User talk:Aleksander Stos

 Where Alek lives it is approximately:  00:06

Archive 1

(please add your comments below)

Portuguese language

Hello, it's me (yet again). I made an info box for the above, went back to see, and noticed that you had already removed one such. Why was this? Is there some policy concerning them that I don't know? Anyway, my one is based on the Spanish language one & is not exactly a thing of beauty... Regards, Robert Thorpe 17:44, 5 October 2007 (CDT)

Oh, I see. Well, I think I've combined the best of the 2 boxes. It's the Big Dirtyup! Robert Thorpe 08:34, 6 October 2007 (CDT)

Big O and little o

Hi Aleks, thanks for your tweaking of the little o and big O articles. You are right, separating the functions and sequences do make them more readable, I guess I was being a bit lazy :-( Just one little thing though, I intentionally avoided using the limit notation because of the pathological case where b_n and g(t) may be uniformly zero, so then it would be necessary to make conventions regarding the 0/0 quotient -- this needs to be remarked in the article. Do you know what would be a good way to get around this? I thought that with the N-epsilon argument this small complication is nicely removed (at the expense of being a bit more abstract). Also, I don't think there's much more that can possibly be added to the articles, so perhaps after adding some examples and some standard references they can be put forward for approval. Let me know what you think! Thanks. Hendra I. Nurdin 05:30, 10 October 2007 (CDT)

(In reply to your post on my talkpage) That's fine, Aleks, take your time -- there's a disclaimer up on top of the articles anyway :-). However, until the 0/0 issue is resolved, to be on the safe side my suggestion would be to temporarily remove the limit interpretation in little o big O O articles and leave it with the slightly abstract N-\epsilon formalism. Thanks. Hendra I. Nurdin 19:17, 10 October 2007 (CDT)

Hi Aleks, I think it would be okay and probably a good idea to reintroduce the limit of fractions interpretation as long as the exceptions/pathological exceptions are explicitly mentioned in the article. So, please go ahead :-) Thanks. Hendra I. Nurdin 07:52, 12 October 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for volunteering for wikiconverting

Any ideas what file formats we should accept? Any other idea about this human wikiconverter project?. Will you convert a MS Word ".doc", say, directly yourself or will you utilize some intermediate converting program? If the latter, what program(s)? Comment on my Talk page, in the section asking for comments, so commenters can share ideas. --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 19:28, 17 October 2007 (CDT)

Message personnel

Hi, I know where Wroclaw is ;-) though I never went to Poland :-( In reply to your msg, I hope that some day we'll see a french citizendium, but now the challenge is to start this project, so we have to improve our english ! As you can see, I'm a beginner and I'm looking my way here :-) Jean Gebarowski 04:20, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

Cauchy

Hi Aleks, I completely agree: blue is better than red. However, I don't always know whether an article exists, but I do my best and I appreciate your fixing my math links. Cheers, --Paul Wormer 03:08, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

Aleks, don't apologize, I appreciate you working alongside, it can only improve the article. My plans are: first finish the description of Cauchy's life (which I extract from Belhoste), and then say a few lines about Cauchy's work, more or less in chronological order. Here I intend to use M. Kline's history of maths. I will also look at McTutor and WP (the latter with great care, of course). Best wishes, --Paul Wormer 05:51, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

French

Alek, would you kindly send a French email for me? See this page and just click on "Commande photo" and tell them we are a non-profit with no funds for images but wish to use it in our articles about http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Cardinal_Mazarin. I'd appreciate it. Stephen Ewen 20:28, 3 November 2007 (CDT)

Bot

Thanks a lot for stopping the bot. I'm sure I tested against it when I wrote the program, but I guess the software update led to a subtle change breaking how the bot handles of the Wikipedia flag. Darn, this might not be so easy to repair. Ah well, it keeps life interesting. -- Jitse Niesen 10:44, 5 November 2007 (CST)

I suppose that fixing the bot code so that it preserves the WP checkbox won't be too hard. So when you write "not easy to repair" you refer to putting back the WP credits on articles (reversion of *some* bot's actions). If so, and if you were interested in, I think I could help do it. I mean I could compile a list of articles concerned. Then the bot could restore the credits. Does it look reasonable? Aleksander Stos 11:10, 5 November 2007 (CST)

You suppose correctly. I'll first have a look how hard it would be to compile this list myself. If it's really not that easy, I'll come back to you. -- Jitse Niesen 11:20, 5 November 2007 (CST)

As you wish. Just to give you a reference point, I have a tool that dumps the revision histories to something like "stub-meta-history.xml" Wikipedia-type file. The only tweak I have to do is to dump from my account (now it's anonymous and the WP status is not visible). To determine the list using such a dump file is not too hard. Just let me know :) Aleksander Stos 11:34, 5 November 2007 (CST)

It wasn't too hard and the bot is cleaning up the mess. There are of course a couple of articles that were edited by others after my bot changed the article. I'll have to check these individually, but it looks like there are only 20 or so of them. Very annoying, though, these humans that edit pages ;)

By the way, are you still interested in a reply to the email you sent me a month or so ago? I have been doing a bit of travelling lately, and then I moved from Australia to England, so I didn't find time to reply; sorry. -- Jitse Niesen 13:10, 5 November 2007 (CST)

Great! Oh, I know those annoying humans.. They spot a wiki and they come. Well, we can always set up a bot-only site. I bet it would grow faster than the Wikipedia ;) BTW, welcome in Europe! Regarding my old question, if I recall it correctly, it has been fixed (on the server side). Aleksander Stos 14:48, 5 November 2007 (CST)

CZ:Live

Thanks for the Categorizations on the break-up of the Yoga article. --Michael J. Formica 17:56, 7 November 2007 (CST)

Keeping the rest of us honest is the least part of stupid. :-) --Michael J. Formica 18:00, 7 November 2007 (CST)

Unknown user

Hi Aleks. I noticed these edits [1] made by an unknown user with the nick Turms. I am not complaining about the edit at all, they're acceptable and constructive (so I'm happy he/she has helped out with the metric space article), but this user should be using a real name like everyone else. Is this a remnant of past CZ self-registration? I think there are a few other users like this around. Perhaps you look into this? Thanks. Hendra I. Nurdin 05:19, 13 November 2007 (CST)

Yes, this is correct--any such user is going to have to be blocked by the Constabulary. They're remnants of the weeks in January and February when we actually were letting people "self-register." Unfortunately, we still haven't deleted all those accounts. For quicker service, just e-mail constables@citizendium.org and you'll get everyone, not just Aleks. --Larry Sanger 06:06, 13 November 2007 (CST)

unchecklisted articles

What are you plans for that page? It seems that quite a few have the checklist on the metadata template but no talk page. Chris Day (talk) 03:40, 19 November 2007 (CST)

Definitely, the script should be updated (recently I was too busy to control the results in the new subpage environment). To the point, have you any examples of articles checklisted on metadata and yet indicated on my list? In theory there should be no such article since the script reads and excludes the "internal articles" and "external articles" categories. This should work in the new system as well. BTW, I'm open to any suggestions for improvements / rearrangements etc. Aleksander Stos 03:48, 19 November 2007 (CST)

The one I found was NGC 1039‎ (I think). Maybe the others in that series have the same problem? Chris Day (talk) 08:04, 19 November 2007 (CST)

OK, I just checked NGC_6218 and it has the problem. I just realised why. As we put the internal category on the talk page, and this article does not have a talk page then your script is blind to it being an internal article. Make sense? Chris Day (talk) 08:06, 19 November 2007 (CST)

Yes, thanks, I'll have a look at this. Perhaps it's more systematic 'bias' of NGC-series. I also spoted Depression on the unchecklisted page; in fact it was checklisted on the metadata page but the subpage template wasn't put on the talk. Anyway the script detects 'correctly' that something is 'out of order' and could be fixed. Just the 'diagnostic' is pretty poor. Aleksander Stos 10:42, 19 November 2007 (CST)

List of sovereign states

Hi, Alek, the above has been superseded & needs deleting. Au revoir - Ro Thorpe 09:37, 27 November 2007 (CST)

I looked at the talk page and was referred to Country/Catalogs, which has a complete list of countries, so delete & redirect, I meant, yes - Ro Thorpe 12:20, 27 November 2007 (CST)

Distribution

Hi Alek, what article in WP are you referring to on the forum? This reminds me, during stub week I wrote Distribution (mathematics). I'm hardly an expert, may be you could have a look at it?

This morning I wrote allotropic and a redirect allotropy. I rather have it the other way round, can I do that myself? Or must a constable do that? --Paul Wormer 08:19, 1 December 2007 (CST)

mv allotropy

It seems it worked. --Paul Wormer 10:24, 1 December 2007 (CST)

New stats images

Hi Alek, I was looking at the new stats images, and some of them look pretty exciting. Clearly, we're on the downside of a spike just now, though, as we're now in the holiday season, which is usually slower. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that the images on CZ:Statistics don't seem to be linking properly to the latest images in every case. --Larry Sanger 11:45, 2 December 2007 (CST)

Double topological space article

Hi Alek, I'm not sure CZ would need to have two topological space articles (i.e., the topological space article, which has been here for a few months, and the new Topological Space article) -- when they're talking about the same object. I had left a note for the author of the second article about this here, but no response. What is CZ policy about this? Thanks. Hendra I. Nurdin 18:08, 4 December 2007 (CST)

I see that the two topological space articles have been merged, producing a more comprehensive article (which is good!). Well, I guess this saved the author of the second article (Giovanni) from rewriting things that may already be in the first article (e.g., some examples). Cheerio, --Hendra I. Nurdin 05:47, 8 December 2007 (CST)

Dirac delta and distributions

Hi Alek,

when I explained delta functions to chemistry students, I used the example of a sequence of Gauss functions Nexp(-a x^2), all linearly (not quadratically!) normalized to unity by choice of N. (I could have used block functions as well). I had a figure showing the normalized Gauss functions for increasing a, making clear that the functions got narrower and narrower, and of course higher and higher (because of normalization). I then argued that at a certain point f(x) could be replaced by f(0) in the integral N\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} f(x)exp(-a x^2) dx, because f(x) was assumed to be "smooth" and the Gauss function narrow enough. Taking f(0) in front of the integral, and the integral yielding unity, I "proved" the delta function property.

In this explanation I believed to be close to the spirit of "delta convergent sequences" (no nonsense from a mathematical point of view, as the WP plot that you mentioned), and yet to be understandable by chemists. What do you think, should we attempt a similar intro to an article on the Dirac delta?

PS. The physical meaning of the Gauss function could of course be a charge or mass distribution, leading in the limit (infinite exponent a) to a point charge or a point mass.--Paul Wormer 04:20, 5 December 2007 (CST)