Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pseudolinear function

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Spartaz ^Humbug! 03:38, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pseudolinear function

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Prod was applied, prod2 was applied. Removed by user without improvement. Not much information here. Does not appear to be notable for a single article. Is there a better place to redirect this? Is there anything that can be expanded? — Timneu22 · talk 16:36, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 18:16, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Delete I agree, too brief and could be applied elsewhere within its context. Warrior777 18:26, 22 December 2010 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Warrior777 (talk • contribs)
Delete unless expanded, this is just a dictionary definition at the moment. Hairhorn (talk) 19:21, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Dictionary. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:46, 22 December 2010 (UTC).[reply]

The nomination really should read, instead of "Removed by user without improvement" which is a completely erroneous description of events, "Removed by user after this improvement that directly addressed the concern raised". "No sources", said the proposed deletion rationale, only five lines above text that said "Source:". It's saddening to see a list of editors accruing in this discussion (a) who clearly don't understand what a stub is and how deletion policy applies to stubs, and (b) who clearly haven't even done a minimum of research to see whether sources exist (including not even observing the source cited, by the article's creator, in the article right before them, that they are supposed to be looking at). None of you even did the most basic step of putting the article title (let alone any other keywords) into a search engine, did you? Neither AFD nor Wikipedia need zero-effort rationales like this; New Pages Patrol certainly doesn't need people who bite the newcomers without doing their research. Please put the effort in. Put into actual action the procedures that are outlined on Project:New pages patrol, Project:Articles for deletion#Before nominating an article for deletion, Project:Guide to deletion#Nomination, and User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage#What to do. Uncle G (talk) 23:05, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I've never seen an article like the current state. A one-sentence description with ten times as much information in "see also" and "external links"? — Timneu22 · talk 23:28, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Again you demonstrate that you aren't reading the article that is right in front of you. This article, as I write this, has no "see also" section and has no "external links" section. This article has a good verifiable definition, a supporting reference cited by the article's creator (that you just ignored outright), and sources cited listing further reading on the subject showing just some of what more there is to be said about it. This is what we call a stub. If you've never seen a stub before, then you haven't participated in the article development process anywhere near enough. If your reaction to stubs is, as here, to ignore the sources and nominate the article for deletion over and over again, biting a novice article writer in the process, then you are no help to Wikipedia. Your approach is entirely contrary to how articles develop, and have many times (over the past decade) developed, here. Our article on banana started as a one-line stub with a technical definition and a pointer to a source indicating scope for expansion. Articles start as stubs today just as they did in 2002. Uncle G (talk) 05:39, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, possibly speedy. Without any evidence of what pseudoconvex and pseudoconcave might be, it has insufficient context to determine the meaning. However, some of the references might have adeqaute information to save it from {{db-context}}. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:14, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Tut tut! You've not read any of them, have you? The source that defines pseudoconvexity, that several of the others themselves cite for their definition, has been handed to you on a platter in the article that you are supposed to have read before commenting upon. Shame on you M. Rubin. You have made as little effort to read the article in front of you, and apply deletion policy properly to a stub with sources and a proper definition, as the four editors above. It is a proper definition, too, that accords with the sources. Valid stub, with a proper verifiable definition, the source for which was supplied by the article's creator, and with scope for expansion that is not only demonstrable but demonstrated: You know what, per policy, the answer you should have reached is. Uncle G (talk) 05:39, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - Speedy is no longer appropriate, but I doubt the concept is that notable. And it now has only a valid definition, and "references". Scope for expansion within Wikipedia guidelines has not been demonstrated, although I wouldn't be surprised if it could be done. Now it would be appropriate to userfy if deletion is supported. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:21, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - I don't have access to the references at the moment; as for some other articles, I'd like confirmation that all the articles about pseudolinear or pseudocovex functions were referring to the same concept. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:23, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I propose to call the article pseudoconvex function. I am a wiki-beginner and don't have much time to deal with it. Hope someone can expand this article.
Rename to pseudoconvex function. The article pseudoconvex function currently redirects to plurisubharmonic function, which is incorrect (those characterize pseudoconvex domains). Our content on optimization and convex analysis is sorely lacking, so deletion is definitely inappropriate. However, the definition (as of the current revision) is incorrect. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:10, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The term does appear to be notable, see [1] for example. The article is basically just a definition though and my preference is to group similar concepts into a single article with redirects; better to have one decent small article than three stubs.--RDBury (talk) 17:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I've extended it beyond a mere definition. Maybe someone should add a comment on its application to mathematical economics. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:34, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The topic is clearly notable and so the article should be retained for improvement per our editing policy. Colonel Warden (talk) 00:00, 24 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: unsubstantiated claims of notability (and ubiquitous boilerplate reference to WP:IMPERFECT) notwithstanding, this article is simply a set of mathematical definitions, making it directly analogous to WP:DICTDEF (except there probably isn't a Wikimath to transwiki it to). Hrafn^Talk_Stalk(P) 08:46, 24 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The notability of the topic is substantiated by the 10+ sources cited in the article and the discussion above. The link to WP:PRESERVE is appropriate as this policy states "As long as any of the facts or ideas added to the article would belong in a "finished" article, they should be retained . . . Do not remove good information solely because it is poorly presented . . ." WP:DICTDEF, on the other hand, is irrelevant in this context because it states "Both dictionaries and encyclopedias contain definitions" and so existence of a definition is expected here. This stub does not only contain such a definition, as it should, it also contains a theorem. We also have pointers to further expansion in the discussion above - the application of these functions to economics and operational research. Colonel Warden (talk) 10:17, 24 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(i) A list of largely WP:PRIMARY source literature "further reading" list does not substantiate notability. (ii) An article that consists solely of set of three mathematical definitions is not "good information". Underlining "policy" does not make the policy relevant. (iii) Your quote-mining of WP:DICTDEF is blatantly dishonest -- it goes on immediately to state "Encyclopedia articles should begin with a good definition and description of one topic (or a few largely or completely synonymous or otherwise highly related topics), but the article should provide other types of information about that topic as well." (my emphasis) This article FAILS to give anything other than definitions. (iii) I take it given that you have time for such game-playing that you now have time to actually answer the complaints made against you on WP:Requests for comment/Colonel Warden, rather than simply further dodging the issues? Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 11:11, 24 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The acclamation of a collection of primary sources as evidence of notability is just more of Col W's never-mind-the-quality-or-relevance-just-count-the-refs approach to WP:GNG. All we have here is a list of primary source academic papers which contain "pseudolinear" in the title. And yes, it would be a good idea for CW to start answering some of the complaints rather continuing to play games. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:35, 25 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not bring here unrelated disputes, thanks. I fail to see how you apply WP:PRIMARY to mathematical publications. A sensible application would be that a source is primary for a mathematical subject if the source introduced that subject, and a source is independent if it was not authored by the same persons who introduced the subject. I think this is how people view it usually. It seems to me that you are suggesting that sources are not independent if they are from mathematicians/programmers/economists, etc ? So you don't want sources by subject-matter experts ? You do realize that in this context the GNG requirements of reliability could not be met then ? This seems to me highly ridiculous. So mathematical subjects should be considered the same way as fictional subjects ? This is not how the community views this, and otherwise 99% of math articles would be gone. Also, note the difference with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Myrzakulov equations (3rd nomination), where we had real WP:PRIMARY and WP:INDEPENDENT issues which made me endorse deletion. Cenarium (talk) 18:45, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is WP:PRIMARY if it is developing news mathematical ideas, proving new theorems etc -- directly analogous to "a scientific paper is a primary source about the experiments performed by the authors" in WP:PRIMARY. "A review article that analyzes research papers in a field is a secondary source". Secondary and independent sources are not the same thing, though they do overlap heavily. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk(P) 13:33, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, without prejudice to re-creation at a future date if a future attempt demonstrates notabilty and adds some content worth keeping. The article as it stands is abysmal. It entirely fails to make any effort to explain either significance or substance of the topic to anyone who is not already well-versed in that branch of mathematics, let alone the general reader for whom wikipedia is written. (For the general reader, this page might as well just be a randomly-generated set of characters). Those factors alone might not be enough to justify deletion if editors take the view that it's worth preserving any old junk on a notable topic, although that is not a view I hold: the fact that a decent article could be written on a particular topic does not mean what we currently have under that title is worth presenting to readers. There is nothing of substance here other than a dicdef, and per Sławomir Biały above even that dicdef is wrong. So I see no evidence that anything in this page is worth preserving.
However in this case, notability is neither asserted nor established: there is just two primary source offline refs and a long list of offline "further reading". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:27, 25 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I have created the article pseudoconvex function which demonstrates the notability of the concept of pseudoconvexity in mathematics and has nontrivial content. I suggest that, per my above vote, the article under discussion be redirected there. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:05, 25 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Notable subject well beyond reasonable doubt, cf book Pseudolinearity and efficiency, cited in google scholar by 59, articles First and second order characterizations of pseudolinear functions (cited by 33), On pseudolinear functions (29), and many others by various authors. This subject has therefore been significantly covered by subject-matter experts (mathematicians, programmmers, economists, etc), hence satisfying the reliability requirements, who are not the same people as those who introduced the concept, hence satisfying the secondary and independence requirements of WP:GNG. This is therefore a notable mathemetical subject, so encyclopedic in nature, and which has applications and uses in economics, computing, and other domains, see for example its use in Analog CMOS implementation of a discrete time CNN with programmable cloning templates, pseudolinear programming, etc, there are several variants and generalizations, see for example Pseudolinear fuzzy mappings or η-Pseudolinearity; so clearly a lenghty encyclopedic article can be written. Obviously, this is a (major) sub-subject of the very important concept of pseudoconvex function, but as shown-above it is fully stand-alone, if there is a concern that the article is in its present state is only a definition, then it can be redirected to Pseudoconvex function until such a time as a proper article can be written, but this should be left entirely at editorial discretion. Cenarium (talk) 18:45, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. There are more than enough references to establish notability as far as I am concerned (and as far as usual practice is concerned). The fact that the references are offline (mentioned in another comment above) is irrelevant. The current state of a stub article is also irrelevant for deletion discussions: deletion is not about the present content, it's about whether we should in principle have an article on the topic, and in this case it appears we certainly should. Editors with some math background can work out the best way to present the material. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:46, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Just because an article is currently a stub doesn't mean it should be deleted. The topic is notable—there's a quarter century of references from a wide variety of authors staring at all of you!—so the length of the article is irrelevant. Ozob (talk) 12:14, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: just looking at Google books, the following scholarly books all discuss pseudolinearity. These are books, not research papers, so we can ignore the issues with WP:PRIMARY above. The continued interest in the topic by many authors over decades is on its own evidence of notability, but these should clear up any doubts. It appears to me that the nominator did not make even a cursory effort to verify the material before nominating the article for deletion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:36, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Generalized convexity and optimization: theory and applications. Alberto Cambini, Laura Martein, 2008. Page 53.
- Invexity and optimization. Shashi Kant Mishra, Giorgio Giorgi, 2008. Page 39.
- Handbook of generalized convexity and generalized monotonicity. Nicolas Hadjisavvas, Sándor Komlósi, Siegfried Schaible, 2004. Page 165.

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.