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There is already homotopy coproduct.
Perhaps we should do a mass deletion of articles that were only edited by “Anonymouse”?
It would be easy to create a list of such articles (I did something similar in the past), but is there a way to execute mass deletion without creating hundreds of new “empty …” articles?
I created this article because coproduct in an (infinity,1)-category didn’t link anywhere prior to the creation of this article, while (∞,1)-coproduct redirected to (∞,1)-limit
Anonymouse
I wasn’t aware of the existence of articles like homotopy pullback, homotopy pushout, homotopy product, homotopy coproduct, etc; I was basing these newly created articles off the already existing articles (infinity,1)-pullback and (infinity,1)-pushout.
Anonymouse
Like, if we are going to merge this article into the homotopy coproduct article, then why did Urs Schreiber create (infinity,1)-pullback in 2010 after creating homotopy pullback in 2009?
Anonymouse
Another example, why do we have separate articles homotopy limit and (∞,1)-limit?
Anonymouse
And we find the answer in ((∞,1)-limit:
The notion of homotopy limit, which exists for model categories and in particular for simplicial model categories and in fact in all plain Kan complex-enriched categories – as described in more detail at homotopy Kan extension – is supposed to be a model for (∞,1)-categorical limits.
I think we should still have separate articles for homotopy coproduct and (infinity,1)-coproduct, since the former is only for model categories. The latter is a more general concept, especially with formal (infinity,1)-category theory where a limit in an (∞,1)-category is not a homotopy limit in a model category.
Anonymouse
Also, to Dmitri Pavlov, do you know how many category: people pages I have created on the nLab to link the authors of published references in articles? If you delete all those articles, many of those references will end up with authors that link nowhere.
Take the model theorist James Hanson for example, a page which I am the only editor of. Links to this page appear via his authored papers in the references of countable set, Brouwer’s continuity principle, Kreisel-Lacombe-Shoenfield-Tseitin theorem, Lebesgue measure, large cardinal axiom, etc…
Anonymouse
On the positive side, this is the first time that you react to communication towards you.
Please stop flooding the nLab with pointless entries. Otherwise Dmitri is right, and mass deletion is our only option.
Adding an actual reference for (infinity,1)-coproducts:
The article homotopy coproduct has zero references.
Anonymouse
Dmitri, re #3: The technical team with server-access, can do proper deletions of entries. If problems with the mouse persist, I’ll speak to them about it.
Added another reference specifically for the notion of a “coproduct in an (∞,1)-category”, not a “homotopy coproduct in a model category”
Anonymouse
Judging by the nForum thread on the now titled indexed heterogeneous identity type article, this Anonymouse figure seems to be finally reading the nForum and listening to people on the nForum. Only two years after the initial discussion happened. Now if they had started listening to us two years ago maybe the nLab could have been spared their misunderstanding of the purpose of the nLab and mass creation of unreferenced original research articles.
I have a message to “Anonymouse”: It’s not 2009 anymore. I know in the early days of the nLab there was a lot of original research and a lot of people treating the nLab as their own personal research notebook, but times have changed and we have higher standards for the nLab today. Stop treating the nLab as your personal notebook and start sourcing everything that you put on the nLab. Every new article that you create should have at least one reference in it.
Articles like Conway semiring are good for the nLab, because they are sourced from existing literature. Articles like skeletal type or gaunt type aren’t, because they don’t appear in the existing literature.
If you want to do your own original research, I would suggest for you to write it up in a paper and submit it to the arXiv or a mathematics journal. Then we can link to your published paper from the nLab. I’m sure the type theory journals or homotopy theory journals would love to see an article about what it means for a simplicial object / type to be skeletal or gaunt. But that material otherwise doesn’t belong on the nLab.
As an aside, I also disagree with Urs Schreiber’s What is… the nLab (schreiber) these days describing the nLab as a “lab notebook” and I think that description may have contributed to Anonymouse’s behaviour. I used to be more sympathetic towards Urs Schreiber’s position but behaviour by people like Anonymouse have over the years moved my beliefs more towards Todd Trimble’s views on requiring sourcing and banning original research on the nLab.
I suppose, in principle, the use and implementation of personal webs could be rethought at some point. But in this case, the desire to remain anonymous even beyond the use of a nom de plume just complicates things further.
In this case, since most of Anonymouse’s original research seems to be on homotopy type theory adjacent subjects, we can also just tell them to move their original research to the now depreciated homotopy type theory personal web, which is still editable by any anonymous user and largely disconnected from the main nLab. Any edits made to that wiki won’t appear on the nForum either, so we won’t know and probably won’t care what goes on over there. So long as the HomePage for the personal web doesn’t change from what it currently looks like right now, other people headed to the personal web from the Homotopy Type Theory website will still see that it is depreciated and will head to the main nLab.
Alternatively, if we do end up taking this route and telling Anonymouse to head over there, we can mention on the HomePage there that the homotopy type theory personal web has been repurposed as the personal web for an anonymous nLab editor to speculate on homotopy type theory adjacent subjects.
They can also go and start their own wiki / reference / website themselves, not affiliated with the nLab, and put whatever they want on there.
I still would like to see Anonymouse go and publish their work in an actual journal. They can use a pseudonym if they have to; the mathematicians behind Nicolas Bourbaki did so too. Then their work will be of benefit to the wider mathematical community who can build upon their work with proper citations. There are some interesting things being written about that would go to waste if they just end up sitting on a personal web / website that nobody else accesses. But the material doesn’t belong on the nLab regardless until it gets published.
A lab notebook is supposed to document “hypotheses, experiments and initial analysis or interpretation of these experiments”.
I think it is fair to observe that in practice the nLab hasn’t functioned in this manner for a while.
A somewhat formal transition happened when we started to systematically remove query boxes from the nLab articles. A query box with questions, comments, discussions, etc., is certainly appropriate for a lab notebook, but we no longer deem such query boxes appropriate for the nLab, only for the nForum.
Looking at the list of entry types at What is… the nLab, which presumably reflects the current vision of what the nLab should be, only the last item “intellectual exotica: Science of Logic, universal exceptionalism, …” has entries (Science of Logic) that unambiguously qualify as original research that is not sourced (in its original part, that is) in articles or books. All the other types of entries, including “monograph-size pages, eg. geometry of physics…” are very well-sourced in the existing literature.
So perhaps it is time to acknowledge this existing state of affairs more formally?
The current description on top of What is… the nLab says “A wiki lab notebook for reference and research notes in mathematics and physics.”
Perhaps something like “A wiki for research in mathematics and physics, with an encyclopedic and expository component.” would do the job?
I wasn’t even aware that there is something original in the Anonymouse contributions, they look like somebody is copying definitions from some type theory literature.
The most important thing is that every entry on the nLab makes clear what the status of it’s content is. Any result should come with a reference or a proof, and a definition should come with a reference or a discussion that motivates/justifies it.
So all rodent entries that don’t make clear they introduce speculation ought to be adjusted just for that. I’ll start with gaunt type and skeletal type. If you know more, please lend a hand.
we can also just tell them to move their original research
Please do. Everyone who sees the problem should speak out.
That’s a functionality of the site.
On query boxes in entries:
These were deprecated not to stop the discussions they carried, but on the contrary, to have these discussions in a more appropriate place and format, namely here in a forum.
Better yet we’d have a “talk” page for each entry, but with our software not supporting this, the next best thing is to have the discussions here.
I wasn’t even aware that there is something original in the Anonymouse contributions, they look like somebody is copying definitions from some type theory literature.
By the discussion on propositional resizing a few weeks ago, adding original research to the nLab seems to be a common behaviour by Anonymouse. The deletion of Anonymouse’s original research by Max New demonstrates that the nLab has different standards for original research today compared to the past, because such material would have just been left on the page a decade ago.
Okay, maybe everyone give a vote:
Should we mass-delete all entries created by the anonymous rodent?
Or should we flag all the suspecious entries, as I just did with gaunt type?
Personally I think we should just flag the suspicious entries, and / or delete them whenever we encounter them. I rather we don’t get rid of this article and articles like ?-modality or zero-dimensional ring or Kleene star algebra which are about actually existing mathematical concepts in the literature, and would end up getting deleted with a mass deletion.
The problem for me isn’t about the mass creation of articles per se, but rather about the insertion of original research in articles and the creation of articles about topics that aren’t in the existing literature. Adding original research to already existing articles about topics in the mathematics literature is equally as bad, but as propositional resizing shows it can be hard to notice, and mass deletions of articles won’t help solve that issue.
At a minimum, all existing original research should be marked in the same way as in approximate integral domain or the “Strict preorders” section in Dedekind completion, and then we can decide on a case by case basis whether the material can stay on the nLab or should be removed. And this shouldn’t be restricted to the original research by Anonymouse either, we should be consistent and do the same for any other old original research from other nLab editors from a decade ago.
So long as Anonymouse refrains from posting their original research on the nLab from here on out and spamming the nLab with new articles (Urs Schreiber’s concern), I don’t think we need to resort to the nuclear option. I hope they listen to us and implement our suggestions, now that we finally have their attention.
Sounds good!
But I’d still like to hear from others, too.
Flagging suspicious entries should be fine for now. But this should be revisited if flagging starts becoming a whole recurrent task on its own, either because this particular user ramps up their contributions or because other anonymous users follow by example.
Re #24: Yes, exactly. It is no longer acceptable to add discussions and other informal “lab notebook” material to the nLab pages proper, and all such material should now be posted to the nForum. I wasn’t trying to say that we shouldn’t have discussions, only that the nForum is now the only possible location for them.
It appears that Anonymouse added proper references to at least some of the articles. I think we should request that sources be added to all the other articles, and those that remain unsourced after a few months should be deleted.
For what it’s worth, I vote against adding boxed warnings. Wikipedia’s experience shows that such boxed warnings will remain on the pages for many years, even though Wikipedia has many more editors than we do. It seems to that if Anonymouse cannot or will not add sources to some of the more esoteric articles (excluding “category: people” pages and the like), then nobody else will.
Fine with me. The alternative to flagging rodent edits with warnings is to delete them.
I added a little note to the HomePage asking people to stop adding original research and to source their additions to the nLab:
Re #34: Depreciated (lessened in price or estimated value) or deprecated (declared obsolescent)?
Also, from the same section:
original material can be found in abundance, as can notes from evolving research.
is no longer true, so should probably be removed.
I meant the latter (i.e. obsoleted).
I’ve made some edits to the note on the HomePage based on feedback from you and from Urs Schreiber:
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