User talk:DMacks

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I want to include a synthetic reaction that is known as Clar's reaction. It is of a certain class of cyclic ketones that condense with themselves when heated to 400 C in a mixture of zinc dust and zinc chloride.

I will add references and a description of what it is used for in synthesizing new polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

The article Sex, Love, Misery: New New York has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Non-notable, see Talk page

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.

I came across your closure at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 April 12 § Redirects to Template:Translation and Template:Transliteration, and I disagree with deleting {{trans}}. Looking at the dozens of comments in the discussion, I can only find two people who said that {{trans}} should be deleted. Most of the discussion was about the longer template redirects, and the proposal to delete the whole set was near the end (so previous silence doesn't imply agreement). And at least two !votes talked about "using {{trans}} instead" or similar, which implies not deleting it. I think getting consensus for deleting {{trans}} would likely require a discussion focused on that template redirect alone. jlwoodwa (talk) 08:34, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the delay in doing anything wiki the past few days...Real Life was a huge mess.

My closure was based on the sense that there was voiced risk of confusion about meaning with no easy way to recognize the mistake. There were indeed a bunch of ideas kicked around. Could you point to the two "using {{trans}} instead" comments? But especially if one (with one meaning some people like) is retargetted to the other's meaning (that some people like), we're making more of a mess for half of those people at best. I see comments that the deletion of trans/transl would be disruptive, but it seems like they are mostly taking about the one-time process of replacing them. I would be happy to add a note to the closure that the proposals of xlat/xlit or tlat/tlit were available as short forms and no prejudice against creating them. DMacks (talk) 21:42, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comments that implied keeping {{trans}}: one by Jkuldick, one by Jacobolus, and an explicit keep !vote by sbb. jlwoodwa (talk) 22:02, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here are my thoughts:

• Jkudlick: does imply keeping {{trans}} but I did not see a clear rationale...merely that it's better than {{trans.}}.
• jacobolus: does not explain why to keep {{trans}} specifically except I'm inferring it's because it is short. Later mentions {{tlit}}, and as I said I saw several such thoughts and options kicked around. But I did not see consensus for any one in particular and several venues noted that this RFD had been idling long enough. So I did not think I should arbitrarily pick one among several viable short forms for the replacement action or relist again to push for consensus among those options.
• sbb's is a good argument from inertia of use and that they and some/many other users know what it means and use it correctly (several editors made comments along those lines). I tried to make sure my close acknowledged that position was voiced. But I gave greater weight to the multiple comments based on our guidelines to help a wider range of editors. That is, "some say it's confusing, some say it isn't" aren't equal-value opposites.

DMacks (talk) 04:49, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery 19:28, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm quite unimpressed with your closure at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 April 12#Redirects to Template:Translation and Template:Transliteration in which your personal preference (what you personally thought was a "convincing argument") was substituted for community consensus (no consensus was in evidence, and indeed there was stark disagreement). A variety of good arguments were presented for keeping {{transl}} as an abbreviation for {{Transliteration}} and {{trans}} as an abbreviation for {{Translation}}, especially that they have long history and many uses so that deleting them will be disruptive and will break viewing historical revisions of a large number of pages.

Bots are now already disruptively implementing this decision, spamming watchlists with pointless template renames that leaves the resulting page markup much visually heavier and runs counter to human editor intentions (of using concise template names). –jacobolus (t) 04:10, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As I mentioned two sections above, there were multiple mentions of other short forms that were not ambiguous, and I would be happy to explicitly note that they are still available options if someone wants to make them. I definitely did not simply count noses, but instead used strength of argument that seemed the least problematic for all involved. A stark disagreement doesn't mean that there is an equal deadlock. DMacks (talk) 04:24, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@DMacks I agree you didn't count noses: indeed, your personal preference that you went with was only supported by a minority of editors, for which there was certainly no consensus, with many reasonable and clearly explained objections.

In any event, "still available options" is not all that relevant since your close has predictably now resulted in bots aggressively replacing every instance of {{transl}} with {{Transliteration}}, cluttering up page markup and trampling editors' intentions on a vast number of pages. (If you want to go request that the bot author at least change those all to {{tlit}} instead, I for one would appreciate it. Overall this deletion is going to be somewhat disruptive one way or another, but adopting a different abbreviated name instead of the very long and distracting full name would at least avoid making the end-result markup significantly worse than before.) –jacobolus (t) 19:55, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

Regarding the self-referencing on the "polymath" entry. It is happening across all authors. Why exclude just me? Somebody has just taken my paper Modern research on Polymathy and created an edited version on Wikipedia. That is why the format is like that. Then some non-research people like Waqas Ahmed were added later.

Second, it seems that the breadth, depth, integration approach from my model has become a major view on the construct:

See independent references to this here:

https://www.polymathu.org/fellowship

https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2024/01/16/do-you-have-a-polymathic-personality-a-psychologist-explains/

https://www.amazon.com.au/Polymath-Multiple-Disciplines-Extraordinary-Autodidact/dp/1647431638

https://www.amazon.com.au/Learn-Like-Polymath-Multidisciplinary-Irreplaceable-ebook/dp/B08JKPHMX7

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Polymaths-Multi-Specialists-Revolutionize-Learn/dp/B0CSVXZ7VY

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-school-walls/202005/cross-pollinate-your-mind

Here are the other authors' entries for your convenience:

Robert Root-Bernstein and colleagues [edit source] Robert Root-Bernstein is considered the principal responsible for rekindling interest in polymathy in the scientific community. His works emphasize the contrast between the polymath and two other types: the specialist and the dilettante. The specialist demonstrates depth but lacks breadth of knowledge. The dilettante demonstrates superficial breadth but tends to acquire skills merely "for their own sake without regard to understanding the broader applications or implications and without integrating it". Conversely, the polymath is a person with a level of expertise that is able to "put a significant amount of time and effort into their avocations and find ways to use their multiple interests to inform their vocations".

A key point in the work of Root-Bernstein and colleagues is the argument in favor of the universality of the creative process. That is, although creative products, such as a painting, a mathematical model or a poem, can be domain-specific, at the level of the creative process, the mental tools that lead to the generation of creative ideas are the same, be it in the arts or science. These mental tools are sometimes called intuitive tools of thinking. It is therefore not surprising that many of the most innovative scientists have serious hobbies or interests in artistic activities, and that some of the most innovative artists have an interest or hobbies in the sciences.

Root-Bernstein and colleagues' research is an important counterpoint to the claim by some psychologists that creativity is a domain-specific phenomenon. Through their research, Root-Bernstein and colleagues conclude that there are certain comprehensive thinking skills and tools that cross the barrier of different domains and can foster creative thinking: "[creativity researchers] who discuss integrating ideas from diverse fields as the basis of creative giftedness ask not 'who is creative?' but 'what is the basis of creative thinking?' From the polymathy perspective, giftedness is the ability to combine disparate (or even apparently contradictory) ideas, sets of problems, skills, talents, and knowledge in novel and useful ways. Polymathy is therefore the main source of any individual's creative potential". In "Life Stages of Creativity", Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein suggest six typologies of creative life stages. These typologies are based on real creative production records first published by Root-Bernstein, Bernstein, and Garnier (1993).

Type 1 represents people who specialize in developing one major talent early in life (e.g., prodigies) and successfully exploit that talent exclusively for the rest of their lives. Type 2 individuals explore a range of different creative activities (e.g., through worldplay or a variety of hobbies) and then settle on exploiting one of these for the rest of their lives. Type 3 people are polymathic from the outset and manage to juggle multiple careers simultaneously so that their creativity pattern is constantly varied. Type 4 creators are recognized early for one major talent (e.g., math or music) but go on to explore additional creative outlets, diversifying their productivity with age. Type 5 creators devote themselves serially to one creative field after another. Type 6 people develop diversified creative skills early and then, like Type 5 individuals, explore these serially, one at a time.

Finally, his studies suggest that understanding polymathy and learning from polymathic exemplars can help structure a new model of education that better promotes creativity and innovation: "we must focus education on principles, methods, and skills that will serve them [students] in learning and creating across many disciplines, multiple careers, and succeeding life stages".

Peter Burke [edit source] Peter Burke, Professor Emeritus of Cultural History and Fellow of Emmanuel College at Cambridge, discussed the theme of polymathy in some of his works. He has presented a comprehensive historical overview of the ascension and decline of the polymath as, what he calls, an "intellectual species". He observes that in ancient and medieval times, scholars did not have to specialize. However, from the 17th century on, the rapid rise of new knowledge in the Western world—both from the systematic investigation of the natural world and from the flow of information coming from other parts of the world—was making it increasingly difficult for individual scholars to master as many disciplines as before. Thus, an intellectual retreat of the polymath species occurred: "from knowledge in every [academic] field to knowledge in several fields, and from making original contributions in many fields to a more passive consumption of what has been contributed by others". Given this change in the intellectual climate, it has since then been more common to find "passive polymaths", who consume knowledge in various domains but make their reputation in one single discipline, than "proper polymaths", who—through a feat of "intellectual heroism"—manage to make serious contributions to several disciplines. However, Burke warns that in the age of specialization, polymathic people are more necessary than ever, both for synthesis—to paint the big picture—and for analysis. He says: "It takes a polymath to 'mind the gap' and draw attention to the knowledges that may otherwise disappear into the spaces between disciplines, as they are currently defined and organized".

Bharath Sriraman [edit source] Bharath Sriraman, of the University of Montana, also investigated the role of polymathy in education. He poses that an ideal education should nurture talent in the classroom and enable individuals to pursue multiple fields of research and appreciate both the aesthetic and structural/scientific connections between mathematics, arts and the sciences. In 2009, Sriraman published a paper reporting a 3-year study with 120 pre-service mathematics teachers and derived several implications for mathematics pre-service education as well as interdisciplinary education. He utilized a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to recreate the emotions, voices and struggles of students as they tried to unravel Russell's paradox presented in its linguistic form. They found that those more engaged in solving the paradox also displayed more polymathic thinking traits. He concludes by suggesting that fostering polymathy in the classroom may help students change beliefs, discover structures and open new avenues for interdisciplinary pedagogy. DrMikeAraki (talk) 17:09, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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