[WikiEN-l] help me

Wed May 19 19:39:49 UTC 2004

It can be a bit disconcerting no doubt to drop into the middle of
Wikipedia and finding yourself in the crossfire of one of our
perennial debates.  As to the personal issues, I can only counsel that
you stay friendly, forgive those who you fell have trespassed against
you, and recognize that everyone is working for the same goal, but
that some minor disagreements are inevitable.

As to the article itself, I think [[XFree86 logfile]] is very much a
proper topic for an article in Wikipedia.  It's a little clumsily
written at the moment, but so are many articles on the first revision.

What I would recommend to you on these sorts of articles is to include
a bit of preamble, setting the context for editors who may not get
what it's all about or why it's important.  A little motivational
material can go a long way.

It took me 2 clicks from the Wikipedia homepage to find the article
"P-adic number".  I daresay not more than 1 in 10 of the people
reading this list can say what those are, and not more than 1 in
10,000 in the general population.

I did a search for 'P-adic' at Britannica, and they don't even mention
it (as far as I can see).  So by traditional standards of what an
encyclopedia should contain, "P-adic number" is too obscure to be a
fit topic for an encyclopedia -- perhaps it's appropriate for a
specialist textbook, but not an encyclopedia.

Except, we don't believe that.  We think, rightly so, that our
mathematical coverage is one of our finest achievements.

--Jimbo