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A minor thing, I know, but nonetheless something that someone with a few minutes to spare and a Wikipedia account could easily fix. On Compactly generated space (wikipedia) there is a reference to our page convenient categories of spaces (which is nice). However, it calls us “ncatlab” instead of “nLab”. Anyone able to fix this?
I can, but I do not have that hi sympathy toward changing a correct internet site name, regardless how we feel and talk about it. This kind of hesitation is useful in history of language, as from mistakes we can infer the data about vowel change in spoken Vulgar Latin for example.
I can’t fix this right now, but it brings to mind two related comments, for what it’s worth:
I see a lot of people say “ncatlab” instead of “nlab”, or even “catlab”;
I find the Wikipedia entry nLab a bit skewed, but I am not sure if myself I am supposed to be editing it. If there are names to be named there, it should be something like “Using software provided/written by Jacques Distler, the nLab was created by Urs Schreiber at dd/mm/yy and then eventually administered and now run by Andrew Stacey.”
I’m not prepared to fix this, but I’ve said ncatlab myself on occasion (especially when I want to include personal webs within the scope of the term), as that is what appears in the URL. Could insertion of a parenthetical like “(aka nLab)” be a satisfactory edit?
someone with a few minutes to spare and a Wikipedia account
umm, you don’t need a Wikipedia account to edit most pages, as I just did.
The better question is whether there exists or should exist a more structured way of citing nLab rather than the ad-hoc method I employed:
[[NLab|nLab]] on [http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/convenient+category+of+topological+spaces convenient categories of spaces]
EDIT: I just fixed the typos so this is now
[[NLab|nLab]] on [http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/convenient+category+of+topological+spaces convenient category of topological spaces]
EDIT: Wikipedia does have a nLab template: Template:Nlab as part of Category:Mathematics source templates.
‘Example usage:
will create the following text:
Simplex category in nLab`
Are nLabbers happy with this template? If so it should probably be promoted in various places and someone could go through the ncatlab instances in Wikipedia and make them conform.
On the Wikipedia page nLab I added a hatnote to Template:Nlab/doc about citation creation.
If some nLabbers don’t like the output produced by that template then they should build some consensus on how it should look.
I added a hatnote to Template:Nlab/doc
By the way, on that page it does saysay “ncatlab”.
On another note:
Since you seem to be familiar with the Wikipedia habits: If I go and edit the Wikipedia page nLab would that be acceptable and accepted?
If not, how about if I write some text here along the lines that I think should go into the Wikipedia entry and then find a third party to look at it and see what of it might be usefully included there?
In any case, something should be done, the current state of the entry is a bit weird.
I’m hardly a Wikipedia expert - I’ve edited maybe a 15 articles, mostly minor, though for some I’ve done major rewrites that nobody objected to.
The Wikipedia nLab edit history indicates that the page is non-contentious and there doesn’t seem to be a self-appointed gatekeeper camping there to prevent others from changing it, so probably nobody would sneeze if you did a major rewrite.
If you want nLab feedback before you start changing the Wikipedia page, maybe you could write some nLab articles on the history, coverage, and statistics of the nLab and then base the Wikipedia article on those and of course cite them using the nlab template. (In some areas of Wikipedia “hard nosed” editors will delete information that comes from personal knowledge and demand citations, but I really don’t think you will have that problem there)
At Wikipedia nLab I added a link to Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Nlab which gives a listing of Wikipedia articles that use (“transclude”) the nlab template to cite nLab articles.
Note that the Wikipedia page says:
Stub icon This article about a mathematical publication is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Stub icon This website-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
so it would seem that they want someone to make it better. :-)
WP doesn't like references to WP in article text (unless the article is about online encyclopaedias or something), but they already have a hatnote about the citation template, so I added the link to backlinks there.
I also updated the documentation for WP's {{nlab}} template.
As Rod says, you don't need a WP account to edit most pages (any more than you need an nLab account to edit the nLab); the exceptions are rare. (It's also easy to create a WP account —you don't even have to give them an email address—, although there's a waiting period before this lets you overcome most exceptions.) So edit Wikipedia, everybody!
If you want nLab feedback before you start changing the Wikipedia page, maybe you could write some nLab articles on the history, coverage, and statistics of the nLab and then base the Wikipedia article on those and of course cite them using the nlab template. (In some areas of Wikipedia “hard nosed” editors will delete information that comes from personal knowledge and demand citations, but I really don’t think you will have that problem there)
The most hard-nosed editors won't accept citations from the topic being discussed or written by the person editing the Wikipedia article. Furthermore, creating statistics pages on the nLab just to have something for Wikipedia to cite will outrage them if they catch you. Still, you are quite right that it won't be a problem here. So create these pages for our purposes if they'll be useful; but as for Wikipedia, just edit it, and don't worry about citations until somebody asks for them.
Okay, I have edited and expanded Wikipedia: nLab a bit.
Looks good! I rearranged text and links to be more like a WP article.
Ah, thanks, that was you. I was wondering. Yes, that looks better, thanks!
I just added an “is” in “Andrew Stacey is the curent system administrtor”. Also after “research level notes” I added “and expositions”.
One question: is there a deeper meaning in removing the links to the nForum and the nPublications? Are these not allowed? Otherwise I would suggest to add them back in, at least as footnotes.
One last thing:
do we really need the clause “and operating the nLab steering committee” related to the nForum? If it just means that the nForum is also used for “steering committee”-discussion then I think this is such a minor point that I’d rather not bother the Wikipedia entry with it. (People should feel invited to the nForum, not be turned off by being told that it is a place of boring committee discussions, which it is not really anyway.)
I agree with Urs on that “and operating the nLab steering committee” phrase so I’ve changed it to saying that the preferred way of contacting the steering committee is via the nForum (that’s stated on the nLab meta page so I felt safe putting that in). However, this has generated two references to the same page and I don’t know enough about Wikipedia’s referencing system to fix that.
I also didn’t like the “technically runs the nLab” as I felt it was ambiguous so I changed that sentence.
The links to the main pages of the Lab, the Forum, and the meta Lab are all still there, under External Links. The line about the steering committee operating through the Forum was originally in the steering committee paragraph, but I moved it when I rearranged things, so the Forum wouldn’t be mentioned before it was introduced. I will fix Andrew’s double reference when I get back to a better computer.
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