Comments on a wikipedia article on a Timeline of Category theory
We would like to draw the attention of readers of this list to the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_category_theory_and_related_mathema... We feel that this entry is slanted, unbalanced, and in many cases wrong. It gives credit to work at a given time often presented in the form of vague ambitious titles or conclusions that give no information on the actual theorems the authors either claimed or published at the time. It fails to give credit to many authors for their contribution to the development of category theory and its wider applications, and fails to describe many developments in the area. It also fails to give references, which is usually a requirement for wikipedia articles, and the `discussion' makes it clear that the author(s) of this entry have no intention of so doing, and have not done so since the entry was made in 2009. The anonymity of the entry is also a handicap. One of us has tried to make a correction, but this is using a sticking plaster on too great a problem. The entry fails to come up to the standards of wikipedia in scholarship, accuracy and presentation, is not really possible to correct, and should therefore be removed. We would be grateful for comments on this matter, and for agreement to support this proposal to wikipedia. Ronnie Brown George Janelidze [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
George, Ronnie, et al., I think you are engaged in a valiant, but losing, battle. Tellingly, just today, in my postal mail, I found a copy of the latest issue of The New Yorker, with its mini-biography of Jaron Lanier, and his reported lamentation of Wikipedia as "a triumph of 'intellectual mob rule'". (See "Issue of July 11 & 18, 2011", pp. 46-53, esp. p. 46.) I hold out no hope of seeing much improvement in the parts of Wikipedia that need improving, and I (for one) have now given up trying. Far be it from me to try to dissuade you, though. So: Cheers, and best of luck in any event, -- Fred ------ Original Message ------ Received: Thu, 07 Jul 2011 07:51:00 PM EDT From: Ronnie Brown <ronnie.profbrown@btinternet.com> To: "categories@mta.ca" <categories@mta.ca>, George Janelidze <janelg@telkomsa.net> Subject: categories: Comments on a wikipedia article on a Timeline of Category theory
We would like to draw the attention of readers of this list to the article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_category_theory_and_related_mathema...
We feel that this entry is slanted, unbalanced, and in many cases wrong. It gives credit to work at a given time often presented in the form of vague ambitious titles or conclusions that give no information on the actual theorems the authors either claimed or published at the time. It fails to give credit to many authors for their contribution to the development of category theory and its wider applications, and fails to describe many developments in the area.
It also fails to give references, which is usually a requirement for wikipedia articles, and the `discussion' makes it clear that the author(s) of this entry have no intention of so doing, and have not done so since the entry was made in 2009.
The anonymity of the entry is also a handicap.
One of us has tried to make a correction, but this is using a sticking plaster on too great a problem. The entry fails to come up to the standards of wikipedia in scholarship, accuracy and presentation, is not really possible to correct, and should therefore be removed.
We would be grateful for comments on this matter, and for agreement to support this proposal to wikipedia.
Ronnie Brown
George Janelidze
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
Dear Ronnie and Georges, I had a quick glimpse on the wikipedia timeline of category theory. It can be criticised on many aspects, for example, for its inaccuracies. But it has also a good side. It shows for example that a lot of category theory has been developed by mathmaticians who are not formally category theorists. I suggest you propose an alternative timeline to the categorical community before the destruction of this one. An imperfect timeline is better than none. Best, André -------- Message d'origine-------- De: Ronnie Brown [mailto:ronnie.profbrown@btinternet.com] Date: jeu. 07/07/2011 09:14 À: categories@mta.ca; George Janelidze Objet : categories: Comments on a wikipedia article on a Timeline of Category theory We would like to draw the attention of readers of this list to the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_category_theory_and_related_mathema... We feel that this entry is slanted, unbalanced, and in many cases wrong. It gives credit to work at a given time often presented in the form of vague ambitious titles or conclusions that give no information on the actual theorems the authors either claimed or published at the time. It fails to give credit to many authors for their contribution to the development of category theory and its wider applications, and fails to describe many developments in the area. It also fails to give references, which is usually a requirement for wikipedia articles, and the `discussion' makes it clear that the author(s) of this entry have no intention of so doing, and have not done so since the entry was made in 2009. The anonymity of the entry is also a handicap. One of us has tried to make a correction, but this is using a sticking plaster on too great a problem. The entry fails to come up to the standards of wikipedia in scholarship, accuracy and presentation, is not really possible to correct, and should therefore be removed. We would be grateful for comments on this matter, and for agreement to support this proposal to wikipedia. Ronnie Brown George Janelidze [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
Concerning Fred Linton's comment about Wikipedia entries in general and Andre's comment about the categories timeline entry in prticular: 1) The 11th edition of the Britanica, with entries written by ad signed by Bertrand Russell and other philosophical and intellectual luminaries is justly renowned. The French analogue, the Enclyclopedie Universalis with many of the mathematical articles written by and signed by Jean Dieudonne is equally distinguished (see in particular Dieudonne's entry on analytic number theory). That Wikipedia can not compare is obvious. Nevertheless, in my view, it has its uses. While the entries on etale or crystalline cohomology were not written by Grothendieck, Artin, Deligne or Berthelot, they contain for non-experts some insights and supply references. The idiom "let the buyer beware" is apt here. 2) I agree with Andre. An imperfect timeline can be corrected and improved upon, but it is an initial effort. By definition, any timeline is a skeletal outline and, by its very nature, can never be a definitive historical text concerning whatever it concerns itself with. Let me take a specific example not mentioned in the Wikipedia timeline. In the late 1970's Goresky-Macpherson invented the theory of perverse sheaves. This theory was further developed by many others and in particular, Beilinson-Berstein-Deligne in Asterisque 100. What is "well known" to those who have looked at this text's introduction is that Gabber was to be a fourth author of this monograph, but he refused to let his name appear, because he thought that the other three authors were not sufficiently careful with regard to (technical) foundational questions. As I do not know who created the current Wikipedia timeline, I do not know if this individual knows or cares what a perverse sheaf is. Bill Messing [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
I completely agree with Ronnie and George. . For the history, in 2009 I had exchanges of mails with Rafael Borowiecki (who also used the nickname of Hasse Riemann). I did not know him but he wrote that he was publishing a timeline and sent me a lot of questions about the works of Charles Ehresmann and myself on categories. I took a lot of time to respond to him in details, with corrections to some of his assertions and proposal of new entries. Since then I had no news from him, and most of the information I sent him does not appear in the present timeline. Andree [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
I agree that it very much unbalanced - for example, practically all works on applications of proof theory to categories are absent. I think that in fact the number of contributors worth mentioning is maybe 5 times greater, and the idea to make a table like in this artikle will generate controverse in any case. Best Sergei Soloviev Ronnie Brown wrote:
We would like to draw the attention of readers of this list to the article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_category_theory_and_related_mathema...
We feel that this entry is slanted, unbalanced, and in many cases wrong. It gives credit to work at a given time often presented in the form of vague ambitious titles or conclusions that give no information on the actual theorems the authors either claimed or published at the time. It fails to give credit to many authors for their contribution to the development of category theory and its wider applications, and fails to describe many developments in the area.
It also fails to give references, which is usually a requirement for wikipedia articles, and the `discussion' makes it clear that the author(s) of this entry have no intention of so doing, and have not done so since the entry was made in 2009.
The anonymity of the entry is also a handicap.
One of us has tried to make a correction, but this is using a sticking plaster on too great a problem. The entry fails to come up to the standards of wikipedia in scholarship, accuracy and presentation, is not really possible to correct, and should therefore be removed.
We would be grateful for comments on this matter, and for agreement to support this proposal to wikipedia.
Ronnie Brown
George Janelidze
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
This is the sort of article that Wikipedia necessarily does badly at - as anybody who thinks about it for a few minutes must realize would be the case. An ad hoc committee not in regular communication can often do a very good job of putting together a collection of facts. Connections between facts are harder because they are often not explicitly in the literature - and Wikipedia [correctly - there are other fora for that] discourages "original research" and "opinion". Similarly, balanced emphasis in long articles is difficult because (as intended) no one person writes all of it, and if the person writing about non-normal whiffle theorists has more spare time and enthusiasm than the person writing on quasinormal whiffle theorists, the non-normal group end up with disproportionate coverage. (For obvious reasons, the less-prolific writer would not be popular if [s]he ripped out an inexpert selection of several hours of the other writer's work to correct this!) And omissions are problematic. In a good single-author article, we could conclude that if there was nothing about X's contributions to the field, they were probably quite minor. A Wikipedia article does not permit this deduction. Can't we just accept that Wikipedia has its weaknesses as well as its strengths? For instance, in a paper encyclopedia you would be lucky to find an article on category theory at all; Wikipedia does not have to keep within (say) 15,000 pages for all topics. This article is probably fairly reliable on who _was_ working on what when; it should not be trusted for who was _not_ working on something, or whose work was most important, and may be dubious on priority. To damn it for this is like damning a thesaurus for not being an etymological dictionary - a sign that somebody is contemplating using a specialized tool for the wrong purpose. Robert Dawson [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
Dear Ronnie, and all, In the internet there is no *removing* of any information, as you suggest, at all. The only way to remove anything (ask celebrities PR people) is to add new information that supersedes the undesired one. I suggest applying as many band-aids as are necessary as soon as possible. Believe me, I just spent 3 years working for a search engine... Best regards, Valeria On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 6:14 AM, Ronnie Brown < ronnie.profbrown@btinternet.com> wrote:
We would like to draw the attention of readers of this list to the article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Timeline_of_category_theory_** and_related_mathematics<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_category_theory_and_related_mathematics>
We feel that this entry is slanted, unbalanced, and in many cases wrong. It gives credit to work at a given time often presented in the form of vague ambitious titles or conclusions that give no information on the actual theorems the authors either claimed or published at the time. It fails to give credit to many authors for their contribution to the development of category theory and its wider applications, and fails to describe many developments in the area.
It also fails to give references, which is usually a requirement for wikipedia articles, and the `discussion' makes it clear that the author(s) of this entry have no intention of so doing, and have not done so since the entry was made in 2009.
The anonymity of the entry is also a handicap.
One of us has tried to make a correction, but this is using a sticking plaster on too great a problem. The entry fails to come up to the standards of wikipedia in scholarship, accuracy and presentation, is not really possible to correct, and should therefore be removed.
We would be grateful for comments on this matter, and for agreement to support this proposal to wikipedia.
Ronnie Brown
George Janelidze
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
I was intrigued by the question of who composed this Wikipedia "timeline of category theory". A closer look at the article's history shows that the list of entries was almost entirely created by a single user, "Fotino", between September 2008 and July 2009. There was one other user from Sweden (IP address 83.233.242.29) who contributed a large number of entries in May 2009. That might have just been Fotino having forgotten to log in that day. Only three entries (on Brower, Heyting, and Serre) were later added by other people. Although many other users contributed changes, all of them just edited existing entries in the list. I think that Fotino, whoever he or she is, should be commended for what was obviously a non-trivial amount of work. He or she hasn't contributed anything else to Wikipedia besides this one article, so it must have really been a work of passion. Of course, any such list will be subject to criticism and possible improvement. I completely agree with Ronnie and George that the article would benefit from references, as per Wikipedia's policy. Also, no survey or timeline written by a single person will include everything that should be included, or exclude everything that should be excluded. Ironically, Fotino him- or herself had a similar gripe with another article, "Timeline of mathematics", where he/she wrote on the discussion page in June 2009: "There is no name of grothendieck and hence the list is not serious. [...]. the list has to be removed completely. [...] In my oppinion almost everything in modern mathematics is missing, not only category theory, but also for instance analysis. But the blame can not be put wholely on the creator of the timeline but on all who could include these things but don't. [...]. Yes, i have some entries to include, but i don't have the time." I guess we can deduce from this that Fotino would be very happy for others to contribute to his article. -- Peter Ronnie Brown wrote:
We would like to draw the attention of readers of this list to the article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_category_theory_and_related_mathema...
We feel that this entry is slanted, unbalanced, and in many cases wrong. It gives credit to work at a given time often presented in the form of vague ambitious titles or conclusions that give no information on the actual theorems the authors either claimed or published at the time. It fails to give credit to many authors for their contribution to the development of category theory and its wider applications, and fails to describe many developments in the area.
It also fails to give references, which is usually a requirement for wikipedia articles, and the `discussion' makes it clear that the author(s) of this entry have no intention of so doing, and have not done so since the entry was made in 2009.
The anonymity of the entry is also a handicap.
One of us has tried to make a correction, but this is using a sticking plaster on too great a problem. The entry fails to come up to the standards of wikipedia in scholarship, accuracy and presentation, is not really possible to correct, and should therefore be removed.
We would be grateful for comments on this matter, and for agreement to support this proposal to wikipedia.
Ronnie Brown
George Janelidze
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
I was intrigued by the question of who composed this Wikipedia "timeline of category theory". A closer look at the article's history shows that the list of entries was almost entirely created by a single user, "Fotino", between September 2008 and July 2009. There was one other user from Sweden (IP address 83.233.242.29) who contributed a large number of entries in May 2009. That might have just been Fotino having forgotten to log in that day. Only three entries (on Brower, Heyting, and Serre) were later added by other people. Although many other users contributed changes, all of them just edited existing entries in the list. I think that Fotino, whoever he or she is, should be commended for what was obviously a non-trivial amount of work. He or she hasn't contributed anything else to Wikipedia besides this one article, so it must have really been a work of passion. Of course, any such list will be subject to criticism and possible improvement. I completely agree with Ronnie and George that the article would benefit from references, as per Wikipedia's policy. Also, no survey or timeline written by a single person will include everything that should be included, or exclude everything that should be excluded. Ironically, Fotino him- or herself had a similar gripe with another article, "Timeline of mathematics", where he/she wrote on the discussion page in June 2009: "There is no name of grothendieck and hence the list is not serious. [...]. the list has to be removed completely. [...] In my oppinion almost everything in modern mathematics is missing, not only category theory, but also for instance analysis. But the blame can not be put wholely on the creator of the timeline but on all who could include these things but don't. [...]. Yes, i have some entries to include, but i don't have the time." I guess we can deduce from this that Fotino would be very happy for others to contribute to his article. -- Peter Ronnie Brown wrote:
We would like to draw the attention of readers of this list to the article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_category_theory_and_related_mathema...
We feel that this entry is slanted, unbalanced, and in many cases wrong. It gives credit to work at a given time often presented in the form of vague ambitious titles or conclusions that give no information on the actual theorems the authors either claimed or published at the time. It fails to give credit to many authors for their contribution to the development of category theory and its wider applications, and fails to describe many developments in the area.
It also fails to give references, which is usually a requirement for wikipedia articles, and the `discussion' makes it clear that the author(s) of this entry have no intention of so doing, and have not done so since the entry was made in 2009.
The anonymity of the entry is also a handicap.
One of us has tried to make a correction, but this is using a sticking plaster on too great a problem. The entry fails to come up to the standards of wikipedia in scholarship, accuracy and presentation, is not really possible to correct, and should therefore be removed.
We would be grateful for comments on this matter, and for agreement to support this proposal to wikipedia.
Ronnie Brown
George Janelidze
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
Peter Selinger wrote in part:
I was intrigued by the question of who composed this Wikipedia "timeline of category theory". A closer look at the article's history shows that the list of entries was almost entirely created by a single user, "Fotino", between September 2008 and July 2009.
Fotino is Rafael Borowiecki, who also contributed the timeline to the nLab: http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Timeline+of+category+theory+and+related+mathema... There it has received some edits and criticism, but was mostly ignored, and in fact has not yet had the wiki-syntax fully converted yet. --Toby
Peter Selinger wrote in part:
I was intrigued by the question of who composed this Wikipedia "timeline of category theory". A closer look at the article's history shows that the list of entries was almost entirely created by a single user, "Fotino", between September 2008 and July 2009.
Fotino is Rafael Borowiecki, who also contributed the timeline to the nLab: http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Timeline+of+category+theory+and+related+mathema... There it has received some edits and criticism, but was mostly ignored, and in fact has not yet had the wiki-syntax fully converted yet. --Toby [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
Very nicely done! All the best, Tom
Before the net and wikipedia the only people which had the possibility of a large audience where "the authorities", prestigious people on their field. We all were bounded by their view of things. Now everybody interested have the same chance to expose his (or hers) own version of a subject. Both situations have their positive and negative aspects. I much prefer how thing are now. No censorship to wikipedia ! [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
participants (13)
-
Andree Ehresmann -
Eduardo J. Dubuc -
Fred E.J. Linton -
Joyal, André -
Messing -
Robert Dawson -
Ronnie Brown -
selinger -
selinger＠mathstat.dal.ca -
Sergei SOLOVIEV -
Toby Bartels -
Tom Leinster -
Valeria de Paiva