Misplaced Pages

Talk:Mathematics in the medieval Islamic world: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 12:34, 6 April 2011 editAquib American Muslim (talk | contribs)2,681 edits →Why this article has been restored: 8 confirmed hard fails on verify← Previous edit Revision as of 12:52, 6 April 2011 edit undoWilliam M. Connolley (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers66,015 edits →Why this article has been restored: please try to listenNext edit →
Line 653: Line 653:
: Please stop making up policy. Your ] isn't going to work ] (]) 07:17, 6 April 2011 (UTC) : Please stop making up policy. Your ] isn't going to work ] (]) 07:17, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
::Please provide 8 examples of clearly failed verifications, confirmed by an independent party (such as me) to prove due diligence and due process has been followed before you stub this important article. This is not too much to ask, it is very reasonable, and it is common sense. -] (]) 12:33, 6 April 2011 (UTC) ::Please provide 8 examples of clearly failed verifications, confirmed by an independent party (such as me) to prove due diligence and due process has been followed before you stub this important article. This is not too much to ask, it is very reasonable, and it is common sense. -] (]) 12:33, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
::: You want a veto over all change? No, of course not. Please: people have been patiently explaining to you, in a variety of places, that you've completely misunderstood the "policy" here. Simply repeating the same mistakes won't make your errors go away ] (]) 12:52, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Revision as of 12:52, 6 April 2011

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Mathematics in the medieval Islamic world article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
Article policies
Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
Archives: 1, 2Auto-archiving period: 6 months 
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Mathematics in the medieval Islamic world article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
Article policies
Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
Archives: 1, 2Auto-archiving period: 6 months 
This article has not yet been rated on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:
Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.
WikiProject iconMathematics High‑priority
WikiProject iconThis article is within the scope of WikiProject Mathematics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mathematics on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MathematicsWikipedia:WikiProject MathematicsTemplate:WikiProject Mathematicsmathematics
HighThis article has been rated as High-priority on the project's priority scale.
Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.
WikiProject iconMiddle Ages High‑importance
WikiProject iconThis article is within the scope of WikiProject Middle Ages, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the Middle Ages on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Middle AgesWikipedia:WikiProject Middle AgesTemplate:WikiProject Middle AgesMiddle Ages
HighThis article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

To-do list for Mathematics in the medieval Islamic world: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2022-09-17


There are no active tasks for this page

We Jews are an Ethnic group

why are we added to the Religion list but not the ethnic group? did not Jews contribute in Islamic Spain? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.72.241.66 (talk) 10:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

if jew are a ethnic group, does that mean my ethnicity changes when i convert to judaism?86.144.71.206 (talk) 02:50, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Please note that the post you are responding to is over three months old, and was offered as a one-time edit. Additionally, your post seems tangential and not really in keeping with the idea of article discussion, Misplaced Pages is not a Monty Python Argument Clinic sketch. - Arcayne () 02:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposed titles

Arabic mathematics

Pros
  1. Together with Islamic mathematics by far the most frequently used term in academic literature in to refer to this period in the history of mathematics. Of these two Arabic mathematics is probably used the most, however Islamic mathematics is more common in recent literature.
  2. This title reflects the fact that a key feature of mathematics in this era was the generation of new mathematical ideas which have become associated with the Arabic language, such as algebra, algorithm and (of course) Arabic numeral.
  3. Consistent with the naming of Babylonian mathematics, Egyptian mathematics, Indian mathematics, ...
Cons
  1. Not all, perhaps even only a minority, of the mathematicians in this period where ethnic Arabs and is therefore seen as offensive by some people, even though "Arabic" seems to refer to the language used to transmit science during that time.
  2. Although Arabic was the dominant scientific language of the Islamic world in that era, the mathematical works were not exclusively written in Arabic. Some medieval Islamic mathematicians have have works in other languages. For example, one of the main works by al-Kashi is written in Persian. Arabic is ambiguous and can refer to both "Arabic language" and "Arabic culture". Even among those mathematicians who have written their mathematical works exclusively in Arabic, many didn't belong to the Arabic culture. For example, Khayyam has written his main mathematical works is Arabic, but he is also famous for his Persian poetry (he is considered as one of the icons of Persian culture).
Quotes

  1. Let us begin with a neutral and innocent definition of Arabic, or what also may be called Islamic, science in terms of time and space: the term Arabic (or Islamic) science the scientific activities of individuals who lived in a region that might extended chronologically from the eighth century A.D. to the beginning of the modern era, and geographically from the Iberian Peninsula and north Africa to the Indus valley and from the Southern Arabia to the Caspian Sea—that is, the region covered for most of that period by what we call Islamic Civilization, and in which the results of the activities referred to were for the most part expressed in the Arabic Language. We need not be concerned over the refinements that obviously need to be introduced over this seemingly neutral definition. —Sabra, A. I. (1996). "Situating Arabic Science: Locality versus Essence". Isis. 87: 654–670.

  2. In the present case, the problems of the proper "historical" approach are further complicated by the difficulties of defining "Islamic" mathematics. One minor dispute is terminological: since "Islam" is primarily a religious term, it seems inappropriate to use it to qualify a science whch had very little to do with religion (especially when a number of its practitioners in the period in question were not Muslims). I prefer "Arabic," although that term too requires many qualifications. But, even when we allow "Islamic" to stand as a shorthand word for a cultural complex, we are still faced with the fact that the mathematics (like all the sciences) of that culture are simply a continuation of the Hellenistic Greek tradition. One of the most remarkable features of Islamic civilization was the way in which it took over and continued, in a different language and mostly in a different geographical area, the scientific heritage of antiquity, which was moribund in the contemporary Byzantine Empire, and in so doing breathed new life into it. There are a number of brilliant achievements in Arabic mathematics, but it has to be viewed as the direct continuation of the Greek tradition (and indeed is unintelligible without that background). Thus making "Islamic mathematics" a separate subject of study is artificial. Berggren, a scholar with a notable record of investigation of previously unstudied medieval mathematical texts, is of course well aware of all this, and of necessity allots some space to laying out the ancient Greek background to the topics he treats. But I should have liked to have seen in the book a more forceful presentation of the essential unity of Greek and Arabic mathematics. — Gerald J. Toomer on J. Lennart Berggren's Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam. (The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 95, No. 6. (Jun. - Jul., 1988), pp. 567-569)

Islamic mathematics

Pros
  1. Together with Arabic mathematics by far the most frequently used term in academic literature in to refer to this period in the history of mathematics. Of these two Arabic mathematics is probably used the most, however Islamic mathematics is more common in recent literature.
  2. Consistent with the naming of Babylonian mathematics, Egyptian mathematics, Indian mathematics, ...
  3. Consistent with Islamic science, Islamic medicine, Islamic astronomy,Islamic astrology ...
  4. "Islamic" refers to "Islamic civilization" which is a well-defined term.
Cons
  1. Seems to put some people into an "OMG Islam!!!1111!1!1"-mode, or at least causes them to misinterpret this as "the mathematics of Islam", while "Islamic" in this context merely refers to the Islamic civilization.
  2. How relevant is it that the culture of the time was primarily Islamic, when there were, for example, many Jewish mathematicians who contributed to the mathematics of the period? (This learnt at a recent CfD!)
Quotes

  1. Let us begin with a neutral and innocent definition of Arabic, or what also may be called Islamic, science in terms of time and space: the term Arabic (or Islamic) science the scientific activities of individuals who lived in a region that might extended chronologically from the eighth century A.D. to the beginning of the modern era, and geographically from the Iberian Peninsula and north Africa to the Indus valley and from the Southern Arabia to the Caspian Sea—that is, the region covered for most of that period by what we call Islamic Civilization, and in which the results of the activities referred to were for the most part expressed in the Arabic Language. We need not be concerned over the refinements that obviously need to be introduced over this seemingly neutral definition. —Sabra, A. I. (1996). "Situating Arabic Science: Locality versus Essence". Isis. 87: 654–670.

  2. Although many able authors have contributed valuable articles, the work as a whole is flawed, to such an extent that one hesitates to recommend it as a general reference on the subject for non-specialists. The flaws are of an editorial nature, and the first is the title chosen for the work. It is no disservice to Arabs (modern or medieval) to point-out that non-Arabs (principally Persians and Turks) also played important roles in the development of medieval Islamic science, and these roles should be acknowledged in the choice of title. "Islamic" is a very serviceable epithet and should have been used, rather than "Arabic," to describe the science being studied. — J. Lennart Berggren on Roshdi Rashed's Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science. (Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 120, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 2000), pp. 282-283.)

Arabic/Islamic mathematics

(Or similar titles such as Arabic and/or Islamic mathematics.)

Pros
  1. Covers both of the most frequently used terms in academic literature with a neutral point of view.
  2. The combination of the two titles suggests that this is an historical period article, rather than an ethnic or religious one.
Cons
  1. Has the potential to offend both the readers who would dislike "Arabic mathematics" and also the readers who would dislike "Islamic mathematics"!
  2. It is quite uncommon, if not unprecedented, to give articles multiple titles on Misplaced Pages. Those are given the lead section.

Arabic and Persian mathematics

Pros
  1. Covers the two main cultures involved. Persian suggests period and arabic suggests it's not ethnic (but see Con no. 2 below!)
  2. Fairly concise, descriptive, would work for the category, and also suggests an option for handling Category:Arab mathematicians.
  3. Usual advantage of avoiding names with religious connotations.
Cons
  1. Nonstandard.
  2. There were mathematicians in this period who where neither Arab nor Persian (but for example, Turkish or Moorish). Unlike "Arabic mathematics" it would be quite difficult to explain that "Arabic and Persian" does not refer to the ethnicity of them but to something else instead.

Medieval Islamic mathematics

Pros
  1. Seems to be regarded as less offensive than "Islamic mathematics" by some people.
  2. Consistent with "Medieval European mathematics" (but see con #2).
  3. A similar title is used in one of the most important books on this subject: Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam.
Cons
  1. Medieval is only a temporal adjective and is superfluous as there is no "Ancient Islamic mathematics" or "Modern Islamic mathematics".

(History of) mathematics in (the) (medieval) Islamic civilization/world

Pros
  1. Seems to be effective at avoiding upsetting some people in the way "Arabic mathematics" or "Islamic mathematics" does.
Cons
  1. Would be inconsistent with the current naming of Egyptian mathematics, Greek mathematics, Indian mathematics, ...
  2. Would be inconsistent with the naming of other article son historical topic (e.g. the article on World War II is located at World War II, not History of the Second World War.)
  3. While a great title (of a chapter) for a book, Misplaced Pages is not a book but an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is a list of terms followed by a description of that term (is this necessarily true for an online wikipedia which easily uses "redirects"?). The terms which people will encounter in literature, and then perhaps decide to look up in Misplaced Pages, are "Arabic mathematics" and "Islamic mathematics". An encyclopedia should not concern itself with "fancy" titles and is a descriptive work, not a prescriptive work and should therefore not try to "correct" unfortunately chosen terminology which is in common use by historians.
  4. Some of these variations do not lend themselves well as suitable names for the associated category.
  5. The lead section of this article would still start out "In the history of mathematics, Islamic mathematics or Arabic mathematics refers to ..." as these are the terms used in the relevant literature.

(History of) mathematics in (the) (medieval) arabic era/culture

Pros
  1. Titles such as these, as in the previous suggestion, have the potential to avoid upsetting some people, by making it clear that the term "arabic" refers to a cultural/linguistic rather than ethnic phenomenon.
  2. It is worth searching for titles which avoid the word "Islamic" (why?), yet do not lend themselves to other misinterpretations.
Cons
  1. Same inconsistency issues as above (how important is consistency?).
  2. The arabic era could be confused with the Arab empire, which is a sub-period, as far as I understand.
  3. Arabic culture still has the potential to be confused with Arab/Arabian culture. That historical culture is often called "Islamic culture" (or "medieval Islamic culture") and "Arabic culture" is mostly used in another meaning (refering only to the culture of Arabic world).
  4. Some of these variations do not lend themselves as suitable names for the associated category.
  5. The lead section of this article would still start out "In the history of mathematics, Islamic mathematics or Arabic mathematics refers to ..." as these are the terms used in the relevant literature.

(History of) Mathematics and Islam

Pros
Cons
  1. This refers to a totally different topic than that discussed in this article.

(Medieval) Middle Eastern mathematics

Pros
  1. Using a geographical term is less divisive than using a term with ethnic or religious connotations.
Cons
  1. No reliable sources have been identified which use this term to refer to this period in the history of mathematics.
  2. Morocco, Spain, and Central Asia are not part of the Middle East.

Excuse me?

Am I the only person who finds this discussion surrealistic? Aquib (talk) 18:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Why? Seems legitimate to me. Question is, who wrote this section? The signatures are missing, as are any replies. Yclept:Berr (talk) 06:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Medieval Islamic mathematics would seem to be a better term, along with (-->) Medieval Islamic science, etc. Then people would actually be able to, y'know, find the page which some folks feel is better left stubbed because they think it takes months to edit to varify or remove sourced claims from an already written article. Good thing they aren't working for a scholarly journal with that attitude! Yclept:Berr (talk) 06:14, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Good point! -Aquib (talk) 14:50, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Err, are you worried that people might not find this page, but instead find Medieval Islamic mathematics? That doesn't make sense, since that redirects to this page. And could you drop the accusations of bad faith, perhaps? William M. Connolley (talk) 14:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

unprotected, and please sign

I have unprotected this page, since it was protected nearly a month ago for edit warring. By the way, everyone should sign posts on talk pages with four tildes. I can't easily tell how long the stuff in the previous section has been there, and usually we look over the talk page before unprotecting articles, so the dates help. CMummert · talk 17:28, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

The section above is being written collaboratively and it would therefore be inappropriate or impossible to sign the comments. —Ruud 20:10, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
It seems CMummert has disappeared or changed their name? -Aquib (talk) 18:51, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Islamic Mathematics

There is no such thing as Islamic mathematics. What is the point of this article. I don't see how anyone, no matter how politically correct they are, could possibly believe that arithmetic would be different for a Mohammedan than a Christian. 1+1=2 universally. --FDR (talk) 17:26, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Please read the preceding talk entries answering your question. Just so you know Mohammedan, like Musulmen, is a fairly archaic term Yclept:Berr (talk) 05:31, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Clean?

I'm dubious about declaring this clean . RK notes at least one other problem and restores the tag . I think the claim re irrationals was dodgy : what the source actually said was Algebra was a unifying theory which allowed rational numbers, irrational numbers, geometrical magnitudes, etc., to all be treated as "algebraic objects" and this is rather different to Arabic mathematicians were also the first to treat irrational numbers as algebraic objects WMC 21:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm beginning to fear that moving most content in the article to a subpage and then selectively moving stuff back in will be a better approach than slowly cleaning up this mess. The real pity is that most statements have some truth at the core, but have been so distorted that any casual reader will be severely misled. —Ruud 14:13, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
It may well be for the best William M. Connolley (talk) 15:54, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Note: the article in its pre-stub state is available from Talk:Mathematics in medieval Islam/Jagged 85 William M. Connolley (talk) 11:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Kindly restore this article

If you wish to work further on a subpage, it is not necessary to stub the article first -Aquib (talk) 03:40, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I am assuming the history will be restored as well. -Aquib (talk) 03:42, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The article was stubbed for a good reason, discussed above. Do you understand those reasons? If not we can explain them WMC 08:48, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The last article I saw stubbed by this "cleanup crew", Science in medieval Islam, is still sitting there empty - as it was left several months ago. If anyone stubs another article in this effort, I am going straight to the arbitration committee. Your choice. -Aquib (talk) 13:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Rewriting this article from scratch is not going to take any longer rewriting the existing article to be factually accurate (which is still going to take a very long time of course). In the mean time there is a nice list of good books anyone interested in the subject can borrow from his or her library. I have all confidence that the arbcom would agree with this action. —Ruud 14:03, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Threats of going to arbcomm are a waste of time. Arbcomm will certainly reject any such attempt on the grounds that you have failed to take the preliminary steps at dispute resolution. The first of which is to discuss the matter here. So, please, lets discuss it. The first point of which has to be: are you aware of the Jagged cleanup and the reasons for it? William M. Connolley (talk) 14:06, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
I have watched this scenario unfold since April of last year. I have made comments on various discussion pages and tried to work with various members of the cleanup effort to quantify the damage and identify a reasonable way to address it. This drawn out, carte blanche approach to remediation is not acceptable.
You and your teammates do not own this article. You are not entitled, under an RFC/U against an editor, to truncate the article, dispense with its history, decat it (whatever that implies), basically lock it out, and take it into a private space where changes may, or may not be accomplished.
Return the article to the mainspace. Then we can discuss what needs to be done with all the affected articles on this portal - in a transparent forum with the necessary visibility across the encyclopedia.
Aquib (talk) 17:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
You are largely mistaken. You and your teammates do not own this article is both wrong and right: no-one owns the article, but there is no "team". In particular, *you* do not own the article either. You are not entitled... to truncate the article - wrong. Anyone is entitled to truncate, change, whatever any article. Subject to agreement from those who care. *You* are most certainly not entitled to insist on the Jagged version being restored. Return the article to the mainspace. Then we can... - no. You are not entitled to issue instructions. When an article is (like this one) badly broken, there are two ways to go: either fix it up in place, or to stub it and work back up. Neither one is entitled to be considered the One True Way. Which gets chosen depends on the balance of the various editors judgements. But in this case the many many many Jagged problems point to not leaving misleading information about being the best way. For myself, I think it better than wikipedia lack some useful information than that it include misleading / wrong information. Even one error isn't worth 10 true facts: it just poisons the entire structure, and you don't know what you can trust.
If you're familiar with the Jagged problems, then you ought to know all this. Simply insisting on having your preferred version is unlikely to work William M. Connolley (talk) 19:00, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Very well, it is no surprise to me you feel entitled to take these actions. -Aquib (talk) 19:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
You have taken these actions in a manner which makes them practically irreversible by anyone else; otherwise, I would do revert them myself. In this regard, you have violated the spirit of our principles. You have also undoubtedly broken a rule somewhere. -Aquib (talk) 19:27, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
You have also undoubtedly broken a rule somewhere? Good to see you WP:AGF, and also trying to defuse tension: Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Page_move_.2F lockout at Mathematics in medieval Islam. Keep reading the rule book and when you work out what rule was broken, do let me know. Or possibly RK; I'm at something of a loss to know what rule I could possibly have broken William M. Connolley (talk) 11:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
I see... and how many articles have had their edit histories obliterated by your team? -Aquib (talk) 15:50, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
There is no team. I have obliterated no edit histories. Why don't you settle down and actually do some productive editing? I just checked the last 500 edits to this page, which reaches back to 2008. You have precisely one edit, and it is trivial . Why not channel the energy you're putting into outrage into actually adding something to the page? William M. Connolley (talk) 16:57, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
You are avoiding answering my question. If you have truncated the article due to Jag's edits, I would like to see what the article looked like before he began editing it. I would also like to do the same on any of the potentially hundreds or thousands of other articles Jag edited. I assume that is why we have edit histories. Please don't say you aren't on a team, don't make me go back through the history of the various pages where this effort has been organized. Assuming they have histories. Kindly answer my question. How many articles are you aware of which have had their histories obliterated due to Jag cleanup, or where is a list of such articles kept? -Aquib (talk) 18:19, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
This is getting a bit surreal and certainly unproductive. You asked how many articles have had their edit histories obliterated by your team? I didn't avoid the question, I answered it fully. First the question is meaningless, because there is no team. If I try to answer your question by replacing it with how many articles have had their edit histories obliterated by you? then the answer is none which I've already given. I don't speak for anyone else. If you want to see what the article looged like pre-Jagged, then you can use the edit history like I did, and discover William M. Connolley (talk) 18:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes I see Future Perfect at Sunrise has undone the damage. -Aquib (talk) 21:56, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

And who did this "damage"? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:01, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
You can find my reply here. -Aquib (talk) 02:11, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


tl;dr: What's the current status of this article ? Is this the final state of the article, or is it still undergoing the restoration process ? Al-Andalusi (talk) 05:37, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The article is stubbed. It awaits someone prepared to either (a) rebuild it from scratch or (b) prepared to go carefully through the pre-stubbed state to sieve out the valuable material from the chaff and the errors William M. Connolley (talk) 22:34, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
Someone you and Ruud Koot approve of. Pjoef didn't do a good enough job right? Aquib (talk) 02:55, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Ruud Koot disagrees with Pjoefs claim, although no proof is given
  • WMC removes a dubious claim but here we can see the claim Islamic mathematicians, Arabs, did use irrational numbers in algebraic equations.
  • WMC believes this sounds totally made up . Again, here we see Arabic mathematicians (or others working in the Islamic civilization) did discover the derivitive of cubic polynomials.
  • Bollocks I don't know what dynamic functional algebra is, but WMC does not dispute the assertions, he only changes the name.
  • Nit picking Fibonnaci's use of the notation system of Arabic mathematicians seems well known, still WMC goes in and clarifies.
  • Apparently it is against the rules to repeat a fact
  • Again But what is the great sin in this? This fact is used in different places in the article, in different contexts. This is dictated by the organization of the material.
  • Ruud moves in to bully and intimidate Pjoef. I guess his name says it all.
To summarize: Koot and WMC tell anyone who complains to get involved in the cleanup. But when people participate, they get bullied and intimidated, and Koot/WMC pull the plug on the article. WMC/Koot claim to be knowledgeable, and question other's expertise. At the same time, their own edits and critiques are hopelessly inadequate and inept. I say that to give them the benefit of the doubt, I would hate to think they know what they are doing.
I am restoring this article to the state it was in after Pjoef's cleanup.
This is just a beginning. A more comprehensive approach needs to be taken to put a halt to these article stubbings, moves and redirects in the name of the Jag cleanup. I am seeing other articles that have been submarined as well. If the justification is similar to this, then we are talking about collateral damage a large scale. Again, I am trying to give the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps people's tempers got the best of them, or they have lost their perspective. I am hoping this is a one-off incident and not a pattern. The alternative explanations are of a far more serious nature.
Aquib (talk) 05:07, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I've re-stubbed it. The article was broken. Insisting that it wasn't is not very useful. Objecting to, say claims that they had invented derivatives makes little sense William M. Connolley (talk) 08:36, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

WMC, I would expect an expert in this field to be more precise. As you can see, the assertion in question is whether "they" (Tusi) was the first to use (ie discover) a derivative of cubic polynomials - not whether he discovered derivatives. Please be more precise, this is important. This is your single response to my points regarding the five edits you made before the article was "stubbed".
My reply to you is found on page 97 of History of Mathematics: Highways and Byways By Amy Dahan-Dalmèdico, Jeanne Peiffer. Published in association with the Mathematical Association of America. I can quote it for you: The discussion, in effect, is almost always based on the search for maxims, and for that Sharif Al-Din used expressions corresponding to the first derivative for polynomials. He referenced the role of the determinant in cubic equations. Here is the link, look for page 97.
Please do not waste my time with the sort of careless offhand inaccurate reasoning you have offered in the discussion up to this point. I actually would prefer to be creating content. You have no case. You have shut down the page claiming inaccuracies you cannot substantiate. In the process you violated AGF for Pj's contributions. Pj was personally attacked for differing with you. The examples you gave for stubbing the article are almost wholly inaccurate or off-topic. Aquib (talk) 23:00, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
And please follow the talk guidelines for indenting replies. Replying without indentation is discourteous. It is also a phenomenon curiously associated with tendentious editors.
Aquib (talk) 23:00, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
Please stop trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs. And if you want a polite discussion, I suggest dropping the careless offhand inaccurate reasoning stuff. As for the derivatives: do you not understand: they didn't even have the concept William M. Connolley (talk) 08:48, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Shame on you for bringing in family members, that is a crude tactic for evasion. And you are disagreeing with a book I am citing - not me. If you disagree with the book, state your reasoning and/or put it up on RS. -Aquib (talk) 15:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Dear Aquib, please find me even one single mathematician who can tell me what a "dynamic functional algebra" is supposed to be (hint: you won't be able to). The term doesn't appear in the source Jagged cited, it's something he made up and suggestively linked to functional algebra. I think we've given several more examples already and could give many more, but I somehow doubt we are going to make you realize how broken and misleading Jagged's prose was. —Ruud 14:38, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Sure RK. It is an algebraic function you can plug variables into. Add an algorithm and you have the makings of a computer program. Here's an article on Backus winning the Turing award in 1977. Backus developed FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator, the programming language used by a generation of scientists. The article discusses these topics at length. If you read the whole article, you will understand what Jag is referring to. The only reason I didn't recognize it at first is because it's so obvious. And it's from the first link in a Google query for the words Dynamic algebraic function.
Jag does not have to repeat his sources word for word. None of us do. In fact, if we did, it would be a copyvio. The rest of the examples are even poorer quality than this one. U got nada. This is looking more and more like it's all smoke and mirrors.
Aquib (talk) 01:22, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Nonsense. —Ruud 01:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
And please indent your replies. Someone else may want to take a look at this, it needs to be readable. Thanks -Aquib (talk) 01:24, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Aam appears to place great store by Pj declaring the article clean. But as far as I can tell, all Pj did was fiddle with the references a bit - he doesn't seem to have understood any of the problems at all. And certainly, *after* his cleanup the article was still littered with nonsense - e.g. . So I don't think IT HAS BEEN CLEANED UP! should be taken seriously William M. Connolley (talk) 17:08, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
Well there's another explanation you haven't mentioned isn't there? And it has been stated by several other editors since this incident began. The article is basically sound and you're wrong. Lights on. -Aquib (talk) 01:31, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I agree with WMC that Pjoef doesn't seen to have understood the scope of this article's problems. It's not that one or two refs need tweaking. We are talking, mass, systematic POV-pushing by completely distorting sources, making claims that are not backed by sources, cherry picking, quoting out of contect, low quality sourcing using Google Books snippets, puffery, the works. It's all outlined in the RfC/U for Jagged 85. The way I see it, the article is NOT clean, and no we are not going to "kindly restore", not now, not ever. Rather, it needs to be re-written from scratch. Athenean (talk) 06:50, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
A few points here. 1) This discussion is about restoring Mathematics in medieval Islam. 2) An RFC/U is not like an FBI badge you can flash in order to get unlimited access to Misplaced Pages. 3) The RFC/U was disavowed by Jag, making the RFC/U inoperable. 4) Stubbing articles was not contemplated by the RFC/U, these actions are outside the RFC/U. 5) I am not a party to the RFC/U and would not be bound by it, if it were binding. 6) There is no statistical foundation that can be used to infer the state of individual articles. They must be examined on a case-by-case basis. 7) This stubbing was done without notice or consensus, in such a way as to pull the article right out from under an editor working on it in good faith. As a result, we are now having the discussion that should have taken place before the article was stubbed. 8) It is still doubtful whether the editors who pulled the plug were actually factually aware of the state of the article when they did so. I have yet to get straight answers on the majority of the 5 edits made by WMC before the article was stubbed. -Aquib (talk) 20:45, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

RFC regarding stubbing (deletion) of Mathematics in medieval Islam article

Please consider joining the feedback request service.
An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. Within 24 hours, this page will be added to the following list: When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

See Kindly restore this article directly above. This article was identified as needing review and possible cleanup per an RFC/U. When Pjoef worked on it and declared it clean, WMC made 5 edits to the page citing objectionable material. WMC and Ruud Koot then moved the article out of the mainspace. Ruud Koot and others subjected Pjoef to an abusive discussion on Pjoef's talk page. The article history was subsequently restored. Looking through the original objections (article edits) by WMC on 2/14, they appear to be spurious; and they have been refuted. In spite of this, Ruud Koot and WMC refuse to allow the page to be restored to Pjoef's version. The article should be restored to Pjoef's most recent version as of 2/14. -Aquib (talk) 02:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The timeline to article stubbing (excerpted and updated from above section)
  • user:Ruud Koot disagrees with Pjoefs claim, although no proof is given
  • user:WMC (AKA user:William M. Connolley) removes a dubious claim but here we can see the claim Islamic mathematicians, Arabs, did use irrational numbers in algebraic equations. I have refuted this claim above.
  • WMC believes this sounds totally made up . Again, here we see Arabic mathematicians (or others working in the Islamic civilization) did discover the derivitive of cubic polynomials. I have refuted this claim above.
  • Bollocks See my explanation of this to Ruud Koot above, This objection has also been refuted.
  • Nit picking Fibonnaci's use of the notation system of Arabic mathematicians seems well known, still WMC goes in and clarifies. Not actually a problem here, more a question of taste.
  • Apparently it is against the rules to repeat a fact
  • Again But what is the great sin in this? This fact is used in different places in the article, in different contexts. This is dictated by the organization of the material.
  • Ruud moves in to bully and intimidate Pjoef.
I am particularly upset at the article move initiated by Ruud Koot, which took the article history with it, and the treatment he and WMC dished out to Pjoef. I am trying to assume good faith and handle this in a civil manner under an RFC.
A review of the facts in the section directly above (Kindly...) will show there is no legitimate reason to keep the article stubbed. All WMC's objections have been refuted. They are spurious. This article needs to be restored to the last edit by Pjoef on 2/14.
Aquib (talk) 02:49, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I haven't looked at the article for a few weeks. When I last saw it, it was badly in need of a complete rewrite or, failing that, stubbing. But it looks like there's been a lot of work since, so I don't know if that was the right call or not. If no one has dealt with this by tomorrow night I'll go through the history and see what I can find. CRGreathouse (t | c) 04:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Please do, and Thank You -Aquib (talk) 05:22, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I think the article is such an utter POV-fest, filled with insidious fraudulent sourcing, outright fabrications, weasel wording, presentism, and peacockery, that stubbing is the only remedy, and I wholeheartedly support it. The sections on "Non-Euclidean Geometry" and "Calculus" are cases in point. Integral calculus? Seriously now? Athenean (talk) 06:41, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
OK fair enough. Have you looked at the 2/14 version by Pjoef summarized "cleanup complete" (something to that effect)? Have you looked at the 5 diffs from WMCs markup edits (above), and his remarks re 2/14-2/15 immediately before the article was stubbed? I would particularly like to know your opinions on those points. Thanks Aquib (talk) 07:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Time out. In the case of integral calculus, you are referring to one of WMC's objections. How do you explain the source I included in my response to him, which I am including below?
Page 97 of History of Mathematics: Highways and Byways By Amy Dahan-Dalmèdico, Jeanne Peiffer. Published in association with the Mathematical Association of America. I can quote it for you: The discussion, in effect, is almost always based on the search for maxims, and for that Sharif Al-Din used expressions corresponding to the first derivative for polynomials. He referenced the role of the determinant in cubic equations. Here is the link, look for page 97.
This RFC is about whether the article has been cleaned up. If you have read the RFC and the section above it closely, and you are familiar with the subject (I am not particularly so), then your opinion is welcome. But I am having a problem sorting out the information I am seeking for this RFC from the immediate reaction everyone has when I bring up the subject. That is why I raised the RFC in the first place.
Aquib (talk) 07:23, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • See Analysis of recent changes below for my summary of the edits performed by Pjoef. It appears to me that despite massive alterations, very little substantive change from Jagged 85's version occurred. Most of Pjoef's edits involved spacing and citation formatting. However, what is needed is careful analysis of the text for accuracy and WP:DUE, with a slow check of the sources. Until that occurs, the article should remain stubbed. Johnuniq (talk) 07:51, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • keep stubbed: Aquib, this isn't an RFC, because an RFC needs to Include a brief, neutral statement of the issue below the template. You haven't included a neutral statement, you've simply pushed your own viewpoint. Pj did not understand the problem; the article he decalred "CLEAN" in bug shouty langage was still a disaster area. Nor, I think, does Aquib really have any understanding of the problems, which is why whenever I, Ruud, or anyone else raises genuine problems with the article he merely dismisses those objections as "refuted", even though they haven't been. I dno't think Aquib has the background in Maths to be understanding the problems (see for example the section above where he tried to explain what dynamic functional algebra is) William M. Connolley (talk) 08:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
True my RFC skills need sharpening and I am a bit upset. I am not an expert on anything; I am a generalist. And I don't plan on leaving this world in the hands of experts, thanks for offering. My interest in the article is due to its significance to Islamic and world civilization. Speaking of civilization, a civil and collaborative approach on the part of the other editors would have gone a long way towards heading this off. I am still hoping to get multi-word replies from you to these questions regarding Tusi and dynamic functional algebra.
  • Page 97 of History of Mathematics: Highways and Byways By Amy Dahan-Dalmèdico, Jeanne Peiffer. Published in association with the Mathematical Association of America. I can quote it for you: The discussion, in effect, is almost always based on the search for maxims, and for that Sharif Al-Din used expressions corresponding to the first derivative for polynomials. He referenced the role of the determinant in cubic equations. Here is the link, look for page 97. Derivatives is a term used in calculus,is it not?
  • Dynamic functional algebra is an algebraic function you can plug variables into. Add an algorithm and you have the makings of a computer program. Here's an article on Backus winning the Turing award in 1977. Perhaps we are coining a term here? You disagree with my line of thinking? Someone puts an assertion like this in an article and you cut it out with the edit summary bollocks? Anyone? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aquib american muslim (talk • contribs) 15:07, March 14, 2011 (UTC)
Dynamic functional algebra is a made-up term. No-one has a clue what it is. Jagged made it up because it sounded good and, like, all impressive. Neither he nor you nor anyone else knows what it is, for the simple reason that it doesn't exist. What we are seeing here is you defending, to the death, all of Jagged's errors, even the utterly implausible. When are you going to admit that there are huge errors in his texts?
As to your PDF - this is ridiculous. You've just googled functional and dynamic, and come up with an irrelevant document about functional programming, which you haven't read, or understood, or even noticed that it has nothing at all to do with the subject under debate. That is an excellent example of the way Jagged approached references: start off with the text you want to justify, google a few of the words, and add in the ref, relevant or not William M. Connolley (talk) 15:23, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
A useful consideration. I didn't catch the place where my source for Tusi and derivatives was refuted. Did I miss it? -Aquib (talk) 17:57, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I am of course referring to the use of derivatives in cubic polynomials, a separate issue from the descriptive dynamic functional algebra. -Aquib (talk) 18:13, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Disagree with stubbing: The editors supporting the blanking/stubbing of this article still haven't provided any adequate justifications for such an extreme measure, but the only justification they continue to use is the flawed Jagged 85 RFC, which was based on an extremely biased selective sample that only represented a tiny percentage of the user's edits, which some users have irrationally interpreted to mean that all edits involving Jagged 85 are unreliable. Several editors have since used the Jagged 85 RfC as an excuse to blank out entire articles, including for example Science in medieval Islam, Physics in medieval Islam, and now Mathematics in medieval Islam, without ever bothering to fact-check these articles at all, nor do they have any intention of ever having these articles re-written. If any editor disagrees with their POV, they'll accuse their opponents of POV-pushing, even though some of them clearly have a POV-pushing agenda of their own. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if they resort to blanking/stubbing all the Islamic science articles if this disturbing pattern continues. And by the way Athenian, the Greek mathematics article also makes claims about integral calculus, so that must mean Greek mathematics should also be stubbed using your own ridiculous logic. Jagged 85 (talk) 09:52, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • You're wrong. People have provided plenty of examples of your errors / disinformation / misunderstandings. For example, this . So your without ever bothering to fact-check these articles at all is just offensive: people *have* fact-checked the articles, and they have repeatedly failed those checks William M. Connolley (talk) 11:02, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
If that's the best example of "fact-checking" you can come up with, then it's a pretty poor example. I highly doubt you checked the original source, but it seems to me you deleted it simply because it sounded like "bollocks". If you did check the original source, Katz clearly mentioned a "dynamic function" stage of algebra and included Tusi in his discussion of it. If you can't even prove that a few passages like these are false, then how can you expect everyone to believe the entire article is false and should therefore be stubbed? The grounds for stubbing this article is extremely faulty and is hinged entirely on my involvement in it, instead of the actual content of the article. Jagged 85 (talk) 07:04, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
And now the POV-pusher responsible for this giant mess furiously lashes out, playing the victim and accusing everyone else of POV-pushing. The RfC/U wasn't "flawed". The example of your tendentious editing were legion, numbering in the thousands and covering a period of years (in fact from your very first edit). And it was closed by agreement, and you yourself owned up to systematic POV-pushing (if only so to escape a ban) and promised to clean up after yourself (which you, surprise, didn't). As for Greek Mathematics, yes it needs work, but it is not so utterly riddled with lies, fabrications, fraudulent sourcing, weasel-wording and peacockery that it needs to be stubbed. Not that you would know anything about the subject anyway. Athenean (talk) 18:51, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
RFC is not binding and it is not won by counting votes. I doubt anyone's mind is being swayed by these sorts of arguments. There is no consensus. Many of us, myself included, would do well to keep this in mind. -Aquib (talk) 20:58, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
It's also fair to say that if Jagged had actually cleaned up after himself instead of just saying he would do so, the article would probably not have been stubbed. It's called "you reap what you sow". Athenean (talk) 19:28, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
To whom are you referring to when you say "you reap what you sow", Athenean? Surely you don't believe Jag is the lone recipient of this misfortune? -Aquib (talk) 20:58, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Jagged gamed the system (i.e. he cheated), he got caught, he said he would clean up after himself but didn't, and so here we are, that is what I mean. I'm getting the impression that you think that those editors that support stubbing do so in order to punish any and all Muslim editors for Jagged's transgressions. Nothing could be further from the truth. That the article had to be stubbed is indeed deplorable and a last resort, but such was the magnitude of Jagged's deceit that such a drastic measure was the least unappealing option out of a bunch of unappealing options. However, absolutely no one is saying that the article should remain a stub forever. There is a difference. So relax, and assume good faith. The article will be rebuilt, and it will be much better than what was there before, of that I have no doubt. And it would be rebuilt even faster if the editors that are knowledgeable about the subject weren't getting bogged down in endless circular debate. Have faith in the wikipedia community, wikipedia works. Athenean (talk) 21:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Whatever was done was done. And no, I don't think the pro-stub group is punishing Muslims. I do not. I do think the cleanup has overreached, and picked up some bad players along the way. Someone65, Allahlovesyou, and others. Other good editors have become jaded and burned out to the point they lose their appetite when the subject comes up. Count me in that group. Positions have become rigid, and there is no middle ground. I have watched Science in medieval Islam sit there stubbed for 6 months. Nothing. Just sitting there. I have not acted to intervene, nor has anyone else I am aware of. Turns out there are others I was not aware of.
But when you have an article (like this one) sitting there for 9 months after the conclusion of the RFC/U, and an innocent bystander editor picks up it's name off the WP articles for review, comes in to clean it up, and gets it pulled out from underneath him, that raises a red flag. How is that timely or appropriate? What is the reasoning? No consensus, no discussion, and not even stubbed - but rather moved with its history to a work area. Then the reasons given are scant and shaky. When I complain about it what do I get? I get the JAG FBI badge flashed on me - no reason necessary sir, just move along now.
So I think we need to consider this single article, the circumstances, and the implications. I know there are people of good faith on the other side of this dispute, and I am counting on them to evaluate this incident and consider the actual circumstances, the true implications of what has happened here. And what it means for the encyclopedia. We need to find a better way to deal with this than stubbing, it's in all our best interests. We need to move beyond Jag and start looking after the content - one article at a time.
Aquib (talk) 22:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
What, so I'm the "victim" now? I thought I was supposed to be the "villain" here? If you think I'm supposed to be the "victim" here, then you're wrong. I honestly couldn't care less if a bunch of medieval Islamic articles were stubbed as I no longer have any interest in them. I never even bothered checking back here for a very long time until Aquib invited me here for discussion. The real "victims" are the contributors who are currently active in the article, not past contributors like myself. As for the "POV-pushing", you obviously missed the point. I wasn't referring to myself as the "victim", but I was referring to a user above who accused Aquib of POV-pushing simply because he refuses to agree with that user's POV. Also, don't even bother trying to use a fallacious strawman argument against me. Nowhere did I ever admit to "systematic POV-pushing", but the only thing I ever admitted to in the RfC was carelessness in a small percentage of my edits, and that's it. As for Greek mathematics, again you miss the point. You were using integral calculus as an excuse for stubbing/blanking this article when that same flaw exists in an article you were involved in, hence I was obviously pointing out the double-standards in your argument. Again, none of this changes the fact that the grounds for stubbing this article is extremely faulty. The pro-stub people are simply cherry-picking a few examples that seem dubious, yet even those few examples don't hold up to scrutiny... and yet you expect everyone to believe the entire article is faulty and should therefore be stubbed despite the pitiful lack of evidence. No offense, but this is just ridiculous. Jagged 85 (talk) 07:04, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
What you have admitted is not relevant. The evidence available at WP:Jagged 85 cleanup demonstrates a severe misuse of sources. Whether such misuse was intentional or not is of no interest—all that matters is that it happened, and now it needs to be cleaned up. Johnuniq (talk) 09:11, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
Don't distort my words. I didn't say you were the victim, I said you're playing the victim, which is exactly what you're doing. The only actual victims here are Misplaced Pages and its readers. As for the "carelessness in the small percentage" of your edits, the evidence in RfC/U speaks for itself as Johnuniq says (and again that is only a fraction). I have no idea what you're on about Greek Mathematics again, as none of the articles I "have been involved in" make any claim about integral calculus. Nor do they contain made-up sci-fi terms like "Dynamic Functional Algebra". No, only this one does. Lastly, regarding "ridiculous", I will conclude with your mention of the Apollo Program in Egyptian Astronomy (though I'm sure I could come up with many examples without trying that hard). Athenean (talk) 02:46, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
I would presume that Jagged 85's comment about Greek mathematics was referring to the following sentence:
"Greek mathematics also contributed importantly to ideas on number theory, mathematical analysis, applied mathematics, and, at times, approached close to integral calculus."
which occurs in the Achievements section of the article Greek mathematics. This does seem to me to be a rather overblown way of (presumably) referring to Archimedes's method of exhaustion. But I don't see how responding to such Tu quoque (or other stuff exists) arguments would make any worthwhile contribution to this discussion, and it seems to me that the most appropriate response would be to ignore them (or take them up in a more appropriate venue).
David Wilson (talk · cont) 13:30, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Restore, but with {{verify source}} tags (or another special tag) following each sentence. We can then slowly verify each sentence/statement and either re-phrase to better reflect the cited sources or delete if failed verification. I'm suggesting this approach based on my experience in cleaning Jagged edits in a couple of shorter articles (al-Battani and Abu Kamil). In both cases, the Jagged content was useful as a starting point, and better than starting from scratch. And I have to admit that Jagged can be right some times or almost so (i.e., not all his edits are of the same quality). Once this process is done, we can delete sources and claims that can be proven false or unreliable. I would also suggest saving the hard parts for last, like writing a synthesis for mathematical development, after all cleaning/verification is done. Wiqixtalk 10:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Interesting suggestion, and comes from an editor who has successfully applied the technique. -Aquib (talk) 13:00, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Belatedly, I thought to check Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam. It isn't clean at all. So the claims of success should be taken with a heavy dose of salt William M. Connolley (talk) 19:26, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Also, that article history shows no sign of the approach W55 suggests having been used. I have a feeling that he was making some kind of metaphorical suggestion, rather than one based on actual experience; hopefully he'll clarify this William M. Connolley (talk) 19:35, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Rereading Wiqi55s statement I can see he might not have been saying he had tagged the articles, he could have simply been suggesting we could do that. Interesting idea nevertheless. -Aquib (talk) 22:26, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • See also, this page for a broader context of the scope involved, as well as a current Wiki-dynamic, which I found today. On that page it appears to start with misuse of sources, but that leads directly to a Misplaced Pages RfC clean-up effort; while well motivated and intentioned, it might have gone past neutral. It was How many articles have been truncated in the Jag cleanup effort? that caused my interest, and I commented there hoping to help. But, I will repeat here a part from the EB article ref'd there, because it sets a reliable standard for others to judge content details in their relevant context; comment has been requested.

    Muslim maritime, agricultural, and technological innovations, as well as much East Asian technology via the Muslim world, made their way to western Europe in one of the largest technology transfers in world history. What Europeans did not invent they readily borrowed and adapted for their own use. Of the three great civilizations of western Eurasia and North Africa, that of Christian Europe began as the least developed in virtually all aspects of material and intellectual culture, well behind the Islamic states and Byzantium.

    Keeping comments informative rather than judgmental for now, one could also look at stable introductory material at another topic, here, and get other ref'd opinions of H. G. Wells , from his c.1920 The Outline of History or more a recent one from academic Bernard Lewis, writing about their period of decline. Regards, CasualObserver'48 (talk) 12:19, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Of course there is systemic bias in wikipedia. The Jagged mess is very good evidence of that: anyone inserting junk, as Jagged did, into any minor pop singer's article would be picked up very quickly. The problem is that here has been no competent oversight of Jagged's edits until recently. Now that his edits (and the articles) have received the scrutiny they deserve, they are seen to be failing. You complain about systemic bias, but you are part of the problem: your attitude, and Jagged's, of unrelenting defence of the most obvious errors inevitably pushes people away, and so the articles remain a mess. Hopefully that won't happen this time William M. Connolley (talk) 17:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • WMC, there is no vast international conspiracy to bring down the English Misplaced Pages. Everyone has a point of view. You can relax. I actually like Misplaced Pages. `Aquib (talk) 17:39, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Restore ~ I was participating to the February 2011 Wikification Backlog Elimination Drive when I "ran" into this article. I have wikified this article in a couple of days (13–14 February 2011). At the end of my work here an advertising banner appeared at the top of the page. Then, I quickly read what was the matter of the litigation, and I thought to do something to help, because I did not want to see many hours of work wasted in just few seconds. So, I started consolidating and grouping references, moving notes in a new proper section, and more, but I was stopped by Ruud and I could not finish the job. My intention was to check out if there were any incorrect information and sources. This article has been edited thousands of times and was reviewed and assessed as B-class by WP Mathematics. I read it line by line and word by word, and in my humble opinion, it is mostly well-sourced, comprehensible and reasonably clear, and follows the NPOV policy, Anyway, our most important resource are our readers (more than editors) so, restore this article immediately and tag any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and unverified facts and citations/sources by using inline citation and verifiability maintenance templates. This was something I was doing before I was stopped by Ruud.
    I also invite you to read the March 2011 Update at Wikimedia Strategic Planning. Cheers. –pjoef (talk • contribs) 10:59, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • If you really read this thing line-by-line, why didn't you spot any of the obvious glaring errors that have subsequently been noted? William M. Connolley (talk) 11:03, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
    • Simply because I was grouping references and that was something I would liked to do after then. If I remember rightly, I've also added a couple of inline templates for citing sources/verifiability and etcetera.
      P.S.: you can not judge the work of your plumber if you stop him when he took off but did not replace the pipe. –pjoef (talk • contribs) 11:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Not good enough. You're claiming to have read this through line by line but you noticed none of the problems. That does rather suggest that you aren't competent to assess it. Please take a moment to look at the problems subsequently identified, and indicate why you failed to notice them William M. Connolley (talk) 11:35, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Correct Pj, you can't be held accountable for not completing the work... I see now your work was still in progress when the article was stubbed. Nice link to the Wikimedia article, by the way -Aquib (talk) 17:21, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Keep stubbed. The old version was flawed and full of POV beyond repair. The best service to the topic is to give editors the opportunity to start anew without first having to work through a mountain of incoeherent material which was copied and pasted together with little real understanding of the topic. If people find the odd assertion well sourced enought to be kept, fine, but the RFC/U last year made amply clear that in case of doubt the burden of proof rests on those who want to keep the contentious material. I am looking forward to a new article with a fresh and unbiased outlook. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:51, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Restore most sections to me it seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water. While some sections may be suspect a lot seem fine. For example what is wrong with the "Geometric algebra" section describing the work of Omar Khayyám and his work on cubic equations? One way to proceed might be to break it down section by section to see which are suspect and which are mainly OK. I'm fine with stubbing sections if there is a specific problem with it but fail to see much evidence as to why it is all wrong. --Salix (talk): 15:36, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
  • The problem with "restore most sections" is that most sections contain errors, or are unverified. Someone needs to check them before they come back. You ask, what is wrong with the GA section, and (on a quick glance) there are no obvious explicit errors in it, but (a) it is all from one ref; which leads into (b) its all about OK. It isn't really about GA at all, just OK's work on it. So it is a badly misleading view of GA in the period. It hasn't been written by someone with a good understanding of GA and how it was then; it has been written by someone who copied a few sentences out of the one ref he happened to have to hand William M. Connolley (talk) 16:02, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
  • @Salix, thanks for dropping by, your insights are most appreciated. -Aquib (talk) 22:10, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Agree with stubbing decision. Pjoef ought to have realized that removing the cleanup tag immediately after it had been placed, without change to the article and without discussing this, would come across as a provocation. It was also clearly not justified; just glancing over that version I stumble over several things that just can't be right. Stubbing the article is not the end of the world; no content has been irretrievably lost, and it is better to present a correct stub to our readers and work quietly on a good version than to offer them an article riddled with disinformation.  --Lambiam 20:24, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
  • What if someone picked up an article off the wikify list, came over to work on it and replaced the wikify notice with an under construction notice, then 6 hours later, as they are working, someone else drops by and inserts a Jag warning on top of the construction notice?. The Jag warning is not a legal document, it is not policy, it is a reference to an RFC/U. No one owns these articles. So, might not some reasonable people take that Jag warning as an aggressive move? Is not this material controversial by its very nature? How would one judge the nature of such actions and such a warning? -Aquib (talk) 21:47, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
    It may have been perceived as aggressive the first time (although I don't know why one would view it that way), but the next time the cleanup tag was applied to a version that did not contain an "under construction" notice, which Pjoef had just removed. Thus, the idea that Pjoef was done with it, was entirely justified. This cleanup tag showed that at least one editor thought the article still had serious problems. In such a case it is definitely a bad idea to revert it just like that.  --Lambiam 01:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Clearly, there was only one incident that escalated through a connected sequence of actions on both sides. As instigator, under these circumstances, the burden will be on RK to prove no reasonable person would have perceived RK's actions as threatening or abusive. Gut feeling, putting myself in Pj's place, that's going to be hard to prove. I have yet to see discussion; the escalation appears to have been a series of edits and edit summaries. Again, a lack of discussion?
  • Restore article with "verify or remove" tags for the claims that some editors find "implausible". I, like some others here, am a generalist and not too knowledgeable on the Islamic world, medieval or otherwise. I do know, however, that Islamic science and mathematics were more advanced than the "bollocks" claim by folks above. There are plenty of Classical Western Canon buffs who would fit right at home in an average interdepartmental faculty argument over the validity of "world lit, world science, world math" etc. These arguments usually hinge around the inherent implausibility of claims that anyone else discovered anything or did anything comparable or worth mentioning in the same article/publication. No offense, but I don't see the same editors leaping to page-blank and stub articles on the development of science and math in the Western World when and if poorly-sourced claims appear in those articles. I suggest they try it and find out what happens to them. (Hint: Bad things would happen if they tried the "Jagged 85" solution on Western Civ articles and deleted them en masse and repeatedly as has been done since apparently all articles on wikipedia that happened to be salted with Jagged 85's edits, i.e. all articles on science and math in the Islamic world, got stubbed.)
Such is disparate treatment, because if all articles on European history, scientific revolution, etc. had been tagged with a single editor abusing the system to insert questionable claims, the same action would not have been taken to those dozen or so pages. and as far as the presentism goes, Aquib gave a cite for the integral calculus claim which Connolly and Athenian cite as "bollocks". Again I am not an expert on the subject, but one of the first things I learned in Calculus (and I got to third year in the subject before bailing) was the early history of calculus, which goes back quite a way in its infancy. I have no trouble believing that Islamic maths did not include elements which prefigured calculus, if citations have been provided for the claim.
I don't have time to engage in an edit war on ten different articles on a subject I'm not expert in with a bunch of classicists who are out to keep these articles stubbed until and unless all claims are removed that Islamic science or math accomplished anything that Misplaced Pages says was discovered by a European even when valid sources are provided for the claim, however. So restore the article, tag the claims you find questionable, and if you don't know enough about, say, geometry to know whether the claim is questionable, then do not delete or tag that claim unless you believe that it is the burden of all of Misplaced Pages to prove that Islamic mathematicians did not actually accomplish anything. Simple as that. Yclept:Berr (talk) 05:20, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
  • More to the point, I think that some folks are hiding behind a gap in wikipedia suggested guidelines for editing, which prompts me to think wikipedia may need a WP:Blind_spot (WP:BABY, WP:BATHWATER) template to deal with folks using the "this subject is not well-enough known to us to confirm if sources are genuine, much less offer our own corrections and improvements to others edits, so to be fair to other subjects on Misplaced Pages that benefit from the aforementioned systemic bias, we will delete it until such time as an unimpeachable source on the subject comes along and proves us wrong. Meanwhile, subjects on Misplaced Pages that do not present a worldwide view of the topic will continue to benefit from crowd wisdom". (On Edit: And lo and behold, we have a WP:BATHWATER template to serve as a starting point, which directly addresses the preceding paragraph and could serve as the basis for its own presumptive guideline on the subject.) Yclept:Berr (talk) 05:42, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
I think there is a reasonable claim that can be made for a template / guideline that can be made to address this phenomenon, because I've seen it pop up in all sorts of unexpected places, often involving Wikipedians who are experts in one topic and have a historic blind spot towards another that is less well-covered. If an expert were curating these pages, the same Wikipedians would be edit warring over the same points, let's not kid ourselves. This guy Jagged simply made it easy for the skeptics to target the whole field of Islamic studies (i.e. every page Jagged edited) instead of having to edit war with a knowledgeable person over which citations are deemed sufficient for the claim that, say, a claim that an Islamic mathematician prefigured a later Western mathematician's discovery. Yclept:Berr (talk) 05:20, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
You are tossing around POV accusations like "Classical Western Canon buffs", and "a bunch of classicists who are out to keep these articles stubbed until and unless all claims are removed that Islamic science or math accomplished anything that Misplaced Pages says was discovered by a European even when valid sources are provided for the claim" rather lightly. They are baseless and needlessly insulting, and can be seen as personal attacks. The scientific achievements in the Golden Age of Islamic civilization were tremendous, and there is no need to blow them up anachronistically beyond what they were. Where such overblown claims were inserted in our articles, they should be removed or tuned down to that which is actually supported by reliable sources. You comment on several specifics, but you got almost all of it wrong. For example, as you can easily verify, the qualification Bollocks strictly referred to the use of the term "dynamic functional algebra", a totally unknown concept even to present-day mathematicians. Aquib's citation supposedly justifying claims concerning integral calculus only describes Sharaf al-Din's use of expressions for quadratic polynomials, corresponding to the derivative of cubic polynomials, quite a different thing than "integral calculus", and one wonders if it is a good idea to leave this article in the hands of editors apparently lacking a basic understanding of fairly elementary mathematical concepts.  --Lambiam 09:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
YB: you need to actually understand the situation rather than, as L says, tossing around accusations. No-one is calling Islamic science bollocks as you say: what people are saying is that the Jagged version of this article was very very bad. Please stop inventing some non-existent war-on-Islam: it doesn't help anyone William M. Connolley (talk) 09:59, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
@YB Thank you for this succinct and incisive summary of the issues. You have reached a conclusion I myself have been considering. There are people on this talk page, for and against, who are acting in good faith. There are also people on this talk page, with an ideological agenda, who would prefer to address this article as a blank slate. Considering the circumstances under which the stubbing occurred, it is a matter of great concern to me. These tactics have no place in Misplaced Pages. If a controversial subject cannot be addressed using the tools and policies we have in place, this encyclopedia has failed. If these tactics are allowed to stand, Misplaced Pages is in danger of being captured by one side in this great war of ideas.
My request for a page freeze was declined a few hours ago; the reason cited was no evidence of recent disruptive editing. I will find a venue where I can appeal this decision.
-Aquib (talk) 13:59, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
No it wasn't. The reason given was declined - not enough recent activity . This had to be said twice before you got the idea William M. Connolley (talk) 14:24, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Well, not exactly. That's what the edit summary said, but the edit itself stated: "not enough recent disruptive activity".  --Lambiam 17:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Ah, that is just the template. But neither version is what Aam said it was William M. Connolley (talk) 17:14, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Disagree with stubbing, seems somone has been deleting content bit by bit.Most likely first removing references (because they cant verify it) then content, claiming there is no reference (based on comparison of this article 20 days ago).--Misconceptions2 (talk) 11:04, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I would add a verify source tag, and a neutrality tag. A maths expert should look at the old version of article. I have done higher level maths at university, and can say a lot of the things in the old version were infact invented by muslims, such as the sin and cos function. The idea that muslims invented the pascals triangle , only for it to be stolen by pascal, is not a widely supproted view, but many mathematicians know about that controversy--Misconceptions2 (talk) 11:04, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Analysis of recent changes

Pjoef (talk · contribs) made many changes to this article, and it is very hard to see what was done. I have attempted to summarize the changes to assist discussion, but now that I have done so I do not think the result is very helpful as it is too complex. Nevertheless, here it is. The early part of the following notes should be accurate, but I lost enthusiasm and might have missed some changes in the later edits.

Pjoef made 45 edits on February 14 and 15, 2011. This permalink shows the state of the article after the last of these edits.

Considering successive edits as a single change, seven changes were made:

diff1

  • Insert spaces (two spaces between sentences).
  • Place punctuation outside quotes.
  • Rearrange citations (splitting to multiple lines).
  • Tweak some citations (use "first" field, use "pp", and more).
  • Change some page ranges like "pages=60–3" to "pages=60–63".
  • Use {{Harv}} to rearrange reference in five places.
  • Add links like Aristotle and first visibility of the Moon.
  • Incorporate {{quote}} into {{Citation}}.
  • Put square brackes around ellipsis, to give .
  • Move an image (Irakischer Maler von 1287 001.jpg).
  • Add {{lang-ar}} and {{lang-lat}}.
  • Add {{See also|Algebra}} and {{See also|Arithmetic}} and {{See also|Geometry}}.
  • Put "See also" in alphabetical order in two columns.
  • Move "Biographies" section.
  • In "External links", add {{Refbegin}} and {{Refend}}.
  • Add the underlined text in: "development of mathematics, including the early Islamic mathematics".
  • Add reference for "MacTutor": Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance?

diff2

diff3

  • Change some links and URLs.

diff4

  • Use {{sfn}} to replace some refs.

diff5

  • More citation changes.
  • Introduce new text:
    Al-Hassār, a mathematician from the Maghreb (North Africa) specializing in Islamic inheritance jurisprudence during the 12th century, developed the modern symbolic mathematical notation for fractions, where the numerator and denominator are separated by a horizontal bar. The "dust ciphers he used are also nearly identical to the digits used in the current Western Arabic numerals. These same digits and fractional notation appear soon after in the work of Fibonacci in the 13th century.
  • Insert new text:
    who were also the first to treat irrational numbers as algebraic objects, which was made possible by the development of algebra
  • Change subheading from "Cubic equations" to "Dynamic functional algebra".
  • Insert new text:
    and was the first to discover the derivative of cubic polynomials
    This was the earliest form of dynamic functional algebra.
  • Change text for Al-Hassar including insertions like "developed the modern symbolic mathematical notation for fractions". Seemed to introduce a partial duplication: "Al-Hassār, an Arabic mathematician from the Maghreb...".
  • Removed some   between number and unit.

diff6

  • More citation changes.

diff7

  • More citation changes and some tweaks.

Taken altogether, the amount of content change was small, yet hard to see due to the massive alterations to spacing and citation style. Johnuniq (talk) 07:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Please, see this and this (note: the second link will be archived at the end of this month ) –pjoef (talk • contribs) 11:06, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Good point Pjoef. As I have been saying, there was a lack of AGF and discussion towards consensus when this article was stubbed. It was basically pulled out from under you. -Aquib (talk) 14:21, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your time, John. This is helpful. I am not seeing opinions anywhere in the RFC on the veracity of the assertions re Tusi's use of the derivatives of cubic polynomials (I have linked a source above) and also the term dynamic functional algebra (I linked to an article on the Turing prize for FORTRAN). I have seen nonsense, bollocks, that sort of reply, but something a bit more specific would be helpful. I am not a SMEee, but they too seem worthy of a civil reply. -Aquib (talk) 14:21, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Aquib, this has been repeatedly pointed out to you, you seem to be suffering from a bad case of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, but once more:
  • The term "dynamic functional algebra" doesn't exist. I can see how Jagged managed to invent this term from the source he cites, but it doesn't exist. The source in question certainly doesn't point out any relation to functional algebra.
  • See Yadegari, Mohammad (June 1978). "The Use of Mathematical Induction by Abū Kāmil Shujā' Ibn Aslam (850-930)". Isis. 69 (2). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |[pages= ignored (help) for a concise overview of "several archaic forms of mathematical induction" and conclude that Jagged's claim:

    "The first known proof by mathematical induction was introduced in the al-Fakhri written by Al-Karaji around 1000 AD, who used it to prove arithmetic sequences such as the binomial theorem, Pascal's triangle, and the sum formula for integral cubes."

    is very misleading. This what is so typical and so wrong about Jagged's writing: falsely claiming that X was the first to do Y (strongly implying X did Y in the modern mathematical sense of the word) while being completely devoid of any mathematical content.
—Ruud 16:01, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Worth considering. I didn't catch the place where my source re Tusi and derivatives was refuted. Did I miss it? -Aquib (talk) 17:50, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Jan Hogendijk (1989), "Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi on the number of positive roots of cubic equations", Historia Mathematica 19, pp. 69-85:

I now investigate the possible relationships between al-Tusi’s definition of D and the derivative. We have f’(m) = , but this quantity does not occur in al-Tusi’s argument. This means that al-Tusi does not find m by computing the derivative f’ and by putting f’(x) equal to zero. Therefore the concept of derivative is not implicit here.

—Ruud 20:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Thank you! This explains the objection WMC has to the assertion. However, we can now see the original Tusi assertion is not fabricated, but is rather a matter of dispute among the scholars. I have a very nice source that contradicts this claim, and your source seems to be directly addressing this controversy. Which means, for the purpose of this RFC, the assertion is within the realm of acceptable content and is not a cause for stubbing the article. Another good reason to have a discussion before taking extreme measures. -Aquib (talk) 21:09, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Well, reveal your cards then... —Ruud 21:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

An interesting and constructive compromise has been offered for the above RFC

Quoting user:Wiqi55 from the above RFC:

Restore, but with tags (or another special tag) following each sentence. We can then slowly verify each sentence/statement and either re-phrase to better reflect the cited sources or delete if failed verification. I'm suggesting this approach based on my experience in cleaning Jagged edits in a couple of shorter articles (al-Battani and Abu Kamil). In both cases, the Jagged content was useful as a starting point, and better than starting from scratch. And I have to admit that Jagged can be right some times or almost so (i.e., not all his edits are of the same quality). Once this process is done, we can delete sources and claims that can be proven false or unreliable. I would also suggest saving the hard parts for last, like writing a synthesis for mathematical development, after all cleaning/verification is done.

Aquib (talk) 15:30, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Not acceptable. Firstly, extrapolating from the current pace at which the cleanup of Jagged's article has been proceeding, this is going to take months at best, most likely more. Factual inaccuracies should not be left out in the open for such a long period. This process can be carried out Talk:Mathematics in medieval Islam/Jagged 85. Secondly, the article suffers from deeper structural issues (e.g. being written from a topical point of view instead of the more logical chronological order) which will likely not be addressed by this solution. —Ruud 15:39, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
First, keeping the article stubbed for months or years is not acceptable. What guarantee do we have the stub won't be in this state 5 years from now? Look at Science in medieval Islam 6 months into its stubbing. Second, rearrangement by chronology is reflective of a certain, shall we say, approach to the study of the History of Science which is not universally accepted. Separate topic. -Aquib (talk) 16:08, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
If you spend all your time forcing us to go round in the same old circles, and refusing to admit that anything is wrong, then yes: this is likely to be a protracted process. If however you actually set to work improving the article, and not getting in other people's way,then we might indeed make some progress. Replacing the entire article with a giant pile of cn's doesn't look like a good idea. A better way forward, if you want to try this, and one that doesn't require anyone's agreement, would be to copy the article, or just one selected section, into a sub-space, add the tags there, and work on it there. when you've finished a given section, ask for an OK, then it can get re-added William M. Connolley (talk) 16:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Pointless. And one of these days, if I have the time, I am going to go back through this page and see if there is a single response to anyone with an opinion different than your own that does not include at least one insult. Why don't you try making your case on its own merits some time? Whew. -Aquib (talk) 18:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
And don't think all the static is distracting me from getting an answer on Tusi's use of derivatives in cubic polynomials. I have a good source. -Aquib (talk) 18:38, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Note: when Wiqi55 said I'm suggesting this approach based on my experience in cleaning Jagged edits in a couple of shorter articles I think some of us thought he meant he had actually used this idea (comes from an editor who has successfully applied the technique. -Aquib (talk) 13:00, 14 March 2011 ). But looking at the article history, and talking to W55, it becomes clear that he hasn't actually used the technique - it is more an idea. It should not be misunderstood as a technique successfully used in practice William M. Connolley (talk) 21:33, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Rereading Wiqi55s statement I can see he might not have been saying he had tagged the articles, he could have simply been suggesting we could do that. Interesting idea nevertheless. -Aquib (talk) 22:30, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Further note: that although W55 asserted he had cleaned up Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam, there was still erroneous material left which he has just restored . Sigh William M. Connolley (talk) 21:35, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you are calling that material "erroneous" considering that the cited references clearly supports the claims being made. I'm afraid that this phenomenon of "careless" editing is now spreading, as we're seeing well-referenced and well-cited material being removed from articles for no obvious reason. Also, see the discussion on my talk page concerning my suggested approach. Wiqixtalk 22:18, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
It is erroneous because it says that Al-K invented algebra, which is wrong. But we've agreed this on the talk page already William M. Connolley (talk) 10:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
@WMC, the last time I heard you making claims about erroneous material, it was the 5 edits you made just before this article was moved/stubbed. Those edits turned out to be much less significant than what I would have expected as a justification for stubbing. In fact, of those 5 edits, three were regarding Tusi's use of a derivative in cubic polynomials - an assertion that is controversial and turns out to be supported by some academics. In fact, it seems the only real issue identified was the section heading referring to dynamic functional algebra. So maybe you could be certain you are referring to material we would all agree is erroneous before you make this new claim. And maybe you could make this claim somewhere besides the area where we should be discussing a proposed compromise. Thanks -Aquib (talk) 22:41, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Starting point

The article should cover a period running not from medieval Islam's start but from medieval Islam's first achievement in Mathematics - for example Al-Khwārizmī's Compendious Book in c820? - or if not then, when? MacStep (talk) 22:55, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

One can argue that Islamic mathematics started with the establishment of the House of Wisdom under Abassid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786) or, slightly later, under his son al-Ma'mun (813). One of the first known contributions was Al-Ḥajjāj's translation of Euclid's Elements. But we actually have a reliable source which errs on the early side with 622. —Ruud 23:19, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Katz starts his description with the founding of Baghdad (766, he says) and the program of translation of Greek texts begun under Harun (786 on, as you say). Smith starts with the Sindhind, again Baghdad, around 766 William M. Connolley (talk) 23:26, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
"mathematics" Encyclopædia Britannica states it is necessary to know ...in Islamic civilization from the 9th to the 15th century. - I think the weight of references will (eventually) push the relevant period forward a couple of hundred years or so. MacStep (talk) 00:21, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
I think that Al-Khwārizmī is a good starting point. Frankly that's already stretching the definition of "medieval". Of course this would be easier if we had a decent article 'early Islamic/Persian/Arabian mathematics' for the material from, e.g., 622. CRGreathouse (t | c) 15:31, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
The history of Islamic mathematics and astronomy are deeply intertwined. According Struik 'Arabic' mathematics starts with the Absid caliphs al-Mansur, Harun al-Rashid and al-Mamun. Al-Mamun founded the House of Wisdom and its first activity consisted of al-Fazari translating the astronomical texts brought to al-Mansur by and unknown Indian astronomer in 771 or 773. So there's actually some activity a few years before al-Khwarizmi already, activity that forms the basis of his work. I think the foundation of Baghdad (762) would be a fairly natural starting point and very close to first known activity of 771 of 773. —Ruud 15:53, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Per my recommendation for a Medieval Islamic X naming convention for this and related pages (see Talk:Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam#Excuse_me.3F above and Talk:Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam#Medieval_Islamic_X below), I don't think 622 or 770s would be too early to count as medieval, if the term is broadly used to mean the post-classical period before the Renaissance (keeping in mind that current scholarship is critical of the whole "Dark Ages" notion in no small part because it only coincides with what was happening in Western Europe, whereas Islam had the opposite experience.) Yclept:Berr (talk) 06:59, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Next Steps

Material unrelated to improving the article

It seems we cannot get a consensus for action to reverse this stubbing, even under these very unusual circumstances.

My next step will be to open an RFC/U on Ruud and WMC for their parts in this incident. Once that is done, I will go back to work trying to bring attention to the bigger problems and mitigate the collateral damage that is resulting, seemingly at an escalating pace, from the Jag RFC/U.

While the result itself is disappointing, it is not surprising. In fact, the turnout in support of stubbing was lower than it might have been. It will be interesting to see who else chooses to comment on this particular incident.

Thank you all for your time.

Aquib (talk) 13:23, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I will go back to work trying to bring attention to the bigger problems. Yes, that is what I expected: ie, what you *won't* do is actually try to improve the articles by adding useful text to them. This is regrettable. Try looking at your recent edit history: how does it make you feel? You've become one of those people who does nothing but complain William M. Connolley (talk) 15:26, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
I will go back to work trying to bring attention to the bigger problems. Glad you've grasped the larger picture and realized that only a small fraction of the damage done to WP has been repaired since last year. We are looking forward to your solutions on how to deal with the thousands of POV edits which still permeate WP articles on Islamic science and technology. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 16:28, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
I can produce more content by stopping this carnage than I could over a period of years with a keyboard. -Aquib (talk) 18:52, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
That seems to me the problem. You seem to be happy with any kind of content as long as it is content. But that's not what Misplaced Pages and its core policies WP:Verfiability, WP:Synthesis and WP:OR are about. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:29, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Looking at these issues makes me wonder if WP:NPOV might be in play as well. -Aquib (talk) 22:53, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Your comment is opaque. Perhaps you could clarify? William M. Connolley (talk) 23:27, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
The more I look at the circumstances around this whole stubbing effort the more curious it becomes. The way this one got stubbed. The way it looks ok to some mathematicians and not others. You guys already working on that stub? You sure that's a good idea? Maybe I should go check with the admins and see if we should lock the page while we get some more comments and feedback. -Aquib (talk) 23:45, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
No idea what you're talking about. In particular The way it looks ok to some mathematicians and not others is obscure. I can't think of any mathematicians who like the Jagged version - can you? William M. Connolley (talk) 09:52, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Appeal to ArbCom

Upon advice and consideration, I have decided to bypass the RFC/U regarding actions of individuals involved in the stubbing of the Mathematics in medieval Islam article. I will instead prepare an appeal to the Arbitration Committee regarding the need for limits and oversight on the Jagged 85 cleanup. In particular, I remain concerned about these page stubbings, redirects and moves. The question of overzealous or careless cleanup edits may come up as well.

As a general approach, I plan to demonstrate the collateral damage occurring as a result of changes in circumstances, and consequently the approach to cleanup, over the period of time since the Jag RFC/U was initiated. Diffs will be presented depicting a variety of unpleasant situations we have encountered, but not for the purpose of singling out individuals for further attention.

I, for one, have no appetite for further conflict. I seek a reasonable solution that protects the valid content and the encyclopedia.

I have placed a similar post on the Jag RFC talk page. Anyone wishing to discuss anything about these issues that has not already been discussed should direct their comments to that page.

Aquib (talk) 00:17, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

The Request fr arbitration has been filed -Aquib (talk) 06:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Requesting page protection for the article

I think we need to settle this without changing the facts on the ground in the process, as they say. I'll just ask and see what they think. -Aquib (talk) 23:49, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

As expected William M. Connolley (talk) 09:53, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Medieval Islamic X

Regarding the naming discussion that took place (apparently) in 2007 (see above in reference to here), I suggest the first step that be taken to rationalize the handling of the Jagged-affected pages is to standardize the naming convention to conform with similar history-of-x pages on Misplaced Pages.

etc. These pages should all be renamed and grouped together so that they can be more easily found and reviewed by experts, and the folks currently editing them need to get over their Jagged obsession and start focusing on bringing back sound content from the pages that were deleted en masse per WP:BATHWATER. Apologies to Ruud above, but if folks have been editing these pages since 2006-7 they should clearly be able to distinguish questionablely sourced additions from the same editor from quality sourced additions made by other editors in support of the same material. A wikiproject might be the best way to handle this. Yclept:Berr (talk) 06:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

  • Why, this page is not even listed on the Islam portal under the current (disparate) naming convention. See up top. Yclept:Berr (talk) 06:41, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Aaand this naming convention (Medieval Islamic mathematics, etc) is the only one both Jahangard (the person who proposed the current page name for this & science page) and Ruud both separately suggested back in 2007 (above). The only reason it wasn't settled on is because the discussion was sidetracked over the merits of "Arab" vs. "Islamic" due to the number of folks coming in insisting that the label Islamic (cultural/historical term) was "potentially offensive", even though Ruud pointed out that is the accepted term Yclept:Berr (talk) 07:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't think now is a good time to talk about re-naming the page. Lets let the current fuss about stubbing die down, hopefully start rebuilding the page (why not help?), then we can have another round of profitless discussion of names William M. Connolley (talk) 10:21, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Khayyam pic

Out of curiousity... the K pic for the cubic solution: am I right that it is not "constructible" in the traditional sense (because you can't draw parabolas?) so doesn't (in theory) allow geometrical solution William M. Connolley (talk) 23:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Not using a straight-edge and compass, but it's seems possible using other devices: http://mathdemos.gcsu.edu/mathdemos/conic_via_locus/. —Ruud 23:17, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
By the way, solving the problem geometrically, means your solving x 2 a = ( b 2 a 2 ) 2 − ( b 2 a 2 − x ) 2 {\displaystyle {\frac {x^{2}}{a}}={\sqrt {\left({\frac {b}{2a^{2}}}\right)^{2}-\left({\frac {b}{2a^{2}}}-x\right)^{2}}}} , if you square both sides, work out the polynomials, and simplify you get x 4 + a 2 x 2 − x b = 0 {\displaystyle x^{4}+a^{2}x^{2}-xb=0} , divide by x {\displaystyle x} to get the algebraic equation back. —Ruud 00:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Al-Din al-Tusi and derivatives of cubic polynomials

There has been some dispute in the Rfc above about the verifiability of the following sourced statement:

"In the 12th century, the Persian mathematician Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī was the first to discover the derivative of cubic polynomials, an important result in differential calculus.

which had appeared in the Differential Calculus section of a pre-stubbified version of the article. A slightly different version of this statement was removed from another section of the article on the grounds that it sounded "totally made up" to the editor removing it, even though that editor had apparently not checked the source cited to confirm that his assessment was accurate. Another editor has given two sources which he apparently thinks provide sufficient justification for the statement. However, one of those sources does not at all justify the statement as it is actually worded, and the other is completely worthless—at least for the purposes of citation as a reliable source.

In view of all this I am rather bemused that no-one seems to have bothered checking the source actually cited, which is an article, "Innovation and Tradition in Sharaf al-Dīin al-Ṭusi's al-Mu'ādalāt ", by J. L. Berrgren, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, 110 (1990), pp.304–9. I have now read this source, which is undoubtedly reliable by Misplaced Pages's standards, and can confirm that the above-quoted text from this Misplaced Pages article blatantly misrepresents it, in that it states as an undisputed fact something—namely that al-Dīn al-Ṭusi discovered the derivative of a cubic polynomial—which the cited source makes absolutely clear is no more than a conjecture proposed by one expert on al-Dīn al-Ṭusi's work to explain how the latter acquired his knowledge about the maxima of certain cubic polynomials. Moreover, although Berrgren, the author of the cited source, does think that the conjecture is reasonable, he also thinks that another explanation, which doesn't rely on al-Dīn al-Ṭusi's knowing how to compute a derivative, is nevertheless more likely.

The first of the two other sources that have been offered as supposedly supporting the above-quoted statement is page 97 of History of Mathematics: Highways and Byways by Amy Dahan-Dalmèdico and Jeanne Peiffer. The passage which was cited as supposedly supporting the statement was the following:

"The discussion, in effect, is almost always based on the search for maxima and for that Sharif Al-Din used expressions corresponding to the first derivative for polynomials. ....
"He referenced the role of the discriminant in cubic equations.

But the somewhat vague circumlocution, "Sharif Al-Din used expressions corresponding to the first derivative for polynomials", used in this passage, does not at all mean the same thing as, nor does it imply that, Sharif al-Din discovered the derivative of cubic polynomials, Moreover, the text originally omitted from this quotation (as indicated by the ellipses) says:

"Although this idea is never so indicated and the extant manuscript still does not permit determination of the source of these deep results their presence must be noted."

Precisely what this means is anybody's guess, but having now read Berrgren's article, I would surmise that Dahan-Dalmèdico and Peiffer are here acknowledging the fact—which is stated explicitly by Berrgren—that al-Din did not actually perform the operations of determining an expression for the derivative (at least, not in his known surviving works).

The second source offered as supposedly supporting the disputed statement was Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt issued by an organisation going by the name of "MobileReference". However, this organisation appears to be in the business of aggregating Misplaced Pages articles and regurgitating them as e-books for downloading to mobile devices. If you compare the page cited with the last four paragraphs of the Algebra section of this version of Misplaced Pages's article, you will find that they're almost (or perhaps completely—but I haven't checked every single jot and tittle) word for word identical. The source is therefore clearly worthless as a citation to support statements made in Misplaced Pages.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 14:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

David, thanks for your detail analysis of the section, one of the most constructive comments in the last few days. Do you have a suggestion as to how this section could be worded to acuratly reflect the sources? --Salix (talk): 17:43, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes David, thanks. My assertion is it is a notable claim. How would the claim be worded and balanced in order to avoid undue weight? Thanks -Aquib (talk) 18:08, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
You need to read what David wrote. The problem is not undue weight. The problem is that the claim is *wrong* William M. Connolley (talk) 18:27, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
You need to exercise common courtesy and focus your remarks on the topic rather than suggesting I did not read his post. Try arguing facts, not personalities. -Aquib (talk) 00:48, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
It is best to focus on the issue. WMC asserted that what David wrote shows that the claim is wrong. Do you disagree? If so, you need to say why. If you agree, how could rewording possibly help? Articles should not record every conjecture. More importantly, the big issue under discussion is whether the article warrants stubbing. If David's analysis is correct, it shows exactly the problem that requires stubbing because it is important that Misplaced Pages not record false information as if it were verified fact. Johnuniq (talk) 04:26, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Could you clarify of make explicit where the "it" in "My assertion is it is a notable claim" refers to? —Ruud 01:19, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, David. I think every assertion made by Jagged should be handled like this. As for al-Tusi and his derivative, we should follow the example given in the last four paragraphs of this MacTutor article (which mentions a few additional papers about the subject). Wiqixtalk 19:51, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
@Wiqi, thanks for turning up this article and the citations it uses, they should be useful. -Aquib (talk) 01:31, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

A clarification of my position

For those interested in understanding my position on this question of the claim al-Din discovered the derivative of cubic polynomials. This is an important point from my perspective, and I do not believe my message has yet been clearly communicated.

1. It does not matter whether this claim is true. What is true is I have a reliable source that says Rashed has argued that Sharaf Al-Din discovered the derivative of cubic polynomials and realized its significance for investigating conditions under which cubic equations were solvable. If there is something wrong with this one, just let me know and I will get another. I am not a mathematician, but I can Google lots of books and scholarly works debating this issue. I don't have JSTOR, and the conclusions of my source article may very well be that he didn't. It is not criticial to my position. I have a reliable source that says Rashed argues he did. This is notable. In addition, judging from the amount of material swirling around this topic, it is important. These facts justify its inclusion, and I am confident that given time I can produce many similar sources. According to neutrality policy, this justifies the inclusion of the material in the article, in proportion to the weight it carries in the scholarly community. I have seen no acknowledgement from the other editors that it is even a legitimate scholarly point of view, but it has a lot of scholars talking about it. How can that be?

2. This claim was removed from the article with an edit summary stating that sounds totally made up. It is not totally made up, and its removal without checking its reliability is a violation of neutrality policy. It is a perfect example of why we should not delete cited material without checking it. I do not know how much weight this claim should be given, yet, but it is a significant claim and should not have been removed. The fact this claim sounded totally made up to one editor largely contributed to the article's stubbing.

3. How much of this is going on right now across the affected articles?. This is a blatant example of what can happen when there are no checks or controls in place to curb destructive editing. The normal WP policies and procedures designed to prevent this sort of problem simply do not apply any more. The cleanup is operating outside the normal bounds of our encyclopedia. One mistake like this is bad. 100 are horrifying. A sustained effort to clean up articles with no safeguards in place could eventually tilt the POV of vast sections of the encyclopedia.

I am not here to argue whether the claim is true. To take an a position on the validity of this claim is essentially to synthesize a conclusion based on conflicting, reliable sources. The claim is notable, and therefore deserves inclusion. If we were operating under the normal rules, a simple remedy would be to tweak the statement to make it more generally acceptable or include opposing views. Any other conflicting claim from a reliable source is perfectly welcome.

Aquib (talk) 05:38, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Aqib wrote:
"What is true is I have a reliable source that says Rashed has argued that Sharaf Al-Din discovered the derivative of cubic polynomials and realized its significance for investigating conditions under which cubic equations were solvable. If there is something wrong with this one, ... "
Well this is just Berrgren's article, this link to which I have already given in my discussion of it above. There's nothing wrong with it, but it did not support the statement that was actually made in, and removed from, the article. I agree that the statement should not have been removed from the pre-stubbified version of the article until the source had been checked (the stubbification itself is a separate issue, which I would prefer not to be drawn into discussing at this time). But the fact remains that had the source been checked, its failure to support the statement actually made in the article would have justified the immediate removal of that statement anyway.
There remains the question of whether an accurate account of the various conjectures—including, but not limited to, Rashed's—proposed to explain how al-Dīn came by his knowledge about the maxima of cubic polynomials should be included in the article. I have no opinion on this at the moment. It's certainly significant enough to be included in the article on al-Dīn himself. But I expect that an accurate account, written from a neutral point of view might need to be so lengthy that including it in this article would be according it too much weight.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 12:30, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for taking the time to look into this David. You are right, the citation does not directly support the claim. Let me boil down my position a bit more. The claim is not totally made up, as it appeared to be in the eyes of one expert. To one such as myself unfamiliar with the subject, the fact that the development of calculus predates the Renaissance is significant. If an expert can make a mistake like this, under these circumstances, what will become of the rest of the cleanup targets? We are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. -Aquib (talk) 13:50, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
The "bathwater argument" gets thrown around a lot here, so let me quote from the actual essay:

Well, if this is the case, the deletion process is not the route to take to solve the problems. That's what the talk page is for. Deletion of an article is damaging to Misplaced Pages and should only be used as a last resort. Content removal can be used to weed out problematic areas. Other adjustments can be made, which may include the addition of information and sources. It may take a lot of work. But it is well worth it!

(Emphasis mine) Might I instead direct your attention to Misplaced Pages:Verifiability. —Ruud 15:05, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Posible rewording

Heres an attempt at a rewording inspired by the MacTutor treatment

In the 12th century, the Persian mathematician Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī investigated cubic polynomials. For example, in order to solve the equation   x 3 + a = b x {\displaystyle \ x^{3}+a=bx} with a and b positives he found the maximum point of the curve y = b x − x 3 {\displaystyle y=bx-x^{3}} to be x = b 3 {\displaystyle x={\sqrt {\frac {b}{3}}}} , using what would nowadays be regarded as the derivative of the function. There is academic debate over quite how he arrived at his expression.

I'd also suggest this goes in section entitles Cubic equations where this and the work Omar Khayyám of could discussed.--Salix (talk): 13:23, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

My understanding from reading Berrgren's article is that the academic debate includes the issue of whether al-Dīn could in fact be appropriately described as having used the derivative of the function. So I would suggest something along the following lines:
In the 12th century, the Persian mathematician Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī developed a novel approach to the investigation of cubic equations—an approach which entailed finding the point at which a cubic polynomial obtains its maximum value. For example, in order to solve the equation   x 3 + a = b x {\displaystyle \ x^{3}+a=bx} , with a and b positive, he would note that the maximum point of the curve y = b x − x 3 {\displaystyle y=bx-x^{3}} occurs at x = b 3 {\displaystyle x={\sqrt {\frac {b}{3}}}} , and that the equation would have no solutions, one solution or two solutions, depending on whether the height of the curve at that point was less than, equal to, or greater than a {\displaystyle a} . His surviving works give no indication of how he discovered his formulae for the maxima of these curves. One scholar has argued that he must have obtained expressions for what would be recognized today as the derivatives of the functions whose maxima were being sought. However, other explanations, which would not entail his explicitly having to calculate a derivative, have also been proposed.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 14:50, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
This seems more reasonable, but still favours Roshed's conjecture, not mentioning explicitly Hogendijk's explanation, while Roshed's conjecture has had the most severe critique. —Ruud 15:04, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
How about replacing the last two sentences with:
"Various conjectures have been proposed to account for his discovery of them."
with citations to the relevant sources? I wouldn't be able to cite Rashed, Hogendijk or al-Daffi and Strolys directly myself yet, because I haven't read the relevant works. I could cite them indirectly by citing Berrgren, and indicating that he cites them, but it would obviously make more sense if they could be cited directly by someone who has actually read them.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 15:59, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
That seems like a good idea. I've only read the article by Hogendijk and the review by Berggren. I would only cite the latter (pp. 308-9) as it nicely summarizes all the other work. —Ruud 16:19, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
No, this still blatantly misrepresents the sources: Roshed conjectured that a derivative might have been used, Hogendijk explicitly states a derivative was not used, al-Daffi offers another explanation not using a derivative. According to Berggren, Roshed's conjecture is not well supported by the primary sources, Hogendijk's explanation is by far the most plausible, and al-Daffi's explanation possible. Now, all four are respected historians of Islamic mathematics, so I agree this warrants a thorough discussion at the article on Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī (mentioning the historians by name, their positions and their critiques.) This discussion cannot be summarized in such a form as to remain accurate, neutral, and concise enough to be put into an overview article. I have not seen any such claim of al-Tusi "using derivatives" in the standard works on the history of mathematics. Also, you, somewhat implicitly, suggest rebuilding this article in a topical fashion: topical histories belong in the "History" section of that topic, overview articles need to be ordered chronologically so the influences earlier contributors had on later contributors becomes more clear. —Ruud 15:00, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Ruud that the exact interpretation is unclear, and that doing justice to the issue - which would indeed be an excellent thing to do - would occupy far more space than it warrants on an overview page (if it were certain, or even probable, that derivatives had been used, that would certainly be worth a place; but as the most probable interpretation seems to be that they weren't, then the final text won't be all that exciting). So, yes, this should be done on the al-Tusi page in detail, and once we have a stable text there it can be referred to here William M. Connolley (talk) 15:49, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
@Salix and David, I find these suggestions constructive and useful. The fact Berrgren characterizes Rashed as arguing that Sharaf Al-Din discovered the derivative of cubic polynomials is significant in terms of describing the strength of Rashed's conviction. -Aquib (talk) 01:25, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Jagged 85 cleanup: article stubbing

Hello. Particpants of the ongoing discussion are invited to take part in this vote concerning the clean-up effort in connectuion with Jagged 85's RFC/U. Regards Gun Powder Ma (talk) 11:46, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Why this article has been restored

The reason is quite simple. If editors wish to stub this article, let them produce 8 confirmed hard failures on verification, per discussion here. 8 failed verifications is not too much to ask before stubbing an article. There are many articles out there that cannot pass this test. -Aquib (talk) 04:40, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Please stop making up policy. Your WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT isn't going to work William M. Connolley (talk) 07:17, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
Please provide 8 examples of clearly failed verifications, confirmed by an independent party (such as me) to prove due diligence and due process has been followed before you stub this important article. This is not too much to ask, it is very reasonable, and it is common sense. -Aquib (talk) 12:33, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
You want a veto over all change? No, of course not. Please: people have been patiently explaining to you, in a variety of places, that you've completely misunderstood the "policy" here. Simply repeating the same mistakes won't make your errors go away William M. Connolley (talk) 12:52, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
Categories: