User talk:David Eppstein

Hi, Professor David Eppstein. I am back to Wikipedia after a few months (and even started an article today!), but I'm here to ask what I did wrong at my user talk page archiving configuration: I wanted the bot to create "Archive 2", but instead it added 11 discussions to my old "Archive 1" (created and then last edited in 2021!). I would like to fix this mess, but I don't know how. Please, could you help me? Good edits! By the way: Wikipedia servers seem really slow today, or is it just me? (sometimes it takes more than 50 seconds to load a page!) Best wishes, MathKeduor7 (talk) 20:40, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't know; I archive my talk manually rather than automatically. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:50, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

So I guess the solution would be for me to revert the bot and do it manually too. I'll do that later! Good edits! MathKeduor7 (talk) 20:56, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Hello, David. I have a quick question if you have a moment. In this comment, you wrote, It contains an entirely unsourced "synopsis" section (which as a work of fiction does not fall under the usual allowance of plot summaries without sources) (you said "fiction" but meant "non-fiction" and clarified that in a later comment). That guideline, of non-fiction works needing sources for their summaries, is one I've followed in my articles for some time now, and though I know I've seen it mentioned numerous times on the site, I'm failing to find where the guideline is actually written, or where that consensus was found. I'm in the process of a GA review where the reviewer hasn't heard of that and would like to see it, and I was beginning to wonder if I'd hallucinated it until I found your comment while searching WT:GAN archives. Is there any chance you can point me to where the guideline might be, or provide any guidance for where to look? I'd appreciate any help you can offer, and no worries if not. Thanks either way. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 13:42, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

WP:GACR #2b: "All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited".

A synopsis of a work of fiction is a plot summary. A synopsis of a work of nonfiction is not because it is not a plot that is being summarized. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:31, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Ah, fair enough. Thanks for your help. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 15:41, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

You are invited to participate in the Destubathon of the Americas, a contest/editathon which will run from May 1 to May 31. The goal is to destub as many of our 475,000+ stubs for the Americas (from Alaska down to Chile) as possible. A good chance to have fun in expanding many of our old stale stubs and win up to £2000 ($2680) in Amazon vouchers for expanding stub articles. Sign up in the Contestants/participants section on the contest page if interested. Even if not interested in prizes you are still warmly welcome to participate in it as an editathon! Hopefully we can achieve something significant in the month of May together! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:52, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

I just committed to mathematics as at an Ivy League school. I’m very excited and very nervous! Do you have any advice for undergraduate math students about which branches of math I should explore? I want to be a professor, and if that doesn’t work out, consider finance. -1ctinus📝🗨 22:57, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Congratulations! As an undergraduate, in your coursework, explore as many diverse directions as you can. Specialization is for graduate studies. But also, find out how to get involved with undergraduate research projects with the faculty in your school. Beyond the fact that this will help you stand out in graduate applications and help you get recommendations for graduate studies, you are also likely to learn whether you love doing research or whether you find it to be something you are only doing because you have to. You need to love it to be successful at it and you need to be successful at it to go into an academic career. If it ends up being just work to you, then it would make more sense to find a career with more financial reward and less risk, like fintech. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:52, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you David! -1ctinus📝🗨 01:10, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

I haven't seen partial graph in Wikipedia: a subgraph ${\displaystyle G''(V,E'')}$ of ${\displaystyle G(V,E)}$ where ${\displaystyle E''\subset E}$. In other words, it is a subgraph that has the same exact number of vertices as ${\displaystyle G}$, but less number of edges than ${\displaystyle G}$. You might have heard this graph before implementing it in the definition of a spanning tree. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 14:43, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

That is what is more commonly called a spanning subgraph. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:38, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

In FAC, a reviewer asked me to rewrite the understandable lede section in terms of junior or high school levels. Since this has already taken a long time and has been rewritten, do you think the lede is now much more understandable? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 11:06, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

First two paragraphs: ok. Last two paragraphs: kind of waffly and dancing around the point, the sort of thing one sees in student writing when they don't really understand the answer to an exam question and are trying to say something relevant when they don't know what they are trying to say. How can you expect a reader to get the point from that? —David Eppstein (talk) 16:36, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

The last two were meant to summarize the Cube § Representations (especially as a graph) and Cube § Related figures (for explaining its connection to other polyhedra or many geometrical shapes). You were right about waffly and dancing aroung the point thingy, since "relates to other geometrical shapes" shows how vague the statement is instead of curiousity. Perhaps some examples may be included, which I have expanded it. For a graph theory section, I am currently working on it. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 12:12, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

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--Chocmilk03 (talk 04:44, 30 April 2026 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Here is your GAR, again, Znám's problem and Prime number. Respectively, the problems are the underdeveloped history, unsourced problem section, and inline citations; and the Riemann zeta function's claim to be one of the famous unsolved problems. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:41, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

I am still forbidden from discussing GARs. I consider it quite inconsiderate of Z1720 (talk · contribs) to raise this issue on two GAs for which I am the nominator, simultaneously, and of you for bringing it to my talk page, while that is still the case, as I cannot reasonably respond on the article talk pages nor provide any substantive response to you and Z1720 beyond telling you to stop trying to provoke me to violate my topic ban. Also pinging Tamzin (talk · contribs) who imposed this censorship on me. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:36, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

So you are not even allowed to discuss in talk page regarding improving before GAR? Maybe you can comment here. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:41, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

I am allowed to work on article improvements, regardless of the existence or threat of a GAR, but I am not allowed to discuss the GAR process nor contribute to a GAR. That means that a thread whose first comment begins by talking about time since review and ends by asking whether a GAR is needed is a thread that is off-topic for me. And again, I am skirting this ban even responding to your questions here. Let me be more direct: Stop talking about GAR on my talk page. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:47, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

If you are not allowing someone talk about GAR, how are you supposed to know about your GAs under threat of being pre-reassessment? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:52, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Do I have to close this thread to stop you asking more questions that I cannot answer? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:40, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Without looking fully into the current situation (and noting that I'm not currently an admin, and not editing very actively), I will just point out that this topic ban expires in 11 days. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 04:55, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

This appears to be an LLM problem, but could you take a look at it, and tell me whether the subject clears NPROF? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:51, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Looks like an easy pass to me. Multiple editor-in-chief positions and academy memberships mean I don't have to evaluate his citation counts (tricky in a high-citation field). —David Eppstein (talk) 18:45, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Please do not post personalised critiques on my edits or reviews in edit diffs or article talk pages. If you would like to discuss my specific skills in editing or reviewing articles, please post on my talk page or on the appropriate noticeboard (like WT:GA). Z1720 (talk) 20:33, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Please develop a more constructive attitude towards constructive criticism. If you do not like it when you make bad edits and are criticized for it, make fewer bad edits. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:50, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

I see you recently reverted several of my edits in which I removed mathematician-related categories from articles on mathematics educators, saying "people who teach mathematics professionally are mathematicians, regardless of whether they also contribute to research". I'm guessing that Wikipedia editors would have different opinions on cases where the article was about a K-12 teacher, or someone who studied mathematics education rather than mathematics in general, but let's set that aside for a moment.

The editing guideline WP:CATSPECIFIC states "Each categorized page should be placed only in the most specific categories to which it logically belongs", which means that articles on people who are both mathematicians and mathematics educators should only be put into the more specific categories---the mathematics educator ones (assuming that both mathematician & mathematics educator categories exist). I propose that in the future, I remove the more general mathematician categories in cases where both mathematician and mathematics educator categories are used, citing this Wikipedia guideline. Agreed? Dotyoyo (talk) 00:05, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

In most cases, people should not be placed into parent categories when they are also placed in more-specific subcategories. That means, for instance, that because Category:American mathematics educators is a subcategory of Category:American mathematicians, people should not be in Category:American mathematicians when they are also in this subcategory. However, even this general rule should not be followed when the descendant category is non-diffusing, which is typically the case for categories involving gender or ethnicity; see WP:NONDIFFUSING.

This reasoning does not apply to the categories you removed people from, which included Category:20th-century American mathematicians, Category:21st-century American mathematicians, Category:African-American mathematicians, Category:African-American women mathematicians, Category:20th-century American women mathematicians, and Category:21st-century American women mathematicians. These are not ancestor categories of Category:American mathematics educators, nor do they have a relevant common descendant category with it. You should not have removed them and you cannot use WP:CATSPECIFIC to justify those incorrect removals. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:42, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

These are not ancestor categories OK. Before writing here, I had confirmed that Category:Mathematics educators was a subcategory of Category:Mathematicians, but didn't do the same for all the variations. Dotyoyo (talk) 02:08, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

It seems to be more focused on surface aspects and less on content. And if you argue that this article is already close to the FA standard so it shouldn't need much change, then that is also an argument that there is not much content improvement to be gained from going through that exercise.

I would say that FAC is like GAN, but multiple reviewers, usually you require a minimum of three supports. Comparing Cube after GA and Cube's after FAC, these versions have a similar structure, but are way more comprehensive. Usually, from what I have experienced, they tend to ask the origin and the background more broadly, topics that are commonly cited by many sources. Some parts may be questioned, asking for extending it, so saying that "not much content improvement to be gained" may be considered.

Occasionally, in some articles, there might be a need to take a rest for too long, so there is a chance that the thread may be closed and might to reopen the nomination. Previously, before nomination, luckily, I have found some questions (I have asked in a collection of threads): Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive93#How to assess comprehensiveness of wide-scope articles and Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive94#What is the difference between FA and GA again?.

Eh ... you won't mind if you could be another assistant of the participants for your article to be promoted by someone before FAC? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:56, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Depends on who. I suspect that fluent English prose is not your greatest strength, for instance, but that is what FA is likely to care about more than depth of content. In fact, the opposite: reviews of featured article Emmy Noether have included calls to dumb down the article (or, more charitably, bring it to a general-audience reading level) by omitting the technical material about the areas she worked in and what she did in those areas. I think it is likely that attempting to gain FA status for prime number would face similar pressure to make it less technical and to achieve this by removing important content.

But you are mistaken to call it my article; I do not WP:OWN it and have no control on what nominations other editors make. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:37, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Fluent English prose is not my real strength, and I might require some time for improvement. Sometimes I can be fluent, sometimes I cannot, and sometimes I may forget.

When I am trying to imply the article is yours, I meant you are the main writer. And when I am asking for your assistance, I mean considering it yourself to be a mutual nominator.

And if you're thinking that Prime number has the same pressure as Emmy Noether because of technical problems, try to compare them to Affine symmetric group, which is much more technical. I'll try to ask for WP:PR if this is necessary. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 03:22, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

It was an enormous struggle to get affine symmetric group to FA. --JBL (talk) 17:45, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

And that was after it had already passed a more strenuous external peer review process. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:50, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

Your good article nomination of the article Tschirnhausen cubic is under review. See the review page for more information. This may take up to 7 days; feel free to contact the reviewer with any questions you might have. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Wikipedian12512(alt) -- Wikipedian12512(alt) (talk) 12:06, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

I would appreciate your help with improving and fine tuning the article as I give feedback. Wikipedian12512(alt) (talk) 13:06, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

I've finished the feedback. Wikipedian12512(alt) (talk) 15:47, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! I might not have time to get to this until the weekend. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:55, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Okay. I'll keep fine tuning and adding more to it. Wikipedian12512(alt) (talk) 15:59, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Nice job with some of the stuff! I’ve noticed that the math equations aren’t rendering for me (maybe it’s just me). I can see the (I think it’s LaTeX) inputs. Thanks! Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 02:09, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

Huh. It renders when I visual edit, but not when I read. Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 02:13, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

Maybe check Special:Preferences → Appearance → Math and try whether one of the other four radio button options that it gives you works better than what you already have it set to? It sounds like you have it set to LaTeX source, which is not usually the right choice. I set mine to SVG. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:53, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

I didn't, and it works when I set it to $LATEX$. Thanks! Wikipedian12512(alt) (talk) 11:41, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

Hi @David Eppstein: This has just came up on WP:NPP with a new editor with 88 edits. Its seems to be a valid algorithmn, the article seems to be well written, structured and referenced. Would you be able to determine if its notable. Or point me in a direction of somebody that can tell me. scope_creep^Talk 10:00, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

@Scope creep: it seems like this is just some engvar violation? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colour_refinement_algorithm&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Color_refinement_algorithm&action=history I have reverted the edits. --JBL (talk) 17:46, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

The Weisfeiler Leman graph isomorphism test is very notable but I'm not convinced that, given the state of the two articles, we need to separate the 1-dimensional case from the rest. Merge? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:49, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is David Eppstein. Z1720 (talk) 03:15, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Notable, or not? Bearian (talk) 02:49, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

I always have difficulty judging these African biographies because the reliability of the major newspapers there is so often low. My gut reaction is not but that's based only on a very quick skim, not on any detailed searching. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:27, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. Bearian (talk) 02:14, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

I like the way you improve Moser's circle problem. The structure is obvious that you are planning to promote the quality class. In a list you have made, what is your plan for other potentials? Particularly in Absolute value, I have contributed to sourcing so far. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:25, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

I have not decided to push for Moser's circle problem to become GA; I was merely trying to get it out of https://bambots.brucemyers.com/cwb/bycat/Mathematics.html and I am not convinced that it is an important enough topic to be worth pushing. As for absolute value, it is definitely important enough (which is why I put it on my todo list) but the last time I looked it would still take a lot more work to become ready. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:37, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Okay, then. For off-topic, do you mind if you can participate Wikipedia:Peer review/Prime number/archive1? There might have been some good questions. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 03:24, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Whoops!! Missed your username has two Ps. – LuniZunie_(talk) 00:22, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Looks like our talk contributions to each other crossed. Anyway, thanks again! —David Eppstein (talk) 00:24, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Typo! You forgotten to revert it by clicking "revert" button. Yikes! —KuyaMoHirowo (talk • contribs) 00:25, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm too scared to use the "Revert" button, it made some messy things in the past (likely due to user error but still). – LuniZunie_(talk) 00:26, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Your good article nomination of the article Tschirnhausen cubic has passed; congratulations! See the review page for more information. If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Please also consider reviewing somebody else's nomination to help keep the backlog down. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Wikipedian12512(alt) -- Wikipedian12512(alt) (talk) 17:25, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! As well as to Wikipedian12512, a lot of the credit for very helpful reviewing should go to User:Femke. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:29, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Lovely to review a maths article for a change and having to use my brain properly. Just if it wasn't clear from the above, it was my who clicked the pass button. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 17:31, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

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--Rosiestep (talk) 22:50, 25 May 2026 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Notable or not? Bearian (talk) 01:35, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not very confident in my opinions on notability for medical researchers because I don't understand the citation patterns in those fields. I didn't find high citations or published reviews of his books, so I tend to lean against him being notable. But I did find one published obituary and if there are more in-depth sources about him he might pass WP:GNG. (Care is needed though to distinguish him from the other Edwards Kowalski including the 1914–1967 one.) —David Eppstein (talk) 01:52, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

Got it. Bearian (talk) 11:01, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi. I see you undid my addition of equal temperaments tempering out the syntonic comma, saying that it needs a published source. I feel that no source is necessary, as all it takes to find whether a comma is tempered out is some fairly basic linear algebra. Please explain your reasoning here. Thanks! G-d bless! MisterShaf (talk) 10:44, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

In the English Wikipedia, verifiability means that people can check that facts or claims correspond to reliable sources. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:26, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Okay :) MisterShaf (talk) 17:35, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Is this technically unsourced? Bearian (talk) 11:00, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

It has one footnote, enough to save it from a BLPPROD. And some of the basic factual (but not evaluative) later content could also be sourced to the same footnote. But most of its content is unsourced. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:55, 3 June 2026 (UTC)