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11 as I write this.
Zoran has expressed concerns that we are overcounting fluff such as blank pages, duplicate history, etc. Although this is relatively small portion of the total, it does affect milestones. By my reckoning, we currently have 23 empty pages, 316 pages of duplicate edit history, 36 pages of SVGs meant for inclusion into other pages, 81 pages of contents meant for inclusion into other pages, 36 tables meant for inclusion into other pages, and 47 meta pages without mathematical (or physical or philosophical) content. There are also hundreds of biography pages, some of which are essentially just user pages for contributors, but I have not attempted to separate those out and count them.
That's rather more duplicate edit history than I expected.
Sure, that’s why I keep speaking of “nominal” count.
But it doesn’t matter, does it. It’s just a number with lots of zeros to entertain us, not anything profound. We also celebrated the year 2000 although the counting is probably off by a few years. But it doesn’t matter. The point is to have a cause for celebration, not the accuracy.
And just as with status bars on a computer: while it is unclear what exactly it actually counts, the point is that it does give a rough idea of how things are progressing.
We also celebrated the year 2000 although the counting is probably off by a few years.
It is not off, it counts from certain arbitrary date in Roman History. Of course, if you mean the “Christ” reference nobody knows what is historically true about that legend, and the bible contradicts history at many places including the mixing the histories of two Herods.
And same for the nLab entry counting. It’s not off, it just counts, very precisely but in arbitrary units from an arbitrary point! :-)
Yes, but it would be nice to say that we have so many and so many contentfull web pages. I mean to recruit new contributors and alike. Though most of people whom I know who tried Lab and do not contribute or even do not much use is not from the lack of content but from comprehensibility problem. A student told me few days ago that she does not look any more as every definition has too many too advanced terms in it, so one would need lots of time to unwind it to something traditionally comprehensible.
A student told me few days ago that she does not look any more as every definition has too many too advanced terms in it, so one would need lots of time to unwind it to something traditionally comprehensible.
We really should start out with comprehensible definitions and then add in the advanced perspective. People often write pages (and I do too) as if taking the usual definition for granted and then noting another approach, but it is better to recap the usual version first. It's just a matter of time and interest.
Zoran, say that we have over 7000 contentful pages; this is probably true. Or just say that we have thousands of contentful pages; this is certainly true.
I have concerns parallel to Toby’s 7. above. Usually entries settle down into a very good stable state after a time with the introduction and ideas sections clearly expository but this does not always happen. Ronnie loves to tell of the introduction to a book on ‘second year analysis’ which started by saying that the book was a second course in analysis and contained all the usual material for such a course. It never got around to saying why such material was interesting, useful, etc. and certainly did not try to convince a student that it was going to ask and answer useful questions that might arise in a first analysis course. (I am sure that I am missing something here, but you get the point, I hope.) As Toby says: it is a matter of time and interest as well.
What would be really good were if we got the Lab to the point that the student who feels the exposition suitable for him or her is missing goes to learn it elsewhere and then comes back and adds the discussion that he would have like to have seen, for the benefit of students after him.
Yes, it would, but it is not realistic to expect that those who have hard time to find convenience in using Lab, that those will raise their usage to even higher level (time-wise, usage-wise, contributor-wise and so on). Especially when they feel frustrated with the abstraction threshold level which seem to be above their head and which seem to prove them to be incompetent to intertwine their own material.
You seem to be talking about students that you are personally related to. In that case I would suggest: type your lecture notes for them into the Lab!
I have written a fair bit of lecture note material into the Lab. There is for instance material on homological algebra on the Lab worth maybe half a standard textbook, with all the standard, non-nPOV material. These were simply the lecture notes that I would have written anyway, broken up into Lab entries.
If you all (for whoever “you all” is) develop a similar habit, the Lab will quickly fill with lots of material for students.
Urs, I can’t do more than I do; in fact I spend already too much time for things which are not main problems I should deal with, including far more involvement in Lab than I can actually afford.
It’s not supposed to be extra work. If you prepare lecture notes for your student next time, just type them into the nLab.
It’s not that easy. I have lots of notes which might be good to put on the nLab, but that would involve expanding the many macros I use and translating all the formatting…
You seem to be talking about students that you are personally related to. In that case I would suggest: type your lecture notes for them into the nLab!
Urs, I am not refering my students to the nLab to learn the stuff from my lectures, I am refering to the nLab to LOOKUP the notions for the background for their projects, diploma thesis, background of what I did NOT cover in my lectures and so on, If I would need lecture notes for some area of math I would refer them to a book on that area, it is more complete than nLab. But on daily basis they need to look up various notions like a student who is now doing a seminar on the model structure for Oka principle reads a difficult paper of Larusson which refers to various notions which are not explained in that paper. Or a student who is doing a homework in complex geometry needs some notions from differential forms and wants to look up. I have an option to give them new and new books and papers for each notion what is overwhelming. If I tell them read and understand the nlab on this it is also overwhelming. ,
As far as my own lecture material I have strong preferences and I wish to do it my way, so there I am not sending them to nLab even if it were less nPOV. I do put some material online, much in Croatian for that, but this is another issue. The main issue is that to navigate through nLab they find it scary. I find it useful, but it is hard to convince somebody who is not that widely scoped as we are.
Anything that makes the nLab more useful to more people is good. But if the nLab is only useful for ‘widely scoped’ people like us, then it still serves a purpose.
Zhen Lin, if your notes are in LaTeX then I may be able to help with the translating. If you would be willing to send me a sample then I’ll have a look.
Zhen Lin, if your notes are in LaTeX then I may be able to help with the translating. If you would be willing to send me a sample then I’ll have a look.
Ah, I forgot about your conversion script. Sure, I’m happy to try that. Here is a document that I will be submitting to the arXiv soon (but I keep finding typos).
@Zhen - nice paper!
Zhen, that’s a lot of custom macros! My class choked quite heavily on that file.
Zoran,
I think I don’t understand what we are discussing then. If you spend time posting about deficiencies of the nLab here then I assume you are inclined to do something about it. But now you sound a bit like you are just complaining that the world is not a more perfect place from the get go. If you see what I mean.
There are thousands of deficiencies of the nLab. Some entries have too little introduction, some have too little sophisticated substance, some don’t even exist, some exist but are weird and need to be fixed, and so forth. There is only one way that will change: if step by step people pick one little aspect a time of it and work on it.
I always pick those aspects that I am currently concerned with in my research anyway. This way I never waste any time “just editing the nLab”. I always do what I would do anyway, only that I don’t take notes on my personal harddrive but right into the Lab. If more people develop that habit, the Lab will asymptote to perfection a tad more quickly.
Urs, realistic awareness of what is going on (why/when people are not contributing and so on) is very important for the success and expansion of the Lab and neglecting the issue under the carpet of “imperfection of the world” is not going to help. In 6 I was clearly talking about what is the problem in recruiting contributors, and then you start throwing out “solutions” which do not address the issue. Often there is a page which has classical intro to get revamped after few months into high brow point of view from very start.
For example, I do not see why would the entry on Hopf algebras have an entire Tannaka table in the middle of the text, instead of a link to specialized entry on that aspect (which is about more general things than Hopf algebras). I think Hopf algebra entry should be about Hopf algebras, and the Tannaka there should be covered in more details for p[recisely that case, not for various generalizations (I like very much your effort on Tannaka duality, but it should not take over normal entries, esp. when redundant). Besides, it should be a true statement, when discussing a concrete definition/notion (for that one needs to impose some finiteness condition!). Once I see it in that state I loose the wish to contribute and to reopen a page in my own nLab, because it looses the focus. For general landscape of the field there is a top reference page called gebra, which I anounced more than once. This is just to raise your awareness, not a criticism of your wonderful work.
Urs, realistic awareness of what is going on (why/when people are not contributing and so on) is very important for the success and expansion of the Lab and neglecting the issue under the carpet of “imperfection of the world” is not going to help. In 6 I was clearly talking about what is the problem in recruiting contributors, and then you start throwing out “solutions” which do not address the issue. Often there is a page which has classical intro to get revamped after few months into high brow point of view from very start.
For example, I do not see why would the entry on Hopf algebras have an entire Tannaka table in the middle of the text, instead of a link to specialized entry on that aspect (which is about more general things than Hopf algebras). I think Hopf algebra entry should be about Hopf algebras, and the Tannaka there should be covered in more details for precisely that case, not for various generalizations (I like very much your effort on Tannaka duality, but it should not take over normal entries, esp. when redundant). Besides, it should be a true statement, when discussing a concrete definition/notion (for that one needs to impose some finiteness condition!). Once I see it in that state I loose the wish to contribute and to reopen a page in my own nLab, because it looses the focus. For general landscape of the field there is a top reference page called gebra, which I anounced more than once. This is just to raise your awareness, not a criticism of your wonderful work.
I assume you are inclined to do something about it
Right, I wrote several hundreds of entries on standard aspects of mathematics to balance and continue with this.
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