Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Uncertainty theory

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 no consensus on Uncertainty theory delete the rest. Secret ^account 14:04, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Uncertainty theory[edit]

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"Uncertainty theory" may be the next best thing since Relativity but so far it seems to have had little impact. I can find very few relevant ghits and almost nobody seems to talk about it apart from its creator, who apparently came up with the idea two years ago. I'm proposing that a set of almost identical stubs, recently created by an spa should be deleted because they are all unreferenced original research, failing WP:OR, WP:N and WP:VER. There's also a suspicion that one of the main aims of these articles is to promote the author's recent book on the subject, contrary to WP:SPAM. andy (talk) 17:10, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note the url orsc.edu.cn is the only reference given in these articles. It's been flagged as possible spam - see here

Delete. As per nomination. Agree that it seems to be an individual's theory that has not been given prominence in any WP:RS. The additions to Wikipedia seem to be more like advertising. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 05:05, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. References to a number of reliable independent sources have been added to the article. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Taqi Haider (talk) 11:38, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete gain notability outside of wikipedia first, then use those references to demonstrate notability here RadioFan (talk) 15:56, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. References to a number of reliable independent sources have been added to the article, that clearly demonstrate the notability outside of Wikipedia. (Also, a book in the third edition published by one of the most respected scientific publishers in the world already does establish notability "outside of wikipedia".) Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all. WuhWuzDat 16:29, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, what? I am not sure if Uncertainty theory is notable or not. There has been a nuanced discussion at WT:WPM#Uncertainty theory. But this isn't just a personal thing. The Uncertainty Theory Laboratory at Tsinghua University lists 43 members and 7 students. [1] Altogether they have roughly 100 mostly peer-reviewed publications [2], including books by Baoding Liu that have gone through several editions with the most respected scientific publishers.

In the thread at WikiProject Mathematics I have already mentioned a third-party citation from outside China. [3] It may well be that this theory has significant impact within China although it is still hardly known outside. Several experienced members of the maths project are watching the article and will see what happens.

The suspicion that this is about promotion of the book seems to be unfounded. All academics want to promote their theory in one way or another, there is nothing wrong with that. The book in question has had 3 editions. The books by this author have been around for a while, and there are no traces of advertising on Amazon.com. [4] I have looked at the online version of the Springer book, and on first sight it seems to meet the usual standards of this publisher and well worth reading.

It's hard to assess notability at this time, because coverage may be mostly in Chinese. Please leave this matter to the mathematics project, so that we avoid a combination of biting and systemic bias. The topic warrants at least a short mention in related topics such as fuzzy measure theory, so in any case outright deletion (rather than a redirect) wouldn't be appropriate. For redirecting we don't need an AfD, which is why the discussion in the WikiProject did not lead to this AfD. In case of any conflicts with the article creator we could still propose the article again as a last resort.

Concerning the other articles: These stubs are hardly useful. If they don't get any serious content soon (which seems possible), they need to be turned into redirects to uncertainty theory. Hans Adler 16:42, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. If you're not sure about its notability - and nobody else in that discussion is either - then it's not notable. Why? Because notability requires proof and there is none here.

In general I'd agree that something technical should be left to a technical group such as the maths project, but in this case it's pretty clear what the situation is (and btw I have a degree in maths so I understand where you're coming from). No independent sources, very few ghits. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that it fails WP:N.

The onus is on the author to prove that the article should be kept. andy (talk) 16:56, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you followed the Amazon link above? 3 Springer books and 1 Wiley book don't look like a complete lack of notability to me, even though they are all by the same author. It's also possible that this is merely a variant of something better known under a different name. I am not particularly interested in this topic, so I am not going to defend the article beyond what I have already said. I left a note in the WPM thread about this AfD. Hans Adler 17:13, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Since they're all by the same author, who's the guy that invented the theory, then they don't count towards establishing notability. [5] lists a total of seven books, every one of which is authored by Baoding Liu. I've done a lot of hunting on the web and can find nothing that's been published on this subject by anyone other than him or his students from the same institution. As I said in the nomination the theory might be notable, but there's no proof of that and try as I might I can't find any. andy (talk) 17:22, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

~~Keep~~, but possibly a merge of some of the satellite articles is warranted. MathSciNet lists 17 matches with "Uncertainty theory" in the title, many of which are independent of Liu's work. I don't have time to format these properly right now, but they do establish notability beyond the Chinese school. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:49, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Rubin's solution below. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:18, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all. "Uncertainty theory" may deserve an article, but the current ~~"theory"~~ article shouldn't be a part of it. On the other hand, if the books are published by Springer that suggests that someone there thinks it's notable. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:56, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As an alternative, redirect (without merge) uncertain(ty) X to fuzzy X, and put a summary of the logic in the appropriate section (which I believe to be somewhere in fuzzy logic#Mathematical fuzzy logic). Unfortunately, the "main" article, uncertainty theory, doesn't correspond to an article named fuzzy theory, so we may have a GFDL problem. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:06, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As an alternative, delete and redirect uncertain(ty) X to fuzzy X, (where "fuzzy X" exists), and merge uncertainty theory to point to an item in fuzzy logic#Propositional fuzzy logics. Only the definition of the fuzzy "measure" seems suitable for the merge; the fuzzy random variables and distribution seem obvious consequences which apply to most forms of fuzzy logic. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:20, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete/redirect as this seems to be a similar concept to fuzzy logic/fuzzy set theory etc. Sussexonian (talk) 21:32, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
NOTE: I've just added two more, very much the same as the others, and another editor has added another one. andy (talk) 23:45, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and cleanup the main article; possibly merge the others. It's unfortunate that we don't seem to have truly independent sources, but the number of publications from high-quality publishers makes it hard to believe the topic is not notable. --Trovatore (talk) 06:43, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: There's a certain element of the blind leading the blind here. Arthur Rubin has made what seems a very sensible suggestion which has some support, but it's based on an educated guess that "uncertainty theory" may be very similar to "fuzzy logic". I'd not object to redirecting all these articles (stubs, really) except that nobody seems sure that it really is another form of fuzzy logic. What if it's not? IMHO all we have for sure is a strong suspicion that it could be notable, but no independent evidence of that as required by WP policy, and another strong suspicion that even if it is notable it ought to be merged anyway. On that basis I don't see that it passes muster. andy (talk) 10:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. The primary reason adduced for deletion seems to be based on the suspicion that independent sources do not exist. However, as I indicated above, there are independent sources. At the time I did not have time to format them. But here they are:

Dubois, Didier; Moral, Serafin; Prade, Henri (1998), "Belief change rules in ordinal and numerical uncertainty theories", Belief change, Handb. Defeasible Reason. Uncertain. Manag. Syst., vol. 3, Dordrecht: Kluwer Acad. Publ., pp. 311–392, MR 1743910
De Campos, Luis M.; Huete, Juan F.; Moral, Seraf\'\in (2000), "Independence in uncertainty theories and its applications to learning belief networks", Abductive reasoning and learning, Handb. Defeasible Reason. Uncertain. Manag. Syst., vol. 4, Dordrecht: Kluwer Acad. Publ., pp. 391–434, MR 1927641
Klir, George J. (1997), "Uncertainty theories, measures, and principles: an overview of personal views and contributions", Uncertainty: models and measures (Lambrecht, 1996), Math. Res., vol. 99, Akademie Verlag, pp. 27–43, MR 1478002
Resconi, Germano; Klir, George J.; Harmanec, David; St. Clair, Ute (1996), "Interpretations of various uncertainty theories using models of modal logic: a summary", Fuzzy Sets and Systems. An International Journal in Information Science and Engineering, 80 (1): 7–14, ISSN 0165-0114, MR 1389944
Golubtsov, P. V. (1994), "Fuzzy set theory as an uncertainty theory and decision-making problems in a fuzzy experiment", Rossiĭskaya Akademiya Nauk. Problemy Peredachi Informatsii, 30 (3): 47–67, ISSN 0555-2923, MR 1299690
Resconi, Germano; Klir, George J.; St. Clair, Ute; Harmanec, David (1993), "On the integration of uncertainty theories", International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems, 1 (1): 1–18, ISSN 0218-4885, MR 1253850
Oblow, E. M. (1987), "O-theory---a hybrid uncertainty theory", International Journal of General Systems. Methodology, Applications, Education, 13 (2): 95–106, ISSN 0308-1079, MR 0914396
Vladimirskiĭ, È. I.; Kiyasbeĭli, Sh. A.; Shishonok, N. A. (1986), "Uncertainty theory in the realization of problems of the reliability of complex systems", Decision-making methods and systems. Applied problems in the analysis of solutions in technical systems (Russian), Riga: Rizhsk. Politekhn. Inst., pp. 17–21, MR 0979772

These are just some of the relevant papers on MathSciNet with "Uncertainty theory" in the title. Many more papers can be found with a wider search that includes the abstracts and reviews. I hope this lays to rest any belief that keep votes are based on "suspicion". Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Most of those citations are to publications that seem to pre-date the alleged invention of the theory by Baoding Liu. There are many theories that deal with uncertainty, but the question is whether this particular capital-U capital-T Uncertainty Theory is something notable that merits an article. Despite this afd none of the authors of the articles have added a single independent reference. andy (talk) 13:15, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know which year you are basing this on, but you can't take the year 2007 mentioned in the article for that. I guess it refers to explosion of "uncertain X" terms that we are observing with the satellite articles. We are dealing with a Chinese speaker who is struggling with the English language. Apparently the Uncertainty Theory Laboratory was founded in 1998 [6], Liu's Wiley book "Uncertain Programming" came out the next year, and in 2004 there was the first edition of the Springer book "Uncertainty Theory: An Introduction to its Axiomatic Foundations". I agree to the extent that most of the sources above probably don't refer to this precise notion, but it's hard to say this with absolute confidence without checking the details. Hans Adler 13:34, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I think the AfD should be closed as no consensus. The "element of the blind leading the blind" factor is no basis on which to delete an article. The above references easily show that the topic is notable, although as I have already indicated, I agree with Rubin's solution to merge these articles into "fuzzy X" whenever possible. Trovatore also has a good suggestion: just keeping the one main article and redirecting the rest. Whatever happens, though, an AfD where 90% of the commentators have been unable to assess accurately the notability of a subject because of their unfamiliarity with it is clearly problematic, and it is not an ideal place to make these kind of content decisions. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:04, 23 November 2009 (UTC).[reply]

I disagree. The point is that articles have to justify their inclusion. There is, if you like, a presumption of guilt. WP:FAILN gives some clear guidance which this afd is following, and simply giving up isn't a terribly good alternative. At this stage in the afd any of the recommended outcomes is possible: tag it, merge it or delete it. The mathematically inclined contributors to the debate seem to be tending towards the latter two options. That's fair enough. andy (talk) 13:15, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well... the references given above can easily be added to the article. Will that "justify the inclusion" of the article? It will certainly render the reasons proposed for deletion totally bogus. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification (I hope). The good professor's first paper was published in 1996 according to his online bio. The International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems in which he has published many times was founded three years prior to that. He's also published in many other journals, mostly to do with fuzzy logic. So it seems clear that his theory falls within the general area of uncertainty or fuzziness as a whole, which is of course a subject that he did not invent. Without seriously expert intervention we mere mortals have no way of knowing if his theory is considered notable within the fuzzy community (sounds like a fun bunch of people!) - unless the authors of these articles provide some clear evidence. Until then they should be treated cautiously and either deleted or merged. andy (talk) 14:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I should remind you that the evidence of notability presented at an AfD can be fairly cursory, because AfD is a very blunt instrument. The above references should be ample to convince "mere mortals" that the topic is notable. We don't usually take a default position of "delete" if experts do not suddenly materialize to examine all of the evidence presented at an AfD and affirm that it supports the article as presently written. If, in the future, an expert shows up who disputes the relevance of these references above, then he or she is certainly welcome to rewrite the article, or take the article back to AfD if appropriate and make a well-reasoned informed case against it. While I hope it is the former that happens, I certainly wouldn't object to the latter. But it isn't fair to keep moving the goalposts, as is being done in this AfD. At first, there were no ghits. Then a bunch of very reliable sources were produced, that may or may not be precisely relevant to the article, as presently written. But those were dismissed as irrelevant on rather dubious chronological grounds. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody is moving the goalposts. There are very few ghits, so there's no evidence of notability to be found that way. The articles as originally written cited no independent sources. A bunch of independent reliable sources were indeed found but reliable proof of what? The chronological grounds for dismissing them weren't spurious - the theory was allegedly invented in 2007 (or maybe 2005) but the sources pre-date that by as much as a decade, so they can scarcely be proof of the notability of the theory, can they? What they show is that people have been using the term "uncertainty theory" for a long time but not that "Uncertainty Theory" as per the original version of this article. I see you've now rewritten it in such a way as to relegate Prof Liu to the sidelines. That totally changes the meaning of the article and probably obviates the need for deletion, assuming the original author doesn't change it back. Let's leave it a couple of days and see what other people think. andy (talk) 17:55, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The latest round of objections centers on the idea that there is some kind of Uncertainty Theory (with a capital "T"). Although the article had been written from this somewhat naive point of view, the fact is that people have been studying these things for quite some time from a variety of points of view—and I am by no means an expert. I disagree that it completely changes the meaning of the article—the article was likely written by a student first encountering these ideas through Liu's book, which the author naturally takes to be the definitive account (it is not, really, but we should be willing to forgive that oversight). At any rate, there are many potential sources that treat this topic from a variety of points of view, so there is definitely room for expansion of the article beyond the views espoused by the Chinese group. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep the main article at least, notability for it seems plainly to have been demonstrated. Paul August ☎ 17:19, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I am a bit alarmed at the suggestion of mixing in references to "uncertainty theory" from mathematics papers in general. Liu obviously has a well-elaborated theory; if that theory ought to have an article (which I think it should), then the article should be specifically about that theory, and not about other possibly-related things that someone has called uncertainty theory. I'm worried about another mess like definable real number. See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Regular number (don't be confused by the fact that there currently exists an article called regular number — the original article was deleted and the existing one was rewritten from scratch). --Trovatore (talk) 20:29, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you have access, you might want to read the 2009 SIAM review of Liu's book (MR2515179). This does put Liu's work into a larger perspective, not just stuff that "could be related", but things that actually are directly relevant. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:40, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep one -- probably uncertainty theory as it seems the most general title, and let the specialists decide what references belong. There almost certainly should also be an article on Liu. DGG ( talk ) 16:02, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Newsflash! The original author or one of his avatars seems to object to Sławomir Biały's changes and has reverted to an even more obscure and POV version of what it was before, with no mention of anyone other than Liu. I think that if it is kept it may have to be protected. I'll remind these dissenting editors to participate in the afd. This is actually getting quite weird. andy (talk) 16:47, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for all your advice. I am improving my article with my friends, and I will make the inference clear. If you check the article, you'll find they have been impoved a lot. There is no cheat in all the articles. We want Uncertainty Theory to be known by more people, so they can do more help to daily life, just as probability does. Besides, probability is unaccepted to the mathematicians before 1930s, but it is hot in finnance now; and we are sure that uncertainty theory will have a widely use someday. Thank you! Please don't delete my article, they will be improved soon.Pingfanlj (talk) 16:54, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all for your advice! i have read all the discussion above. I want to say something.(My English is poor, so maybe some sentences are hard to understand.) 1)Baoding Liu have studied Uncertainty Theory for many years before 2007, and write some articles above it. However, he found something a little wrong in his theory, so he now have been redefining some defination about his theory since 2007. 2)It is slow to link to http://www.en.wikipedia.org in my university, and it often fails. This is why i write the article now(Beijing Time 1:47, time to sleep), as it link fast now. 3)I creat my account in wiki

about a week ago, so i am unfamiliar with writing an article, this is why i didn't write references the first time. 4) My friends are improving the articles. However, we are all student, so we don't have much time to do such a job, this is why the articles are improved slowly. 5)MR2515179[7],Dobois do some research in fuzzy theory with different methods. As uncertainty theory is not perfect now, so the method to study it may be different, and someone(unwill to open to other methods)may say others are wrong, just so so. Thank you all! Please don't delete my articles, thank you!--Pingfanlj (talk) 17:54, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep uncertainty theory, delete the rest, per WP:UNDUE. This is a promotional attempt to give undue prominence to a topic by creating a large number of spin off articles. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:32, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all. Wikipedia is not the place for advertising obscure mathematical theories. All the citations to his work seem to be by himself and his group in China. The page also fails to give any context or explanation of this theory. Fences&Windows 17:32, 29 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all or translate them and move them to the Chinese language wiki. The references provided above prove that something called "Uncertainty Theory" (UT) exists, but it is not clear if UT is clearly defined, nor is it clear if this article is about the "real" UT. Since the article claims that UT was invented in 2007, but the references provided date back to the mid-90's, my gut feeling is that this article is not accurately reflecting the sources that were found for it. Just because we can search for "uncertainty theory" and find math articles with "uncertainty theory" in the title doesn't mean that we've found a reference that backs up the material in these articles. I say the articles get deleted, and if someone wants to rewrite the article based on multiple independent sources, then so be it. At this point, the articles appear to need a nearly complete rewrite, so deletion is probably the best thing we can do for UT. SnottyWong talk 00:56, 30 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge all of these into Uncertainty theory. As others have noted above, the topic is notable, and good sources can be found, but having several articles violates WP:UNDUE. Bearian (talk) 19:23, 30 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment - given the complexity of some of the secondary articles I think merging is impossible. It's got to be redirection or nothing. andy (talk) 22:47, 30 November 2009 (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.