User talk:Peter Kwok

There are always many ways of saying the same thing.

Respect other people's choices.

If you have nothing new to add, wait until you do.

Don't be a style police!

Hello, visitor.

Talk to Peter (Insert four tildes ~~~~ into your message to identify yourself.)
See Peter's Wikipage

Welcome to the Wikipedia[edit]

Here are some links I find useful

Feel free to ask me anything the links and talk pages don't answer. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, likes this: ~~~~.

Cheers, Sam [Spade] 06:09, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome![edit]

Damn! Sam beat me to it. But since I came all the way over here... :)

Welcome to Wikipedia.

Here are some useful links if you need any help:

You can sign posts on talk pages by entering four tildes (~~~~)

If you have any questions:

See Wikipedia:Help
Post a question to the Village pump
Or leave a message on my talk page.

Again, welcome!

Anyway - hello, and thanks for your recent articles. Charles Matthews 07:19, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Don't worry[edit]

Your addition appears to be of high quality at my minimal inspection. Not that I'm an expert on the subject of course, but glad to have you! Sam [Spade] 15:45, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Math tags are nice, but...[edit]

The <math> tags are nice, but we probably want to refrain from using it whenever there is a reasonable substitute. The pictures not only cost bandwidth, but also hurt the eyes when mixed in-line. Also, I think it is good to respect other people's styles and let them use their own style of spacing, numbering, and such.
Peter Kwok 18:50, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC)

I'm surprised that you're addressing this to me, since I have done dozens of edits that I summarized by saying that although TeX looks good in "displays", it often looks terrible on Wikipedia when embedded in lines of text; in those edits I changed TeX to alternative notations. I think I am the foremost proponent of the point of view that you've been urging. (Although I've been notably less fastidious about this after the most recent new server was put in place, since TeX now gets centered rather than lifted above the line.) Michael Hardy 20:41, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, no offence, but recently I couldn't help but notice that your name appeared in a bunch edits (e.g. subadditive function, Lubell-Yamamoto-Meshalkin inequality, etc.) unrelated to the correctness or accuracy of those articles. In some places, I feel that your addition of <math> tags were not necessary. Perhaps having a little toleration to other people's style would be good? It is almost like I am not even allowed to put the "in mathematics" part at the end of the first sentence and have to be corrected. While I understand that we all should respect each other's right of editing, I just feel that some of those edits were overdone and are counterproductive in the sense that it creates frustration and doesn't add value. I won't blow the whole thing out of proportion here. Just wanted to let you know where I stand.
Peter Kwok 00:33, 2004 Jun 30 (UTC)

I do not edit without intending to make the article better. "A k-set" is better than "An k-set" for obvious reasons. Putting "In mathematics," at the beginning is better than putting it after the concept being defined for two reasons: the latter interrupts the sentence, and in many cases the reader should be given the appropriate context first. Definitions should not say "is called", e.g., "An animal that barks is called a dog" is inferior style to "A dog is an animal that barks." I don't know why those edits would create frustration. I do know why I would expect them not only to add value, but to be perceived by readers as adding value.

I am very strongly opposed to the idea that only correctness and accuracy matter. The sort of edits I mention above add comprehensibility and memorability. Those who think smoothly flowing style does not matter as long as the semantic content is correct and accurate are very wrong-headed in that regard, in my view. Michael Hardy 22:35, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No one is going to argue about grammar and spelling with you. My main problem is that your sense of "style superiority" is rather personal and unconvincing. I have already stated the reason why I disagreed with your choice, so I won't repeat them here. From where I see it, you are not making the articles better— you are just making other people write like you. And I strongly believe that kind of attitude doesn't help promote respect and cooperation among users.
Peter Kwok 15:05, 2004 Jul 1 (UTC)

I can't find the part where you explain why you disagreed with any of my particular choices. Putting in mathematics at the very beginning helps users who follow a link to an article without having any idea whether it's about stamp-collecting or religion or detective novels or botany, so that they don't have to wade through what to them may be incomprehensible technical language before finding out that it's mathematics. On a number of occasions I have started reading an incomprehensible sentence only to find out at the end of a long first sentence or even later that it's about characters in some novel I've never heard of, and I don't like that. If attending to that kind of editing is not your strong point, why not just leave it to others and concentrate on what you know, instead of taking personally something that is not? I don't think that it's just my own personal taste that says that

Chatoyancy is a term used by gemologists to refer to an optical phenomenon in which etc., etc.....

is not as good as

In gemology, chatoyancy is an optical phenomenon in which etc., etc.....,

and not only because the first sentence above is more complicated than it needs to be. Michael Hardy 19:39, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

PS: As far as your comment about "not making articles better" is concerned, I don't think it's unfair to mention that I've added more solid content to Wikipedia's math articles, both in the form of a very large number of new articles and in the form of additions to already-existing articles, than all but perhaps four or five other Wikipedians, if that many. See the list of new articles I have created at User:Michael Hardy. Michael Hardy 19:55, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree with your statement that mutual respect is important. I have always been polite and respectful to you, and moreover, when I noticed your existence I was glad to see another person contributing articles on mathematics, and that remains my evaluation of your work on Wikipedia.

You seem to think that I have targeted you some how. I have not. I do not edit articles without intending some identifiable improvement.

You wrote: "Right now I find it hard to work in an environment where style police who have nothing new to add just run around to make other people write like them."

Would you tell me who those people are? You seem to think I am one such person. I have contributed a far larger number of new articles on mathematics than you and most others, and a far greater amount of substantive mathematical content to article initiated by others.

I also do minor edits such as a small spelling or punctuation correction in a long article. I did several of those in the article you created on the LYM inequality. You stated on the discussion page that those edits contribute nothing. I disagree. But if you don't agree that they contribute anything, that is not a reason to infer that I was personally targeting you. After I created uses of trigonometry, jengod made some small changes for which I saw no need. It is possible that that person knows some reason of which I am unaware why the changes were improvements, and it is also possible that they are not. Even if I disagreed with those edits, I would still conclude only that another person disagrees, and not that I am being targeted or attacked.

As for moving "In mathematics..." to the beginning, there is a reason for that that I tried to explain to you earlier; I did it because I think the article is in several respects better that way, and I would be specific about that if you appeared to be interested.

You wrote: "I don't deny that some style changes are good, or even necessary, and I don't mind people overwriting articles with richer and better content. It is the ones that added no substance got me. I regard the "In mathematics" changes as cosmetic and think that we should give people more leeway on that issue. If you disagree, fine; but let's draw a line somewhere."

Do you regard "cosmetic" as meaning unnecessary or bad? Making an article esthetically better makes it easier to understand and to remember.

You wrote: "Now some people even begin to change journals' standard abbreviations to long names, which is not even recommended by Wikipedia!"

... because some readers may otherwise not understand the abbreviation. If you disagree with that, you could say so, rather than acting as if there is something personal about it.

You wrote: "I believe some of the later changes were made just to get me after I expressed my disagreement." On this point I have good news that will reassure you. You suggested that I may be among those doing this. But I have not done this. When I disagree with the way someone edits or with their opinions about how others should edit, I address the actual content of the disagreement, saying why I think what I think. I do not personally attack them.

You wrote, "Do those cosmetic changes really do the readers any good?". I would say that if they do no good then they are _not_ cosmetic. "Cosmetic" by definition means they make an esthetic improvement in the article, and therefore they do some good.

You wrote "If this place really believes in the "everything goes" philosophy, then do let things go. However, if this place believes in maintaining a house style, then maybe we need some kind of guidelines or governing body to give users some protection."

_Some_ guidelines are in the style manual: usually the title word or title phrase is highlighted at its first appearance, one eschew's superfluously capitalized letters in section headings, etc.

You wrote: "I could have even mass reverted articles." Did the things you object to happen in more than one article? You have mentioned only one to me. What were the others, if any? Michael Hardy 02:12, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Coming back?[edit]

Hi Peter. I don't think we met as I showed up on Wikipedia several months after you left, but wondering around a while ago I ran into your contributions, and then into your talk page.

I read about the issues you had with Michael Hardy. All I can say is that that fight was not worth a dime. Yes, it is rather customary to start an article with in "in mathematics... " which would be helpful since the audience of Wikipedia articles is very wide, and many math articles are filled with specialized language to such an extent that without any introductory wording whatsoever people would be very confused.

On the other hand, I agree with you that overall there is not much value in that phrase.

As such, you should not have cared so much if Michael keeps on adding it, and on the other hand Michael should have known better, as he is an old timer and should have stopped messing up with your contributions, at least for a while.

Anyway, I was very positively impressed with your contributions (again, that's how I found your user page and the drama on the talk page). It's been a while. How about giving it a second chance? I can promise to try talking Michael into not being so pedantic about things. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:13, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonious_coloring[edit]

Why was this paper (cited below) (which also introduced the concept of Harmonious coloring) not referenced in this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonious_coloring page - I think that this too deserves same respect as it Harary et al's paper. This paper is also cited in Keith Edwards bibliography.

J. E. Hopcroft & M. S. Krishnamoorthy, On the harmonious coloring of graphs, SIAM Journal on Algebraic and Discrete Methods, 4 (1983), pp. 306-311

Please respond - My email address is moorthy@cs.rpi.edu —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mskmoorthy (talk • contribs) 23:48, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open![edit]

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:16, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]