User talk:Adam8592

Maryanthe Malliaris

Re Maryanthe Malliaris: The fact that many (or even most) "biographies" of academics have been written badly, turning them into cv's (dry sequential and indiscriminate listings of minor achievements) instead of actual biographies does not justify making the remaining articles equally bad. What is the justification for removing the fact that she comes from an academic family (surely related to her motivation for being an academic)? What is the justification for mentioning the Career award (note that this is a research grant, not a notable prize, and that in some disciplines many or most faculty at US research universities receive this, to the point that I have seen not getting it used as an argument against tenure)? —David Eppstein (talk) 01:56, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi David, I'm sure this could be written better. Maybe you have ideas. But, as written, the original bio was not accurately representative of a scientist. The bios of other mathematicians are about the math. I tried to significantly improve this. I agree it was dry, but it was more accurate. I was following: "In such cases, exercise restraint and include only material relevant to the person's notability, focusing on high-quality secondary sources"

Regarding the parents, the citation was to a dedication in a book. Unless the writer had inside information, that does not uniquely identify the relationship. "Biographies of living persons ("BLPs") must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy"

I think it was copied from the German version. I appreciate your comments, but I hope you now understand the reasons for my edits. Adam8592 (talk) 02:08, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

You think wrong. It was not copied from anywhere. Copying material here without attribution is a serious violation of standards, and throwing around such accusations should not be done lightly. As for the other mathematicians, again, look at the actual good biographies to see what sort of material should be included: Emmy Noether, Andrew M. Gleason, etc. Do not follow the many bad examples of articles that copy the cv because that's the only information to be found. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:14, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Emmy Noether Andrew M. Gleason Yes. Those are great long biographies of well known people written after their careers were over.

I read all 35 biographies of Model Theorists and a number of other Mathematicians. All the others focus on scientific achievement and a number are brief. See for example Lou_van_den_Dries, Danny Calegari.

Only two other living Model Theorists articles mention family and those are both unambiguous newspaper or book sources.

You can argue that all of Wikipedia should be written better, but there is no justification for singling out this article for attack.

1. Removed the statement about parents. Justification: The source cites dedication in a book. This does not uniquely identify the person. "[E]xercise restraint and include only material relevant to the person's notability"

2. Removed the statement about non mathematical articles written in college. This seems irrelevant. Again "only material relevant to the person's notability" Notability is mathematical. This is not a famous person.

3. Added several awards which are notable. Sloan, ICM are mentioned regularly in mathematical articles. What is your disagreement with this? If you disagree with CAREER why not just delete that?

Yes, the article can be written better. But it is not written well now. My edits focus it more on science. Adam8592 (talk) 03:26, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Your edits focus on making the article bad. The examples you cite of van den Dries and Calegari are exactly what we should *not* be aiming for. We don't have, or haven't found, sources to turn them into actual biographies, so we only write cv's. Malliaris has better sources, already, so we don't have to write as bad an article for her. "Focus on mathematics" does not mean "treat the subject as a robot and ignore everything but mathematics" nor "make the article as boring as we can possibly imagine". As for the dedication not uniquely identifying a person: you think there are many people named Maryanthe Elizabeth Malliaris who might match the one in the book dedication? As for why not just delete Career: because I disagreed with too many other of your edits. The ICM talk is probably significant enough to keep. The Sloan is dubious, but at least less boring than the Career. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:37, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

What in your opinion is a good short article about a young mathematician?

It is not reasonable to say you are against any edit that is not a Noether biography.

Q: does your sentence about CAREER above have an extra negation? Adam8592 (talk) 03:48, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

It also doesn't make sense to call the Sloan "dubious" and call to delete the CAREER award, while arguing for the inclusion of an article on postmodernism that she apparently wrote as an undergraduate and has no apparent relevance to her research. What justification is there for trivializing professional achievements and skewing the biography of this scientist towards inconsequential information?Adam8592 (talk) 04:10, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

"Well written" and "short" and "young" rarely go together in academic biographies. Basically, in rough order by priority, I think we should

• Say why the subject is significant enough to warrant an article. If we don't do that, the article is likely to be deleted, especially if it is about a young woman.
• Describe the highlights of the subject's research. Far too many academic biographies don't even get this far.
• Give the broad outlines of education and career: which schools the subject went to, where they were hired, etc. This is the easy part, so basically all of them already do this, and too many only do this.
• Fill in enough details about the subject's non-academic life that can be sourced, to make it more of a story and less of a cv, without overwhelming the article with extraneous detail. Some kinds of details, like what the subject's parents did or where they came from, are essentially always included when available. Some, like what activities the subject took part in during college, are more optional. In this case I think it's relevant to point out that Malliaris's college education was far from focused only on mathematics, just as for Moon Duchin we talk about her feminist activism, for Ami Radunskaya we talk about her music and late shift to mathematics, for Ioana Dumitriu we talk about how she chose her graduate school for love over mathematics, or for Miranda Cheng we talk about her punk rock high school dropout phase.

I don't think any of these are good articles on any kind of absolute scale, but in all cases I think trying to trim down the article to even more of a bare skeleton in order to focus on the mathematics would be a mistake. The article already covers Malliaris's mathematics in more detail than most articles of this length do; more detail than that would probably better be added to cardinal characteristic of the continuum than to Malliaris's biography, because it's also important to keep biographies readable to a general audience.

No, as for your specific point: Did I put in more negations than I intended? No. The relevance of an article on postmodernism is to show that she has broader interests than mathematics. From my point of view it is you who is trivializing the article, by making Malliaris indistinguishable from every other assistant professor everywhere, a cog in a machine. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:15, 21 September 2017 (UTC)