user talk : jacobolus

How to edit a page, General tutorial, Picture tutorial, How to write a great article, Naming conventions, Manual of Style, help pages, village pump, Images for deletion

Again, welcome! --Lst27 (talk) 23:54, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Jacobolus!

Happy New Year!

Jacobolus,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Volten001 ^☎ 05:53, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Volten001 ^☎ 05:53, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Anniversary Jacobolus 🎉

Hey @Jacobolus. Your wiki edit anniversary is today, marking 21 years of dedicated contributions to English Wikipedia. Your passion for sharing knowledge and your remarkable contributions have not only enriched the project, but also inspired countless others to contribute. Thank you for your amazing contributions. Wishing you many more wonderful years ahead in the Wiki journey and a blessed New Year. :) -❙❚❚❙❙ GnOeee ❚❙❚❙❙ ✉ 17:09, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

Baudhayana sutras

In the section of Baudhāyana Śulbasūtra for the article it is stated that

Baudhāyana Śulbasūtra states the rule referred to today in most of the world as the Pythagorean Theorem (now as Baudhyana theorem

The problem is that I can't find any reliable article which calls pythagoras theorem as baudhyana theorem nor even in local indian version Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 17:13, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

No idea about the name, but the property that the area of the square on the diagonal of a rectangle is the same as the sum of areas on each side of the rectangle was indeed there. One source you could look at is JSTOR 41133224. –jacobolus (t) 17:51, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

I agree with that point. However, no credible source states that the Pythagorean theorem is also called the Baudhayana theorem. While it is true that versions of the theorem appear in the Baudhayana Śulba Sūtra, the theorem has never been historically known by that name.

Similarly, modern scholarship acknowledges that the earliest known evidence of the theorem comes from ancient Babylonian tablets, yet no academic source refers to it as the Babylonian theorem. Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 18:08, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

You could just remove the claim about the name. If whoever put it there disagrees, they should provide a reliable source. –jacobolus (t) 18:20, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

yep done Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 18:23, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

Square article white space

Hey jacobolus, when editing with the visual editor, it automatically adds/removes white spaces that makes things line up. Thus, the change that you did on the wiki article for square seems at least unnecessary, and maybe goes against some wikipedia policy or guideline. But I am not too bothered by it, I just wanted to let you know of the difference since your edit suggested that you were unaware of how the visual editor works. EulerianTrail (talk) 20:25, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

I'd recommend avoiding the visual editor. It's buggy, routinely leaves messes, and generally makes editing more difficult. I consider it to be a generally failed experiment. –jacobolus (t) 20:28, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

To elaborate a bit: incidentally reformatting the whitespace of arbitrary templates that the human user was not intending to edit makes those edits (unintentionally) rude. Human editors should not be making such changes without explanation and consensus (along the lines of MOS:STYLEVAR), and if the visual editor is going to do it for them, the human needs to take responsibility and make sure that such changes are avoided; if that is impossible, then that is a show-stopper bug in the visual editor, and those edits should just not be made at all. –jacobolus (t) 20:40, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Listing for discussion of Template:Hexcolor2red

Template:Hexcolor2red has been listed for discussion, which may result in the template being merged or deleted by consensus. You are invited to comment on the proposed action at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Trialpears (talk) 19:11, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	Thanks for catching and reverting the changes made on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps. That could have led to some problems. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 02:34, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

The you you are

I presume I know you, but I’m not sure which you you are. Could we communicate offsite? Strebe (talk) 17:34, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

I emailed you. –jacobolus (t) 18:02, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Special:Diff/1342562594

Okay, but where is the policy that determines when this sort of link is suitable for piping? I have seen multiple other articles pipe links to articles of a different spelling than the actual content of the link itself, and these seem to be regarded as completely fine. I am aware of the necessity of redirects, but the article on nanometers is not going to be moved to the American spelling anytime soon, so why are we having the user spend extra bandwidth (however minor it may be) to follow an extra path to an article that could just have the middleman cut out entirely? — rae^5e <talk> 14:56, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

"user spend extra bandwidth" – the user does not "spend extra bandwidth"; they arrive at the same place immediately.

In general, linking to redirects is usually preferable if you are certain that the redirect title is going to continue pointing at the most relevant target for the wikilink. Wikipedia:Piped link and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking § Techniques have more guidance. –jacobolus (t) 16:22, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

The browser still has to send a request to the redirect page to get there though. It just seems somewhat arbitrary to require that extra step when it can be cut out with reasonable guarantee that the link target for it will never change. — rae^5e <talk> 01:27, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

This is a basic part of the operation of Wikipedia, which does not take any non-negligible amount of extra time, attention, or effort for readers or their browsers. Using redirects this way is the preferred/expected markup. To quote the manual of style, "Per WP:NOTBROKEN and § Link specificity, above, do not use a piped link where it is possible to use a redirected term that fits well within the scope of the text." If you want to change the expected editing conventions to insist on using the exact article title with a pipe for every wikilink, you should take it up at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking or maybe at the Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). I'm not the right person to ask. –jacobolus (t) 01:37, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

ArbCom

As a courtesy, and because I doubt the ping went through, you should know that I mentioned you here. --JBL (talk) 18:29, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Trout

Whack!
You've been whacked with a wet trout.

Just a reminder, you're not supposed to write in someone else's section on the case request arbcom page. That's all, happy editing! GrayStorm^{(Talk to me|My Contribs.)} 19:04, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

As you can probably tell, I don't have much practice with arbcom pages. –jacobolus (t) 19:22, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

That's fair. I don't either, I just watch cases when they pop up. Again, happy editing!GrayStorm^{(Talk to me|My Contribs.)} 19:31, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi, I also saw and read what you wrote. All interesting points, but Arbcom are not going to want to know about the ins and outs of the dispute on that page. They only want information directly related to the problematic editing. You are also over the 500 word limit. Fair enough that you are new to that, but you might want to go and edit it back quite a lot. If not now, then soon someone will point out you are over the word limit. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 20:39, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I probably should have added in my notification, "Not that I recommend getting involved" :-/ . --JBL (talk) 17:42, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

I won't worry too much about it either way, but I can share my take. –jacobolus (t) 19:03, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Arbitration Case opened

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Maghreb. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Maghreb/Evidence. Evidence of misconduct by parties but outside of Maghreb-related articles is welcome. All private evidence must be directed to arbcom-en-b@wikimedia.org. If you wish to add another party, please make a request on the case talk page within the first week of the case. Please add your evidence by April 7, 2026 at 23:59 UTC, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Maghreb/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Party Guide/Introduction. For the Arbitration Committee, Sennecaster (Chat) 02:20, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Trisecting an angle

why did you revert the news that angles can be trisected? Michaelatobias (talk) 12:50, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLutejg3UkGdy74cILOfXuvkkBEEDoVJ30&si=gGCkdsjs4LHac38z

Explains Michaelatobias (talk) 12:51, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Reliable sources, and perhaps also Wikipedia:Fringe theories. About the substantive content, you could try looking at Angle trisection#Proof of impossibility and perhaps Dudley (1983) "What To Do When the Trisector Comes?". –jacobolus (t) 16:13, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Jacobolus, I found "What to Do when the Trisector Comes" fascinating, I will probably use those techniques over on some of the edits on Collatz conjecture. Honestly, the most significant Mathematics that I can think of from a "Home Mathematician" in the last 40 years is some of the Pentagonal Tiling work.Naraht (talk) 17:52, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

A future suggestion

Looking at the sizes of all the pages involved, I do not think it would be unreasonable to merge Arabic numerals, Hindu–Arabic numeral system and History of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system into a single page called, probably, "Hindu–Arabic numerals". A section within that, perhaps called "Western digits", could cover the specific glyphs 0123456789 and their immediate ancestors. I don't want to make any official proposals about this, however, until the ArbCom case is concluded, out of concern for entangling the situation further. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 20:48, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I think a merger to Hindu–Arabic numerals would be fine given what Wikipedia currently has about these topics which is quite underdeveloped. But several subtopics could support separate articles if more were written about them. Certainly quite a lot could be written about these topics. –jacobolus (t) 20:54, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. My personal feeling is that it would be easier to merge into a single page, develop that page, and then split sections out if and when that becomes advisable. The current mess of partial overlaps is confusing and counterproductive; it would invite tiresome disputes even without the nationalist motivations that are (apparently) involved. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 21:12, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

OK, as a proof of concept, I made a merged draft. It is still very rough. But it is not too long. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 00:09, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

I think it would be worth workshopping an improved article expanded with better sourcing, more images, etc. for a few weeks, before trying to make an RFC, to give an obvious concrete demonstration of here's how things can be improved if the article isn't artificially held back. Just merging the current content of these articles is only going to be a marginal improvement.–jacobolus (t) 00:24, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

I agree. In the process of merging, I noticed many places that needed a tune-up (I have addressed some of them). And seriously hitting the books would no doubt enable bigger improvements. One advantage of a merged page is that we only need to get things right in a single place, rather than having to root out myths, oversimplifications, nationalistic weirdness, etc., in multiple pages. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 00:36, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

If you want to make any changes to that userspace draft, go ahead. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 01:18, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

At this point, I'm feeling like I should abandon that draft, since I doubt I'll have time to finish tidying it up, let alone arguing for a page merge. Thoughts? Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 09:33, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant to reply here sooner. I had been waiting for the resolution of the editor drama, and then didn't get my head back around to the topic afterward. I think it's well worth working on these pages, but it would indeed be quite a bit of work to do well. I've been a bit busy off-wiki and also annoyingly distracted by the math rendering change thing. I'd be glad to put some time into this, but not feeling incredibly motivated to do it alone. If there are a few people working on it I'll chip in though. –jacobolus (t) 20:28, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Tally Ho and YouTube infobox

Hi,

I reverted your revision of my removal of YouTube infobox/metrics from the Tally Ho (yacht) page. Please note that inclusion of such an infobox and YT metrics was discussed 4 years ago (see Tally Ho's talk page for the history and discussion.

I suggest either extending that discussion, or starting a new one at the article's talk page.  — sbb (talk) 23:59, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

@Sbb I don't think the youtube metrics (view count, etc.) are very useful or interesting, but the dedicated box with a link to the YouTube page seems pretty helpful. –jacobolus (t) 02:33, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Moved to Talk:Tally Ho (yacht) § YouTube personality infobox (pt. 2)

 – Keeping discussion and consensus in article talk, not user talk

 — sbb (talk) 14:58, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Help:Displaying a formula - Relations

Please restore my edit in formula \mathrel{\overset{\underset\mathrm{def}{}}=} (wrong) back to \mathrel{\overset{\underset{\mathrm{def}}{}}=} (good). Underset has two arguments, the first is here \mathrm{def}, while the second is empty. Both argument require a {} around them, that's why my corrections.

If you still have doubts, please test the formula on math.stackexchange.com by | starting a new question (of course you don't have to post it). Simply copy and paste there the following:

wrong:

$$\mathrel{\overset{\underset\mathrm{def}{}}=}$$

good:

$$\mathrel{\overset{\underset{\mathrm{def}}{}}=}$$

wrong:

$$\mathrel{\stackrel\mathrm{def}=}$$

good:

$$\mathrel{\stackrel{\mathrm{def}}=}$$

'n Quijote (talk) 06:26, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

Both argument require a {} around them

This isn't generally true. For example, in these cases = is also an argument of these various functions, and works fine not wrapped in braces. But you do seem to be correct that making \mathrm{def} an argument doesn't work without being wrapped in braces (as tested in a local LaTeX distribution here). I'm not quite sure what the issue is, but I'll restore your change. –jacobolus (t) 07:58, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Destubathon of the Americas

You are invited to participate in the Destubathon of the Americas, a contest/editathon which will run from May 1 to May 31. The goal is to destub as many of our 475,000+ stubs for the Americas (from Alaska down to Chile) as possible. A good chance to have fun in expanding many of our old stale stubs and win up to £2000 ($2680) in Amazon vouchers for expanding stub articles. Sign up in the Contestants/participants section on the contest page if interested. Even if not interested in prizes you are still warmly welcome to participate in it as an editathon! Hopefully we can achieve something significant in the month of May together! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:06, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Notification of proposed decision

Hi Jacobolus, in the open Maghreb arbitration case, which you have commented on, a proposed decision has been posted. You can review the proposed decision and draw the arbitrators' attention to any relevant material or statements. Comments may be brought to the attention of the committee on the proposed decision talk page. For a guide to the proposed decision, see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Party Guide/Proposed decision. For the Arbitration Committee, EggRoll97 ^(talk) 04:39, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for May 10

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Soddy circles of a triangle, a link pointing to the disambiguation page Line was added.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 21:49, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Feedback on Angle names with degree and radian measures en

Hello,

I'm sorry, I didn't realize how messy it could seem. How could I improve this file? TealComet (talk) 20:38, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

There is already an image depicting most of the same information in angle, which I floated to the right here. Notice that because of the different aspect ratio its thumbnail has much larger text, which can actually be read. Your version has images and text that are entirely illegible because they are much too small at thumbnail size. But frankly I don't think having this all crammed into one image is all that helpful, and I may remove the existing image at some point (and not replace it with anything similar). It may be more useful to show the multiples of 90° in one place and the other kinds of angles in a different place, or it may be more useful to put these into a table, using rows and columns to list various information about each type of angle. Alternately, we could just use paragraphs of prose sentences. Trying to relate degrees to radians within an image doesn't seem necessary. I would save that for the text. Finally, I'd recommend against making images with white lines/text on a black background; these are generally out of place on Wikipedia, since they don't match most of the other images around the site. The existing image could be improved by larger text, better alignment/spacing, and some use of color. –jacobolus (t) 21:53, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Hello,

I overhauled the file, hope it's better now.

TealComet (talk) 17:15, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

I still wouldn't use it in the article, but it is indeed more legible now. –jacobolus (t) 17:51, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

links to archive.org in Projective geometry

This edit summary is wrong:

this IA scan is "borrow unavailable", which makes it pretty useless for our readers.

Searches work fine, and they often display useful information.

Further, the title page and copyright page are almost always accessible.

Anyone who uses Internet Archive a lot would know all that.

-- ~2026-36339-86 (talk) 04:36, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

The point of such links is to let readers access the source so that they can verify claims made in the article. If the book can't be borrowed, this becomes nearly impossible, and the link is a bait-and-switch, promising readers something useful to them and then disappointing them with a blocked resource when they click through. Such links aren't helpful to include in our articles. Just seeing the title page and copyright page is not enough to justify the link. –jacobolus (t) 15:28, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Pascal Triangle

The encyclopedia brittancia article of al-karaji literally attributes him for the first description of Pascal Triangle but the Pascal's triangle wiki article literally says that he isn't the first for description of Pascal Triangle .It does talk about pingala and halayuda but the oldest description of the triangle in India might be done by halayuda than pingala or is it maybe than the encyclopedia brittancia may talk about the Pascal Triangle within islamic mathematican and it has been already discussed on archive talk page discussion related to it Talk:Pascal's triangle/Archive 3 Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 09:55, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Why are you posting this on my talk page instead of Talk:Pascal's triangle? –jacobolus (t) 15:43, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

I have posted in on talk page but I am getting confused why both of the article in encyclopedia brittancia and wikipedia gives different description of who first described it Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 16:28, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Equilateral triangle

I like the way you draw the image File:Incircle and circumcircle of a square.png. Can you also draw for an equilateral triangle? And for the record, I am underway to expand the article, particularly in the construction section, where I hope I could find some sources regarding the Cartesian coordinates for such a triangle. Many thanks. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 13:28, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

If you want to take a crack at it, the square image is a screengrab of https://www.desmos.com/geometry/g6fzkoauzg

Cartesian coordinates for an equilateral triangle will depend on where it's centered and what the side length is. If you use a circumradius of length 1 and center at the origin in the complex plane, you can use the 3rd roots of unity to find 3 points on an equilateral triangle: ⁠$(1,~\!0)$⁠, ⁠${\bigl (}{-{\tfrac {1}{2}}},~\!{\tfrac {1}{2}}{\sqrt {3}}~\!{\bigr )}$⁠, ⁠${\bigl (}{-{\tfrac {1}{2}}},~\!{-{\tfrac {1}{2}}{\sqrt {3}}}~\!{\bigr )}$⁠. Alternately you could use a triangle of side length 1 and vertices at coordinates ⁠$(0,~\!0)$⁠, ⁠$(1,~\!0)$⁠, ⁠${\bigl (}{\tfrac {1}{2}},~\!{\tfrac {1}{2}}{\sqrt {3}}~\!{\bigr )}$⁠. Using the line segment from ⁠$(0,~\!0)$⁠ to ⁠$(1,~\!0)$⁠ as either a side or circumradius of the triangle is a natural choice, and I'm sure with enough hunting you could find a source explicitly mentioning these, but I also think it would be fine to put such coordinates without directly listing a source; there's not really a controversial claim here. –jacobolus (t) 18:06, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Ip user threatening me with previous edits

@Jacobolus this ip user ~2026-41329-79 is constatly threatening me in Talk:Pascal's triangle] on my old 2023 edits on History of calculus and many more i am feeling depressed because of it.Back then I was a young editor so I did reduced it to make it more efficent but my edits were been reverted by prominent editors back then and i dont actually wanted to remove any contribution on indian mathematicans I actually added more contribution about them according to reliable source and I only removed fringe theories like modern integration and derivative were known to indian mathematicans before newton and leibniz and I have shortend the articles. Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 13:48, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't think this was intended as a "threat". –jacobolus (t) 17:00, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

but still putting my previous 3 yr old edits to showcase the revision is also bad as most of it has been reverted and I don't know why the user is showing my 3 year old edit of mine and I just reverted the edits back to version of user No Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 17:15, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I think you should try not to worry about any of this or to take it personally -- if you just now, in 2026, try to engage in the usual process of figuring out (together with other editors) what the best sources are about this and what they have to say on the subject, everything will be fine. --JBL (talk) 17:40, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

thanks for recommendation Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 18:41, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

For the Pascal's triangle, I specifically mentioned for somewhat different purpose and definitely not as he sees, Nevertheless, if he really think that make him depress as he state, I will remove those link. My intention wasn't to make them depress; infact am quite soft-Hearted infact!

PS. It's really amazing he went to 3 to 4 people for the same thing; .

I will remove as I stated! ~2026-41562-51 (talk) 03:37, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

will you please Stop threatening me for this it's my old edits and why should I remove indian edits as I am indian myself and why are multiple ip address threatening me . Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 03:57, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Well! I understand the possible reason (which I will not state in the wiki here); Anyway, I have actually removed those from the Pascal's triangle talk page which concerned you, infact if you have told me I would have removed long away(my aim(or intention) has never been to hurt anyone but really can't compromise if I feel that something going on is really unfair, harsh and or in a bad-faith). The intent was mainly to show how those edits were unfair which you did without examining and till date it's being repeated! It is strange how you reacted to me! ~2026-41562-51 (talk) 04:30, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

you need to stick on Pascal Triangle topic rather than my previous 3 years old edits which has been undone and the reason why it has been removed previous has to do with the discussion Talk:Pascal's triangle/Archive 3#Pingala and was been removed by multiple editors. Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 04:39, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

That I stated in the article itself which you don't still seem to be aware off! You need to state me, like, the Current Britannica article about Pascal's triangle doesn't mention both Al-Karaji or Indian; so how will it concern you now?

Are you not seeing what the [Mentioned] sources tend to say? Are the statements not clear to you? ~2026-41562-51 (talk) 04:54, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

I just readded the old version of user No but I didn't read your point in talk page but now the current version of the article is accurate. Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 05:00, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Also, you can also remove the above link if you think it threatens or make you depressed. Despite our conflict- I still wish and pray for your well-being! ~2026-41562-51 (talk) 05:28, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

i am going to remove my previous 3 yr old edits that you mentioned and let it stick it on Pascal Triangle and let's talk about it in talk page on Pascal Triangle Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 05:40, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Trigonometry

In history section of the article trigonometry it says that In ancient India, trigonometric ideas initially emerged with the works of Baudhayana. In his work Sulbasutras, he employed right-triangle ratios, shadow measurements (śaṅku), and diagonal relations in the contruction of complex altars. Is it true that trigonometry ideas predated the development in ancient Greece and it originated in ancient India or it is just the geometrical representation of altar?? Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 20:19, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Can you keep these conversations on the article talk pages instead of my talk page? But I think what counts as "trigonometry" probably depends who you ask. –jacobolus (t) 20:46, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

okay fine then I will stick on the talk page of the article Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 20:51, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Link suggestions

I very strongly share your concerns about the link suggestions tool (there was, for example, a run of articles where it proposed linking "A Taxi Driver" wherever someone had been "a taxi driver") but there is a community of people who are unaffected by the problems and conceptually love the tool too much to see its drawbacks, and there has been too little disunity among groups that are affected, as the math project has been. Eventually, this dam will burst. BD2412 T 21:30, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Maybe I should directly ping whoever is in charge of the tool, and have a more direct conversation. –jacobolus (t) 21:43, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Client-side math rendering

Hi @Jacobolus,

I think it's becoming clear that the various people trying to push the new math rendering are just ignoring you — and that, more generally, they have no intention to actively get feedback (let alone consensus) from Wikipedia editors before deploying the change.

So I'm think maybe we (= "Wikipedia editors who write math formulas", no "you and I") should try to go through the various bugs and build some consensus regarding which bugs are blocking for deployment; which are non-blocking but high-priority; and which are more like feature requests. For instance, I don't think that the spacing between \mbox and mathematical symbols is that much of an issue, and I'm thinking that mixing-in such bugs together with more serious ones might be counter-productive, as it could make it look like we are splitting hairs.

Project Mathematics and Project Physics would be obvious first place to ask for input on this specific question, because it's where one is most likely to find people who care at least somewhat about how equations are displayed, but ideally we should try to get some broader community consensus.

What do you think, and if you think this is a good idea, then what do you think could be a good way to go about this? Malparti (talk) 16:52, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

PS: I'm organizing a conference this week, so I will most likely not reply until the weekend. Malparti (talk) 16:53, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

Hey sorry, I meant to reply sooner. I am not really sure what would be most helpful.

From poking around MathJax v.4 I think it might be possible to reconfigure it to use the font from amsfonts/amssymb for miscellaneous symbols, which would fix a lot of the "wrong/ugly symbol" type issues. It also should be possible to reconfigure it to use the basic letter fonts from MathJax v.2. Both are variants of computer modern, but the version they used to use had somewhat thicker strokes, which don't become nearly as hard to read when shrunk down to script size.

Beyond font issues, the big problem is I don't think the new PHP library parses/interprets LaTeX the same way that LaTeX itself or MathJax does. There are a bunch of examples where expressions nested a few levels deep forget their context or have broken spacing. I'm not sure how easy these are to fix in a systematic way; I am a bit worried that even if the reported bugs are fixed, different combinations of LaTeX features will still be broken because the fundamental issue wouldn't necessarily be addressed. –jacobolus (t) 18:21, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Hi, and sorry for taking a bit of time to reply too: I had missed your reply!

I'm a bit more optimistic than you: for now, I'm still hopeful that if the reported bugs get fixed, we'll get something decent — maybe not perfect, maybe slightly worse than before... but acceptable. What really worries me is the transition, as it looks like we're headed for a big mess. In fact, it seems likely that without your post at WikiProject Mathematics, those bugs would not have been reported and the client-side rendering would have already been deployed.

Hence my suggestion to sort the current bugs and come up with some sort of "open letter" to the developers from math/physics editors essentially saying something like: "Whatever you do, don't deploy before these have been fixed". Otherwise I fear they'll just wait for us to stop complaining, fix a few bugs and deploy. I know me saying this makes it sound like I have a low opinion of MediaWiki developers; I don't, on the contrary. But I'm really taken aback by the sloppiness of the proposed transition, so that this point I'm imagining the worse. Malparti (talk) 18:42, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Writer's Barnstar
	Thank you for editing Wikipedia! KNM5847478 (talk) 23:04, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Euclid's Elements on Clark University

Hi, When I first started looking for online info about Euclid's Elements, the project at Clark University from 1998 kept coming up.

https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html

Much later I happened across a comment on the web that the Java applet that was used is not likely supported by modern browsers, so there is a new version 2025 available at

https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html

In case you didn't already know.

Jeff JeffCampsall (talk) 15:11, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I saw when you changed the link at Euclid's Elements to https://www.euclids-elements.org/. Feel free to change those links on other pages. I had never realized the images were supposed to be interactive, but the site is a convenient source for links to specific propositions. –jacobolus (t) 16:35, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Regarding Golden ratio

I reverted your edits to my edits, because your make no sense. The article is specifically about ⁠$\varphi$⁠, but your edits removed the factorization of it, reducing them to simply combinations of sqrt(5). Especially a nested sqrt(sqrt(5)) factor.

Regarding ⁠${\sqrt {3-\varphi }}$⁠, that just needs an in-text explanation, or perhaps even replacing with ⁠$\xi ={\sqrt {3-\varphi }}$⁠. It's crops up all over icosahedron and dodecahedron equations for properties (especially depending on which property is normalized for / factored out). ⁠$\varphi =2\cos \left({\tfrac {\pi }{5}}\right)$⁠ and ⁠$\xi =2\sin \left({\tfrac {\pi }{5}}\right)$⁠. See Platonic solid § Radii, area, and volume.  — sbb (talk) 12:50, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean by "removed the factorization of it". What I did was explicitly factorize these numbers.

The squares of all of theses numbers are in the so-called golden field ⁠$\mathbb {Q} {\bigl (}{\sqrt {5}}~\!{\bigr )}$⁠ (or, if you prefer, ⁠$\mathbb {Q} (\varphi )$⁠). But it's simpler for readers to understand if we write them as products of powers of their basic constituents ⁠${\sqrt {5}}$⁠ and ⁠$\varphi$⁠ than if we write them as sums. The number ⁠${\sqrt {5}}=-1+2\varphi$⁠ and its associates ⁠${\sqrt {5}}\,\varphi =2+\varphi$⁠ and ⁠${\sqrt {5}}\,\varphi ^{-1}=3-\varphi$⁠ appear often in any context where the golden ratio appears (and, more generally, ⁠${\sqrt {5}}\,\varphi ^{n}=L_{n-1}+L_{n}\varphi$⁠ where ⁠$L_{n}$⁠ is the ⁠$n$⁠th Lucas number).

In principle, someone can of course write the number ⁠${\sqrt {5}}=-1+2\varphi$⁠ in either of these two forms (etc.). But if you're going to use a normalized sum form for these, then you should also use the same normalization for the golden-field units ⁠$\varphi ^{-2}=2-\varphi$⁠, ⁠$\varphi ^{-1}=-1+\varphi$⁠, ⁠$\varphi ^{2}=1+\varphi$⁠, ⁠$\varphi ^{3}=1+2\varphi$⁠, etc.

Just because an article is about the golden ratio doesn't mean we shouldn't ever mention the square root of 5. And replacing the easily explainable number ⁠${\sqrt {5}}\,\varphi ^{-1}$⁠ with the symbol ⁠$\xi ^{2}$⁠ obscures its relation to the golden ratio. –jacobolus (t) 14:44, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Since you already put in the ⁠$\xi$⁠s, we can go with that. I tried to explain more clearly where it comes from. –jacobolus (t) 16:12, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Mei-Chi Shaw COI

@Jacobolus, I hope you realize that you just added back a blatant undeclared COI edit. That wS the husband adding a link to himself on his wife's page. Ldm1954 (talk) 16:56, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that (or at least, can see that that's a reasonable inference to make). I think the wikilink seems fine to me. If the husband's page gets deleted it will turn into a red link, which would be okay. –jacobolus (t) 17:04, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

The husband's page shows hints of AI. I am going to ask for a 2nd opinion that, as he passes NPROF. Ldm1954 (talk) 17:08, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Do you know if there's any active community here competent to assess biographies related to chemical engineering?

(The way I got to this was from a discussion of the "link suggestions" feature, where your revert was used as evidence that sometimes wikilinks added "organically" by newcomers are incorrect.) 17:13, 28 September 2026 (UTC) –jacobolus (t) 17:13, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

I am not anonymous, please check my user page. There are quite a few chemists and some material scientists who are well qualified.

The reversion was for COI violations. Ldm1954 (talk) 17:27, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Okay, cool. I personally don't feel qualified to judge chemical engineering bios.

I think the particular wikilink on the wife's page is fine to keep, even if the husband's article has problems, and even if it was added by someone with an undeclared COI. But if you want to take it back out, I won't be bothered. –jacobolus (t) 17:35, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

I think sometimes a revert like this can make someone take a step back and be more aware. For certain an accomplished academic should read enough to know, and not consider asking one of their students to write an article on them using LLM for the first draft. Ldm1954 (talk) 18:38, 28 September 2026 (UTC)