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Toot

Written by 0xDE on 2024-12-20 at 01:22

I have a new paper Princ-wiki-a Mathematica: Wikipedia Editing and Mathematics, https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202501/noti3096/noti3096.html, in the January Notices of the AMS, and a new blog post, Pseudonymity in academic publishing, https://11011110.github.io/blog/2024/12/19/pseudonymity-academic-publishing.html

The Notices paper is on editing mathematics on Wikipedia, and I hope it encourages more to do so. The blog post is on the fact that the AMS would not let us list our pseudonymous coauthor as an author. Pseudonymity is important and highly protected on Wikipedia, in part because Wikipedia editing can sometimes put its editors into serious danger, but in this case it clashed with academic publishing standards, or at least the AMS's publishing policies, and I wanted to explore that.

Some of the other material in this issue also looked interesting to me, especially @tao's article on machine-assisted proof (https://www.ams.org/cgi-bin/notices/nxgnotices.pl?next=202501) and Nick Trefethen's on rational approximation (https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202501/noti3066/noti3066.html). See https://www.ams.org/cgi-bin/notices/nxgnotices.pl?next=202501 for the whole issue.

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Descendants

Written by Rob Corless on 2024-12-20 at 04:42

@11011110 @tao as a sometime Wikipedia editor I find the existence of this article extremely heartening. I have felt like a complete amateur for the last 6 years as I've made the occasional edit. Yesterday I edited Bob O'Malley's page to indicate that he had died in 2020. I felt extremely uneasy about doing that. I am going to go and read all of the links that you provide. Thank you very much!

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Written by John Carlos Baez on 2024-12-20 at 17:00

@11011110 - very fun and well-written article! I hope it lures some more good mathematicians into working on Wikipedia, and also coaxes mathematicians to make Wikipedia articles easier for nonexperts to read - at least at the start, without getting rid of the incredibly valuable more advanced material.

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Written by 0xDE on 2024-12-20 at 17:35

@johncarlosbaez The two goals are a little contradictory: the new mathematics Wikipedia editors are the ones who tend most to write for themselves rather than for a general audience. But they also tend to get better over time.

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Written by John Carlos Baez on 2024-12-20 at 18:47

@11011110 - yes, true. I feel we could benefit from both experts who correct math mistakes on Wikipedia and add more information about advanced topics, and people who care about exposition! I try to be both, but I only tackle topics that I happen to care about at the moment.

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Written by soaproot on 2024-12-26 at 19:18

@johncarlosbaez @11011110 I'm idealistic enough to think it is possible to write for both general audiences and include advanced topics (and I could find various Wikipedia policies and essays on the subject if people aren't familiar). But I agree that it is very easy to just get one or the other.

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Written by 0xDE on 2024-12-26 at 19:24

@soaproot @johncarlosbaez I think it's possible to do that, too, and desirable. But it takes more effort and practice.

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Written by Nemo_bis 🌈 on 2024-12-20 at 08:52

@11011110 Nice. Seeing the mention of #copyright assignment, interesting if they actually require individually signed copyright transfer agreements from each and every author; imagine doing that for big physics experiments! I was reminded of @pchestek's "Theory of joint authorship" https://ctlj.colorado.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/3-Chestek-6.20.18-FINAL.pdf .

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