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The discussion on our entry on Wikipedia has brought to the fore of my mind something that’s been brewing for a while. It’s also looking ahead slightly to our 5th birthday.
I’ve sometimes felt that I’d like to write an article explaining the nLab from the inside. We have some things scattered here, there, and everywhere on this but somehow it still seems that folk don’t get it.
So, my first question: would anyone like to shoot this idea down in flames?
If not, there are various ways such an article could be written. It could be a single author, it could be a single author but with contributions from others, or it could be a proper multi-author.
So, my second question: would anyone be interested in contributing at some significant level? I put “significant” there as I’d hope that if it did get written then lots here would read it and comment on it to help improve it. So I don’t mean that level of contribution.
(Lastly, the title of this discussion is an obvious allusion to the AMS Notices column “What is …”. I haven’t been approached by them, nor have I approached them.)
I also think that it might be good to write something like this.
Myself, I don’t quite have the leisure to contribute much at the moment. But I’d be interested in seeing what others would write.
I would be interested; but also more interested in (contributing to) a bit more technical paper on the workings of Lab. And the latter, as it would have emphasis on technical issues in building mathematical knowledge databases, to have it in parallel to some other online projects (like the one where I have shortly participated – on Croatian mathematical terminology).
Sounds great, but I don’t think that I could put significant effort into it until at least late August, if then.
Toby, I think that quality is more important than urgency and late August is not that late and you are so knowledgeable about inner workings not only of Lab but also of many related issues and efforts (from unicode and character tables to TeX variants and wikipedia and internet code, privacy and open access), that it would be really nice having your contribution, in my opinion.
I’d enjoy to hear what Toby thinks the nLab is, but I think for it to be interesting, it should contain none of the technical terms in the line
unicode and character tables to TeX variants and wikipedia and internet code, privacy and open access
If you see what I mean.
Urs, I was proposing more than one article, one technical which is of my interest and another for propaganda. But even for propaganda it is good to have a person behind it who knows the technical aspects mentioned, even if not mentioning them explicitly, but having those in mind to have the right emphasis on proportions and issues. The term “interesting” here as you use it is not entirely appropriate, as interesting is an audience dependent and of course, technical issues for some of us are more interesting than the propaganda.
By internet code I meant wiki, forum etc. ethiquette, not any kind of computer code. Social code.
This sounds like a nice idea, but I won’t have the time to contribute “significantly” in the near future.
If somebody would remind me in late August, then I’ll be more likely to contribute. (Reviving this thread with a note to me would probably suffice as a reminder.)
What is … the nLab?
An experiment in the online expression of a research program, higher category theory, as it is being worked out, combining elements of an encyclopaedia with others of a laboratory notebook. It is a multi-user facility, and many have contributed to it, but at present it is predominantly driven by the research of one person.
Further question
What could the nLab be?
10 I see lots of buzzwords and little explanation of what it means. Laboratory notebook ? For me a lab notebook would be some scratch tables with data, to start with (and I tought physics instructory lab for several years)…I also do not think it is experiment. I think Urs and others have quite a use and purpose and picture what they want and we certainly would not spend that much time for an experiment!
I didn’t write that for the penetrating accuracy of the first sentence, but to provoke reflection on the second.
I commonly meet people who express regret that the Cafe went into decline. I tell them there was a transfer of energy over here. Still, I rather doubt many people will follow day to day changes here, and without that you get little sense of a living research program. We used to have the likes of Jacob Lurie, Matthew Emerton, James Borger, and David Ben-Zvi joining in the conversation.
I do not think the Café went into decline. There is a lot going on there. it, of course, changed when John put more of his energies into Azimuth, but it is still very active.
I agree with Zoran that the terminology of a lab book does not give the right idea. I sometimes use it as a place to summarise what I have been looking at recently, or sometimes when I see something that may be of use to another nLabber, I try to start up some pages (e.g. when we got going on some pages on Modal Logic). It also has a ‘thinking aloud’ aspect that is very important. The topics in the limelight of the nLab change and some of the people who used to add in things here are now working on topics that are not developed enough here, so they think that to write a substantial amount so as to get to a good place for really new material will take a lot of time…. so they do not contribute.
As to being centred on a few topics of interest to one person, that is not really the case. There has been a good deal of ’cohesive’ stuff, but also HoTT, and constructive stuff added. My own current work involves profinite homotopy but I cannot put too much of it up as I am going back over old ideas in the development so am using the Lab instead of contributing to it that much. (That is why I keep on correcting typos!) When I see more clearly what to write, I mean to add stuff on prohomotopy and profinite homotopy. The task of filling in where there are gaps is very daunting, and I promise myself to do more on several topics, thinking aloud in the manner that I mentioned above.
Finally if people complain that the Café s not as good as it was, or that the nLab is …, then they should do something about it and contribute new material. Academic constraints are against writing a lot on the nLab, since published papers are used for promotion etc., but they can add small amounts and/or come here and discuss changes that might be a good thing in their opinion.
I commonly meet people who express regret that the Cafe went into decline.
That’s too bad. I feel, like Tim, that it’s still sometimes quite active, but I also think this may be a case of perception equals reality – if people think the Cafe is in decline, then they won’t visit as much, and it will therefore be less interesting.
I do not think the Café went into decline.
I second that.
I also think this may be a case of perception
As well.
As to being centred on a few topics of interest to one person
Urs’s interest is quite wide and he found Lab collaborators which were along those at the beggining at least. But it is far oversimplification. For example, the emphasis on the foundational issues like intutionistic logic, freeing things from axiom of choice etc. was much under the influence of Toby and few other people at start. A couple of years later Urs became very interested in semantics of topoi and he got more focused on that what was at the beginning peripheral to him. Mike in the meantime became a world expert in HoTT what fit with this and they made a research on that. But the initial effort of Toby Bartels has partly made this possible. Similarly I was putting together many entries on algebraic and noncommutative geometry, being almost sole in that for a while and then about a year ago a number of people including Urs started putting even more substantial material there. It is in waves and driven in different phases by ever-changing interests of different people.
Some preliminary thoughts:
Urs, I love that last sentence!
I love all of it.
Okay, thanks for the feedback. So maybe then we should move it to the main web, polish/expand a bit more, and then link to it from the Home page?
I like it too!
Sounds good to me, Urs.
Returning to Andrew’s #1:
but somehow it still seems that folk don’t get it
I can’t help but wonder if some of the same folks don’t get it because they don’t fully appreciate the power and economy of looking at things categorically. (Surely such preachiness would rub the same folk the wrong way. Sorry about that. Maybe it would be better for me to ask: do such folk ever articulate their feelings about the nLab?)
My own feeling about the nLab is that it could be so much more in terms of a very powerful learning tool. In my very slow way, my ever-present goal here is to make mathematics and especially mathematical arguments as clear and simple to myself as I possibly can [via category theory, of course], and at length create a permanent home for them here. I have a feeling that this overarching desire colors my general usage and activity here a little differently from others’, particularly in terms of the level of detailed argumentation I want to make available (which makes it very different from your usual encyclopedia).
Oh, there’s one little thing that occurred to me as I read Urs’s “stop duplicating answers”. Of course I agree with him, and I suspect the software of MO (to name a famous example) isn’t quite up to the task of stemming the flow of answer duplication. But the “little thing” is that I think a little duplication (to make nLab pages self-contained) is alright. I at any rate find it difficult to absorb ideas by constantly hop-scotching over many links, written by different people with different moods and different trains of thought at the time of writing. (But maybe this is a conversation to be had elsewhere.)
re #21:
I can’t help but wonder if some of the same folks don’t get it because they don’t fully appreciate the power and economy of looking at things categorically. (Surely such preachiness would rub the same folk the wrong way. Sorry about that. Maybe it would be better for me to ask: do such folk ever articulate their feelings about the nLab?)
I get lots of positive feedback from people reading the Lab. I think what Andrew had in mind was rather people contributing to the nLab. To see the issue here, one does not have to look far. There are effectively order of active contributors here, in the low range. Already among our very steering committee are members who contribute much more to MO and G+ etc. Something is in the way, clearly, for better or worse.
My own feeling about the nLab is that it could be so much more in terms of a very powerful learning tool.
Yes!
re #22:
But the “little thing” is that I think a little duplication (to make nLab pages self-contained) is alright.
Sure, a little chaos is unavoidable. But the chaos produced say on MO when one wants to look up things and then has to chase through the tiny and hidden comment boxes and the “this was already discussed over here”-links can certainly be reduced a good bit. By taking a minute to put things down stably and in context.
Already among our very steering committee are members who contribute much more to MO and G+ etc. Something is in the way, clearly, for better or worse.
I was curious where I stood in this, and so began counting the number of nLab articles I’ve worked on. I got tired of this after a while, but I think it’s certainly over four hundred; the number of MO answers I’ve given is a little over three hundred. Surely there are many edits I’ve made on nLab articles that are rather minor, but I think my general tendency is not to make minor edits or write stubby articles, but to edit repeatedly at things and keep on adding in lots of detail, whereas just about every answer I give on MO is a one-off effort, not something I come back to and edit much, once written. (Right now I’m preparing stuff on one of my personal webs which will eventually migrated to the nLab, on matters related to compacta, ultrafilters, relational algebras in the sense of Barr, and whatnot.)
Obviously my activity here is completely dwarfed by yours, Urs. For me it’s mainly a matter of available time and personal habits (keeping in mind too my relative isolation from the greater world of research and academe) – I prefer have blocks of time to work on articles at leisure, and not just try to jot down something quickly between errands and appointments.
With regard to general authors, I’m not convinced there’s anything really wrong or that there’s something that people “aren’t getting”. As a general rule, people will contribute in proportion to how much they will personally get out of the effort, whether it be savings of personal time or the rewards of solidifying understanding by writing something out. (I personally get a lot out of trying to create something I feel is worthy of the nLab.) It’s not likely they will contribute in an utterly selfless spirit just for the abstract good of the internet.
Maybe a “problem” is that people are not quite sure who the audience is when writing on the nLab. (My own sense of this is pretty vague.) A crucial difference between the nLab and MO is that people have a better sense of who they’re interacting with on MO; there’s more dialogue between people. (Which leads me to add that “bathe the ego with points and badges” is probably a bit unfair, even if it’s funny and carries at least some truth. It’s the interaction which is probably more crucial.)
(Incidentally, I find myself enjoying MO much less since the move to 2.0, for reasons I can’t quite identify, but connected with a vague sense of “different crowd”.)
There are effectively order of 10 0 active contributors here, in the low range. Already among our very steering committee are members who contribute much more to MO and G+ etc.
I think these two sentences are making very different points. One is about the number of active contributors, the other is about how much those contributors contribute. I wrote a lot on the nLab at one point, but these days I don’t do so much any more, only occasionally when the itch strikes me — most often when I’m learning about something fairly new to me, such as when refereeing a paper or listening to a talk at a conference. Of course, most people don’t have the time or energy to write nearly as much as Urs does (or even as much as Todd does, or as much as I did when I was writing a lot). I would rather have a lot of low-level contributors, who write a page here and there and correct mistakes in those they read as part of their day-to-day research, than a smaller number of high-level contributors (not that there is anything wrong with having high-level contributors, of course).
A crucial difference between the nLab and MO is that people have a better sense of who they’re interacting with on MO
It’s interesting that you say that, because I don’t feel that way, and the reason is the nForum. At one point we discussed possibly making the connection between the lab and the forum more obvious, e.g. adding prominent links to forum discussions (like wikipedia “talk pages”) on every nLab page. We could even potentially have a sidebar on the nLab listing “recent edits” with links to the corresponding forum announcements/discussions. I wonder whether this would make casual readers and potential editors more aware of the community behind the nLab and thus more interested in contributing?
The thing is, there aren’t many people who are regular on the nForum either – besides you guys and a few others, I’m not sure who is reading stuff I (or anyone else) puts down.
This reminds me as well of another nForum discussion we had, where the topic came up on giving oral presentations. A number of people were chiming in (I recall myself, Toby, Zoran, and you Mike, and there were likely others), and at some point Mike you said that the conversation we were having felt curious, because you had never actually seen any of your interlocutors in action, as it were. Similarly, I have some sense of who the regulars are, but being based almost entirely on what appears here in print, it’s just not a very developed sense. (I actually got curious enough, rather recently in fact, to seek out a video of Mike Shulman lecturing at the IAS, and glad that I did. It was nice to see you in action, Mike.(-: )
there aren’t many people who are regular on the nForum either
True, that’s something else one might hope would be improved by making links from the lab to the forum more prominent.
With my remark I was referring to editing that is happening anyway, but then not aimed at the nLab.
For instance David Roberts started to make all his scientific comments on g+, such as pointing out interesting references etc. It seems that happens to many people: they run into something remarkable in maths etc. and want to make a public note. The issue is to have or have not the sense that this note is fruitfully made on the nLab.
David for instance could by now have a decent article on the recent progress in prime number distances on the nLab, that I could go to to have a look at to inform myself. But instead there is a bunch of g+ posts that are hard to get an overview of.
there aren’t many people who are regular on the nForum either
True, that’s something else one might hope would be improved by making links from the lab to the forum more prominent.
A typical reaction I get from colleagues who I point to the nForum is that they feel or find it too much trouble to go through the login process. Just recently this happened with Ryan (who then made it with Andrew’s help) and with Igor K. (who gave up).
The thing is, there aren’t many people who are regular on the nForum either – besides you guys and a few others, I’m not sure who is reading stuff I (or anyone else) puts down.
I get the feeling there are a handful of people, like myself, who glance through the nForum almost everyday but don’t speak up much.
Coming back to the idea of making the answer to “What is… the nLab?” public:
I am not sure who of you is wanting to add what to the text I proposed, the one which received some positive replies above. So for the moment I just went ahead and added the link at Home page – Purpose right together with the link to About.
But this is not meant to be the last word, just the first word. Everybody please feel invited to edit. For instance to grab my text, make it a meta-page on the nLab proper and edit that.
Regarding prime gaps: http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/index.php?title=Bounded_gaps_between_primes
I think the last sentence in What is text is written slightly ironically but an outsider will miss this. Outside may indeed think that not having pluses is a technical problem and we aspire to solve it in future editions. Also it implies that pooints only boost ego up, but in fact this is a beginning psychology, once a user is used to receive pluses for his posts, it is likely to swallow also disappointments when the number of pluses is smaller than expected and in long run it s a vicious circle. Of course, on the ways a lot of users got stimulated for a while or even permanently hooked up, but I would not say that even that “happiness” is long term better than for a person who does things in peace and is happy with improvements of colleagues, with aesthetics of his own, with new insight and with use of his notes in classes in preps for the seminars and so on.
It also seems to me that the iBourbaki idea and so on which drive many is put too much under the rug. I disagree with some points in this thread that nobody is writing here for mere internet good. I think at least 30% of my activity are actions which do purely for that. For example, I see that a paper which is somewhat of our interest became public access. And I find that this should be made use of, and record it, though otherwise would not as the particular article is not THAT important for me or Lab at this early point. Also I like to point out references, alternative notions and definitions, which are very good but somehow not so well known for accidental or historical reasons. This is also just for the feeling of balance in internet and math community. Similar actions where I act only to make things available to the open community are about 30% of my activities in Lab and I am somewhat fed up with repeated critic of my fellows from Lab that nobody is doing that in significant amount and that only selfish and practical purposes work and points and other crap. Even Todd wrote ” It’s not likely they will contribute in an utterly selfless spirit just for the abstract good of the internet”, while I am sure that he does the same kind of things like me exactly for that reason (internet taken in a sense which also mean “our” community of mathematicians). Please, the aims and mechanisms are MULTIPLE and single tear definitions are a invalid!
I think answering What s Lab is a different question from a programme, Lab manifesto a person may have in mind (which is less congruent with reality and even in future it will be just a part of the Lab reality). What should be Lab is a different issue from what is. I also think that emphasis that systematising can be done “of course by category theory” is not something what resonates with many people who would be very useful in this community (say most of mathematical physicists who have much to say on geometry of QFTs, PDEs, algebraic geometry, quantization…)…I also think that many of main contributors are not motivated here by physics and do not consider it the purpose of Lab. Most people whom I know and who do not contribute to Lab is precisely for thinking that it is too categorical for their taste, while they are not fully aware that they can contribute and read it in less categorically oriented paths and still doing good fo themselves and others.
As for iBourbaki, in Lab we have lots of good effort to rework known stuff in the right generality. This abstract nonsense idea at which level things are both simple and still fairly general and which is much backed up especially by Urs and Toby, is beyond what is considered category theory. While essence of some math often is of categorical nature word essence is wider than that essence which is of categorical nature. Urs wrote few words about this idea. I like his emphasis that we want level of detail which is beyond the wikipedia. The level of detail is I think not bounded nor intended in particular measure in advance; unlike wikipedia we can always expand, and do not need to justify this with traditional external sources. Also the level of detail will be larger in areas closer to our interests and will be below wikipedia in areas of math far from our focus.
For Forum, small number of attendees may partly be attacked if we use more often notice blog format and do some posts dedicatedly in that format. Blogs are somewhat more popular than specialistic forums. Of course, this is not so radical remark, but a reminder.
Zoran, Jim,
okay, I have expanded that piece at What is the nLab? to
The Lab means to connect the dots and show the big picture. That’s why it’s organized by higher category theory category theory. This is the structure that helps organize things and bring them together conceptually. (While of course many specific entries need not have to be category theoretic at all).
I think that I clarified something in the last section.
I may give a talk this week in Warszawa partly on this topic (not yet scheduled but a person to schedule it is working on it) warszawa2013struna (zoranskoda).
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