Talk:Mathematics in the medieval Islamic world/Archive 2

This is an archive of past discussions about Mathematics in the medieval Islamic world. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

If you wish to work further on a subpage, it is not necessary to stub the article first -Aquib (talk) 03:40, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I am assuming the history will be restored as well. -Aquib (talk) 03:42, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The article was stubbed for a good reason, discussed above. Do you understand those reasons? If not we can explain them WMC 08:48, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The last article I saw stubbed by this "cleanup crew", Science in medieval Islam, is still sitting there empty - as it was left several months ago. If anyone stubs another article in this effort, I am going straight to the arbitration committee. Your choice. -Aquib (talk) 13:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Rewriting this article from scratch is not going to take any longer rewriting the existing article to be factually accurate (which is still going to take a very long time of course). In the mean time there is a nice list of good books anyone interested in the subject can borrow from his or her library. I have all confidence that the arbcom would agree with this action. —Ruud 14:03, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Threats of going to arbcomm are a waste of time. Arbcomm will certainly reject any such attempt on the grounds that you have failed to take the preliminary steps at dispute resolution. The first of which is to discuss the matter here. So, please, lets discuss it. The first point of which has to be: are you aware of the Jagged cleanup and the reasons for it? William M. Connolley (talk) 14:06, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I have watched this scenario unfold since April of last year. I have made comments on various discussion pages and tried to work with various members of the cleanup effort to quantify the damage and identify a reasonable way to address it. This drawn out, carte blanche approach to remediation is not acceptable.

You and your teammates do not own this article. You are not entitled, under an RFC/U against an editor, to truncate the article, dispense with its history, decat it (whatever that implies), basically lock it out, and take it into a private space where changes may, or may not be accomplished.

Return the article to the mainspace. Then we can discuss what needs to be done with all the affected articles on this portal - in a transparent forum with the necessary visibility across the encyclopedia.

Aquib (talk) 17:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

You are largely mistaken. You and your teammates do not own this article is both wrong and right: no-one owns the article, but there is no "team". In particular, *you* do not own the article either. You are not entitled... to truncate the article - wrong. Anyone is entitled to truncate, change, whatever any article. Subject to agreement from those who care. *You* are most certainly not entitled to insist on the Jagged version being restored. Return the article to the mainspace. Then we can... - no. You are not entitled to issue instructions. When an article is (like this one) badly broken, there are two ways to go: either fix it up in place, or to stub it and work back up. Neither one is entitled to be considered the One True Way. Which gets chosen depends on the balance of the various editors judgements. But in this case the many many many Jagged problems point to not leaving misleading information about being the best way. For myself, I think it better than wikipedia lack some useful information than that it include misleading / wrong information. Even one error isn't worth 10 true facts: it just poisons the entire structure, and you don't know what you can trust.

If you're familiar with the Jagged problems, then you ought to know all this. Simply insisting on having your preferred version is unlikely to work William M. Connolley (talk) 19:00, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Very well, it is no surprise to me you feel entitled to take these actions. -Aquib (talk) 19:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

You have taken these actions in a manner which makes them practically irreversible by anyone else; otherwise, I would do revert them myself. In this regard, you have violated the spirit of our principles. You have also undoubtedly broken a rule somewhere. -Aquib (talk) 19:27, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

You have also undoubtedly broken a rule somewhere? Good to see you WP:AGF, and also trying to defuse tension: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Page_move_.2F lockout at Mathematics in medieval Islam. Keep reading the rule book and when you work out what rule was broken, do let me know. Or possibly RK; I'm at something of a loss to know what rule I could possibly have broken William M. Connolley (talk) 11:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I see... and how many articles have had their edit histories obliterated by your team? -Aquib (talk) 15:50, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no team. I have obliterated no edit histories. Why don't you settle down and actually do some productive editing? I just checked the last 500 edits to this page, which reaches back to 2008. You have precisely one edit, and it is trivial [1]. Why not channel the energy you're putting into outrage into actually adding something to the page? William M. Connolley (talk) 16:57, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

You are avoiding answering my question. If you have truncated the article due to Jag's edits, I would like to see what the article looked like before he began editing it. I would also like to do the same on any of the potentially hundreds or thousands of other articles Jag edited. I assume that is why we have edit histories. Please don't say you aren't on a team, don't make me go back through the history of the various pages where this effort has been organized. Assuming they have histories. Kindly answer my question. How many articles are you aware of which have had their histories obliterated due to Jag cleanup, or where is a list of such articles kept? -Aquib (talk) 18:19, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

This is getting a bit surreal and certainly unproductive. You asked how many articles have had their edit histories obliterated by your team? I didn't avoid the question, I answered it fully. First the question is meaningless, because there is no team. If I try to answer your question by replacing it with how many articles have had their edit histories obliterated by you? then the answer is none which I've already given. I don't speak for anyone else. If you want to see what the article looged like pre-Jagged, then you can use the edit history like I did, and discover [2] William M. Connolley (talk) 18:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes I see Future Perfect at Sunrise has undone the damage. -Aquib (talk) 21:56, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

And who did this "damage"? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:01, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

You can find my reply here. -Aquib (talk) 02:11, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

tl;dr: What's the current status of this article ? Is this the final state of the article, or is it still undergoing the restoration process ? Al-Andalusi (talk) 05:37, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The article is stubbed. It awaits someone prepared to either (a) rebuild it from scratch or (b) prepared to go carefully through the pre-stubbed state to sieve out the valuable material from the chaff and the errors William M. Connolley (talk) 22:34, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Someone you and Ruud Koot approve of. Pjoef didn't do a good enough job right? Aquib (talk) 02:55, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

• 18 hours before this article was stubbed, it was declared clean by User:Pjoef.

• Ruud Koot disagrees with Pjoefs claim, although no proof is given [3]

• WMC removes a dubious claim [4] but here we can see the claim Islamic mathematicians, Arabs, did use irrational numbers in algebraic equations.

• WMC believes this sounds totally made up [5]. Again, here we see Arabic mathematicians (or others working in the Islamic civilization) did discover the derivitive of cubic polynomials.

• Bollocks [6] I don't know what dynamic functional algebra is, but WMC does not dispute the assertions, he only changes the name.

• Nit picking [7] Fibonnaci's use of the notation system of Arabic mathematicians [8] seems well known, still WMC goes in and clarifies.

• Apparently it is against the rules to repeat a fact [9]

• Again [10] But what is the great sin in this? This fact is used in different places in the article, in different contexts. This is dictated by the organization of the material.

• Shortly afterward, The decision, to stub the article was made by two people: User:William M. Connolley (AKA User:WMC) and User:Ruud Koot. This decision was taken without consensus.

• Ruud moves in to bully and intimidate Pjoef. I guess his name says it all. [11]

To summarize: Koot and WMC tell anyone who complains to get involved in the cleanup. But when people participate, they get bullied and intimidated, and Koot/WMC pull the plug on the article. WMC/Koot claim to be knowledgeable, and question other's expertise. At the same time, their own edits and critiques are hopelessly inadequate and inept. I say that to give them the benefit of the doubt, I would hate to think they know what they are doing.

I am restoring this article to the state it was in after Pjoef's cleanup.

This is just a beginning. A more comprehensive approach needs to be taken to put a halt to these article stubbings, moves and redirects in the name of the Jag cleanup. I am seeing other articles that have been submarined as well. If the justification is similar to this, then we are talking about collateral damage a large scale. Again, I am trying to give the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps people's tempers got the best of them, or they have lost their perspective. I am hoping this is a one-off incident and not a pattern. The alternative explanations are of a far more serious nature.

Aquib (talk) 05:07, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I've re-stubbed it. The article was broken. Insisting that it wasn't is not very useful. Objecting to, say claims that they had invented derivatives [12] makes little sense William M. Connolley (talk) 08:36, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

WMC, I would expect an expert in this field to be more precise. As you can see, the assertion in question is whether "they" (Tusi) was the first to use (ie discover) a derivative of cubic polynomials - not whether he discovered derivatives. Please be more precise, this is important. This is your single response to my points regarding the five edits you made before the article was "stubbed".

My reply to you is found on page 97 of History of Mathematics: Highways and Byways By Amy Dahan-Dalmèdico, Jeanne Peiffer. Published in association with the Mathematical Association of America. I can quote it for you: The discussion, in effect, is almost always based on the search for maxims, and for that Sharif Al-Din [ed Tusi] used expressions corresponding to the first derivative for polynomials. [ed para] He referenced the role of the determinant in cubic equations. Here is the link, look for page 97.

Please do not waste my time with the sort of careless offhand inaccurate reasoning you have offered in the discussion up to this point. I actually would prefer to be creating content. You have no case. You have shut down the page claiming inaccuracies you cannot substantiate. In the process you violated AGF for Pj's contributions. Pj was personally attacked for differing with you. The examples you gave for stubbing the article are almost wholly inaccurate or off-topic. Aquib (talk) 23:00, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

And please follow the talk guidelines for indenting replies. Replying without indentation is discourteous. It is also a phenomenon curiously associated with tendentious editors.

Aquib (talk) 23:00, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Please stop trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs. And if you want a polite discussion, I suggest dropping the careless offhand inaccurate reasoning stuff. As for the derivatives: do you not understand: they didn't even have the concept William M. Connolley (talk) 08:48, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Shame on you for bringing in family members, that is a crude tactic for evasion. And you are disagreeing with a book I am citing - not me. If you disagree with the book, state your reasoning and/or put it up on RS. -Aquib (talk) 15:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Dear Aquib, please find me even one single mathematician who can tell me what a "dynamic functional algebra" is supposed to be (hint: you won't be able to). The term doesn't appear in the source Jagged cited, it's something he made up and suggestively linked to functional algebra. I think we've given several more examples already and could give many more, but I somehow doubt we are going to make you realize how broken and misleading Jagged's prose was. —Ruud 14:38, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Sure RK. It is an algebraic function you can plug variables into. Add an algorithm and you have the makings of a computer program. Here's an article on Backus winning the Turing award in 1977. Backus developed FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator, the programming language used by a generation of scientists. The article discusses these topics at length. If you read the whole article, you will understand what Jag is referring to. The only reason I didn't recognize it at first is because it's so obvious. And it's from the first link in a Google query for the words Dynamic algebraic function.

Jag does not have to repeat his sources word for word. None of us do. In fact, if we did, it would be a copyvio. The rest of the examples are even poorer quality than this one. U got nada. This is looking more and more like it's all smoke and mirrors.

Aquib (talk) 01:22, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Nonsense. —Ruud 01:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

And please indent your replies. Someone else may want to take a look at this, it needs to be readable. Thanks -Aquib (talk) 01:24, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Aam appears to place great store by Pj declaring the article clean. But as far as I can tell, all Pj did was fiddle with the references a bit - he doesn't seem to have understood any of the problems at all. And certainly, *after* his cleanup the article was still littered with nonsense - e.g. [13]. So I don't think IT HAS BEEN CLEANED UP! [14] should be taken seriously William M. Connolley (talk) 17:08, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Well there's another explanation you haven't mentioned isn't there? And it has been stated by several other editors since this incident began. The article is basically sound and you're wrong. Lights on. -Aquib (talk) 01:31, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with WMC that Pjoef doesn't seen to have understood the scope of this article's problems. It's not that one or two refs need tweaking. We are talking, mass, systematic POV-pushing by completely distorting sources, making claims that are not backed by sources, cherry picking, quoting out of contect, low quality sourcing using Google Books snippets, puffery, the works. It's all outlined in the RfC/U for Jagged 85. The way I see it, the article is NOT clean, and no we are not going to "kindly restore", not now, not ever. Rather, it needs to be re-written from scratch. Athenean (talk) 06:50, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

A few points here. 1) This discussion is about restoring Mathematics in medieval Islam. 2) An RFC/U is not like an FBI badge you can flash in order to get unlimited access to Wikipedia. 3) The RFC/U was disavowed by Jag, making the RFC/U inoperable. 4) Stubbing articles was not contemplated by the RFC/U, these actions are outside the RFC/U. 5) I am not a party to the RFC/U and would not be bound by it, if it were binding. 6) There is no statistical foundation that can be used to infer the state of individual articles. They must be examined on a case-by-case basis. 7) This stubbing was done without notice or consensus, in such a way as to pull the article right out from under an editor working on it in good faith. As a result, we are now having the discussion that should have taken place before the article was stubbed. 8) It is still doubtful whether the editors who pulled the plug were actually factually aware of the state of the article when they did so. I have yet to get straight answers on the majority of the 5 edits made by WMC before the article was stubbed. -Aquib (talk) 20:45, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

DON'T! Now, let's discuss POVs: everybody comes here with a POV and a personal bias. My own biases are to 1. defend truth, 2. defend christianity against creationism and intelligent design, 3. by affirming the historical positive relation between religion and science, including the relation islam/science. A POV inflating the role of islam is as destructive as a denigrating position. Jagged 85:s POV contravenes my POV, by weakening that position. Cure: Wikipedia NPOV. Conclusion: Wikipedia quality and reputation, and in the long run truth, is better served by not presenting the severely deficient texts, which in my humble experience are essentially unworkable, but better preserved (in history) for referential purposes only. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 10:18, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

See Kindly restore this article directly above. This article was identified as needing review and possible cleanup per an RFC/U. When Pjoef worked on it and declared it clean, WMC made 5 edits to the page citing objectionable material. WMC and Ruud Koot then moved the article out of the mainspace. Ruud Koot and others subjected Pjoef to an abusive discussion on Pjoef's talk page. The article history was subsequently restored. Looking through the original objections (article edits) by WMC on 2/14, they appear to be spurious; and they have been refuted. In spite of this, Ruud Koot and WMC refuse to allow the page to be restored to Pjoef's version. The article should be restored to Pjoef's most recent version as of 2/14. -Aquib (talk) 02:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The timeline to article stubbing (excerpted and updated from above section)

• 18 hours before this article was stubbed, it was declared clean by User:Pjoef.

• user:Ruud Koot disagrees with Pjoefs claim, although no proof is given [15]

• user:WMC (AKA user:William M. Connolley) removes a dubious claim [16] but here we can see the claim Islamic mathematicians, Arabs, did use irrational numbers in algebraic equations. I have refuted this claim above.

• WMC believes this sounds totally made up [17]. Again, here we see Arabic mathematicians (or others working in the Islamic civilization) did discover the derivitive of cubic polynomials. I have refuted this claim above.

• Bollocks [18] See my explanation of this to Ruud Koot above, This objection has also been refuted.

• Nit picking [19] Fibonnaci's use of the notation system of Arabic mathematicians [20] seems well known, still WMC goes in and clarifies. Not actually a problem here, more a question of taste.

• Apparently it is against the rules to repeat a fact [21]

• Again [22] But what is the great sin in this? This fact is used in different places in the article, in different contexts. This is dictated by the organization of the material.

• Shortly afterward, The decision, to stub the article was made by two people: User:William M. Connolley (AKA User:WMC) and User:Ruud Koot. This decision was taken without consensus.

• Ruud moves in to bully and intimidate Pjoef. [23]

I am particularly upset at the article move initiated by Ruud Koot, which took the article history with it, and the treatment he and WMC dished out to Pjoef. I am trying to assume good faith and handle this in a civil manner under an RFC.

A review of the facts in the section directly above (Kindly...) will show there is no legitimate reason to keep the article stubbed. All WMC's objections have been refuted. They are spurious. This article needs to be restored to the last edit by Pjoef on 2/14.

Aquib (talk) 02:49, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the article for a few weeks. When I last saw it, it was badly in need of a complete rewrite or, failing that, stubbing. But it looks like there's been a lot of work since, so I don't know if that was the right call or not. If no one has dealt with this by tomorrow night I'll go through the history and see what I can find. CRGreathouse (t | c) 04:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Please do, and Thank You -Aquib (talk) 05:22, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the article is such an utter POV-fest, filled with insidious fraudulent sourcing, outright fabrications, weasel wording, presentism, and peacockery, that stubbing is the only remedy, and I wholeheartedly support it. The sections on "Non-Euclidean Geometry" and "Calculus" are cases in point. Integral calculus? Seriously now? Athenean (talk) 06:41, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

OK fair enough. Have you looked at the 2/14 version by Pjoef summarized "cleanup complete" (something to that effect)? Have you looked at the 5 diffs from WMCs markup edits (above), and his remarks re 2/14-2/15 immediately before the article was stubbed? I would particularly like to know your opinions on those points. Thanks Aquib (talk) 07:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Time out. In the case of integral calculus, you are referring to one of WMC's objections. How do you explain the source I included in my response to him, which I am including below?

Page 97 of History of Mathematics: Highways and Byways By Amy Dahan-Dalmèdico, Jeanne Peiffer. Published in association with the Mathematical Association of America. I can quote it for you: The discussion, in effect, is almost always based on the search for maxims, and for that Sharif Al-Din [ed Tusi] used expressions corresponding to the first derivative for polynomials. [ed para] He referenced the role of the determinant in cubic equations. Here is the link, look for page 97.

This RFC is about whether the article has been cleaned up. If you have read the RFC and the section above it closely, and you are familiar with the subject (I am not particularly so), then your opinion is welcome. But I am having a problem sorting out the information I am seeking for this RFC from the immediate reaction everyone has when I bring up the subject. That is why I raised the RFC in the first place.

Aquib (talk) 07:23, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• See Analysis of recent changes below for my summary of the edits performed by Pjoef. It appears to me that despite massive alterations, very little substantive change from Jagged 85's version occurred. Most of Pjoef's edits involved spacing and citation formatting. However, what is needed is careful analysis of the text for accuracy and WP:DUE, with a slow check of the sources. Until that occurs, the article should remain stubbed. Johnuniq (talk) 07:51, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• keep stubbed: Aquib, this isn't an RFC, because an RFC needs to Include a brief, neutral statement of the issue below the template. You haven't included a neutral statement, you've simply pushed your own viewpoint. Pj did not understand the problem; the article he decalred "CLEAN" in bug shouty langage was still a disaster area. Nor, I think, does Aquib really have any understanding of the problems, which is why whenever I, Ruud, or anyone else raises genuine problems with the article he merely dismisses those objections as "refuted", even though they haven't been. I dno't think Aquib has the background in Maths to be understanding the problems (see for example the section above where he tried to explain what dynamic functional algebra is) William M. Connolley (talk) 08:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

True my RFC skills need sharpening and I am a bit upset. I am not an expert on anything; I am a generalist. And I don't plan on leaving this world in the hands of experts, thanks for offering. My interest in the article is due to its significance to Islamic and world civilization. Speaking of civilization, a civil and collaborative approach on the part of the other editors would have gone a long way towards heading this off. I am still hoping to get multi-word replies from you to these questions regarding Tusi and dynamic functional algebra.

• Page 97 of History of Mathematics: Highways and Byways By Amy Dahan-Dalmèdico, Jeanne Peiffer. Published in association with the Mathematical Association of America. I can quote it for you: The discussion, in effect, is almost always based on the search for maxims, and for that Sharif Al-Din [ed Tusi] used expressions corresponding to the first derivative for polynomials. [ed para] He referenced the role of the determinant in cubic equations. Here is the link, look for page 97. Derivatives is a term used in calculus,is it not?
• Dynamic functional algebra is an algebraic function you can plug variables into. Add an algorithm and you have the makings of a computer program. Here's an article on Backus winning the Turing award in 1977. Perhaps we are coining a term here? You disagree with my line of thinking? Someone puts an assertion like this in an article and you cut it out with the edit summary bollocks? Anyone? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aquib american muslim (talk • contribs) 15:07, March 14, 2011 (UTC)

Dynamic functional algebra is a made-up term. No-one has a clue what it is. Jagged made it up because it sounded good and, like, all impressive. Neither he nor you nor anyone else knows what it is, for the simple reason that it doesn't exist. What we are seeing here is you defending, to the death, all of Jagged's errors, even the utterly implausible. When are you going to admit that there are huge errors in his texts?

As to your PDF [24] - this is ridiculous. You've just googled functional and dynamic, and come up with an irrelevant document about functional programming, which you haven't read, or understood, or even noticed that it has nothing at all to do with the subject under debate. That is an excellent example of the way Jagged approached references: start off with the text you want to justify, google a few of the words, and add in the ref, relevant or not William M. Connolley (talk) 15:23, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

A useful consideration. I didn't catch the place where my source for Tusi and derivatives was refuted. Did I miss it? -Aquib (talk) 17:57, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I am of course referring to the use of derivatives in cubic polynomials, a separate issue from the descriptive dynamic functional algebra. -Aquib (talk) 18:13, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Agree with stubbing Looking at both versions, Athenean sums up my feelings on the non-stub version pretty well. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 08:58, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Disagree with stubbing: The editors supporting the blanking/stubbing of this article still haven't provided any adequate justifications for such an extreme measure, but the only justification they continue to use is the flawed Jagged 85 RFC, which was based on an extremely biased selective sample that only represented a tiny percentage of the user's edits, which some users have irrationally interpreted to mean that all edits involving Jagged 85 are unreliable. Several editors have since used the Jagged 85 RfC as an excuse to blank out entire articles, including for example Science in medieval Islam, Physics in medieval Islam, and now Mathematics in medieval Islam, without ever bothering to fact-check these articles at all, nor do they have any intention of ever having these articles re-written. If any editor disagrees with their POV, they'll accuse their opponents of POV-pushing, even though some of them clearly have a POV-pushing agenda of their own. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if they resort to blanking/stubbing all the Islamic science articles if this disturbing pattern continues. And by the way Athenian, the Greek mathematics article also makes claims about integral calculus, so that must mean Greek mathematics should also be stubbed using your own ridiculous logic. Jagged 85 (talk) 09:52, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• You're wrong. People have provided plenty of examples of your errors / disinformation / misunderstandings. For example, this [25]. So your without ever bothering to fact-check these articles at all is just offensive: people *have* fact-checked the articles, and they have repeatedly failed those checks William M. Connolley (talk) 11:02, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

If that's the best example of "fact-checking" you can come up with, then it's a pretty poor example. I highly doubt you checked the original source, but it seems to me you deleted it simply because it sounded like "bollocks". If you did check the original source, Katz clearly mentioned a "dynamic function" stage of algebra and included Tusi in his discussion of it. If you can't even prove that a few passages like these are false, then how can you expect everyone to believe the entire article is false and should therefore be stubbed? The grounds for stubbing this article is extremely faulty and is hinged entirely on my involvement in it, instead of the actual content of the article. Jagged 85 (talk) 07:04, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

And now the POV-pusher responsible for this giant mess furiously lashes out, playing the victim and accusing everyone else of POV-pushing. The RfC/U wasn't "flawed". The example of your tendentious editing were legion, numbering in the thousands and covering a period of years (in fact from your very first edit). And it was closed by agreement, and you yourself owned up to systematic POV-pushing (if only so to escape a ban) and promised to clean up after yourself (which you, surprise, didn't). As for Greek Mathematics, yes it needs work, but it is not so utterly riddled with lies, fabrications, fraudulent sourcing, weasel-wording and peacockery that it needs to be stubbed. Not that you would know anything about the subject anyway. Athenean (talk) 18:51, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

RFC is not binding and it is not won by counting votes. I doubt anyone's mind is being swayed by these sorts of arguments. There is no consensus. Many of us, myself included, would do well to keep this in mind. -Aquib (talk) 20:58, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

It's also fair to say that if Jagged had actually cleaned up after himself instead of just saying he would do so, the article would probably not have been stubbed. It's called "you reap what you sow". Athenean (talk) 19:28, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

To whom are you referring to when you say "you reap what you sow", Athenean? Surely you don't believe Jag is the lone recipient of this misfortune? -Aquib (talk) 20:58, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Jagged gamed the system (i.e. he cheated), he got caught, he said he would clean up after himself but didn't, and so here we are, that is what I mean. I'm getting the impression that you think that those editors that support stubbing do so in order to punish any and all Muslim editors for Jagged's transgressions. Nothing could be further from the truth. That the article had to be stubbed is indeed deplorable and a last resort, but such was the magnitude of Jagged's deceit that such a drastic measure was the least unappealing option out of a bunch of unappealing options. However, absolutely no one is saying that the article should remain a stub forever. There is a difference. So relax, and assume good faith. The article will be rebuilt, and it will be much better than what was there before, of that I have no doubt. And it would be rebuilt even faster if the editors that are knowledgeable about the subject weren't getting bogged down in endless circular debate. Have faith in the wikipedia community, wikipedia works. Athenean (talk) 21:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Whatever was done was done. And no, I don't think the pro-stub group is punishing Muslims. I do not. I do think the cleanup has overreached, and picked up some bad players along the way. Someone65, Allahlovesyou, and others. Other good editors have become jaded and burned out to the point they lose their appetite when the subject comes up. Count me in that group. Positions have become rigid, and there is no middle ground. I have watched Science in medieval Islam sit there stubbed for 6 months. Nothing. Just sitting there. I have not acted to intervene, nor has anyone else I am aware of. Turns out there are others I was not aware of.

But when you have an article (like this one) sitting there for 9 months after the conclusion of the RFC/U, and an innocent bystander editor picks up it's name off the WP articles for review, comes in to clean it up, and gets it pulled out from underneath him, that raises a red flag. How is that timely or appropriate? What is the reasoning? No consensus, no discussion, and not even stubbed - but rather moved with its history to a work area. Then the reasons given are scant and shaky. When I complain about it what do I get? I get the JAG FBI badge flashed on me - no reason necessary sir, just move along now.

So I think we need to consider this single article, the circumstances, and the implications. I know there are people of good faith on the other side of this dispute, and I am counting on them to evaluate this incident and consider the actual circumstances, the true implications of what has happened here. And what it means for the encyclopedia. We need to find a better way to deal with this than stubbing, it's in all our best interests. We need to move beyond Jag and start looking after the content - one article at a time.

Aquib (talk) 22:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

What, so I'm the "victim" now? I thought I was supposed to be the "villain" here? If you think I'm supposed to be the "victim" here, then you're wrong. I honestly couldn't care less if a bunch of medieval Islamic articles were stubbed as I no longer have any interest in them. I never even bothered checking back here for a very long time until Aquib invited me here for discussion. The real "victims" are the contributors who are currently active in the article, not past contributors like myself. As for the "POV-pushing", you obviously missed the point. I wasn't referring to myself as the "victim", but I was referring to a user above who accused Aquib of POV-pushing simply because he refuses to agree with that user's POV. Also, don't even bother trying to use a fallacious strawman argument against me. Nowhere did I ever admit to "systematic POV-pushing", but the only thing I ever admitted to in the RfC was carelessness in a small percentage of my edits, and that's it. As for Greek mathematics, again you miss the point. You were using integral calculus as an excuse for stubbing/blanking this article when that same flaw exists in an article you were involved in, hence I was obviously pointing out the double-standards in your argument. Again, none of this changes the fact that the grounds for stubbing this article is extremely faulty. The pro-stub people are simply cherry-picking a few examples that seem dubious, yet even those few examples don't hold up to scrutiny... and yet you expect everyone to believe the entire article is faulty and should therefore be stubbed despite the pitiful lack of evidence. No offense, but this is just ridiculous. Jagged 85 (talk) 07:04, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

What you have admitted is not relevant. The evidence available at WP:Jagged 85 cleanup demonstrates a severe misuse of sources. Whether such misuse was intentional or not is of no interest—all that matters is that it happened, and now it needs to be cleaned up. Johnuniq (talk) 09:11, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Don't distort my words. I didn't say you were the victim, I said you're playing the victim, which is exactly what you're doing. The only actual victims here are Wikipedia and its readers. As for the "carelessness in the small percentage" of your edits, the evidence in RfC/U speaks for itself as Johnuniq says (and again that is only a fraction). I have no idea what you're on about Greek Mathematics again, as none of the articles I "have been involved in" make any claim about integral calculus. Nor do they contain made-up sci-fi terms like "Dynamic Functional Algebra". No, only this one does. Lastly, regarding "ridiculous", I will conclude with your mention of the Apollo Program in Egyptian Astronomy [26] (though I'm sure I could come up with many examples without trying that hard). Athenean (talk) 02:46, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I would presume that Jagged 85's comment about Greek mathematics was referring to the following sentence:

"Greek mathematics also contributed importantly to ideas on number theory, mathematical analysis, applied mathematics, and, at times, approached close to integral calculus."

which occurs in the Achievements section of the article Greek mathematics. This does seem to me to be a rather overblown way of (presumably) referring to Archimedes's method of exhaustion. But I don't see how responding to such Tu quoque (or other stuff exists) arguments would make any worthwhile contribution to this discussion, and it seems to me that the most appropriate response would be to ignore them (or take them up in a more appropriate venue).

David Wilson (talk · cont) 13:30, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

• Restore, but with {{verify source}} tags (or another special tag) following each sentence. We can then slowly verify each sentence/statement and either re-phrase to better reflect the cited sources or delete if failed verification. I'm suggesting this approach based on my experience in cleaning Jagged edits in a couple of shorter articles (al-Battani and Abu Kamil). In both cases, the Jagged content was useful as a starting point, and better than starting from scratch. And I have to admit that Jagged can be right some times or almost so (i.e., not all his edits are of the same quality). Once this process is done, we can delete sources and claims that can be proven false or unreliable. I would also suggest saving the hard parts for last, like writing a synthesis for mathematical development, after all cleaning/verification is done. Wiqixtalk 10:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Interesting suggestion, and comes from an editor who has successfully applied the technique. -Aquib (talk) 13:00, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Belatedly, I thought to check Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam. It isn't clean at all. So the claims of success should be taken with a heavy dose of salt William M. Connolley (talk) 19:26, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, that article history shows no sign of the approach W55 suggests having been used. I have a feeling that he was making some kind of metaphorical suggestion, rather than one based on actual experience; hopefully he'll clarify this William M. Connolley (talk) 19:35, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Rereading Wiqi55s statement I can see he might not have been saying he had tagged the articles, he could have simply been suggesting we could do that. Interesting idea nevertheless. -Aquib (talk) 22:26, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• See also, this page for a broader context of the scope involved, as well as a current Wiki-dynamic, which I found today. On that page it appears to start with misuse of sources, but that leads directly to a Wikipedia RfC clean-up effort; while well motivated and intentioned, it might have gone past neutral. It was How many articles have been truncated in the Jag cleanup effort? that caused my interest, and I commented there hoping to help. But, I will repeat here a part from the EB article ref'd there, because it sets a reliable standard for others to judge content details in their relevant context; comment has been requested.

  Muslim maritime, agricultural, and technological innovations, as well as much East Asian technology via the Muslim world, made their way to western Europe in one of the largest technology transfers in world history. What Europeans did not invent they readily borrowed and adapted for their own use. Of the three great civilizations of western Eurasia and North Africa, that of Christian Europe began as the least developed in virtually all aspects of material and intellectual culture, well behind the Islamic states and Byzantium.

  Keeping comments informative rather than judgmental for now, one could also look at stable introductory material at another topic, here, and get other ref'd opinions of H. G. Wells , from his c.1920 The Outline of History or more a recent one from academic Bernard Lewis, writing about their period of decline. Regards, CasualObserver'48 (talk) 12:19, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Please don't fall into the Aquib / Jagged "war on Islam" framing. this isn't. This is a "'war' on very badly misleading articles" William M. Connolley (talk) 11:02, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Not just Islam, WMC, any minority. Not war, neglect. There is systemic bias on Wikipedia. Do you deny that? If you don't believe me, why don't you try stubbing an article on one of the singers popular with the 18-25 crowd? -Aquib (talk) 16:59, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Of course there is systemic bias in wikipedia. The Jagged mess is very good evidence of that: anyone inserting junk, as Jagged did, into any minor pop singer's article would be picked up very quickly. The problem is that here has been no competent oversight of Jagged's edits until recently. Now that his edits (and the articles) have received the scrutiny they deserve, they are seen to be failing. You complain about systemic bias, but you are part of the problem: your attitude, and Jagged's, of unrelenting defence of the most obvious errors inevitably pushes people away, and so the articles remain a mess. Hopefully that won't happen this time William M. Connolley (talk) 17:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• WMC, there is no vast international conspiracy to bring down the English Wikipedia. Everyone has a point of view. You can relax. I actually like Wikipedia. `Aquib (talk) 17:39, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Restore ~ I was participating to the February 2011 Wikification Backlog Elimination Drive when I "ran" into this article. I have wikified this article in a couple of days (13–14 February 2011). At the end of my work here an advertising banner appeared at the top of the page. Then, I quickly read what was the matter of the litigation, and I thought to do something to help, because I did not want to see many hours of work wasted in just few seconds. So, I started consolidating and grouping references, moving notes in a new proper section, and more, but I was stopped by Ruud and I could not finish the job. My intention was to check out if there were any incorrect information and sources. This article has been edited thousands of times and was reviewed and assessed as B-class by WP Mathematics. I read it line by line and word by word, and in my humble opinion, it is mostly well-sourced, comprehensible and reasonably clear, and follows the NPOV policy, Anyway, our most important resource are our readers (more than editors) so, restore this article immediately and tag any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and unverified facts and citations/sources by using inline citation and verifiability maintenance templates. This was something I was doing before I was stopped by Ruud.
  I also invite you to read the March 2011 Update at Wikimedia Strategic Planning. Cheers. –pjoef (talk • contribs) 10:59, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• If you really read this thing line-by-line, why didn't you spot any of the obvious glaring errors that have subsequently been noted? William M. Connolley (talk) 11:03, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Simply because I was grouping references and that was something I would liked to do after then. If I remember rightly, I've also added a couple of inline templates for citing sources/verifiability and etcetera.
    P.S.: you can not judge the work of your plumber if you stop him when he took off but did not replace the pipe. –pjoef (talk • contribs) 11:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Not good enough. You're claiming to have read this through line by line but you noticed none of the problems. That does rather suggest that you aren't competent to assess it. Please take a moment to look at the problems subsequently identified, and indicate why you failed to notice them William M. Connolley (talk) 11:35, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
• Correct Pj, you can't be held accountable for not completing the work... I see now your work was still in progress when the article was stubbed. Nice link to the Wikimedia article, by the way -Aquib (talk) 17:21, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• 622 - Why was this year picked as a starting point? If the pre-stubbed version provides a concise answer then it has my vote, otherwise not. MacStep (talk) 22:07, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• The pre-stubbed version is linked in a section above, but a link is [27]. I can't see any explanation William M. Connolley (talk) 22:16, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
• I found it. Ruud is your man [28] William M. Connolley (talk) 22:23, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Cheers... this prompts the comment below MacStep (talk) 22:35, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Keep stubbed. The old version was flawed and full of POV beyond repair. The best service to the topic is to give editors the opportunity to start anew without first having to work through a mountain of incoeherent material which was copied and pasted together with little real understanding of the topic. If people find the odd assertion well sourced enought to be kept, fine, but the RFC/U last year made amply clear that in case of doubt the burden of proof rests on those who want to keep the contentious material. I am looking forward to a new article with a fresh and unbiased outlook. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:51, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

• Restore most sections to me it seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water. While some sections may be suspect a lot seem fine. For example what is wrong with the "Geometric algebra" section describing the work of Omar Khayyám and his work on cubic equations? One way to proceed might be to break it down section by section to see which are suspect and which are mainly OK. I'm fine with stubbing sections if there is a specific problem with it but fail to see much evidence as to why it is all wrong. --Salix (talk): 15:36, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

• The problem with "restore most sections" is that most sections contain errors, or are unverified. Someone needs to check them before they come back. You ask, what is wrong with the GA section, and (on a quick glance) there are no obvious explicit errors in it, but (a) it is all from one ref; which leads into (b) its all about OK. It isn't really about GA at all, just OK's work on it. So it is a badly misleading view of GA in the period. It hasn't been written by someone with a good understanding of GA and how it was then; it has been written by someone who copied a few sentences out of the one ref he happened to have to hand William M. Connolley (talk) 16:02, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
• @Salix, thanks for dropping by, your insights are most appreciated. -Aquib (talk) 22:10, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

• Agree with stubbing decision. Pjoef ought to have realized that removing the cleanup tag immediately after it had been placed, without change to the article and without discussing this, would come across as a provocation. It was also clearly not justified; just glancing over that version I stumble over several things that just can't be right. Stubbing the article is not the end of the world; no content has been irretrievably lost, and it is better to present a correct stub to our readers and work quietly on a good version than to offer them an article riddled with disinformation.  --Lambiam 20:24, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

• What if someone picked up an article off the wikify list, came over to work on it and replaced the wikify notice with an under construction notice, then 6 hours later, as they are working, someone else drops by and inserts a Jag warning on top of the construction notice?. The Jag warning is not a legal document, it is not policy, it is a reference to an RFC/U. No one owns these articles. So, might not some reasonable people take that Jag warning as an aggressive move? Is not this material controversial by its very nature? How would one judge the nature of such actions and such a warning? -Aquib (talk) 21:47, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

  It may have been perceived as aggressive the first time (although I don't know why one would view it that way), but the next time the cleanup tag was applied to a version that did not contain an "under construction" notice, which Pjoef had just removed. Thus, the idea that Pjoef was done with it, was entirely justified. This cleanup tag showed that at least one editor thought the article still had serious problems. In such a case it is definitely a bad idea to revert it just like that.  --Lambiam 01:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• Clearly, there was only one incident that escalated through a connected sequence of actions on both sides. As instigator, under these circumstances, the burden will be on RK to prove no reasonable person would have perceived RK's actions as threatening or abusive. Gut feeling, putting myself in Pj's place, that's going to be hard to prove. I have yet to see discussion; the escalation appears to have been a series of edits and edit summaries. Again, a lack of discussion?

• Restore article with "verify or remove" tags for the claims that some editors find "implausible". I, like some others here, am a generalist and not too knowledgeable on the Islamic world, medieval or otherwise. I do know, however, that Islamic science and mathematics were more advanced than the "bollocks" claim by folks above. There are plenty of Classical Western Canon buffs who would fit right at home in an average interdepartmental faculty argument over the validity of "world lit, world science, world math" etc. These arguments usually hinge around the inherent implausibility of claims that anyone else discovered anything or did anything comparable or worth mentioning in the same article/publication. No offense, but I don't see the same editors leaping to page-blank and stub articles on the development of science and math in the Western World when and if poorly-sourced claims appear in those articles. I suggest they try it and find out what happens to them. (Hint: Bad things would happen if they tried the "Jagged 85" solution on Western Civ articles and deleted them en masse and repeatedly as has been done since apparently all articles on wikipedia that happened to be salted with Jagged 85's edits, i.e. all articles on science and math in the Islamic world, got stubbed.)

Such is disparate treatment, because if all articles on European history, scientific revolution, etc. had been tagged with a single editor abusing the system to insert questionable claims, the same action would not have been taken to those dozen or so pages. and as far as the presentism goes, Aquib gave a cite for the integral calculus claim which Connolly and Athenian cite as "bollocks". Again I am not an expert on the subject, but one of the first things I learned in Calculus (and I got to third year in the subject before bailing) was the early history of calculus, which goes back quite a way in its infancy. I have no trouble believing that Islamic maths did not include elements which prefigured calculus, if citations have been provided for the claim.

I don't have time to engage in an edit war on ten different articles on a subject I'm not expert in with a bunch of classicists who are out to keep these articles stubbed until and unless all claims are removed that Islamic science or math accomplished anything that Wikipedia says was discovered by a European even when valid sources are provided for the claim, however. So restore the article, tag the claims you find questionable, and if you don't know enough about, say, geometry to know whether the claim is questionable, then do not delete or tag that claim unless you believe that it is the burden of all of Wikipedia to prove that Islamic mathematicians did not actually accomplish anything. Simple as that. Yclept:Berr (talk) 05:20, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

• More to the point, I think that some folks are hiding behind a gap in wikipedia suggested guidelines for editing, which prompts me to think wikipedia may need a WP:Blind_spot (WP:BABY, WP:BATHWATER) template to deal with folks using the "this subject is not well-enough known to us to confirm if sources are genuine, much less offer our own corrections and improvements to others edits, so to be fair to other subjects on Wikipedia that benefit from the aforementioned systemic bias, we will delete it until such time as an unimpeachable source on the subject comes along and proves us wrong. Meanwhile, subjects on Wikipedia that do not present a worldwide view of the topic will continue to benefit from crowd wisdom". (On Edit: And lo and behold, we have a WP:BATHWATER template to serve as a starting point, which directly addresses the preceding paragraph and could serve as the basis for its own presumptive guideline on the subject.) Yclept:Berr (talk) 05:42, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I think there is a reasonable claim that can be made for a template / guideline that can be made to address this phenomenon, because I've seen it pop up in all sorts of unexpected places, often involving Wikipedians who are experts in one topic and have a historic blind spot towards another that is less well-covered. If an expert were curating these pages, the same Wikipedians would be edit warring over the same points, let's not kid ourselves. This guy Jagged simply made it easy for the skeptics to target the whole field of Islamic studies (i.e. every page Jagged edited) instead of having to edit war with a knowledgeable person over which citations are deemed sufficient for the claim that, say, a claim that an Islamic mathematician prefigured a later Western mathematician's discovery. Yclept:Berr (talk) 05:20, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

You are tossing around POV accusations like "Classical Western Canon buffs", and "a bunch of classicists who are out to keep these articles stubbed until and unless all claims are removed that Islamic science or math accomplished anything that Wikipedia says was discovered by a European even when valid sources are provided for the claim" rather lightly. They are baseless and needlessly insulting, and can be seen as personal attacks. The scientific achievements in the Golden Age of Islamic civilization were tremendous, and there is no need to blow them up anachronistically beyond what they were. Where such overblown claims were inserted in our articles, they should be removed or tuned down to that which is actually supported by reliable sources. You comment on several specifics, but you got almost all of it wrong. For example, as you can easily verify, the qualification Bollocks strictly referred to the use of the term "dynamic functional algebra", a totally unknown concept even to present-day mathematicians. Aquib's citation supposedly justifying claims concerning integral calculus only describes Sharaf al-Din's use of expressions for quadratic polynomials, corresponding to the derivative of cubic polynomials, quite a different thing than "integral calculus", and one wonders if it is a good idea to leave this article in the hands of editors apparently lacking a basic understanding of fairly elementary mathematical concepts.  --Lambiam 09:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

YB: you need to actually understand the situation rather than, as L says, tossing around accusations. No-one is calling Islamic science bollocks as you say: what people are saying is that the Jagged version of this article was very very bad. Please stop inventing some non-existent war-on-Islam: it doesn't help anyone William M. Connolley (talk) 09:59, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

@YB Thank you for this succinct and incisive summary of the issues. You have reached a conclusion I myself have been considering. There are people on this talk page, for and against, who are acting in good faith. There are also people on this talk page, with an ideological agenda, who would prefer to address this article as a blank slate. Considering the circumstances under which the stubbing occurred, it is a matter of great concern to me. These tactics have no place in Wikipedia. If a controversial subject cannot be addressed using the tools and policies we have in place, this encyclopedia has failed. If these tactics are allowed to stand, Wikipedia is in danger of being captured by one side in this great war of ideas.

My request for a page freeze was declined a few hours ago; the reason cited was no evidence of recent disruptive editing. I will find a venue where I can appeal this decision.

-Aquib (talk) 13:59, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

No it wasn't. The reason given was declined - not enough recent activity [29]. This had to be said twice before you got the idea William M. Connolley (talk) 14:24, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, not exactly. That's what the edit summary said, but the edit itself stated: "not enough recent disruptive activity".  --Lambiam 17:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah, that is just the template. But neither version is what Aam said it was William M. Connolley (talk) 17:14, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Disagree with stubbing, seems somone has been deleting content bit by bit.Most likely first removing references (because they cant verify it) then content, claiming there is no reference (based on comparison of this article 20 days ago).--Misconceptions2 (talk) 11:04, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I would add a verify source tag, and a neutrality tag. A maths expert should look at the old version of article. I have done higher level maths at university, and can say a lot of the things in the old version were infact invented by muslims, such as the sin and cos function. The idea that muslims invented the pascals triangle , only for it to be stolen by pascal, is not a widely supproted view, but many mathematicians know about that controversy--Misconceptions2 (talk) 11:04, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Keep the stubbing! Impossible to work up the textual structure of a severely desinformed page, such texts must – according to my experience – be rewritten from scratch, to provide a coherent discourse based on citable majority opinions (wherefrom citable minority opinions may be explained). An article whose discourse revolves around falsaria cannot be reworked in such a direction. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 10:31, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Hello. Particpants of the ongoing discussion are invited to take part in this vote concerning the clean-up effort in connectuion with Jagged 85's RFC/U. Regards Gun Powder Ma (talk) 11:46, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

The reason is quite simple. If editors wish to stub this article, let them produce 8 confirmed hard failures on verification, per discussion here. 8 failed verifications is not too much to ask before stubbing an article. There are many articles out there that cannot pass this test. -Aquib (talk) 04:40, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Please stop making up policy. Your WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT isn't going to work William M. Connolley (talk) 07:17, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Please provide 8 examples of clearly failed verifications, confirmed by an independent party (such as me) to prove due diligence and due process has been followed before you stub this important article. This is not too much to ask, it is very reasonable, and it is common sense. -Aquib (talk) 12:33, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

You want a veto over all change? No, of course not. Please: people have been patiently explaining to you, in a variety of places, that you've completely misunderstood the "policy" here. Simply repeating the same mistakes won't make your errors go away William M. Connolley (talk) 12:52, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

In the course of the extensive discussion which ultimately lead to the reworking of the article more than eight serious flaws were discovered and debated. There was really no reason to assume that weren't more, much more. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 13:07, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

In the course of the exhaustive discussion on this stubbing only one or two hard fails were identified and agreed upon. And I'm not certain they were originally Jag's. But please feel free to renominate any that appear in the pre-stub version.-Aquib (talk) 17:59, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm getting the impression Aquib here is simply here to obstruct attempts at fixing this issue. Aquib, if you actually want to help keep these articles free of misinformation, you are welcome to comb through Jagged's old versions and work out their issues yourself. In the mean time, please stop with the absurd stalling tactics and fake policy. Enough is enough. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm getting the impression people are simply unable to produce 8 hard fails on verification in this article, and would prefer to discuss other subjects. If this content is so bad, why is it so difficult? I have had an open mind on this topic, but I have been involved in several of these stubbings now, and at least two of them have failed to objectively establish the quality of the deleted content. It may be impossible to assess Jag's overall impact, but this is an extremely low bar I have set here. What is the problem? Is this content being deleted because it is wrong, or is there some other reason? I'm seriously beginning to wonder. -Aquib (talk) 22:30, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

If you think the stubbings are objectively wrong, has it occurred to you to wonder why so few people agree with you? Has it ever occurred to you that, just possibly, *you* might be wrong? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:47, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but there is more than one possibility isn't there? In fact, I'm still waiting to be proven wrong. That reminds me, did you see the results of the first batch of challenges over at the Medicine in medieval Islam talk page? Only 7 more hard fails on verify and I will step aside from the article. Doesn't that make you want to go over there and actually do something to put an end to this nightmare? You can see I put my hours in today. -Aquib (talk) 03:27, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

You know, William, I am serious about my offer, and I am willing to be wrong. I would be content to find I'm wrong. I'm not sure I'm right. I just want to know. What about you? Can you envision the possibility, after all that has been said and done here, you could turn out to be wrong? -Aquib (talk) 04:44, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Sure, everyone else might be wrong, but only in some pointless theoretical sense, such as we might all be in the matrix and none of this might be real. Johnuniq (talk) 05:06, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes your point is taken. But in reality we are talking about the decision to strip out huge tracts of Islamic history, among other things, and leave behind a string of rotting carcasses. Is it unreasonable to ask this be done in an orderly, controlled fashion? These disputes at math and medicine could have been avoided. -Aquib (talk) 16:52, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

And here we witness the true reason for Aquib's endless stalling tactics, weaseling, and lawyering revealed. Look, Aquib, on Wikipedia, as anywhere else where factuality is demanded over falsity. In other words, a mass of misinformation is not acceptable over absence thereof. Fortunately for the project, it doesn't seem anyone is buying your nonsense here, and your desire to describe articles that have had misinformation removed as "carcasses" and the action of removing the misinformation as "strip[ping] out huge tracts of Islamic history" speaks volumes about the mindset behind your position. That said, if you actually care about the factuality of these articles, you'll either simply go back and spend the hours upon hours required to go through and correct all of Jagged's numerous, numerous errors and outright falsities, or simply rewrite them from scratch. Either way, lobby to get them re-admitted on to this (and other) articles all you want, but it is not going to happen, and, as you continue, I think you'll find people less and less likely to take you seriously and/or put up with you. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:43, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing. -Aquib (talk) 18:49, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Apparently there is no controversy over the relative roles of transmission and original work, since Al-A rejects:

There is some controversy as to the relative weight of transmission versus original work in the value of the medieval Islamic contribution.^{[citation needed]}

William M. Connolley (talk) 21:40, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe there is no controversy, so I've restored the text. I hope that Al-A will actually read it before making any further changes William M. Connolley (talk) 21:16, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

You restored (1) uncited, (2) controversial claim (3) to the lead section and you're asking me to explain my edits ? You should explain yourself, share with us those "scholars" who still question the originality in Islamic science. Al-Andalusi (talk) 21:34, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the claim is controversial, if you actually read it. It doesn't say what you seem to think - that all "golden age of Islam" science was from the Greek. It says that the relative weight of transmission against original work is controversial. Since this is the very point that we've been arguing in various guises in various articles, you can hardly claim that the existince of the controversy is controversial William M. Connolley (talk) 22:04, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/346217/history-of-logic may be helpful in this regard. For example, Transmission of Greek logic to the Latin West As the Greco-Roman world disintegrated and gave way to the Middle Ages, knowledge of Greek declined in the West. Nevertheless, several authors served as transmitters of Greek learning to the Latin world. Among the earliest of them, Cicero (106–43 bce) introduced Latin translations for technical Greek terms. Although his translations were not always finally adopted by later authors, he did make it possible to discuss logic in a language that had not previously had any precise vocabulary for it... Arabic logic Between the time of the Stoics and the revival of logic in 12th-century Europe, the most important logical work was done in the Arab world. Arabic interest in logic lasted from the 9th to the 16th century, although the most important writings were done well before 1300. Syrian Christian authors in the late 8th century were among the first to introduce Alexandrian scholarship to the Arab world. Through Galen’s influence, these authors regarded logic as important to the study of medicine. (This link with medicine continued throughout the history of Arabic logic and, to some extent, later in medieval Europe.) By about 850, at least Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Categories, De interpretatione, and Prior Analytics had been translated via Syriac into Arabic. Between 830 and 870 the philosopher and scientist al-Kindī (c. 805–873) produced in Baghdad what seem to have been the first Arabic writings on logic that were not translations. But these writings, now lost, were probably mere summaries of others’ work...

Encyclopedia Britannica is a tertiary source and unsuitable due to its need to generalize topics. We should be using secondary sources. -Aquib (talk) 22:38, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Tertiary sources such as compendia, encyclopedias, textbooks, obituaries, and other summarizing sources may be used to give overviews or summaries. Since we are indeed talking about an overview or summary, your assertions re the unusability of EB are incorrect William M. Connolley (talk) 12:28, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

As long as it doesn't contradict more specialized secondary sources, it's ok. -Aquib (talk) 13:08, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

The present view is that there was much translation and aggregation of existing works in the early centuries and some original work in the latter. This may have been viewed differently several decades ago, but I don't believe there is much if any, certainly not lead-section worthy, disagreement or controversy over this among academics. If there is it should be clearly attributed. —Ruud 22:40, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I am looking at the summaries of several recent works in the field which seem to contradict this view. I will look closer. -Aquib (talk) 13:10, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I am surprised that someone who is knows nothing about mathematics ( WMC) gets to do a cleanup. The History of Mathematics article in Wikipedia has much more details on Islamic Mathematics than this article. Yet, this article is SUPPOSED to be much more detailed. Why is there less ? Because the first article was written by people who have some knowlegde about math and its history and the people who did the "cleanup" are islamophobes. It's that simple really. Rules of WIKIPEDIA : If you can supply a source, you can write a statement. UnbiasedNeutral (talk) 01:48, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Please do not use talk pages like a forum (see WP:NOTFORUM and WP:TPG). An article talk page is a place to discuss improvements to the article, based on reliable sources. It is not a place to make personal statements (particularly when those statements are presented without evidence and involve attacks on other editors). Johnuniq (talk) 03:09, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

This cited reference clearly states:

Important contributions to geodesy and geography were also made by al-Biruni. He introduced techniques to measure the earth and distances on it using triangulation. He found the radius of the earth to be 6339.6 km, a value not obtained in the West until the 16th century.

Rather than doing a blanket revert, I suggest you use the talk page, the cn tag or a partial revert as a last resort. Wholesale (multiple) deletions not justified. Al-Andalusi (talk) 14:50, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand the disruptive editing by Bloodofox here and here to remove the entire referenced section, with the excuse that the first one has "no attached reference", something that could have been easily fixed without removing any content. If you checked the article, you would see that both paragraphs are shown as one block under the image. But nevertheless, there is this insistence to remove the whole part, and not just the first paragraph. Feel free to explain why you insist on removing this fact. Al-Andalusi (talk) 17:11, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Al-Andalusi, it is not my responsibility to go checking up on whether if an unreferenced paragraph you've placed on an article does or does not have some relation to a reference you've applied to another paragraph somewhere else. Obviously, when one referenced paragraph depends on another unreferenced paragraph before it, they both need to go, and thus the reversion. I suggest you make sure all of your information is appropriately cited; the last thing we need on these articles is more paragraphs hanging around with no citations attached; all information must be readily verifiable. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:00, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

This seems to me like a pretty dubious reason for removing the material, as opposed to asking for the first paragraph to be documented. You are perfectly within your rights to ask for this to be done, but If you have no good reason to doubt the accuracy of the material, and made no effort yourself to find appropriate sources, then your proper course of action is not to remove the material immediately, but to tag the unsourced paragraph with a {{Citation needed}} template. As it happens, it's very easy to find good sources for the information in that paragraph,and there's nothing much, if anything, wrong with it.

There is, however, a serious problem with the text under discussion, in that it misleadingly insinuates that the accuracy of the estimate was somehow attributable to a superiority of the method Al-Biruni used, or to his skill in applying it. In fact, however, that estimate has been cherry picked from just one particular work, The Determination of the Coordinates of Positions for the Correction of Distances between Cities the Masudic Canon, in which the apparent accuracy results from an entirely fortuitous combination of errors. As WMC mentioned in one of his edit summaries, this has already been discussed (here)—although that discussion gives a misleading impression (or at least it did to me) that the actual value of the estimate was only obtained through shonky scholarship on the part of one particular investigator. However, an electronic copy of one of the references cited in that discussion, Geodesy, by Raymond Mercier, available online, shows that this is not the case. Nevertheless, that reference's very detailed discussion of how Al-Biruni arrived at the estimate in question does make it absolutely clear that the accuracy of the estimate was entirely fortuitous.

The formula for the radius, ${\displaystyle r_{e}}$, of the Earth using Al-Biruni's method is ${\displaystyle r_{e}=h\cos(d)/(1-\cos(d))}$, where ${\displaystyle h}$ is the height of the mountain, and ${\displaystyle d}$ is the angle of dip from the top of the mountain to the horizon. Al-Biruni gave values of ${\displaystyle 652+1/20+1/200}$ cubits and ${\displaystyle 34}$ arc-minutes for ${\displaystyle h}$ and ${\displaystyle d}$ respectively. Now, if you use a sufficiently accurate value for the cosine of ${\displaystyle 34}$ arc-minutes to calculate the value of ${\displaystyle r_{e}}$ using the above formula, you get ${\displaystyle 13,331,728}$ cubits. Using the accepted value of ${\displaystyle 493.2}$ mm per cubit, this gives ${\displaystyle 6,575}$ km for the radius of the Earth, not a very accurate estimate at all. However, when Al-Biruni did the calculation he used a value for the cosine which, after subtraction from 1 in the denominator of the above formula, resulted in a not very accurate value for ${\displaystyle 1-\cos(d)}$. As a consequence he obtained the value of ${\displaystyle 12,851,369+5/6+7/600}$ cubits for the Earth's radius. Using the value given above for the length of a cubit, this would be equal to ${\displaystyle 6,338.3}$ km. The value of the estimate given by the MacTutor article, ${\displaystyle 6,339.6}$ km, apparently comes from using ${\displaystyle 493.3}$ mm for the length of the cubit instead of ${\displaystyle 493.2}$ mm. All this shows, beyond any shadow of doubt, that the accuracy of this particular estimate was entirely fortuitous.

David Wilson (talk · cont) 01:39, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Wilson, unreferenced material may be challenged and removed. In fact, it should be. That's basic Wikipedia policy; unreferenced material is a serious problem that Wikipedia still faces. It's up to the editor to add a reference with their contributions, particularly on articles with as problematic a history as this one. I refuse to go Easter egg hunting for an editor who can't be bothered to reference his or her material on an article with a long history of problems, and no one should be expected to; "the burden of evidence lies on the editor who restores the material": WP:PROVEIT. :bloodofox: (talk) 03:18, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

95% of the so called islamic mathematicians were Persian. Their work had nothing to do with Islam nor arabs or their culture.

The west has come to know Persians as arabs due to lack of knowledge, and the arab nationalists prey on that. 82.209.153.239 (talk) 19:01, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

something you same to dont know is that arabs conquered iran and part of the arabs persian speakers are arabs descent you seem to be an idiot ! there is no persian who speak arabic,even moderner persian dont speak arabic so how can a persian could speak arabic ????? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.196.180.177 (talk) 19:35, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I made an important contribution by translating the french wikipedia. What an horribilis discovery I made by seeing the history of the differents versions of wikipedia. It's a pure vandalism. Morris Kline has said about the mathematics made by Arabs and Hindus : It's not brillant. Open the book and you will see what exactly Kline think about it. Nicolas Bourbaki don't even talk about the Arabs in the chapter devoted to algebra. I am not a native. I am sure I have made errors or maybe blunders during the translation. But vandalism is not acceptable.Tranquil Pepere (talk) 13:39, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I have reverted the recent additions by Tranquil Pepere. Reverting questionable content is not vandalism. Issues with the content include grammatical problems that make some sections incomprehensible, spelling errors, and a question of neutral POV. Tranquil Pepere, I suggest you post your proposed changes here on the talk page first, and give other editors a chance to discuss them. I've left a note on your talk page about editing in general. Dialectric (talk) 14:06, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

It is not a questionable content. It is a translation from the french wikipedia. Grammatical problems can be modified directly on the main page. If a passage is incomprehensible, in this case, you can transfert it to the talking page in order to ameliorate it. The question of neutral point of view must be discussed quoting the phrases tou estimate to be not neutral. What I see, it's vandalism. Or may be worst, a disregarding manner to welcome a non native englishman.Sincerly yours.Tranquil Pepere (talk) 14:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Your changes are unacceptable. It is not the duty of other editors to wade through large masses of poorly written material to correct it; it is up to you to make it of sufficiently acceptable quality that they will be willing to let it stand. Even apart from the grammar, there are other problems with the material you have added, so please stop edit warring to keep it and describe the changes you wish to make, one by one, on this talk page.

David Wilson (talk · cont) 15:12, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I repeat I ask to stop vandalism or worst censorhip (my contributions are made using quotations from academics professors not John Doe)Tranquil Pepere (talk) 09:45, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm French myself, as Tranquil Pepere, and I totally disagree with him. My English is not good enough to make modifications directly on the page, I know and accept it, and it's not a matter of being unwelcoming to non native English speakers. If someone with a poor French grammar wants to make modifications directly on the page, I would understand that people ask him to make the modifications first on the talk page. It's a matter of wisdom. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E35:8A8D:FE80:B87D:6838:831A:31E4 (talk) 14:59, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

One speak of Arabic mathematics, but it was Arabic in language primarily. Most of the scholars were Greeks, Christians, Persians and Jews.^[1]

Most of the scholars speak about "Arabic mathematic". So a change is needed.Tranquil Pepere (talk) 09:53, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

You are mistaken. "Arabic mathematic" is not even correct English. It's a solecism which would not be used by any reputable scholar with a good command of the language. The term "Arabic mathematics" is commonly used, but the final "s" cannot be omitted. But in any case, the titling of English Wikipedia articles relating to intellectual developments in Islamic countries is controversial. Therefore, if you want to propose a change to the title of this article, you must follow the appropriate procedure.

David Wilson (talk · cont) 13:42, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Moving pages without consensus is not good. Having an revert edit war is worse. I've now added move protection to the page. If you want to start a move discussion please follow the procedure at WP:RM.

There have been previous discussion on the name of the page:

Talk:Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam/Archive_1#Move_to_Islamic_mathematics_or_Mathematics_in_Medieval_Muslim_World

--Salix (talk): 13:30, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

The abuse of blockquote is not neutral. What interest is it to have commentaries such as "it's fantastic" or "an important contribution" or "it is not brillant". These are point of view. What is neutral is to say wich person made what and what was known before him. The rest is only glorification. And it is not allowed. Sincerely yours. Tranquil Pepere (talk) 12:39, 30 July 2013 (UTC) In his A History of Mathematics, Victor Katz says that:^[1]

A complete history of mathematics of medieval Islam cannot yet be written, since so many of these Arabic manuscripts lie unstudied... Still, the general outline... is known. In particular, Islamic mathematicians fully developed the decimal place-value number system to include decimal fractions, systematised the study of algebra and began to consider the relationship between algebra and geometry, studied and made advances on the major Greek geometrical treatises of Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius, and made significant improvements in plane and spherical geometry.

An important role was played by the translation and study of Greek mathematics, which was the principal route of transmission of these texts to Western Europe. Smith notes that:^[2]

The world owes a great debt to Arab scholars for preserving and transmitting to posterity the classics of Greek mathematics... their work was chiefly that of transmission, although they developed considerable ingenuity in algebra and showed some genius in their work in trigonometry.

Adolph P. Yushkevich states regarding the role of Islamic mathematics:^[3]

The Islamic mathematicians exercised a prolific influence on the development of science in Europe, enriched as much by their own discoveries as those they had inherited by the Greeks, the Indians, the Syrians, the Babylonians, etc.

Morris Kline in his book "Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times" says :

Though the mathematical work of the Hindus and Arabs was not brilliant ...

^[4]:

Al-Biruni developed a new method using trigonometric calculations to compute earth's radius and circumference based on the angle between the horizontal line and true horizon from the peak of a mountain with known height.

This is an example of disinformation I have suppress. There is no interest to evoke the second person who have discovered something. And the manner it was introduced let us presume that Al-Burini has calculated for the first time the radius of the earth. He was the second one.

Eratosthenes of Cyrene calculated the circumference of the Earth and obtained 250,000 stadia}} (it is believed that a stadium was 157 meters). So the result of Erathostene is 24,662 miles^[1]

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Tranquil Pepere (talk • contribs)

There is no disinformation in the quoted passage about Al-Biruni's calculation of the Earth's radius. You have simply missed the point of it entirely, which is that Al-Biruni was the first person known to have calculated the Earth's radius using the method described. That method is completely different from the one used by Eratosthenes, and is potentially much less expensive to apply, in that it doesn't require one to carefully measure the distance between two points some 100 or more km apart (in fact, about 900km in Eratosthenes's case). As it happens, the method isn't very useful in practice because the effect of atmospheric refraction on the measurements is not accurately determinable, but that doesn't make it entirely uninteresting.

David Wilson (talk · cont) 17:19, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

As I already noted at Talk:Astronomy in medieval Islam, the page title is unfortunate because it includes improper use of the adjective "medieval" (which is rampant in popular usage and should be discouraged in more educated historical discussion). "Medieval" means "intermediate between classical antiquity and the Renaissance". Islamic astronomy is a perfectly sufficient title for this page, there is no need for inserting a problematic adjective, it's not like we need to distinguish the mathematics of "medieval Islam" from that of "ancient Islam" or that of "Renaissance Islam". What is the "medieval" period in Europe is actually the "Golden Age" in the Islamic world (the two stages of development being, of course, connected), but since the article does not and should not propose to go into this question, it will be enough to just cut out the misleading adjective. --dab (𒁳) 09:51, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

@User:Dbachmann: While I personally agree "Islamic mathematics" would be the most appropriate name for this article, for among the reasons you mention, it has had the unfortunate effect of enticing hordes of uninformed editors to rename this article to various even more inappropriate titles. This name seems to be relatively uncontroversial and is derived from one of the better references on the subject (J. Lennart Berggren, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam, 1986). Also see /Archive_1#Proposed_titles and other threads in that archive. —Ruud 17:36, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Mathematics in the medieval Islamic world/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

The most active fields of research were Math and Astro. Actually there is an Indian influence too on Arabian or Islamic Mathematics (mathematics in islamic countries) when people from these places came to India, many places in India were centers of such activities. Usually it is believed that Arabians took the knowledge from India and spread it to the west other than their own contributions.

Substituted at 20:13, 26 September 2016 (UTC)