Mathematics on Wikipedia

[Barry R. Smith]

I was never a contributor to Wikipedia, although I do look at a Wikipedia page every so often.  I was thinking about why I hadn't signed up for the Workgroup week, and realized that one big reason is that I don't feel confident that I could defend Citizendium against the "What's wrong with good old Wikipedia?" argument, at least in the case of mathematics pages.  I am hoping to get some answers in this thread.

Now I do see problems with some of the Wikipedia pages -- for instance, the page about Ernst Eduard Kummer barely mentions his contributions to number theory, which were the highlight of his career.  But when I mention this to my dad, he says, "why not just edit the Wikipedia page?"  And that's a good point.  It sounds like the main defense against this argument here is that people will constantly make edits like this on Wikipedia, even when incorrect, and that there was a constant battle against "the misinformed amateur" on certain pages.  But is there anything this controversial in the arena of mathematics?  Can anyone give me a specific example?  For instance, I could imagine that perhaps the page on Fermat's Last Theorem might have been perpetually edited with "bogus" elementary proofs.  Do things like this happen in mathematics on Wikipedia?

Also, what arguments can people make that mathematics pages, in particular, on Wikipedia have a major problem that is fixed by the approach at Citizendium?

[Chris Day]

In my experience I'd say the constant reverting of vandalism is one problem. A related problem is that there are no stabel versions except for linking to old version in the history. Third there is a poisonous atmosphere there that drives me insane. No need to go into specifics, but if you're interested try editing there a while, you might have a different experience. Fourth editors with minority and fringe (crank) ideas seem to predominate in certain areas, meaning a constant vigil has to be maintained not to mention repeatedly rebutting the same 'arguments from ignorance' at least once a week. All in all, it is a huge time sink with a feeling of three steps forward two steps back. I have high hopes that citizendium will not deteriorate in to such a mess. 

As far as quality, there are many high quality articles in wikipedia, it is the price you pay to maintain that quality that is the reason I stay away. One issue with their quality though is the obsession of having to cite every sentence, even common knowledge.  This can get out of hand and is not how one would usually write. The style also appears to be inflexible and always seems to end up in a critics vs adherents prose. This is less of a problem with math articles, I imagine.

Anyway, those thoughts are a bit rambling but at least it gives you something to think about. By the way, there is no rule about bringing over a good article from wikipedia and developing it into your own here. Many like to start from scratch but you don't have to work that way.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

I don't feel confident that I could defend Citizendium against the "What's wrong with good old Wikipedia?" argument, at least in the case of mathematics pages.
...
there was a constant battle against "the misinformed amateur" on certain pages.  But is there anything this controversial in the arena of mathematics?
...
what arguments can people make that mathematics pages, in particular, on Wikipedia have a major problem that is fixed by the approach at Citizendium?

Probably mathematics is one of the less (least?) problematic areas in Wikipedia (i.e. least likely to need, or benefit from, changes to the Wikipedia model).

Although it might still suffer from vandalism, especially the kind that turns a "+" into a "-" (do that, along with a bunch of grammar improvements, and it might slip through). I have no idea if it is a problem though; take a look at the history of some math articles there, to see how often they get hit.

I also don't know how good the article editing is there, in the sense of flow of presentation, copyediting for ease of comprehension, etc. A lot of Wikipedia articles suffer from 'drive-by' editing, where someone comes along and changes one sentence, and someone else does that to another, and pretty soon you don't have a smoothly-flowing, coherent, well-organized article any more. Again, I have no idea if this is a problem in math, but it definitely is elsewhere; so take a look at some math articles there, and see how well they are organized.

Finally, an Approved article in CZ is something one can reasonably rely on, and cite - whereas the same can most definitely not be said of Wikipedia articles!

Besides, you can always write articles on math subjects and upload the copy to both sites in parallel, right? The differences are minimal - both use MediaWiki markup, etc.

Noel

[Paul Wormer]

Even mathematics on Wikipedia is not without problems.

On the one part of the spectrum there are the very arrogant pure mathematicians that reject anything that is not in the style and notation of Bourbaki. If you come on their turf using notation common in theoretical physics, they will tell you that you are doing it all completely wrong and that you shouldn't try to write math-oriented articles.

On the other end of the spectrum there are the amateurs that for instance edit matrix-vector expressions without knowing any linear algebra, but still insist on  being right.  (One such person called me an "antagonistic corncob" when I tried to explain to him that the inertia tensor of a mechanical system is symmetric.)