Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boy's surface/Proofs (2nd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Cirt (talk) 21:29, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Boy's surface/Proofs[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Result of previous AfD was 'transfer to Wikibooks'. Article was copied to b:Famous Theorems of Mathematics/Boy's surface but the wikipedia article was never deleted. PROD (A5. Article has been traswikied) was entered but contested. There is little hope of turning this into an article in encyclopedic style. No references are given for the material.--RDBury (talk) 13:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since the previous AFD closed as delete, I would have simply deleted this if asked. The reasons for deletion are well summarized by the essay at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Proofs: "if a proof is made a topic of its own dedicated Wikipedia article, the proof must be significant as a proof, not merely routine." The proofs included in this article are not significant as proofs, and would be out of place in the main article on their topic because they are routine but long. This makes them a bad fit for Wikipedia. On its own, that would lead me to recommend deleting this page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This AfD nomination was incomplete (missing step 3). It is listed now. DumbBOT (talk) 12:41, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy delete per WP:CSD#A5. The declined prod shouldn't prevent the speedy deletion. I agree with Carl — some proofs are significant enough to deserve their own articles, and others are short and illuminating enough to be worth including within articles on other subjects, but this is neither. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
delete wikipedia is not the place for long manipulation of formula. No refs, indication of notability etc--Salix (talk): 07:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
keep notability is obvious from the main article, refs are not strictly necessary for mathematical proofs which can be understood by anybody who knows the topic.--Pokipsy76 (talk) 20:42, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Could you explain further how the notability of these proofs is obvious from the main article? These seem like textbook exercises to me. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - My opinion is that if a mathematical statement is notable (enough to be mentioned in wikipedia) then also the proof is. I can agree that these proofs are awefully technical and long compared with the wikipedia standards but this is another kind of problem and I don't think that anybody would have even thought to delete them if they were nice and elegant proofs.--Pokipsy76 (talk) 22:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - So, since the Feit–Thompson theorem is notable then the proof (200 pages of a journal article that only a handful of group theorists can understand) should also be in Wikipedia? Including a proof of every mathematical statement would be contrary to both WP:NOTTEXTBOOK and WP:IINFO. No one is saying remove all proofs, but they need to conform to the same standard of being encyclopedic as everything else.--RDBury (talk) 18:19, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - I just said that the proof is "notable", not that *any* notable proof should be added entirely in wikipedia. I agree that this proof is ugly, long and technical but my view is that it is still not so much ugly/long/technical to require a deletion. This is just my opinion and my vote counts just one :)--Pokipsy76 (talk) 18:33, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        Actually, it is not a vote, you need to give a reason why this proof is notable. Geometry guy 21:56, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        I've the feeling that I am being asked to give far more justifications than anybody else here :\--Pokipsy76 (talk) 09:08, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Should have been deleted 2 years ago, and nothing has changed. A proof which no reliable sources provide or refer to cannot possibly be notable. I spent a little time reminding myself of the mathematics here and conclude that these proofs are pedestrian attempts to verify obvious statements, and they do so rather badly. They will never be notable. The immersion of Kusner and Bryant is simply a conformal inversion of a complete minimal surface given by the Weierstrass representation, and this article uses formulae which make the properties proven here essentially obvious. Alas Boy's surface does not do a good job explaining this and needs a lot of work anyway. Unfortunately this sort of thing is likely to happen when we cut and paste from MathWorld (as here), rather than check reliable and original sources. Geometry guy 21:56, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per first AfD. Ozob (talk) 23:24, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.