Talk:Main Page

Some Development Questions (open)
Joe encouraged me to post my questions on the "main talk page". Hopefully, I post it on the right place.

I am the developer of the site Math Harbour (young GNU project) that developes search engines at Mathematics. You can find it here http://sites.google.com/site/mathharbour/, but it will soon have the domain "mathharbour.com". I will write more about the type of the GNU-license, when the site gets better integrated. Recommendations are welcome.

'''A summary of my questions: '''

1. Why can not CSE googlebot find most definitions in Proof Wiki? Please, test the term "dimension" in the Define -engine (http://sites.google.com/site/mathharbour), and then test the term "bijection". The latter term only works.

2. Can I embed your site without any modification with iFrames? An example is http://sites.google.com/site/proofmath/. Please, notice that I am not stealing anything, Proof Wiki only gets more traffic and I think it is a good thing.

3. If Math Harbour have your site embedded, I hope you can embed some of its search engines. I will, of course, make them much better if you want them. The Define Math and Proof Math -engines would fit to Proof Wiki (particularly if problem in 1st Question can be fixed).

 - My original post to Joe

''Firstly, I want to thank for your great service. I have three questions. One question is related to Google CSE. The other is related to the GNU license. The third is related to the sites.

I have developed some engines, and one of the engines index some of your definitions: please, search for "bijection" in

* http://sites.google.com/site/mathharbour/Search-Engines/define-math

I have one problem. Google CSEs can find only the first page of your definitions even though the index is like:

* http://www.proofwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Definitions&from=H * ...   * http://www.proofwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Definitions&from=Z

1. Why does it not work?

The reason for the other question to make 100% that my site can embed your site in iFrame (without any modification). To make my question clearer, you can see here an example:

* http://sites.google.com/site/mathharbour/Search-Engines/math-proof

I will take it immediately away if it somehow endangers the license. If I can understand it right, it should not.

2. Can I embed your site without any modification with iFrames to my site? Proof Wiki benefit from the traffic of Math Harbour.

Finally, I believe your site would benefit from the engines. I am developing them openly, free for contributions, under GNU-license. I will soon include more about the topic to the site. If you allow me to embed your site in iFrames, I am ready to customise engines to your site so you can embed it to your site. Alternatively, Google offers some Ajax-code so you do not necessarily need iFrames.

3. What kind of engines your site would like to have?

Please, do not hesitate to contact me. --Heooo

I don't initially foresee a problem with with having ProoWiki pages embedded, the whole page is there so I don't think it will violate the license. --Joe (talk) 18:12, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Change of Image namespace
The new version of MediaWiki has changed the namespace Image to File. Though it is still backward compatible, I think we should begin to use File:filename.ext when calling an image. --Joe (talk) 14:33, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

A Question about Random Pages
I was unable to contact Joe by email. Hence, I will publicly ask.

The "Random proof" is a very cool feature. Pages, such as "random proof in algebra", "random proof in logic" and "random proof in graph theory", would be useful as well. So are there more random pages? Is it possible to get them more?

I was talking to Heooo via email, and we may be working towards this idea, implementing new search engines on ProofWiki. --Joe (talk) 20:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I found a Perl script that randomizes the Logic articles in Wikipedia, here. Wget it, and then you can investigate it. It is not a big thing, but it helps not to reinvent the wheel :) -- Heooo

The ProofWiki look (open)
I'm working on editing the look of the site so that we don't look exactly like Wikipedia. This is what I've been working on so far if you want to take a look at it tell me what you think (likes and dislikes). All you have to do is copy what I have and paste it into you own page at User:username/monobook.css (You may have to clear your cache: Ctrl+Shift+r in firefox I think). Any feedback would be great. I've already made some small changes to the main one for ProofWiki such as rounding the edges on the boxes. --Joe (talk) 19:35, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm immediately noticing two things: red (i.e. nonexistent) links on the top bar (discussion, delete, etc) are really hard to read, and the gaps in some places seem pretty big, especially between the top link bar and the page title. Also, fyi, I think something you did overrode my theme selection (I had changed it in preferences). I'm trying out the one you made, so I don't know if I can change back/what your modifications would do to other themes, but I thought you should know. --Cynic (talk) 03:54, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I fixed it so that you can change you theme! The monobook.css only effects the monobook skin (which is the site default for new users). --Joe (talk) 20:35, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm ... not sure I like orange much, I'm more of a purple man. But hey, it ain't wikipedia (not necessarily either a bad or good thing) and it looks clean and neat. Nice one. May play with the colors on my own monobook.css. --Matt Westwood 21:40, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I've edited it a little more ( Fixed header spacing and colours). Thoughts? --Joe (talk) 02:15, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Thumbs up :) Nice enhancement. --Heooo

Open question: How to deal with Complexity?
Future challenge is to keep the site simple. Will ProofWiki become more complex by expanding to other areas, besides books and mathematicians? Personally, I feel that examples would fit the site rather than the latter two topics, because they make proofs easier to understand. Perhaps, a collection site, like Serverfault for Stackoverflow, would store ambiguous topics. My site, Math Harbour, can help the use to some extent, but it will be very hard if the site is becoming too large to control.

I will give some examples, so that my point is easier to understand. ProofWiki has its timeline of Mathematicians here. Then again, you can see many other timelines here and here. You can see them even more if you investigate the topic here. The timelines are to some extent different. Still, I am afraid that the wheel is reinvented. What do you think? --Heooo

Yes, it's complex and probably going to get more complex. The plan as I see it is to link everything to everything else, so that it will be possible to trace every single result back to the most basic axioms (that's where I'm bogged down at the moment). If it expands into physics, for example (as well it ought to, there are many mathematical results that are somewhat impenetrable without the application to provide a motivating factor) then so it be. It's bound to expand into all sorts of other areas (just wait till we get round to statistics, that should be jolly) but till it does so we can but watch and wait.

The history timelines you cite are all very well, but one's just names and lines, the other one's just a few milestones here and there. Ours is different from both. I thought the mathematicians list would be a good idea so that the user would have a framework on which to hang the otherwise somewhat bald mathematical results.

As for the books, the idea was that we could cite where certain important results originally came from. I was being taken to task at one point for not quoting my sources from someone whose source I quoted. Rather than copy the details of the publications the things come from over and over again, I thought how about a page where all the important books live. But maybe that's a bit ambitious and unwieldy a task so maybe rethink that bit. But please, please, let's keep the mathematicians page. --Matt Westwood 19:38, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Matt, we still need to get a feel for the Book's section. But in terms of the mathematicians, its not so much a timeline, more of a list of who proved what with the fortunate property that it is in chronological order. --Joe (talk) 20:33, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate your ambitions. The url is then rather misleading. By the word "ProofWiki", I understand that the site is about proofs and related things. I am worried that if you specialise too much in mathematicians and books, then the quality of proofs (main idea of the site) may deteriorate. If you continue to expand topics, rather than enhancing the content by examples and such things, ProofWiki will have a time when it needs seriously consider management issues. How is it possible to control the huge variety of content in one Wiki (on one front page etc)?

I will return to the issue as I have experimented enough with the Google here. My belief is that it may solve the future problem in ProofWiki if it solves the same problem in Math Harbour. Please, do not get too concerned about the topic. You can continue with proofs, while I am investigating the topic. I will report my findings until I do not get the domain www.mathharbour.com propagated. --Heooo

We're limited in all these things by what gets contributed. Not many people are actually doing a great deal to expand the site in any direction. Once we have enough input we'll be able to shake it down and consolidate what we have. Feel free to start adding stuff. Several areas still untouched: stats/prob, mathematical physics, graph theory (barely started) are good areas to attack.

Oh yes, and we have a handful of pages on mathematicians out of nearly 2000 pages of proofs. That's hardly "specialisation" in mathematicians and books --Matt Westwood 05:36, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

You are on the important point. Your challenge is your own ambition. I feel there are enough work on the current topics. Please, try to work smarter, not harder. Google Sites advertises itself by Free wikis. It provides sitemap automatically. Its integration to other Google products is easy. Perhaps, you could use some iFrame thing in Google Sites if MediaWiki is not sufficient provider. At least, it works with "rudimentary" knowlegde. Later, you can extend to Google App, a very cool service to collaborate. My belief is that ProofWiki could have much more users with the right platform. Please, notice that you don't need to start everything from the scratch. You can build on the top of the Mediawiki things. I repeat: "try to work smarter, not harder." ProofWiki is such a great site to lose. Hopefully, you won't burn out due to the platform.

Ps. If you start to use Google App, I want to become a member. It would help in managing things with a separate calendar/chat/gmail etc. --Heooo

I don't understand what you mean when you say "work smarter not harder". I'd disagree in that in order to work smarter you have to work harder. It's hard work sometimes boiling down the essence of several different presentations of a particular result in order to provide something webworthy. It would be easy just to slap up whatever proofs we can find on the web and let them hang there in mid-air, so to speak, but that won't do for this site. We try to work harder to provide something smarter.

It's light relief for me to do a bit of history, so when I'm in the mood I put some stuff about mathematicians up. I work on this site as a hobby, so as to decompress from a stressful and insufficiently intellectually challenging day-job. As such I would prefer to carry on as I am until I've finally achieved the result I'm aiming for (however long that takes). Ars longa, vita brevis. --Matt Westwood 21:42, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

ProofWiki in Search engines?
Let's take an example of the site here. Please, google one of its sentences such as: "From its definition, a group is a monoid, all of whose elements have inverses and thus are invertible."

You cannot find Proofwiki. Have you posted the sitemap? Please, read here and here. I feel the topic to be serious because ProofWiki should be much more popular in the searches. Hopefully, you can get it fixed. --Heooo

Could be because "group", "monoid" etc. are in the source code as internal links and therefore the linker can't pick up the text as is because it's not stored "as is". But I don't know about such things, my computer abilities are rudimentary. --Matt Westwood 05:31, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I understand your concern now. The sitemap -application seems to be outdated. --Heooo

So I think that search engines being able to search ProofWiki efficiently is important. I'm wondering why it's not easy to search for things on ProofWiki via say Google, but it is for Wikipedia which runs the same software. Is it that the crawlers aren't getting to all the pages, or maybe that the material on the pages is not easily searchable? If you have any ideas of how to make the site more searchable let me know. Also, I find that the onsite search engine is not the greatest. I know that you can use a Google search, but I have not bothered to try it yet. If you wanted to try this out, figure out how to do it / make a custom one, I can give you access to a test version of ProofWiki that you can use to develop. --Joe (talk) 12:45, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The test version sounds good. Hopefully, I can use Git, rather than Subversion, because I tend to break things :) I could, of course, start to develop a site based on ProofWiki in Google App, so you can concentrate on proofs. Perhaps, it is the easiest way to do. Then, I will just invite you, when the time comes due. --Heooo

Yes, it is basically a sandbox. It's not Git or Subversion, but just a replica of the site as it was a few weeks ago. Anything you break can just be overwritten with a new copy. In terms of of Google App. I'm not sure how that would work, the MediaWiki software is very versatile and easy to use / develop for. What excatly to you mean by "evelop a site based on ProofWiki in Google App", what advantages would this have over the MediaWiki software? Once you have an idea for how to develop a custom internal Google search engine let me know, email me with a username/pass. you want to use and I'll email you directions on how to connect. --Joe (talk) 13:05, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

You can create your Free account here. You can post your Sitemap here. First, we need to solve the sitemap issue before any "internal" search thing or anythning else. It should be of the top priority. --Heooo

I am working on uploading a sitemap now. --Joe (talk) 22:43, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Well done. Let's see how Google sees ProofWiki in two days :) --Heooo

Google now has a copy of the sitemap, lets see what it does with it!--Joe (talk) 14:49, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Just typed "a group is a monoid, all of whose elements have inverses" into Google and it picked up the very page that Heooo was trying out earlier. So that seems to have worked. (Incidentally it also picked up a book on phonology in an interesting context.) --Matt Westwood 18:45, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

That's awesome! --Joe (talk) 20:19, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Please, google them:

"The unique minimal subfield in a field F is called the prime subfield of F."

Zenzizenzizenzic

Meromorphic Function site:proofwiki.org

No result will occur. The reason is probably that your site seems to have many sitemaps, and you changed permissions of only one. More here.

@Joe: The sitemaps should be chained to indices. Then, you should change their permissions. If you change the permissions one-by-one, the risk is greater for human errors. Can you create me a sandbox to fix the issue? I am very interested how the sitemaps and indices really work. --Heooo

I can give you access, only problem is that right now it is just FTP access. No SSH :(. So I don't think it would be easy to test the sitemaps. Though I do have an extension installed that helps with that. Either way, email me with a user name and pass, and I'll set you up with access to the test site ( and ftp access to the files). --Joe (talk) 19:28, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Google Gadget for ProofWiki?
ProofWiki is now in ToolkitMath. It covers things such as definitions, proofs and unsolved problems. The new gadget should help to use ProofWiki, Math Harbour as well as many other useful sites at Mathematics. You are free to use the Gadget in ProofWiki or better everywhere in Google! Things will be much improved when the problem with sitemaps is corrected. --Heooo

Things you find when you surf
Pointless topology. Yes I know it means "an approach to topology without mentioning points", but it is a term that begs one to add the word "utterly" in front of it.

Then there's sober spaces and Stone duality that you just have to call "stoned duality".

Delightful. --Matt Westwood 22:00, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Further software graphics tools questions
We've discussed tools for rendering graphics on this site before. I've been using GeoGebra for graphs, and geometrical diagrams, and it's excellent.

What I need to do is to be able to draw:
 * Commutative diagrams, which are mentioned on this Wikimedia page but I haven't tried this technique yet because I haven't needed to write any of these yet;
 * Semantic Tableaux, i.e. the sorts of decision trees as described here;
 * Venn diagrams.

I'm searching for some Venn diagram s/w at the moment, on and off, but I have problems with my machine at the moment, it's not running Java, I can't ftp and my unzip program won't work so I have a rebuild to do. This will have to wait till I have more spare time than an hour here and there, should be a couple of weeks time perhaps.

Till then, any info anyone has about how these sorts of graphics can be rendered, drop in here. Thx. --Matt Westwood 21:44, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

T2k
We're up to 1998 proofs as I type. Anyone care to bang in a couple of quick ones? --Matt Westwood 21:16, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Definition Categories
I think we brought this up once before, but we really should decide about categorizing definitions. It seems to me that we should have categories for definitions as subcategories of the definitions category rather than under the relevant proofs category. What do others think? --Cynic (talk) 15:50, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah okay, deliberate decision on my behalf to make the subcategory in question ... The definitions I've been setting up are relevant purely to the specific exposition of propositional calculus that I'm putting up at the moment.

I think we need to keep this subdivision in, but whether we keep it where it is or move it to be a subcategory "Definitions/Propositional Calculus" is a decision that I'm willing to defer. If pressed, I'd suggest that subcategorising definitions off of PropCalc is better than a PropCalc subcateg of definitions - because then the defs are specifically relevant to the exposition of PropCalc that I've got. There are other systems which can also be added, all of which may need their own subcategories. I think. Not quite sure how it will pan out yet. --Matt Westwood 20:31, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

We should probably begin to consider what to do with the definitions. The general category is getting pretty big. I'm not sure if we can actually use proper subpages in the Category namespace...hummm....might end up with categories like. Which itself isn't so bad, but might get confusing when adding that to a more general definition category. One of the listings would be Defintion/Logic. Probably better then the huge list we have now. --Joe (talk) 11:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The trouble with this approach is that it may be difficult for casual users to browse for a particular definition: Entering "Definition:Group" for example, will put them right on the button, but knowing to have to enter "Definition/Group Theory:Group" for example, is more like hard work, specially if some of the categories for some of the definitions may be less intuitively obvious. Unless we always add a redirect. Come to that, maybe we need a redirect from "Group" to "Definition:Group" as it is at the moment. Let me go away and think about this.--Matt Westwood 12:02, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Links to other sites
Wonder whether we want to add links to other relevant sites. I find them all the time. Here's an example (whose educational politics I personally endorse completely). It would be good to have a section on the left of the main page, perhaps, where we could add these links and then legitimately mail those sites with: "Look, we've cited you - now what do you think of us?" --Matt Westwood 07:28, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd endorse that completely. Above or below the news column would be my suggestion for the location. --Cynic (talk) 04:40, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree, any ideas for sites add below, then we'll work on adding then contacting them. --Joe (talk) 15:09, 2 August 2009 (UTC) Add Here: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ http://planetmath.org/ http://www.cut-the-knot.org/ http://www.mathhelpforum.com/math-help/ http://www.mersenne.org/ http://www.seventeenorbust.com/ http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/index.php http://nrich.maths.org/public/ http://plus.maths.org/ http://isquaredmagazine.co.uk/# http://xkcd.com/ http://www.latex-project.org/ http://www.w3.org/Math/Software/ http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html http://www.abstractmath.org/MM/MMIntro.htm http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~r-ash/ http://uob-community.ballarat.edu.au/~smorris/topology.htm http://radicaleye.com/lifepage/ http://wildaboutmath.com/ http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-305259.html ... just a few that I have immediate links to. It goes on for ever out there ...

It's easiest just to add to the list, so I put on one and will add more if I think of them. --Cynic (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2009 (UTC)