If there are any I have missed, please let me know (or feel free to add them yourself). --prime mover (talk) 22:17, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Styling of headings
I have noticed that headings at level H1 and H2 (but not H3 or smaller) are being rendered in Times New Roman (or some serifed font) while the headings of H3 and smaller are appearing in the usual sans serif font as usual.

I'm not close enough to the coal face here to be able to address this or even to work out whether it's something about my own environment that may have got corrupted.

Can someone check this?

Many thanks. --prime mover (talk) 21:08, 9 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I updated MediaWiki last night to the newest release, I'll take a look at it later tonight to see what's up. Have you tried cleaning your cache? --Joe (talk) 21:10, 9 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Yep, cache is well and truly cleaned. Problem still exists -- on both Chrome and Firefox. To IE I go not. --prime mover (talk) 21:40, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Ok, compared out headers to Wikipedia's. Looks like this is the new style. --Joe (talk) 01:09, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Pfff. A bit rubbish, isn't it? :-)
 * Seriously though, can we look a bit different from Wikipedia, at least in this particular instance? --prime mover (talk) 06:09, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Sure, what do you want to use for the fonts? You can just edit Common.css, or I can. --Joe (talk) 14:49, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

There we go, back to the ways of old. In passing, I noticed that the newly introduced "Code editor" is an abomination that prohibited saving any edits. Fortunately, it can be disabled. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 18:54, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Exception thrown when renaming
Trying to rename Definition:Topologically Equivalent Metric Spaces back to Definition:Homeomorphism/Metric Spaces because that's actually where it sits better. Changed my mind on a refactoring job I did earlier today.

Getting this:


 * [16ffc302] 2014-12-22 20:13:45: Fatal exception of type MWException

I even tried restoring and re-deleting the offending target page Definition:Homeomorphism/Metric Spaces but it still does it.

My next plan is to do the move manually (select all, cut and paste), so as to effect the change. That will mean losing the history, but there's not much to lose, so no worries. --prime mover (talk) 20:17, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Re-indexed everything, should be good now. --Joe (talk) 20:45, 22 December 2014 (UTC)


 * All is good. Sorry for the delay in replying, a bit distracted at the moment. --prime mover (talk) 21:38, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Main page overhaul
I've been picking at redoing the main page in my sandbox. If anyone has some ideas please feel free to modify it. My main goal was to get rid of the underused news section and most wanted list. Any thoughts? --Joe (talk) 02:29, 30 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd be sad to lose the "most wanted" list, but I admit that it's not really used enough. I sometimes go through it and browse when I'm bored with what I'm currently working on, so it would be nice to at least retain the list somewhere. --prime mover (talk) 06:26, 30 December 2014 (UTC)


 * When will it go live? :) &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 12:45, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Whenever everyone thinks it's good enough. I'm pretty happy with it for now, though it would be nice to change style somewhat. --Joe (talk) 14:14, 30 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd say: go for it. Change is good. --prime mover (talk) 16:25, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Books Without Links
The books do not have links. On the Template:BookReference page (at the bottom), it says to contact the administrators if a book you reference shows up in red. So I thought I'd say it here, and not try to add any entries myself.
 * "Complex Analysis" by Serge Lang
 * "Real and Complex Analysis" by Walter Rudin

I referenced Lang for the proof of Morera's Theorem, and Rudin for Triangle Inequality for Integrals.

-- Ovenhouse (talk) 23:46, 30 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Yep okay, I'll get onto it.


 * ... stub pages have been added for the Lang and the Rudin as required. All that is needed is for the contents to be added.
 * (My technique for this used to be to scan them in, use an OCR and tidy up using Notepad++ or something, but I can't do this so easily any more as I have "upgraded" my printer, and the scanner is so physically constructed as to make the scanning of books impossible.) --prime mover (talk) 08:01, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Can't upload files again
Got the error messaeg

Could not create directory "mwstore://local-backend/local-public/archive/f/fd".

Can this be fixed?

Thx. --prime mover (talk) 07:19, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Should be okay now, the issue is that the archive directories are being created with the wrong permissions. I'll look into a more permanent fix for when this happens in the future. --Joe (talk) 14:28, 21 January 2015 (UTC)


 * All working again now, thanks. --prime mover (talk) 21:08, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Not ProofWiki related, but I need help
After an overnight software update, the fonts on my machine have got screwed up.

This can be seen when I open up an edit pane and see the letters are incomplete, which is hard on the eye and makes editing a more difficult operation.

See this screenshot for an example:


 * Edit Pane Screenshot.png

Does anyone have any idea as to what might have happened? There is nothing obvious from "inspect element" -- it just shows font="monospace" as you'd expect.

IT's not just ProofWiki it happens on -- every application which requires I open an edit pane behaves the same.

Anyone else had the same problem? --prime mover (talk) 06:56, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
 * According to Google it's possibly caused by one the latest Windows updates. --Joe (talk) 14:27, 12 February 2015 (UTC)


 * That could indeed be what caused it -- had an overnight update, as I say. Thx. --prime mover (talk) 17:10, 12 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Yep, that's sorted now. Many thanks.--prime mover (talk) 17:20, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Problem with graphics again
In the page Definition:Quadrilateral/Parallelogram/Base, I tried to change the line:

to:

so as to change the presentation size of this item, but I got:


 * Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination

Is this a recurrence of our recurring problem saving graphics images? --prime mover (talk) 12:05, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'll find a better solution. --Joe (talk) 14:26, 7 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I've been catching up on unresolved issues. This is still happening -- changing 450px to 400px causes the above error to happen still.  Is there something I can do to fix this? --prime mover (talk) 12:52, 1 April 2016 (UTC)


 * It's a permissions issue on the server when some files are created. I've added a script which periodically "refreshes" the permissions. I plan on updating the server in the next month or so, will fix "properly" then. --Joe (talk) 14:13, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Euclid Has Been Mastered
The $13$ books of have now been documented on  as well as the so-called Book $XIV$ by.

Obviously there is still a lot of room for improvement, as well as the many (historical) alternative proofs of many of the propositions.

But all that is ongoing work and can be done at any time.

From here I will be tidying up some outstanding maintenance tasks, and then will go ahead and revisit the work on Abstract Algebra, specifically in relation to the foundations of the natural numbers that I initially documented from the work of and has been worked on since by Lord_Farin.

If there are any specific maintenance tasks that you would like me to address, please let me know. --prime mover (talk) 07:35, 18 March 2015 (UTC)


 * A most commendable effort on your part. That your perseverance be known and lauded across the interwebs! :) &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 20:27, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
 * That's awesome! You are the undisputed prime mover --Joe (talk) 02:58, 19 March 2015 (UTC)


 * (Takes a bow) $\substack{.\,. \\ | \\ \smile}$ --prime mover (talk) 06:11, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

$\LaTeX$ codes
A new resource has been created in Symbols:LaTeX Commands which contains all the $\LaTeX$ commands as defined in MathJax, in alphabetical order. Yes I know it's not complete -- it does not handle commands properly which require arguments. Work in progress. --prime mover (talk) 21:50, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

MathJax Updated to Latest
I've updated MathJax to the latest version (2.5.1). --Joe (talk) 01:01, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Milestones
It occurred to me with the recent restructuring of the front page, the number of proofs on has vanished. That means we can't keep track of approaching milestones. Whether this is a good thing or not may need to be discussed. Is it worth maintaining, or does it genuinely look a bit lame-o, specially since it is never a genuine count? --prime mover (talk) 20:17, 31 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I think there is value in the landmarks, although now that we've gone beyond 10k, I think there is a case for increasing the distance between the milestones. I would suggest continuing to 15k, then do 5k at a time until 50k. That should keep us occupied for the coming decades. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 21:20, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Changes to Eqn template
I have made some changes to the Eqn template because the most recent addition of possible columns moved the right-hand side of any expression a bunch to the right in an ugly and very noticeable manner. This will roll out to all pages using the template as the cache is cleared.

If you are on a page that still has the cached version of the template, please append  to the URL you're visiting. This will clear the cache and thus force the use of the updated template.

If you have any questions or remarks, leave a note here or on my talk. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 16:44, 24 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Is it worth adding
 * Some vertical padding
 * To make a small gap
 * So lines don't overlap? --prime mover (talk) 20:00, 2 June 2015 (UTC)


 * That boils down to personal preference, I think. But you can fiddle around with the padding. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 20:19, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Pending changes
I think every edit page should have 4 boxes titled in order, "Save page", "Submit for review", "Show preview", "Show changes" where clicking "Submit for review" makes a change that awaits pending approval. It should also be possible to create a new page and submit it for review where it will either only be visible to administrators or it will appear in a different namespace than Page name space and not be searchable by a normal search. There are so many risky edits and page creations I don't feel free to make since I don't know of a way to make an edit that doesn't automatically change the article right away. Blackbombchu (talk) 17:12, 3 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Too much like hard work. For a start it's not how a mediawiki site works, and for another thing, I don't want all my edits to have to sit in a queue waiting for someone to approve them. I would have to trust the person doing the approval and I don't know what level of accreditation or mathematical sophistication they would need. --prime mover (talk) 18:06, 3 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Enter: the sandbox. Your sandbox is awaiting your arrival at User:Blackbombchu/Sandbox. You can create more pages using the format User:Blackbombchu/Sandbox/Page (compare mine). You can do whatever you want there without worrying about the main site. If you feel you've finished a meaningful chunk of information, you can leave a note on my or Prime.mover's talk page requesting the desired review. You can also use talk pages to indicate where you see room for improvement in existing pages. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 19:49, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Structure of contents page
Can anyone explain this? :


 * [[File:WeirdContentsPresentation.png]]

Contents lists have suddenly started to appear as bullet-separated lists. It doesn't do this in wikipedia so I know it's not something that is endemic to my machine. OTOH it may be something to do with my settings having become corrupted somehow (do I have any customised javascript and/or css for my account? If so where do I find it?)

Would it be possible for someone else to check to see whether it has happened to them? Or is it a deliberate change to the presentation of the website? Not my position to complain about it, I'm not really a member of this community any more, I'm just interested, and I'm not sure it's actually an improvement. --prime mover (talk) 11:14, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Nothing has changed, and things look fine to me. What browser are you using. My guess would be that they changed the default style for which MediaWiki software doesn't override because it's no bullets? --Joe (talk) 22:55, 23 August 2015‎


 * Google Chrome as ever. Hmm. Seems intermittent. It's okay today. --prime mover (talk) 06:51, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

editing sections
Didn't someone put a bodge in place to stop people being able to edit sections? What's happened to that? I can't edit sections myself but it seems as though some can. --prime mover (talk) 18:28, 26 August 2015 (UTC)


 * IIRC there is an option in your preferences where you can enable or disable it. I thought there was a global override in place to prevent the setting from being enabled, but apparently it doesn't work (anymore). &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 18:40, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think we ever had a global override, we just had it disabled by default. I guess some people turned it on. We could just hide it with CSS I guess. --Joe (talk) 18:41, 26 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Found it -- there's an option in preferences to allow you to edit a section by right clicking on it. I wouldn't want to apply css to disable it, I quite like it for e.g. talk pages (like I'm doing now) and my own home page. --prime mover (talk) 18:51, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Natural Numbers
Please, all, take a look at the splendour of the new Definition:Natural Numbers. I've put quite some hours in this project already, and it is finally coming close to completion. Notable areas to be addressed are the ordering $\le$ and the multiplication $\times$; I think the addition $+$ will also need a second round of reviewing. But for now, I'm curious about your opinions. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 14:38, 30 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I'll go through the process flows for the books I've got in due course, but for a first glance it appears the structure makes sense. But not yet, I'm so fed up with abstract algebra it makes me sick. --prime mover (talk) 17:55, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Conic Sections
I've taken on the task of tidying up the Definition:Conic Sections. Please accept that it will look sub-optimal for a while, during which time I will be experimenting with layouts and structure. It turned into a bigger job than I thought it would. --prime mover (talk) 14:36, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * ... horrible job. If anyone can think of a better way to organise this, feel free to have a go. --prime mover (talk) 20:05, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

View Count Gone
The view count field (the number of views of a page) at the bottom of pages has gone. Is there a chance of getting it back, or is it available somewhere else, or is there some way of displaying the view count for a page? --Ivar Sand (talk) 08:43, 21 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The latest version of MediaWiki has removed page view counts. --Joe (talk) 13:42, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Question about ProofWiki meta-structure: Mathematicians and Books namespaces
For historical reasons and maybe other reasons, all the mathematicians and books that we document are in the "ProofWiki" namespace, thus:

to pick an example, and:

to pick another.

Is there any MediaWiki-related reason why they should not go in their own category and namespace, e.g.:

and:

for example?

Most of this material is now referenced (mainly) via templates, so (apart from moving the actual pages), changing the links would then be merely a matter of changing the templates.

In that way we could conveniently set up the mathematicians and books in categories, like the rest of the material on the site.

Thoughts?

If I don't hear nay from anyone in the next few days, I may start work on that. --prime mover (talk) 16:37, 25 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The only MediaWiki thing required is to create the namespaces, which I will now go and do. --Joe (talk) 17:15, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Done. --Joe (talk) 17:32, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Ah. One of those iconic moments where a radical change of perspective is presented, accompanied by the immediate realisation of the greatness of the idea. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 18:47, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Practically every single mathematician link is going to redlink. Please enjoy the colourful show. Normal service will resume in due course. --prime mover (talk) 19:38, 25 October 2015 (UTC)


 * ... is there a tool available -- or can one be made available -- that will rename everything in the format:
 * ProofWiki:Books/... $\to$ Book:
 * ProofWiki:Mathematicians/... $\to$ Mathematician:


 * That would save a lot of manual work of refactoring. If we want to be brave we can leave no redirects and just "expect" that all the redirection will be done by the appropriate amendment of the various templates. This will leave a number of redirects (particularly in the source flow section at the bottom, but there's not all that much of that). --prime mover (talk) 22:10, 25 October 2015 (UTC)


 * ...and at the same time move "ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Writers/..." to "Mathematician:Writer/" (thus to lose the unnecessary plural form there). --prime mover (talk) 06:23, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

I've found Special:ReplaceText, but it sadly doesn't support changing the namespace. The only other option I encountered was the MoveBatch script. Based on a file consisting of source and target names, it would perform all renamings for you. This leaves us with the task of creating this file in the specified format. I would like to hear Joe's opinion on the best way to approach that.

A final alternative would be a direct change in the database, but for obvious reasons I consider this only a last resort. The MoveBatch script, when adequately fed, should do the trick. Seeing as I could find no good way to relocate the non-existing pages (there are over 5000 pages red-linked to, many of them talk pages invoked by templates) I think it's best to keep the redirects and have their deletion as a boring maintenance task whose automation is a follow-up project. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 16:31, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Using moveBatch.php is probably the best. Still quite a task. --Joe (talk) 16:39, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Could we generate a list of the to-be-renamed pages using some query, then transform it to the desired format using RegEx? &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 16:46, 26 October 2015 (UTC)


 * As long as we can indeed move everything, I think we can live with the redirects. We can get rid of them as and when we see fit. It is indeed better to keep the redirects otherwise we'll miss all sorts of things. --prime mover (talk) 21:20, 26 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I am, unfortunately, quite busy for the next week or so :/. --Joe (talk) 13:33, 28 October 2015 (UTC)


 * No urgency, I'm deep into another project anyway at the moment (creating "Definition" pages for branches of mathematics for which we only have "Category" pages) which is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. --prime mover (talk) 17:34, 28 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Basically done, apart from the final hunting through of mathematicians for redirects. --prime mover (talk) 11:48, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Another task completed: restructuring the "Branches of Mathematics" category
I thought it would take me about half a day -- in fact it took a week.


 * a) The main change is that all categories which can be classified as "branches of mathematics" now have a specific Definition page. Previously this was haphazard: there would be a page for Set Theory, for example, but not one for Class Theory or Field Theory or Ring Theory, for example -- or even Topology. (Instead, the definitions were placed in the category page themselves.


 * b) Each of those definitions is now in the "Definitions/Branches of Mathematics" category, as well as their own category (that is, for example, Definition:Field Theory is in the Definitions/Field Theory category). Thus it is always easy to get to the definition of that category -- I have been frustrated in the past by my inability to navigate to particular definition pages quickly.


 * c) The header of all non-definition Category pages for each branch of mathematics has been standardised and put into "Template:SubjectCategory" which gives:
 * A category header from CategDef: "This category contains results about Definition:branch being defined"
 * A transclusion of the definition of the category
 * A link to the associated "Definitions" page.


 * d) Similarly, the associated Definition page has a standard structure which transcludes the category definition as for the main Category, and also provides a link directly to that category via the "subcategory" template (which already existed, of course).


 * e) Everywhere (or everywhere I could find) where a category has been invoked from the body of the pages, e.g.  has been replaced by e.g.  .  This turned out to be a colossal job.


 * f) During the course of this I revisited many of the Mathematician pages and did whatever prep work may be needed to change the namespace over to Mathematicians: from ProofWiki:. That itself is more than probably incomplete, but a lot has been done.

Many of these categories are empty as yet, inviting those who know about them to populate them.

Note also that many of the category definitions are themselves a little sketchy, superficial and quite possibly inaccurate, and one or two I didn't even bother to fill in -- I was just at this stage keen on sorting out the structure.

I am now going to have to go and remind the household that I am still part of it. :-) --prime mover (talk) 10:51, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Mathematicians and Books
I believe I have moved all references to Mathematicians and Books from the ProofWiki namespace into the Mathematician and Book namespaces respectively. During the course of tidying up and reviewing I noticed that there were one or two of both mathematicians and books which had not been recorded in their parent pages: the appropriate subpage of Mathematician:Mathematicians and Book:Books.

Please beware that there still may be such entities which have not been moved as they ought to be. If you find them, please flag them up.

Also note that a lot of the old redirects from the old ProofWiki namespace are still around. They can be got rid of whenever convenient. --prime mover (talk) 08:19, 9 November 2015 (UTC)


 * This job is now complete. The next phase will be to move the majority of those categorised as "writers" to "minor mathematicians", or even full-blown Mathematicians if their biogs have come to light on the internet. But that will be done as and when I feel like it. --prime mover (talk) 19:03, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Retrieved from
Today, the following line started to appear on the bottom of every page:


 * Retrieved from ‘https://proofwiki.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lord_Farin&oldid=201961’

It's kind of annoying and pointless (I can read the URL myself) and it seems to come from a "printfooter" class, suggesting it's intended for printing only. Am I alone in experiencing this? &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 17:02, 11 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't see it, but I run AdBlock which may have an effect. --prime mover (talk) 20:18, 11 November 2015 (UTC)


 * 't Has disappeared again. Strange. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 20:23, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Problem with Replace Text tool
I don't know if this is something that's wrong with MediaWiki software or just something I'm doing wrong.

I'm trying, for example, to replace:


 * BookReference|Category Theory|2010|Steve Awodey|prev

with:


 * BookReference|Category Theory|2010|Steve Awodey|ed = 2nd|edpage = Second Edition|prev

... so as to do a global update on all the Sources sections of the pages which need it.

But it doesn't work.

It gives me:


 * No pages were found containing the string " ".

But I know that's rubbish because I just copied that to-be-replaced string out of a page that does have it in.

Is there a subtlety about search and replace that I don't understand, does anyone know? I know, I should read the documentation but life's too short. --prime mover (talk) 21:50, 15 November 2015 (UTC)


 * It's the same for me. I'm thinking it might be because of the pipe characters or search/replace not working within template calls. But then sometimes it *does* find results within templates.


 * But then when suggesting to replace "Definition:Natural Numbers" it only gives back 19 results, which is clearly absurd. The functionality is not to be trusted. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 17:28, 16 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Worthy though the Awodey work may be, I'm not a big fan of going through and adding "|ed = 2nd|edpage = Second Edition" to every single page in its citation thread. So I'm regretfully going to leave that last bit of work undone until this bug has been fixed or workrounded. --prime mover (talk) 19:01, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Assistance needed on Non-Dimensional Cantor Set
I have done my best to try and make some sort of order out of Non-Dimensional Cantor Set. It is clear that the original author had been unable to craft the $\LaTeX$ adequately, so I have attended to that. But the major effort that I can see will be to identify what the actual definition is, establish what the proofs actually purport to prove, extract those proofs onto their own standalone pages, add all the links (a major task requiring a high level of domain knowledge which I don't think I have), and to tighten up the language to make it pithy and up to the requisite expository standards. As I don't think I'm up to that last task, I'm going to ask whether there's anyone out there who knows their way around this area to try and take on at least some of this. --prime mover (talk) 07:23, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Tidying progress
I have cleared all the pages which had the Tidy template invoked, except for a few user pages, a couple of pages on tensors which need their approach reviewed, and a couple of other pages which need particular attention.

That is not to say that (apart from the above) all pages are perfectly house-style compliant, as there are probably still plenty which have not come up on the radar -- but it's a start.

The next major maintenance project will be to attack the Refactor category. --prime mover (talk) 08:18, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Extending ProofWiki to "derivations" and visual explanations?
I'm proposing the extension of ProofWiki to "derivations" and visual explanations of mathematical concepts and expressions. Examples would include the convolution integral or e.g. the Hilbert transform.

An example explanation is how the convolution integral is presented here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution#Visual_explanation

What do you think?


 * No reason why not. We already have plenty of visual enhancements of proofs. The only thing limiting us has been the ingenuity of the people putting such visuals in place.


 * If you have particular skills and interests in this area, then please feel free to contribute. Your work will be very welcome. --prime mover (talk) 07:47, 24 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm willing to contribute, but I don't understand how to edit the Wiki (if I even have the rights to set up those pages). --Mviljamaa (talk) 09:18, 24 December 2015 (UTC)


 * You should have sufficient rights to edit pages. You also have all sorts of Help and FAQ pages to read. Feel free to study these. You have links on your home Talk page, and you also have various links down the left hand side to explore. --prime mover (talk) 13:56, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Joke namespace
Since it is of course of the utmost and pressing importance that we ensure that we have documented all the mathematical jokes in the world, we are going to need a namespace for them.

Can we therefore have a "Joke" namespace, the same way we have a "Mathematician" and "Book" namespace?

What does anyone else think? --prime mover (talk) 08:29, 3 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Meh. Use subpages until it becomes too unwieldy. It's better that they're all in one place, to be read in a single run. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 22:02, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Style problem
Something gone wrong with this page Category:Definitions/Fundamental Dimensions

Anyone able to sort it out? --prime mover (talk) 18:42, 23 January 2016 (UTC)


 * no worries, flushed my browser cache, all OK --prime mover (talk) 19:02, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Problem with MathJax?
Is anyone else seeing this problem?


 * [[File:MathJaxProblem.png]]

All the $\LaTeX$ strings are appearing with a following vertical line.

I first noticed this yesterday on a different machine from my usual one (Windows 7 vintage), but now I notice it on this (my trusty old Vista). On both machines I am using Google Chrome.

I just tried it on Firefux and it's fine (I don't fancy getting IE out this morning to check that too) -- so it appears it may be a problem with Google Chrome. --prime mover (talk) 07:28, 30 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I can't reproduce it. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 09:14, 30 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Very odd. As I say, it exhibits this problem on both of the machines I have access to: work and home, and on Google Chrome only. I can't get IE to connect to it (but then I can't get IE to connect to anything, I never use it). --prime mover (talk) 10:12, 30 January 2016 (UTC)


 * This has been happing to me for the past few months on the Canary version of Chrome. I assumed it was a bug that would be fixed. I guess it has made its way into the stable branch. --Joe (talk) 16:56, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
 * According to Stack Overflow this has been fixed in MathJax. --Joe (talk) 16:58, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Updated MathJax, should be fixed now. --Joe (talk) 16:59, 30 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Yep, after a page refresh, this is now looking okay. Although I may stick with Firefox, the version I currently have (and have been using all day) seems to run more easily than Google Chrome ... the only thing I don't like about it is the tab management paradigm. --prime mover (talk) 20:28, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Template:BookReference
Some recent pages brought the need to support more authors in the BookReference template. I've expanded it to 6, and also included a whitespaced sample of the (for display reasons necessarily) cluttered wiki code producing it. This should help in making such templates more maintenance friendly. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 14:52, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I think something might have gone wrong with it -- check out the Book:Books page. Also, Template:Book needs a similar expansion.  I'd work on it myself but I lack the patience tonight :-) --prime mover (talk) 20:49, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Done. (And this time, I did check that it works on existing stuff ;).) &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 11:45, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Nice one. Might not have been good in all browsers, though -- I found you have to use  instead of a space at the start of any string after a pipe delimiter that is being used as an "else", otherwise the space is not interpreted. --prime mover (talk) 12:30, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Invitation for suggestions on improvements to presentation of oscillatory systems
There's a lot of new material that's been added in the Mechanics section, all of which is working towards a treatment of (so far as I've reached) resonance. The overall plan is that the general second order ODEs defining the underlying mathematics be established separately from the applications (whether they be moving carts attached to walls by springs or L-R-C circuits, or whatever) and hence to decouple the mathematics from the physics.

I'd welcome suggestions as to how to assemble the various categories, and also how to structure the pages and even to name the pages if they appear to be inadequate. Also, any definitions which appear loose or inaccurate (and there are plenty) I definitely want to improve.

I may well be changing direction after this, as I'm getting tired. --prime mover (talk) 13:01, 27 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Good work. Personally I find physical applications of ODEs boring, so I'll refrain from having an opinion on that front. As to the particular ODEs, I would probably go with the following scheme:
 * ODE LHS (basically TeX without backslashes and braces)
 * /Homogeneous
 * /Inhomogeneous
 * /Instance
 * Furthermore I think there is a need for clear overview pages of the calibre Trigonometric Identities (e.g. Linear Second-Order ODEs). As much as possible, these should have TeX'ed click-throughs. Naming convention close to TeX will help searchability.
 * If all becomes too much to maintain, we will eventually end up introducing the Example namespace we've kept out thus far. For now, however, subpages will be fine. (We might even consider sub-wikis or other cross-wiki collaborations, but this is at present unrealistic.) &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 18:00, 28 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Overview pages was something I started, but they got a little unwieldy and I reckoned it would be easier to go back to them, but I never did.


 * Another thought I had was to subcategorise the 2nd order ones further into the three categories: over-, critically and underdamped, and then resonant, but at the "pure" level rather than at the application level, but that came to me late as I got into the thread with the oscillating cart. And there is a lot in there which need to be pulled back into the abstract, but that also needs work which I'm not prepared to do at the moment, I'm going to need to let it rest a little before I can see it from a fresh angle.


 * All contributions welcome here. I've not seen an example before of such a structured categorised approach to arranging DE's into categories before, so as to exactly what it is we're trying to achieve, I confess I'm not sure where it's going. --prime mover (talk) 19:28, 28 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I think one reason why there is no good categorisation for ODEs is because unlike e.g. finite simple groups there is provable failure in classification: we cannot solve them all in "elementary" form. This also makes me less eager to attempt such a thing.
 * But then, admittedly I have been out of the theory of DEs and everything that goes with them for a long time, so maybe I'm not in a position to comment on this. &mdash; Lord_Farin (talk) 19:13, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Template:explain spans too many lines. It makes bad reading experience.
Example to illustrate that template:explain is bad.

Two solutions:

1. Use template:clarify.

2. Remove redundant sentences in template:explain.

Golopot (talk) 03:28, 7 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I disagree. --prime mover (talk) 05:43, 7 April 2016 (UTC)