3 ms·
playing devil's advocate a little bit, but wikipedia does have a policy against original research. If you published an obviously correct counterexample to wikip
by markasoftware 3mo ago
playing devil's advocate a little bit, but wikipedia does have a policy against original research. If you published an obviously correct counterexample to wikipedia which is not anywhere else on the internet (or in a book, etc), the rules are clear: the counterexample must be removed.
in this case it's not original research, because there's a tweet by someone with a good reputation, and plenty of comments on said tweet corroborating the result. But it's a more sketchy "secondary source" than most wikipedia references and some caution on the part of the editors is not out of place.
(saying this as the person who made the original edit to the wikipedia page adding the counterexample)
- tptacek 3mo agoI'm not complaining about Wikipedia here, just noting for the thread: it's a vector of polynomials. It has a nonsingular Jacobian. Provided with it are 3 distinct points it sends to the same point; it can't be invertible. What Wikipedia says about this doesn't matter, does it?
- bonzini 3mo agoWikipedia does have a rule allowing "routine calculations" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Routine_calculations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research... Of course given the magnitude of the statement a bit of care is warranted, but the rules do allow it.
- tptacek 3mo agoI think Wikipedia has very sane processes. I'm just saying that process isn't useful to this thread. It's like if I found a SHA2 collision. I'd probably have to be an absurdly talented (and lucky) cryptanalyst to do that, but anybody on the thread could trivially confirm my finding.
- redsocksfan45 3mo ago[dead]
- CamperBob2 3mo agoWikipedia's editors won't be happy until the site has joined Stack Overflow in self-owned oblivion.
- endgame 3mo agoThe talk page about the conjecture clarifies WP:RSSELF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Self-published_sources_(online_and_paper) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Sel... > Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications.
- jibal 3mo agoSee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Routine_calculations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research...
- nullc 3mo agoVerifying that counterexample is a trivial calculation for basically anyone qualified to make substantive changes in that category of article, it shouldn't be an issue in and of itself. Discovering the counter example is research, validating it is basic calculations.
- throwaway676712 3mo agoIt's more like WP:BASICMATH. It's like someone showing a huge number isn't prime (proverbially hard to factor, trivial to check) and HN/WP users requesting a reputable source citation for the factor multiplication when anyone can input it in a calculator.