Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1045

About the accusation of

WP:OWN

, it suffices to read above mathsci's post to be convinced that it is a problem for mathsci.

IMO,

WP:BOOMERANG should be applied here. D.Lazard (talk

) 16:27, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• This edit appears as a tentative of mathsci for escaping from
  WP:3RR by restoring the disputed material in another section. D.Lazard (talk
  ) 16:45, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

(ec) In principle this involved updating and improving the article, I looked at it in 2008. During that updating period, I noticed that the article was incoherent, because of missing sections. The first task was then to add a few preliminary sentences, needed for surfaces: content on

Taylor series expansion, needed for the first fundamental form and second fundamental form

of a surface. A few minutes ago I added content related to the "first fundamental form". I wrote about the matrices ${\displaystyle {\begin{pmatrix}E&F\\F&G\end{pmatrix}}}$. It was blanked.[33] At the moment material that should have been in the article along while back is being added. That was my initiative. The material is standard, but requires care. I think in my experience editing, I have never before seen blanking like this. At the moment this anodyne neutral topic is hardly

WP:OWN comes into here. Mathsci (talk

) 18:04, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

@Mathsci: You need to respect editorial consensus. At the moment, the consensus of editorial opinion seems against you. Paul August ☎ 18:25, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

@Paul August: I have noticed that you have been one of the very few editors to actively edit this particular article: many thanks for that! Originally this week I added a proof of the the inverse function theorem in this article; it only gradually became clear that it could be transplanted to another wikipedia article, where it belonged. Then step by step, I have tried to reduce the sentences about derivatives and diffeomorphisms to the very minimum, both to clarify what's going on with regular surfaces, while making it accessible to a general readership. From my own edits, I hope you can see that is what has been happening. In the article, there are still problems in defining principal curvature, Monge patches, etc. I am trying my best. Mathsci (talk) 19:31, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm sure you are trying your best. But this is not the place to discuss article content. This board is for discussing editorial conduct. Paul August ☎ 21:50, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• I reverted
  WP:OWNERSHIP issues. Russ Woodroofe (talk
  ) 08:46, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
• One of ANI's more esoteric reports to date, to be sure. EEng 10:09, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
• Comment: Here are the main points for which, in my opinion,
  WP:BOOMERANG
  must apply.
  • Edit warring after a consensus was reach on the talk page: the three first edits that are linked above are reversions of the same Mathsci's contribution from August 3. The last three are reversion from August 5 of the same contribution, after that a consensus was reach on the talk page.
  • Tentative to escape from
    WP:3RR by adding the same material in another section [34]
  • Personal attacks in edit summaries, for example [35]
  • Removal of a heading in the talk page, which makes nonsensical other's post [36]
  • Systematic and still continuing use of article's page as a sandbox for preparing their contributions; see [37] as a typical example. This is disruptive by making very difficult to others to review these fast changes, and fixing/improving/reverting them.
  • Contributions on the talk page that consist mainly in attacks on user conduct and summaries of sources that they think the most relevant ones; see Talk:Differential geometry of surfaces#Recent edits by mathsci, and more recently Talk:Differential geometry of surfaces#Theorema Egregium

Although, IMO, none of these items is sufficient by itself for opening a thread here, all together, they form a highly disruptive behavior that must be stopped. D.Lazard (talk) 10:25, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

• Comment I hadn’t realized that this content dispute had escalated so far. The consensus at
  edit warring against multiple editors and that they have made inappropriate and often tangential accusations against D.Lazard. — MarkH₂₁^talk
  09:34, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
• Comment I stopped following the page because it was stressful, but I came back today and was shocked further. Every editor outside of MathSci has been unanimous that his edits are not appropriate for Wikipedia, reading more like a textbook and using a level detail not appropriate for a high level article. There have been 300 edits since he started editing the page in late July, with 250 edits since Aug 3, and as far as I can tell there have been reverts back and forth every day for the past week. I don't know if its a thing you guys do, but I suggest the page be reverted back to the state it was in July 9 before any of the edits and locked for a time.Brirush (talk) 20:05, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

• Postscript to the above comment: I think MathSci is intelligent and eloquent, and I think the material has use somewhere, but not in this article in this fashion. Others have suggested moving the new material to a new page and summarizing it on the main page, and I think that's a great solution. I post here not to condemn MathSci, but to admit that I'm not sure how to proceed; outside observers could see clearer, IMO.Brirush (talk) 20:39, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

I am biased as an editor who has made some major changes in the last week, but I believe there have been vast improvements to the article since July 9, and I think it'd be a very bad idea to revert it. I know there is at least one other editor (D.Lazard) who thinks my edits have made a positive impact. In my opinion, mathsci's edits to the page have been highly confusing and in need of clarification, which in part explains the number of edits - in my own opinion, he's also made it rather difficult for me to improve the page. In essence, I think the article needed an almost complete rewrite for it to be clear. The (current) end result of the major edits, in section 3, is in its majority written by me and not by mathsci. It may look long and over-detailed, but it is very much not written as a textbook, it is just a summary of the main points. (There is one section on isometries, written by mathsci, which I think is unclear, as well as two paragraphs, also written by him, which are in discussion on the talk page.) Gumshoe2 (talk) 21:02, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

It is not a good idea to restore an old version such as the one of mid July. At this time, the first technical section of the article was not as usual the definition of th object of study or the needed background. It started directly by the sentence "Informally Gauss defined the curvature of a surface in terms of the curvatures of certain plane curves connected with the surface." In other words the article could be understood only by people who already know its content. After Gumshoe2's major edits, the article is much better and useful for a much wider audience. It would be a pity to destroy this good job. My contribution to this improvement is minor, because, while I know enough of the subject for understand and reviewing edits, I do not know enough for writing sections and chosing the material that deserve to be added (or kept). D.Lazard (talk) 22:09, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

In summary, the problem here is that although Mathsci edits of the article and his contributions to the talk page are clearly done in good faith, they are very disruptive, and this would help to improve the article if they are stopped. D.Lazard (talk) 22:22, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

• Comment Holy
  WP:TLDR! This is ripe for a cool down and RfC to get more uninvolved eyes. Gleeanon409 (talk
  ) 22:39, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

I would really like to have some extra observers. What is an RfC? Gumshoe2 (talk) 02:44, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

@

WP:RfC, they need to be written neutrally. Gleeanon409 (talk

) 02:59, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. Unfortunately I'm not very familiar with the wikipedia bureaucracy... it says there "The use of requests for comment on user conduct has been discontinued," are you sure it's the appropriate way? It is also a little unfortunate that an observer might have to be somewhat knowledgeable in math to understand the situation Gumshoe2 (talk) 03:11, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

@Gumshoe2:, don’t focus on user(s), make it on how best to treat the contested content. Gleeanon409 (talk) 07:33, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

To editor

WP:BOOMERANG, that the behavior of the opener of the thread has also to be considered. D.Lazard (talk

) 16:54, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

• Further comment. The discussion at Talk:Differential geometry of surfaces#Section on orthogonal coordinates is a newer example that is rather surrealistic. It seems that Mathsci discusses from another spacetime Universe. To administrators: It is time to stop Mathsci's disruptive editing, even if they are disruptive with good faith. D.Lazard (talk) 16:54, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

I fully agree. Mathsci makes it extremely difficult to improve the page. Gumshoe2 (talk) 17:18, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

If the section has been repeatedly removed by blanking against consensus then simply take the issue to

WP:3rr for edit warring. If they are doing this across content on the article then make the case for a topic ban on the article itself. Gleeanon409 (talk

) 19:05, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Remark. I would like to be very clear. I think Mathsci is trying to be helpful and understands part of the material, but does not understand all of it, and is not himself able to draw the line between what he understands and what he doesn't understand. He is highly combative about presenting the material as he sees fit, mostly by drawing directly upon textbooks and authors he respects. This would of course be ok (and even in many cases very good) if he understood the material well enough. The discussion on the talk page about the Theorema Egregium, and newly, about a "derivative formula" of Gauss, shows that he does not. He is not able to respond to technical questions about what he is claiming, always just deferring to "standard sources" which he often misinterprets. Surely there is a wiki procedure that could directly deal with this, without locking the whole page? Gumshoe2 (talk) 19:49, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

• I agree with several users above (Chris Troutman, Paul August, Russ Woodroofe, MarkH21, Brirush) that there is already a clear consensus on the article talk-page, and that MathSci's behavior in ignoring it is disruptive. There is no point in holding an RfC when discussion has already included a significant fraction of editors who might be expected to weigh in on a mathematics article, with unanimity except from MathSci. If MathSci will not voluntarily agree to recognize and abide by the consensus on the page, it might (regrettably) be necessary for them to be blocked from editing that article -- but I hope they will acknowledge that their approach is not an acceptable mode of collaboration. --
  talk
  ) 19:28, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

(

WP:RS

. Content has been carefully paraphrased and summarised. In July 2020 I noticed that very easy material had been missing from the article: looking at how it was treated in real life, I tried to add it on wikipedia. Definitions of regular surfaces, Monge patches, examples, etc. Perhaps part of that change—a crash course in 2 variable calculus—was against consensus, not sufficiently user-friendly; that material was quickly suppressed, completely reasonably.

Gumshoe2 has made a number of changes to the article. Apart from checking some sections, I have encouraged him to improve the sections on geodesic polar coordinates. I have also made it quite clear that others, including Gumshoe2, can make any improvements that they want. That has always been the case. Why would it be otherwise?

On the article talk page, some content has been checked using

WP:V. As far as I'm aware the same rules apply in mathematics articles. Mathsci (talk

) 21:16, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

In response to "In the 13 years of writing the article, everything I have edited so far has been accurate," here is a list of some of Mathsci's edits which contain parts that are either wrong or incoherent, from small mistakes to fundamental misunderstandings: ex 1, ex 2, ex 3, ex 4, ex 5, ex 6. There was a discussion of example 4 on the talk page, where Mathsci showed his failure to understand the relevant result. I encourage anyone, even those who are not familiar with the technical material, to read the thread to see the nature of Mathsci's non-responses and superficial use of "reliable sources" and "verifiability". I'll try to avoid any further comments here until admins respond. Gumshoe2 (talk) 22:43, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

User Mathsci on the page "Differential geometry of surfaces"

This has been partially discussed in a previous ANI thread D.Lazard and Differential geometry of surfaces, where Mathsci (talk · contribs) accused D.Lazard (talk · contribs) of inappropriate edits to the page Differential geometry of surfaces. It seems to have been ignored by admins since the conversation shifted to accusations against Mathsci, who has been (in at least some of our opinions) a corrosive presence on the page. I am not aware of anyone who has defended his comments or edits.

I'll copy my comment from there: "I would like to be very clear. I think Mathsci is trying to be helpful and understands part of the material, but does not understand all of it, and is not himself able to draw the line between what he understands and what he doesn't understand. He is highly combative about presenting the material as he sees fit, mostly by drawing directly upon textbooks and authors he respects. This would of course be ok (and even in many cases very good) if he understood the material well enough. The discussion on the talk page about the Theorema Egregium, and newly, about a "derivative formula" of Gauss, shows that he does not. He is not able to respond to technical questions about what he is claiming, always just deferring to "standard sources" which he often misinterprets. Surely there is a wiki procedure that could directly deal with this, without locking the whole page?"

This recent talk thread on the subsection "orthogonal coordinates" is particularly conspicuous. It was in reference to this section of this version of the page. As I showed by links to edits in the talk page, this entire section was written by Mathsci. To briefly summarize the talk thread: I found a precise reference to the material in Eisenhart's book, in section 88; Mathsci insisted that the material was a trivial consequence of section 63 of Eisenhart's book; I showed him that the formulas in section 63 were, in context, trivial, and logically could not possibly be the source; Mathsci now seems to be claiming that the material he wrote into the wiki page is in error, despite the fact that it is explicitly present in Eisenhart's book and I identified where it came from. In response to D.Lazard, in the previous ANI thread, calling the exchange "surrealistic", Mathsci wrote (at the time that he was claiming that it all followed from section 63):

I have no idea what D.Lazard means by "rather surrealistic"? Here I had to check

WP:RS that happens in all wikipedia articles (or should do). The verification is here in the diff and it is rather tedious. [Link to then-current version of talk thread] I am stil editing articles on Bach organ music, where the same rules apply. Similarly articles on France where the same rules apply. Even very infrequently updating the early history parts of History of the race and intelligence controversy

where the same rules apply.

This is highly emblematic for the following reason. Mathsci routinely insists on closely following the presentation of certain references, without being willing to spread material out over different wiki pages, as is common (especially, I believe, on math pages). In response to various disagreements, he routinely says that he's just following the sources, and suggests that others are being impudent for disagreeing with widely acknowledged standard sources; he almost never engages with the actual claims made. As the "orthogonal coordinates" talk thread exchange makes clear, Mathsci is not competent to correctly interpret what is in these standard sources. Another example is in the section on the Theorema Egregium, where Mathsci routinely misunderstood the meaning of the theorem, and was only able to respond to technical criticism by listing various references and standard facts about tangentially related material.

This is a major problem since (as can already be seen from some of his comments on the prior ANI thread) Mathsci seems to feel some ownership over the page Differential geometry of surfaces, and is highly active in controlling edits to the page. This can be seen, for one example, in this edit where the reason given for reversion was "too many changes." He makes it quite difficult to make improvements to the page.

I would like to also note that the accusations I'm making here are distinct from the accusations made against him in the prior ANI thread. They are also based on different (and more recent) material. Gumshoe2 (talk) 11:19, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Things are still at the level of a content dispute and not bad enough for administrator intervention. Some other form of

WT:WPM, I've been following the discussion but I'm not quite sure what the locus of the dispute is interms of concrete changes to the article. --Salix alba (talk

): 12:44, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't know very much about wikipedia policies and procedures. But I agree with D.Lazard when he said in the previous ANI thread that this "is not about article content, it is about user conduct. It is also clear in WP:BOOMERANG, that the behavior of the opener of the thread has also to be considered." I would describe it as a problem on user conduct which has been initiated by article content. Personally, my real problem is not about specific matters in the article; it is summarized by my sentence "He makes it quite difficult to make improvements to the page."

(Also, I have used WT:WPM for some specific article content matters, but it didn't seem to draw any new commentators) Gumshoe2 (talk) 13:08, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

WP:RS. I used an old-fashioned Princeton treatise from 1909. The first half of the material was fine but in the article there was an error in two statements (due to me), [40] Modern content on "geodesic polar coordinates" also occurs in the article, used for the so-called Gauss lemma

. As mentioned to Gumshoe2 (in the above diff), a few more details could be provided for the section "exponential map", using a modern source. All of this is standard undergraduate material.

My 2006 user page self-identified me as a professional mathematician. Gumshoe2's account started in April 2020. He has not made many edits. He started by improving BLPs of eminent mathematicians listed on his user page. He has expertise in non-linear PDEs, geometry and physics, sometimes stringy. To my knowledge, so far nobody has suggested that there is a problem editing this article. It happens in the normal way. Mathsci (talk) 13:11, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

My comment on locking the page was due to Gleeanon409's comment on the previous ANI thread suggesting "a topic ban on the article itself." Maybe I misunderstood the meaning. Also, you are still failing to understand that there is no "error in two statements" on the wiki page. The material explicitly appears in section 88 of Eisenhart. It is your current statements on the talk page which are in error, not your edits from 2007 (the only problem with those being the vague sourcing) Gumshoe2 (talk) 13:21, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Gumshoe2: I made an error in the two last lines of the section. The edits in 2007 for the sentences ("If in addition E = 1, so that H = G^1⁄2, then the angle φ at the intersection between geodesic (x(t),y(t)) and the line y = constant is given by the equation...") were just garbage. Mathsci (talk) 13:37, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

I can't believe I keep having to say this: check section 88, page 210, formula (57) here. The derivative formula you wrote in 2007 is completely correct. The link I just gave is open-access, anyone can see for themselves. It is the claims you've been making now, on the talk page, which are completely incorrect. Gumshoe2 (talk) 13:42, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Gumshoe2, did I make these edits in 2007 or did you? My edit history shows that it was me. On 13 November 2007, I followed through my mangled reasoning on time derivatives of x and y. The conditions F = 0 and E = 1 were not realistic. Geodesic polar coordinates are a different matter. Please could you stay on the article talk page? This kind of discussion on ANI is clearly off-topic. Mathsci (talk) 13:58, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

I tried to get more eyes on the article talk page, by posting on Wikiproject:Math, without success. Trying to directly discuss the matters with you took up (and continues to take up) inordinate amounts of time with no progress whatsoever. Anyhow, geodesic polar coordinates are very well-known to have F = 0 and E = 1. That is established, for instance, in the last full paragraph on page 207 (in section 87) in the same open-access link I just posted. Gumshoe2 (talk) 14:13, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

• It's already recorded in the article that geodesic polar coordinates have the form ${\displaystyle ds^{2}=dr^{2}+G(r,theta)d\theta ^{2}}$. Its a corollary of the Gauss theorem. The more general result on orthogonal coordinates can be found, not so easily, in a 1909 Princeton treatise and a 1940 Princeton book by Eisenhart. They can be found in (32.14) of Eisenhart (1940) ${\displaystyle d\theta /ds=-{\sqrt {g}}/g_{11}\Gamma _{12}^{2}dv/ds}$ and (25.7), ${\displaystyle \tan \theta =dv/du}$. Similarly the same method works for Eisenhart (1909), page 76, (24) and then page 204, (42). The proof (due to Gauss) follows from the formula for differentiating arctan and the Euler equations for geodesics. A lot of the editing of this article happened in Aix-en-Provence in November 2007. Mathsci (talk) 21:34, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
• I am afraid the real problem is that our articles on math are written in such a way (for example, good luck anybody without a degree in math trying to understand what
  WP:V to them, since only a few users are capable of verifying the article text with a source. When the number of these users is down to two and they disagree, we have a situation as described above.--Ymblanter (talk
  ) 08:15, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes, that's probably true. You mentioned today's freshly-minted article above on
    commutation theorem, Butcher group, Hermitian symmetric space, Littlewood subordination theorem. Carathéodory kernel theorem, Grunsky's theorem, Hartogs–Rosenthal theorem, Grunsky matrix, etc, etc. Mathsci (talk
    ) 09:26, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
  • As Mathsci himself has said several times, this is material from standard undergraduate coursework, and not a specialized (graduate-level) topic such as any of those listed. Of course, I understand that this still blocks out anyone who hasn't taken the class or prerequisites. But there must be a number of people on wikipedia who can verify, for instance, that my summary

"two days of continuous conversation to get to the point where Mathsci will recognize the phrase "classical derivative formula of Gauss" out of three sentences in the section he wrote, to not recognizing that it is proved in section 88 of Eisenhart, to insisting on a false verification of it based on other material, to then saying that the statement is wrong and should be removed, finally to then doing the very simple calculation by himself and recognizing that it is correct."

of this thread is completely accurate. Again, it is undergraduate material, not advanced mathematics; at the end I show how the problem is (after the setup) one that even students of multivariable calculus could carry out.

I think, also, that even those who have never taken a math class can see the structure of this conversation. In the third message, I allege "The link between these [certain two textbook topics] is the Gauss formula, which was not part of your presentation," i.e. that there is something missing from Mathsci's presentation. In the response, Mathsci just lists various textbooks that have proofs. In the next message, I look up one of the specific books and point out specifically that the fundamental point of the work done in the book had no counterpart in Mathsci's edit in question. Mathsci responds by saying that these books are legitimate sources and recommends a different book, a total non sequitur. Then Mathsci says "You are editing too rapidly at the moment and are making errors," and points out another book I should read. My editing error was apparently this deletion, which was clearly explained in the edit summary. I believe it doesn't take any understanding of the math involved to see that I was making specific claims about Mathsci's edits which Mathsci was absolutely nonresponsive to. Gumshoe2 (talk) 12:42, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Today Gumshoe2 wrote, "And, as I said before, I believe you are editing in good faith but do not have a very good understanding of some of the material. I believe this whole section is proof of that."[41] Gumshoe2 has given some form of apology for this.[42] Eisenhart's 1940 book has a good treatment of orthogonal nets; I used it for checking one of the main formulas. Not really a "total non sequitur."[43] Mathsci (talk) 17:38, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

To clarify for other readers. I was at most apologizing for using the talk page for expressing personal opinion about another user; the place for such comments is here, perhaps not there. Mathsci's talk about Eisenhart's other book is unrelated to the thread I outlined above, and in particular was not mentioned in the post I described as a "total non sequitur". He is confusing two different threads with each other. Gumshoe2 (talk) 17:51, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

• To
  WP:V
  , as all the content of this article appears in many textbooks (probably hundreds), some being listed as reference. So any reader that is able to read one of these sources should be able to verify the content of the article. So, is is completely useless, as does Mathsci, to comment with long technical details on the way that some authors present a material that is well known by mathematicians for two centuries.

The impression that two editors only can discuss the subject results from Mathsci's behavior: for proving that his interpretation of sources is wrong, one has not only to know the subject, but also to have a deep knowledge of the literature.

This Mathsci's way of discussing, and his aggressive behavior make almost impossible to discuss the main issues of this article, that are the accessibility to an audience that is as large as possible, the lack of contextual comments for explaining why each result is important, and for what it is used, and the whole structure of all our articles about surfaces. Personally, I have started to discuss some of these points. I do not continue because Mathsci's disruption makes impossible to have a constructive discussion. D.Lazard (talk) 17:10, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

I am not aware of any evidence of disruption at the moment, despite D.Lazard's views. References have been checked—sometimes time-consuming. D.Lazard's statements about numbers of sources are misleading. For the article Surface (topology), which D.Lazard page-watches, only a small but relevant references were added by me in 2016. As far as content-editing is concerned, all editors can make improvements, which are normally discussed on the article talk page. At ANI in the previous section, editing has explicitly been encouraged by me. There has sometimes been duplication of content, but that's part of the nature of the material: the Theorema Eqregium has several different proofs. Mathsci (talk) 19:40, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

One new, small, example of the difficulty of communicating with Mathsci here, in response to this edit of mine. Mostly adding as an illustration of previously-made comments, as there is absolutely nothing technical needed to understand this thread. Gumshoe2 (talk) 15:25, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Possible measures

I really should recurse myself here as I've had my own run ins with Mathsci (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log). There is clearly a communication problem here which has been reported by a number of users. But it is falling well short of anything requiring administrative actions.

One possible option would be to revisit the block log. The last but one block was in 2016, and the unblock was conditional on a statement proposed by Bishonen and accepted by Mathsci.[44]

"I would be far more careful not to overreact. I would state problems with edits dispassionately and carefully avoid any personal comments about editors. I would be careful to show that my edits on talk pages are there to help other editors as much as to discuss improvements to the article. I would strenuously avoid giving the appearance of belittling other editors with different skills."

I would propose that Mathsci be asked to reafirm this statement. Some recent edits have fallen short of these. --Salix alba (talk): 16:55, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

No part of that statement addresses my issues with Mathsci, which I view as the impossibility of communicating with him about this page in a rational or coherent way. I've never before had such an experience in talking about mathematical topics with others (whether with non-mathematicians, students of mine, colleagues, or senior figures) Gumshoe2 (talk) 17:22, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

I can remember the circumstances of the two recent blocks. Fram was the blocking administrator both times. In July 2016 it was for edits related to the

Disclosure: Salix alba was a graduate student at the University of Liverpool, when I was a mathematics lecturer there (1983-1989).

I have done quite a lot of editing of wikipedia articles, particularly mathematics, but not exclusively. For example I helped create

WP:ARBR&I, I was blocked indefinitely in October 2013. There was a possibility of returning to editing after 6 months, but I made a request only in 2016.) When discussing the block in August 2016, Bishonen asked, "Are you thinking of sticking to uncontroversial articles altogether? Obviously we would be very glad to still have your editing on baroque music and mathematics." In 2017 I made a few edits to 2017 Westminster attack

without problems. Baroque music has occasionally been problematic. Since a 2-way IBAN from April 2018, another editor has been blocked for 6 weeks and then a year in 2018.

Mathematics has so far not been a problem. One of the articles I have written has been

WP:NPA is non-negotiable: I apologize for making any personal comments towards D.Lazard. Everybody agrees that belittling comments should be avoided. I will certainly try to avoid making any vaguely belittling comments; and I hope that other editors will do the same. The talk page of this particular article, however, is not comparable to that of Talk:2016 Nice truck attack, The article talk page has become a little bogged down. Mathsci (talk

) 09:09, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I think that's a positive step forward. I didn't really want to drag up past history other than the resolution seemed useful. Hopefully we can close this section now. --Salix alba (talk): 11:22, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks Salix alba for clarifying all these matters. It was a positive step. I hope that this incident can now be closed. Mathsci (talk) 00:57, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

This statement "I have no plans on contributing very much to Differential geometry of surfaces" seems like a rather abrupt shift from the last couple days. Is this to say that if I make more major edits to the page, many of which I believe are still required, I won't have to waste days on the talk page convincing you of basic material? Gumshoe2 (talk) 17:42, 18 August 2020 (UTC)