Talk:Cantor's first set theory article: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:30, 17 February 2016

Revision as of 17:14, 19 February 2016

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If that doesn't capture the scope of the article, then the article should be revised in one way or another. We can either abandon the idea that the article is about one of Cantor's papers, or we can move some of the material less relevant to Cantor's paper to, say, [[History of set theory]]. I don't see any need for the latter article to spring fully-formed from our foreheads; it could be started and left incomplete for now. Or, if the result would be too short, then I think it's fine for the present article to overgrow its proper scope. Eventually the relevant material can be reorganized. [[User:Ozob|Ozob]] ([[User talk:Ozob|talk]]) 00:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

'''Several more points:'''

* I can find no explicit Wikipedia rule that requires the name of an article be used. In fact, I've already discovered three examples where it is not used:

** Wikipedia article title: '''Grothendieck's ''Tôhoku'' paper'''. Paper's name: "Sur quelques points d'algèbre homologique." (Mathematics)

** Wikipedia article title: '''Alpher–Bethe–Gamow paper'''. Paper's name: "The Origin of Chemical Elements." (Physics)

** Wikipedia article title: '''Lighthill report'''. Paper's name: "Artificial Intelligence: A General Survey." (Computer Science)

* [[WP:TITLE]] states: "A good Wikipedia article title has the five following characteristics: '''Recognizability''' … '''Naturalness''' … '''Precision''' … '''Conciseness''' … '''Consistency'''. I discussed these above and compared the current Wikipedia article title with the proposal to use the title of Cantor's article. No one has refuted my claim that the current title is better than the proposed title in the first four characteristics and in the last characteristic they are tied.

* Concerning the example: "We wouldn't put the article about ''Gone With the Wind'' at [[Margaret Mitchell's most famous novel]], say." For me, [[Margaret Mitchell's most famous novel]] doesn't work because of '''Recognizability'''. I've seen the movie ''Gone With the Wind'' so I would recognize it. However, I've never read the book so I wouldn't recognize the author's name. In the case of '''''On a Property of the Collection of All Real Algebraic Numbers''''': many (most?) mathematicians and students of mathematics would not recognize this title, but nearly all of them would recognize the author's name in '''Georg Cantor's first set theory article'''. They would also recognize the area of "set theory" and a good number could tell you his first article's most significant result: the uncountability of the set of real numbers. These are two of the problems with the proposed title: (1) It fails the [[WP:TITLE]] '''Recognizability''' characteristic: "The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize." (2) The title is unexpected and confusing since it doesn't mention the theorem the article is well-known for. (By the way, [[Margaret Mitchell's most famous novel]] is not an acceptable Wikipedia title because it uses the peacock word "famous"--see [[WP:PEACOCK]]).

* Concerning Wikipedia article content: I regard there as being two approaches to article content: A narrow article that only talks about what is in the math article versus a more comprehensive article that does this and puts it into historical context. In mathematics and the sciences, it is often of interest to understand what led to an article and what an article has led to. In the case of Gödel's article, the Wikipedia article "Gödel's incompleteness theorems" is the comprehensive article and ''On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems'' is the narrow article (it only contains publication info, outline of the paper, and a section on translations of the paper). I was thinking of having the same division with current Wikipedia article title being the more comprehensive article and another Wikipedia article (whose title would be the title of Cantor's article) that would be very narrow. It was a compromise measure I was proposing, but it obviously got nowhere and I only confused people. I take it that everyone wants just one Wikipedia article (which I think is the best way to go). --[[User:RJGray|RJGray]] ([[User talk:RJGray|talk]]) 17:12, 19 February 2016 (UTC)