Talk:Director string

Hi, I'm unsure about the notability of this article. Google scholar says the Fernandez-Mackie-Sinot article has 13 citations (7 non-self citations), and the Sinot article has 3 citations (2 non-self). I'm not sure this makes this a notable concept... Is there other justification? (I don't intend any disrespect to user:linas, who took some time to make this article.) Sam (talk) 15:53, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sam, next time, let me know on my talk page. Director strings are of interest as a means of program normalization for some AI work that I'm involved in, see the opencog project, and particularly the Transformation of Complex Programs page. The goal of creating this page was to provide a simple gloss on the general concept, to provide a simple intro for younger students.

As to notability, beta-reduction is a central step of lambda calculus, and any sort of practical work with lambda calculus, or any sort of program complexity work with lambda calculs, has to deal with beta reduction. So I would think that alone makes in "notable enough". linas (talk) 03:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

p.s. Google scholar counts are insanely wrong. If I search for my own name, I see that a number of papers that I've published, some in pre-eminently mainstream journals, which I know have been widely cited, have not yet even been found by google scholar. By contrast, it gives undue and very heavy weight to some random drivel I once put on a web-page, which was apparently cited on someone else's random self-published web-page. Woop-de-doo. Based on this, I would say google scholar is a wholy untrustworthy way to do actual research on citation counts. linas (talk) 03:40, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Linas, thank you for your messages. I agree that you have made a nice summary of this work. I also agree that the subject is interesting and potentially important. But if I don't think this makes the topic notable for wikipedia. My concern is that, on my own, I can't find "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" (WP:GNG). There is a "requirement for verifiable objective evidence to support a claim of notability" (WP:NOBJ), and so I think there should be a sentence in the opening paragraph explaining why "director strings" are notable, and where there has been "coverage in reliable sources". Something like: "There have recently been some applications in program normalization or artificial intelligence"... but perhaps you are better placed to write this... Sam (talk) 09:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]