Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/MathWorld

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 Speedy keep.

MathWorld

MathWorld (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

This article appears to exist simply as part of a comprehensive Wikipedia based commercial promotion by Wolfram Research intended to raise the profile of it's Mathematica and LiveGraphics3d products, including

• Keep. The article itself contains history and context for MathWorld demonstrating how it has been distinct from both Mathematica and Wolfram. In short the entry itself is notable. This can be shown by the, just under, five thousand returns on a direct (naive) Google Scholar search. However I do believe that the article could be much better referenced.
  The source, Mathworld, is also very extensively refernced by articles on Wikipedia. Over 999 results are returned when the "what links here" section above is examined. This additionally argues in favour of maintaining a specific entry. Asperal 11:20, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Absurd proposal. Article has little or nothing to do with other products and its notability is evident. Colonel Warden 11:38, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Maybe sprinkle a few more sources, but it's OK the way it is. Am I missing something? Funded by the NSF? Seems notable to me. Mindraker 13:47, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, although needs better sourcing. MathWorld is definitely something with separate notability rather than just a product of Wolfram. --Dhartung | Talk 23:07, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep 'Tis harmless enough and presents a good first-hand source for information. If a strong argument is shown that this is not the case and the article merely advertises, I will reverse my position. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexnye (talk • contribs) 23:47, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Although I think it would be possible to argue for keeping purely on notability and sourcability grounds, I'm going to argue based on a different point of encyclopedic value. As an encyclopedic dictionary of mathematics, MathWorld makes a very useful source or target of external links for our parallel articles here, and as Asperal notes, there are around 1000 links to mathworld, many or most of them added via the {{
  mathworld}} template by editors such as myself who have no connection to Wolfram or Mathematica. As such, having an article on MathWorld helps our readers to find out what kind of site those 1000 links are pointing to and decide whether the information from it is trustworthy. —David Eppstein 07:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • P.S. To strengthen this argument, MathWorld is explicitly mentioned at
    guideline for notability of numbers includes the existence of MathWorld articles as one criterion for judging notability. —David Eppstein 19:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply
    ]

• Keep - notable subject, NPOV article, range of different editors, and I can see no evidence of "commercial promotion" in this article. Gandalf61 14:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article is one of several whose principle purpose seems to be to direct people towards Wolfram Research websites, and those are highly commercial, the website concerned appears to exist primarily to showcase Wolfram Research products Mathematica and LiveGraphics3d. DMcMPO11AAUK/Talk/Contribs 15:19, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Notable site, famous among math interested people on the Internet. Nominated twice for Webby Awards in science [1][2] (didn't win among 5 nominees). Huge math resource often referenced inside and outside Wikipedia. Note: I'm a small volunteer contributor to MathWorld.[3] PrimeHunter 15:34, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep obviously. This proposal for deletion is assinine. Did the nominator not notice that:
  • Nearly 1500 Wikipedia pages link to this article?
  • MathWorld rivals Wikipedia as the main source of information on mathematics on the web (or did until very recently, and was the main source of information on mathematics on the web for years before Wikipedia expanded to the point of competing.
  • The article was created before Wikipedia was considered notable enough to be worth using as an advertising venue.
  • MathWorld is highly respected among mathematicians.

The nominator actually nominated this for "speedy deletion" (i.e. with no discussion) before someone objected to that. "Speedy deletion" is supposed to be used only for things that are obviously not disputable. Michael Hardy 17:22, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Snowball Keep. per all the above. Jheald 17:20, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Wait, is this to delete MathWorld, or just the WP article? Oh. Too bad. Keep, then. --Trovatore 17:58, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Per Michael Hardy. As well, the nominator should be
  tutored with a trout. --KSmrq^T 18:12, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Keep JRSpriggs 18:31, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Obvious keep: Look, I don't even like Wolfram, but MathWorld is an excellent resource and apparently a very popular Wikipedia article. It's one of the most notable math websites anywhere, possibly the single most notable. Michael Hardy has justified this better than I have, but this one's blindingly clear so I won't attempt to explain myself better. I don't want to speculate as to the motivations of the nominator, but this is pretty hard to believe. CRGreathouse (t | c) 18:34, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep subject of article is notable.--Jersey Devil 18:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Slightly OT comment I want to get this in before the article is speedy kept. Yes, notwithstanding my snarky comment above, MathWorld is a valuble resource. However some of it has an idiosyncratic, slapdash quality that I would not be pleased to see at Wikipedia, and I don't want the outpouring of astonishment at this ill-conceived nomination to make contributors think they ought to just uncritically parrot anything that shows up at MathWorld. Cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Radical_integer and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Regular_number , among others. One gets the impression that some of the articles are stuff that Weissstein made up in school one day. --Trovatore 19:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that MathWorld is sometimes idiosyncratic and shouldn't be blindly copied. I'd have thought those two points were too obvious to need to be mentioned. Michael Hardy 19:46, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy keep clear consensus. --Salix alba (talk) 19:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Strongest possible keep--Filll 19:37, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Oh, I forgot to mention: There are probably thousands of external links to MathWorld in Wikipedia articles. Those were obviously not put there by people trying to advertise Wolfram. They were put there by many people like me. I've done lots of them; so has almost everybody else. Michael Hardy 19:50, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep of course. Notable. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:01, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Someone please close this nomination; everything has been said. --Trovatore 20:10, 28 October 2007 (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.