[WikiEN-l] NOR contradicts NPOV

[WJhonson at aol.com]

<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 2:54:03 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
cbeckhorn at fastmail.fm writes:

What  would you make of decades-old papers that are well known and 
accepted by  everyone in the area, but not covered by review texts 
because nobody feels  a need to do so? This is the situation with much 
mathematical  research.>>
------------------
 
Sure.  150 to 200 years ago, Sophie Germain published a very valuable  
insight into Fermat's Last Theorem.  Her work actually is interesting for  some 
other related equations as well.  We mention this already, in brief,  but some 
readers might like the complete set of steps she followed and their  results.  
You can find hundreds of citations to her work, in both primary  and secondary 
material.
 
The reason is because her work was important for an interesting problem,  and 
we should report it.  That we can easily find it cited in secondary  
material, then opens the door to provide primary source information, such as the  full 
paper itself if we wish.
 
However, there is an article I was reading a while ago, about how common  
certain digits are in the expansion of pi.  The general feeling might be  that 
all digits should occur with an even chance, and the paper was discussing  
whether this in-fact occurred.
 
Interesting perhaps to some, but if no secondary source mentions it, even  if 
many people have heard of this paper, then it probably wouldn't be  
appropriate for us to mention it either, thereby giving some obscure author  credence 
on some insignificant observation.
 
Just because everybody has heard of something, doesn't mean it's  
encyclopedic.
 
An object takes on increased significance, with the number of publications  
mentioning it.
Do we want a work that has a list of the 3 billion known stars numbers each  
with their own articles showing their apparent brightness, density and 
distance  from the Earth?  It would swamp the entire project.  "Random page"  would 
become worthless.
 
So we focus on what others have determined to be important, based on the  
number of citations to it.
 
Will Johnson
 
 
 
 
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