5 ms·
Calling this a "famous long-standing mathematical conjecture" seems a bit of a stretch. It gives the impression that this would be comparable to Fermat's Last T
by a3_nm 10y ago
Calling this a "famous long-standing mathematical conjecture" seems a bit of a stretch. It gives the impression that this would be comparable to Fermat's Last Theorem, the ABC conjecture, the Riemann hypothesis, etc. However, this conjecture doesn't seem to have a Wikipedia page. The discoverer, Thomas Royen, does not have a Wikipedia page either. The Loren Pitt paper establishing a special case of the conjecture was cited only 50 times.
The only justification for the importance of the problem that I see in the original article is that it was open since 1972 and someone is quoted as having worked 30 years on it and knowing other people who have worked long on it. That's something, of course, but it's not so much -- there are lots of problems in mathematics that remain unsolved after some decades despite serious efforts, and not all of them are famous ; it depends on how much attention they have attracted.
- infogulch 10y agoCiting the Wikipedia articles' existence is a curious argument to make when an article titled "40% of Wikipedia is under threat from deletionists" [1] was just on the front page. [1]: http://boingboing.net/2017/02/16/40-of-wikipedia-is-under-thre.html http://boingboing.net/2017/02/16/40-of-wikipedia-is-under-th...
- FrozenVoid 10y agoObviously obscure content will not survive unless it somehow gains fans willing to guard the page from these people, who pretend wikipedia is paper encyclopedia with limited budget for "notable" topics. They have to defend citations, perceived bias/neutrality and fight merge/deletion votes, gain allies with admins once it reaches arbitration and explain the article "notability" each time its questioned(and articles can lose "notability status" once one of these pedantic autists start questioning every line and word, deleting everything not following exact rules). In fact an isolated article, with new content or very few backlinks will not even be accepted and get speedily deleted before it gets worked into something acceptable to wikipedians. There has to be an alternative to this.
- a3_nm 10y agoDespite deletionists' efforts, I doubt that any long-standing mathematical conjecture which can reasonably be called "famous" (to a general, non-specialist audience) does not currently have a Wikipedia page. My point about the article is just that I found it annoying to be made to believe that this was about a very major result and find out later that the claims of fame had been exaggerated.