Talk:Boubaker Polynomials/Wikipedia

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(excerpt from a user talk page...)
 * I've just spent an insane amount of time reviewing all the sources that were in the External Links section of the article. If it was Boubaker who was visiting here to create this resource, he was hiding his light under a bushel. I'm overwhelmed with what I found. And then, after completing that first task (see Boubaker Polynomials/Sources), I did a Google scholar search limited to 2012-present. 296 hits. Nearly all the journals that I looked at were mainstream, reputable. I did not yet list maybe 17 Boubaker publications in the Hindawi family of journals. He had not pointed to them. I see no reason to expect the more recent publications have gone to pot. This guy has been astonishingly prolific. I did not compile citations, so we are only looking at articles from the 2011 set that have Boubaker in the article name. For 2015 alone, Google Scholar comes up with 62 results.


 * I can understand why the first deletion discussion on Wikipedia was delete. But the second, it was getting iffy. The third, in 2011, was preposterous.


 * Yes, this guy is an author on very many of the papers. However, notability guidelines have been misunderstood. This is not self-published material. All of it shows the notability of the name "Boubaker polynomials." Not Boubaker himself. Not yet, anyway. On him as a person, I only found a weak source, and one possibly stronger, but inaccessible.


 * I've seen this many times, users confuse independent publisher with independent author. It would be like saying that a source can't be used because the author is a professional in the field. After all, not independent! If he had called them "mousetrap polynomials" or something like that, there wouldn't have been such a strong reaction. But in his field, it is common to name a kind of mathematical object over the person who first specifically studies it. It looks like his first publication didn't use that name. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 03:02, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

I noticed something similar when I looked at "papers cited" on either Google scholar or our library search engines. I think the Boubaker page on Wikiversity can turn into something very interesting, but not because Boubaker polynomials are interesting. I recently saw something on TV about Wikipedia (on 60 minutes?). It turns out that Wikipedia struggled over whether a wedding dress recently worn by British royalty was "notable". I think it is inevitable that Wikipedia will make mistakes. I see exactly three internet systems that provide general information:
 * 1) The entire internet is the largest.  As an educator, my biggest problem with this internet-at-large is the copyright issue, coupled with the fact that even "fair-use" copying and editing of internet pages for instructive purposes is awkward and time-consuming.
 * 2) The second system consists of other open-source resources (PlanetMath, Wikibooks, ...). The problem with PlaneMath, Chemwiki, and OpenStax College is that while it is legal to copy/paste/edit this material, it is currently an awkward operation.  The ability to integrate with Wikipedia is a tremendous advantage for the wiki-sisters.  My hope and expectation is for the Wikipedia-sisters to grow and become as sort of "open source internet-at-large".  I actually believe this growth is exponential, occurring right now, but at a slow growth rate that nobody notices.  You can't measure this growth by looking at the number of pages; it's the quality that counts.
 * 3) Then we have Wikipedia.  I don't think any of us have anything against Wikipedia.  But for this planet to rely on a single open source of information would be insane. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 13:11, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Several issues, you raise.
 * I'm not personally interested in Boubaker polynomials, as such. My expectation, at the beginning, was that this was mildly notable, and I saw the extreme reactions. However, the exercise of going over those sources, to do this properly I had to look at all of them, changed my mind. This is not mildly notable, this is extremely notable. Note that "notable" and "personally interesting" are very different.
 * There are many aspects to the reactions found in the deletion discussions (and in the comment on PlanetMath). People who know some math (and perhaps even certain expert mathematicians) claimed that these polynomials were "uninteresting," or something known from long ago. A variation in this is claims that they are "useless." All these arguments are fundamentally irrelevant in a Wikipedia article deletion discussion, normally. The only issue is "notability," which has relatively objective standards, and those standards were not -- in the later discussions -- being applied.
 * Now, looking over those papers, and remember this was only papers published by a certain date in 2011, not later, I'm astonished at the breadth of applications considered by Boubaker and others, and accepted by editors and peer-reviewers in mainstream academic publications. I had in my mind an idea that most of the journals would be vanity presses (or journals that claim peer review but that really will accept almost anything, because they want the money.) I actually know a scientist, possibly one of the world's foremost theoreticians working on cold fusion, a hot fusion physicist with many years of experience, and his work is cutting-edge quantum field theory. He published a paper of his in such a journal, and shared the comments with us. His work would require maximum expertise to even begin to understand. There was no challenge, no comment no errors or incompletely explained aspects. The review was superficial.
 * However, I was wrong. Boubaker has published in top journals, many of them. I found only a handful of journals that were marginal, none that were clearly vanity press. Hindawi would be an example of "marginal."
 * So "not interesting," for me, would be about myself, and not about Boubaker.
 * In fact, what I'd like to see is an exposition of how these polynomials are used to solve problems, a lay explanation. I'm not competent to write it, though I could edit it.
 * I suspect that the naming of the polynomials was an aspect of the rejection. However, it's normal and common practice. The polynomials have a series of names, but it appears to be completely accepted by the journals to use that name in titles. There is no clearer short name. Boubaker polynomials are a subset of Chebyshev polynomials, with, apparent, specific applications. One of the suggestions, made long ago, was that Wikipedia have a reference to Boubaker polynomials in the Chebyshev polynomial article. That's an obvious beginning! But to the Wikipedians, with their horror of "self-promotion," not allowable!
 * Another issue would be an idea that by studying these things, a person might be "against" Wikipedia. This is a common trope among Wikipedians when faced with descriptions of arguably abusive treatment of editors. It's practically Catch-22. "You are claiming that X happened to you. If X happened to me, I'd be very angry. Therefore your are very angry." Because text can very poorly convey emotion, it's easy to believe that these projections are correct. And, of course, sometimes they are.
 * However, this is not my position. I loved the vision of Wikipedia. And then I saw that certain things were missing, that would lead to -- in my opinion -- a more complete realization of that vision. And then I discovered -- by stumbling over them -- the forces that prevent those structural defects from being addressed and fixed. I'm by far not the only one to notice these things, and many long-term Wikipedians have left in disgust.
 * Where I may be different is that I see a path to the fulfillment of that vision. And Wikiversity is a major piece of that, and establishing academic freedom and genuine consensus process here is, to me, crucial. It's a long-term project, one step at a time. Why Wikiversity? Well, it is much easier here. The encyclopedia has a scarcity that is intrinsic to the project design. It didn't have to be that way, and it is not impossible that this could be eliminated in 2.0. However, the community became extremely conservative, and that is easy to understand. One could say that it was written in the structure.
 * I find Wikipedia useful every day. I also find being banned there useful, because it keeps me from being tempted to fix things; Wikipedia is not designed for efficiency, user time has almost no value there, unless one is an administrator, and even then, it's erratic, as administrators find to their chagrin if they, themselves, stumble across an obstacle. An example: I used to Article Rescue Squadron work. Basically, see an article facing AfD, research the topic and find reliable source and show it. And then I discovered that when I did this, satisfying what should have led to Keep, the article was deleted anyway.
 * Process issue: voting before presentation of evidence and argument is complete. Standard organizations have known not to do that for centuries, but it conflicted with "wiki," i.e., quick. Too much trouble! When decisions were easy, not a problem. But when they required actual knowledge? When has an editor ever been sanctioned for making a blatantly ignorant vote in an AfD? In fact, administrators and "respected users" do it frequently. Nobody thinks anything of it.
 * Wikipedia became unable to see itself clearly.
 * It is a classic task of academia to study society and how it works. Hence this is our responsibility, ultimately. If we do so from an attached point of view, i.e., "Wikipedia is wrong," we won't be successful, we will merely be reacting oppositely.
 * So I'm simply studying what happened with the Boubaker affair. It's easy to jump to conclusions that this or that was wrong on this or that side. But in my training, we never start with conclusions and we avoid them as long as possible. Rather, we become very interested in What Happened. On a wiki, What Happened is mostly transparent. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:39, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Why all this work?
I have a long history of learning rapidly and deeply by writing commentary on documents, and on the comments of others. This topic, l'affaire Boubaker, caused massive disruption on fr.wikipedia, with, on the one hand, charges of racism and administrative bias, legal threats, and, on the other, speedy deletion of articles, with the bulk of deletions being by a single administrator, and then, fr.wiki administrators piled into AfD discussions on Wikipedia, as well as many sock puppets or SPAs, and there was a tendency to assume SPAs were socks, when it is clear that there is more than one user involved.

Nevertheless, the disruption on en.wikipedia was much less than on fr.wikipedia. On fr.wikipedia, deletions were speedy, and the same admin blocked users, often on thin evidence. One user was blocked, for example, because he said he was "from China," and checkuser, not disclosing where he *was* editing from, reported he was not editing from China. The user had given a Chinese email address, and, for all we know may have been a Chinese student -- or professor -- working elsewhere.

On en.wikiversity, there were, three times, deletion discussions, the first very routine and simple. I had assumed (and many commenters in these discussions seem to have assumed) that the second and third deletion discussions were necessary because these users illegitimately created the page again. That was true the second time, but, in fact, that was quickly handled with speedy deletion. It was an administrator, who happened to be a mathematician, who undeleted because he believed that the content had been improved. That was a procedural error. Remarkably, the same administrator created the occasion for the third AfD by again undeleting, putting the page in user space, and then moving it back into mainspace. Many called for the page to be protected against recreation, but this would not have impeded an administrator at all!

IP apparently Boubaker praised the Wikipedia community for helpful consideration of the article and suggestions as to how to improve it. And disruption on en.wikipedia was relatively minor, then.

Discussion was the difference. Speedy deletions when a user opposes the deletion is a very bad idea, unless the content is positively harmful. And when the same administrators block the users whose content they deleted, an impression is created of bias, an impression that can be sold to off-wiki communities, who become convinced that something is rotten in Wikipedia. In this case, in fr.wikipedia. One fr.wiki administrator was blatant, they have massive problems from "Arabs." That is, I'm sure, not just on Wikipedia, but would be an issue for the French in general. The comment was, nevertheless, racist. It was suppressed under a different excuse, at the request of the admin who made the request.

I have not found other actual examples of racism, as such. Charges I've seen from "team Boubaker" were without diffs -- these are not sophisticated users, knowing how to debate on a wiki. However, even if I take the claims as true, as stated, they don't look like clear racism to me. They look like possibly uncivil comments, which, on some wikis, are practically routine. Unfortunately.

What I've been coming to in this study, which is not yet complete, is that the basic notability problem that led to deletions was not exactly a lack of reliable sources, but of reliable secondary sources. Further, a review of Boubaker polynomials by Boubaker, is that a primary or secondary source? Essentially, the name of the topic is not relevant, and this point mostly escaped notice. Most of the sources asserted by team Boubaker, at the beginning, were primary sources, pure original research, albeit published in mainstream journals.

The third AfD on Wikipedia included much more Keep argument from regular Wikipedians than before. There is an obvious trend. Yet that was in 2009. What has happened since then? There are now far more sources on this topic. There are numerous secondary sources. The claims that Boubaker polynomials are a hoax is an uncivil claim, actually libel, of a real person. It is preposterous. People may argue that these polynomials are not "important," but that is belied by the sheer number of articles approved in mainstream journals. If this is a hoax, exposing the hoax would be very important. But "hoax" exists, apparently, only in the minds of certain Wikipedians.

Reviewing these discussions and writing commentary on them is how I learn, and it has always been highly effective for me. It's even faster if there is discussion, so if anyone cares, all these pages are open for additional commentary except what is explicitly attributed to an author (and even then, there can be commentary on attached Talk pages.)

From my experience, those most likely to oppose what is written here will stay away. We have pages on fringe science on Wikversity, and they have been criticized by Wikipedians, but the Wikipedians do not, generally, engage in attempting to improve them.

Boubaker polynomials are not fringe. They are solidly mainstream. There is no controversy in the journals. There are many citations. Etc.

As part of this study, I report on user behavior, mostly administrative behavior. This is only a study. None of these pages are intended to ask for sanctions for any users. If any user is upset about how their work is portrayed here, I hope they will speak up. There is, for example, no desire to claim that a user was engaged in a problematic pattern of behavior, and there is only one exception, perhaps, an fr.wiki functionary, who is not active now, and ... it appears that his behavior was routinely accepted on fr.wikipedia, and supported by many other administrators. So if there is a problem, it would not be with him, it would be with what a community has allowed and tolerated or even praised. It is a structural problem, not about Bad Users and Bad Administrators. (Nor is it a Bad Community, but ... participation bias.) --Abd (discuss • contribs) 22:58, 7 July 2015 (UTC)