The n-Category Café

Hi John

I’m a firm believer that the wiki needs to have its own domain name. People will simply remember it better.

As for long-term maintenance, it really needs teams of people. For hosting and stability, one idea could be to host it on university servers. This shouldn’t be too hard (but depends on IT policies) where multiple people have access to its administration.

On top of that, you have the site controllers/moderators that manage the users, content, etc.

Pierre

young mathematicians are here,

here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here…..

John Baez asked several questions:

I had offered to host this wiki on my website, but I have no great desire for that unless it actually makes sense. Since Blake is technically competent, it may make sense for it to be on his site, or at least someplace he can easily access. (Giving someone with no connection to UCR access to the UCR math department computer might be a tedious bureaucratic challenge.)

If UCR is anything like other schools, I’m sure that’s correct. The good news is, however, that most of the technical work would be involved with the initial start-up, with behind-the-scenes access only necessary at infrequent intervals thereafter (say, when upgrading to new versions of MediaWiki). Work on the site itself wouldn’t require a UCR math department account, only an account on the wiki; even running a bot to build wiki pages from a new dataset only requires a wiki account.

Assuming we want to stay with MediaWiki — it’s not a bad platform, IMHO, unless you have to poke “under the hood” more than once — the server will have to run PHP and MySQL, which may well already be there (although the newest versions of MediaWiki won’t work with older versions of the other software).

I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody else at UCR had some experience with this stuff. (Hey, isn’t this kind of website work what undergrads were invented for?)

So, some questions: how stable is this http://www.sunclipse.org site, Blake? That is, how long is it likely to be around, how long are you likely to have access to it, how long are you likely to be interested in this project — and what’ll we do after that?

In one sense, sunclipse.org is very stable. I’ll have access to it for the indefinite future, and I expect I’ll be concerned about math and science journals for a good long while too. However, I have had unexpected server downtime in the past few months. (It’s an old machine, in which each part has been replaced at least once — kind of a “server of Theseus” problem.) I’m hoping these problems are licked, but having the wiki (and anything else I host) vanish into HTTP neverneverland for six hours to a day would be rather unpleasant. Hosting it on an actual university server, instead of one of the myriad of machines plugged into MITnet, might be a good idea.

Is this where we want the wiki to stay?

I’m of two minds about the domain name question. On the one hand (mind?), domain names are easier to remember than long URLs, but on the other mind, .edu suffixes bring prestige and unwarranted respectability.

It’s important to note that I can point another domain name to my system, and if the site then moves to another physical server (at UCR or wherever), we can use that same name.

How much of a pain in the butt is it to get our own domain name?

It’s pretty easy. I registered sunclipse.org through joker.com, a registrar which I picked for the sophisticated reason that a friend said he liked it. From there, it was a simple matter of pointing that domain name to my server’s IP address and configuring Apache to direct queries for that domain into the proper branch of my directory tree.

However, the “Sci” leaves open an ambiguity: how much physics and/or other sciences should be covered? So far there’s an entry for “Physics Journals”, but the only journals listed are those connected to math.

At the moment, this is just an artifact of my data-mining bias. The first source of readily-usable journal data was the AMS Journal Price Survey. However, the journalprices.com dataset (that’s a 1.4 Mb Excel file) should be equally parseable; I haven’t tried it yet, partly because I’ve been busy and partly because it lists journals by their full titles, rather than the abbreviated titles used by the AMS.

See the wiki page Extracting Data on Journals for more on this issue (many thanks to Bruce Bartlett for carrying the search forward).

My personal opinion is that our wiki should cover math and physics journals, but not more than that (at first). A few days ago, a friend of mine — a materials scientist with a mechanical engineering background — saw me reading “From Finite Sets to Feynman Diagrams” (2000), and he asked, “Did you get that off the arXiv?”

(Yes, my friends can speak in hyperlinks. We’ve been practicing for years.)

“Yeah,” I said.

“Do people actually use the arXiv?” he asked.

I sputtered a little and realized how little I understood of journal-use practices outside of physics.

We will probably have only a small group of people who can work on the big tasks: incorporating big new datasets into the wiki, contacting other websites to arrange the use of their data, and so forth. Lots of people can contribute little bits here and there, but I’d be happy if we had half a dozen who can help with the heavy lifting (mumble mumble, power law, mumble mumble). Therefore, I think we need to choose our site’s “mission” so that it is broad enough to interest many people but narrow enough that we can understand the cultural factors involved.

I had a bit of inspiration last night while watching the movie Zorro. Until the end, when it degenerates into a nasty all-out brawl punctuated by massive explosions, this movie is pretty inspirational. You get the feeling that the downtrodden poor can indeed triumph over the corrupt scheming rich — and do it with panache and a sense of humor, while doing backflips and dodging bullets.

Yeah, it’s a bit hokey, but I decided the MathSciJournalWiki needs some of this idealistic flair to attract young mathematicians, awaken their sense of fair play, and incite them to rebel against the existing journal system, where the fat cats earn all the money while we do all the work.

For this, a name like ‘MathSciJournalWiki’ just won’t do! It’s too bland.

Neither will ‘Math Journal Watch’, which I’d modeled after ‘Human Rights Watch’. Keeping an eye on the bad guys is a worthwhile endeavor, but it’s fundamentally pessimistic — it suggests we’ll be doing this forever.

Also, including the word ‘Wiki’ should be unnecessary. We can have a descriptive subtitle saying something like ‘A wiki for open-access scholarly communication in math and physics’ — or something like that. The name of the site should inspire! It should be quick and catchy. Someday putting ‘Wiki’ in the title of a wiki will seem like putting ‘Book’ in the title of a book.

So: we need a name that’s inspiring and instantly recognizable by mathematicians and physicists (at least).

I asked my wife about this, because she’s good at coming up with titles, and after some discussion she suggested: Eureka!

Archimedes is an inspiring figure for mathematicians and physicists, and scientists generally. He helped the city of Syracuse battle an encroaching empire. The word ‘eureka’, meaning ‘I found it’, suggests victory and triumph — but of a pure and noble sort.

The one catch, of course, is that Syracuse didn’t win against the Roman Empire, and Archimedes was killed despite orders that he be spared. But even this works to our advantage, in a way. We can adorn our website with a picture of Archimedes drawing mathematical figures while a Roman soldier stands over him, breastplate adorned by the Elsevier logo.

Here’s a bit of the story, as told by Plutarch. To set the stage: the Roman consul Marcellus decided to take Syracuse by siege…

When, therefore, the Romans assaulted the walls in two places at once, fear and consternation stupefied the Syracusans, believing that nothing was able to resist that violence and those forces. But when Archimedes began to ply his engines, he at once shot against the land forces all sorts of missile weapons, and immense masses of stone that came down with incredible noise and violence; against which no man could stand; for they knocked down those upon whom they fell in heaps, breaking all their ranks and files. In the meantime huge poles thrust out from the walls over the ships sunk some by the great weights which they let down from on high upon them; others they lifted up into the air by an iron hand or beak like a crane’s beak and, when they had drawn them up by the prow, and set them on end upon the poop, they plunged them to the bottom of the sea; or else the ships, drawn by engines within, and whirled about, were dashed against steep rocks that stood jutting out under the walls, with great destruction of the soldiers that were aboard them. A ship was frequently lifted up to a great height in the air (a dreadful thing to behold), and was rolled to and fro, and kept swinging, until the mariners were all thrown out, when at length it was dashed against the rocks, or let fall. At the engine that Marcellus brought upon the bridge of ships, which was called Sambuca, from some resemblance it had to an instrument of music, while it was as yet approaching the wall, there was discharged a piece of rock of ten talents weight, then a second and a third, which, striking upon it with immense force and a noise like thunder, broke all its foundation to pieces, shook out all its fastenings, and completely dislodged it from the bridge. So Marcellus, doubtful what counsel to pursue, drew off his ships to a safer distance, and sounded a retreat to his forces on land. They then took a resolution of coming up under the walls, if it were possible, in the night; thinking that as Archimedes used ropes stretched at length in playing his engines, the soldiers would now be under the shot, and the darts would, for want of sufficient distance to throw them, fly over their heads without effect. But he, it appeared, had long before framed for such occasions engines accommodated to any distance, and shorter weapons; and had made numerous small openings in the walls, through which, with engines of a shorter range, unexpected blows were inflicted on the assailants. Thus, when they who thought to deceive the defenders came close up to the walls, instantly a shower of darts and other missile weapons was again cast upon them. And when stones came tumbling down perpendicularly upon their heads, and, as it were, the whole wall shot out arrows at them, they retired. And now, again, as they were going off, arrows and darts of a longer range inflicted a great slaughter among them, and their ships were driven one against another; while they themselves were not able to retaliate in any way. For Archimedes had provided and fixed most of his engines immediately under the wall; whence the Romans, seeing that indefinite mischief overwhelmed them from no visible means, began to think they were fighting with the gods.

Yet Marcellus escaped unhurt, and deriding his own artificers and engineers, “What,” said he, “must we give up fighting with this geometrical Briareus, who plays pitch-and-toss with our ships, and, with the multitude of darts which he showers at a single moment upon us, really outdoes the hundred-handed giants of mythology?”

And, doubtless, the rest of the Syracusans were but the body of Archimedes’ designs, one soul moving and governing all; for, laying aside all other arms, with this alone they infested the Romans and protected themselves. In fine, when such terror had seized upon the Romans that, if they did but see a little rope or a piece of wood from the wall, instantly crying out, that there it was again, Archimedes was about to let fly some engine at them, they turned their backs and fled, Marcellus desisted from conflicts and assaults, putting all his hope in a long siege.

Yet Archimedes possessed so high a spirit, so profound a soul, and such treasures of scientific knowledge, that though these inventions had now obtained him the renown of more than human sagacity, he yet would not deign to leave behind him any commentary or writing on such subjects; but, repudiating as sordid and ignoble the whole trade of engineering, and every sort of art that lends itself to mere use and profit, he placed his whole affection and ambition in those purer speculations where there can be no reference to the vulgar needs of life; studies, the superiority of which to all others is unquestioned, and in which the only doubt can be whether the beauty and grandeur of the subjects examined, of the precision and cogency of the methods and means of proof, most deserve our admiration. It is not possible to find in all geometry more difficult and intricate questions, or more simple and lucid explanations. Some ascribe this to his natural genius; while others think that incredible effort and toil produced these, to all appearances, easy and unlabored results. No amount of investigation of yours would succeed in attaining the proof, and yet, once seen, you immediately believe you would have discovered it; by so smooth and so rapid a path he leads you to the conclusion required.

I wanted to mention an option or at least something to consider as far as hosting goes. While some may view Google as too big for its own good, it might be an interesting option to consider. That is, to ask Google to run the basic technical support that Pierre Far mentioned. It also has the advantage of not really going anywhere and being separate from educational institutions. As far as legal concerns, they tend to protect their clients and not give out names.

Just a thought,
sean
In fact the only reason I read this blog regularly is because of Google.

I am trying to tackle the issue of how data should be stored in Eureka. Are there any technical gurus in the n-cafe who can offer words of advice?

Here’s the scenario. We’re running MediaWiki. Each journal has a page, with some text, which ultimately includes the publisher, price per article, price per volume, price per etc., citation index, list of editors (managing and other), and so on.

At the moment this is just being stored as raw text… but that disadvantages us in the long run, if we want to be able to perform searches on the data, like “What are the top 5 most expensive Topology journals?”

I looked around on the net, and I propose here a solution, which I’m looking for comments on.

I suggest we use Semantic MediaWiki, which is an extension of MediaWiki. The quick-and-dirty guide to what it does can be found here.

Ultimately, this means that when one is entering the text on the journal page for the journal “K-Theory”, one will write something like:

K-Theory is a journal published by [[published by:Springer]]. It’s managing editors are [[managing editors: A.Bak]].

Well, something like that. Anyhow the advantage of this is that this loose English information can then also be automatically displayed in a uniformly structured infobox, which appears alongside. Thus the page will look something like this one, for the Tajik ethnic group.

And moreover, it enables very powerful searches and bots and things to be let loose on the data.

Blake wrote:

Now, we just need a better mascot.

This picture is a little bit grey and fuzzy — but it’s more upbeat than the above picture of Archimedes about to be slain by an Elsevier salesman.

Motto: Give me a place to stand, and I can move the world!

Does anyone know better public-access pictures of Archimedes, that fit the story we’re trying to tell?

This one is nice as a picture, but too contemplative. We want Archie as a man of action!

Math journal wiki is a great idea; as others have said, having its own domain is imperative. I can host the domain for free if you need a host. Drop me a email if you need help setting it up, I will help where I can for free of course!

Anyone who’s interested in this project but hasn’t seen it in the last week or so should take a look! It’s really coming along. In particular, Blake and Bruce have done heroic work.

5. And in other news, has everyone here heard about PRISM?

I’ve been really busy lately. I flew back from England on Tuesday. Now I’m preparing for classes that start next Thursday — including a seminar on geometric representation theory to be taught with Jim Dolan! More on that elsewhere. I’m also correcting the proofs of a paper and preparing a talk on quantum mechanics. So, I’d sort of lost track of what’s been going on at Eureka. I’m really impressed with what you’ve done, Blake!

It may be time to launch the big publicity blitz. What do you think?

By the way: the paper I just mentioned will appear in Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics — and as with another paper of mine that just got accepted there, I never received a referee’s report!

In both cases the same thing happened: I submitted the paper, waited well over a year, didn’t get a referee’s report. Then — BOOM! — I got the proofs of the paper to correct. No referee’s report, no formal acknowledgment that the paper had been accepted! This is pretty strange. I don’t know if they forgot to send me the referee’s report or just decided to skip that stage of the process. I’ll email them and find out.

Anyway, this is a good example of the sort of thing that people should mention on Eureka, so people can see if it’s a fluke or part of a general pattern.

Another irksome thing about ATMP is that it was freely available online when I submitted these papers over a year ago, but now it’s not. Part of a general trend toward backsliding as noble intentions fade?

The establishment of the mathematics journals Terry Tao reports on here sounds like an interesting venture. They’re run by Mathematical Sciences Publishers:

MSP is a non-profit organization, run by and for mathematicians, which is dedicated to publishing journals and books at the lowest possible cost and distributing them to the mathematical sciences community as freely as possible.