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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by R physicist (talk | contribs) at 11:42, 21 March 2008 (→Myrzakulov equations (2nd nomination)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Myrzakulov equations (2nd nomination)

AfDs for this article:
Myrzakulov equations (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

This article has apparently been created by its original author, a junior colleague and collaborator of Myrzakulov, and has been enhanced by him, as a vehicle for self-promotion.

They have chosen to assign his name to a plethora of equations, which are mainly variations of the standard continuous spin field equation known by some as the Landau-Lischitz equation. They are not generally known amongst experts in the field, and apparently are of interest mainly to the author and his collaborators. They do not justify a Wikipedia entry devoted to them.

It seems that a previous deletion debate has taken place, and ended as inconclusive. This should not be the outcome of the present discussion. It is to be hoped that others, who are well qualified to express an opinion, will do so, and not just the author of the article in question and his collaborators or friends. It should end conclusively with deletion of the article.

It is true that the author has published several papers, apparently mainly joint works with several authors, in journals that generally have reasonable peer review standards. In fact some of these publications include coauthors who have somewhat more recognition in the area than does Myrzakulov.

I am not impugning the author's qualifications to publish such articles, or commenting in any detail on their merits. However, I do find it very suspicious when an author of scientific papers that are not regarded by the expert community as having any distinction or notability - indeed, which are virtually unknown and perhaps somewhat marginal - chooses such unconventional means for promoting his work. A great deal gets published in this field, and not all of it is of the first calibre. The fact that an author has published some papers in respectable journals is certainly not an adequate reason to have a wikipaedia article devoted to them, or to identfy them by the author's name as though this were common usage, and the equations had some established importance.

Work of genuine notability is, sooner or later, recognized within the expert community on its own merits, and not by such primitive self-promotional devices as enshrining them in a wikipaedia article that consists of little more than a listing of obscure equations to which the author has attached his own name and a number.

I have to express some awe, however, at the scope of this individual's audacity. Most people, especially those of genuine distinction, do not have so remarkable a lack of taste or modesty as to actually try to name an equation after themselves. If there happens to be such a usage, it usually is arrived at as a result of common practice within the community of experts and gets adopted in time. This author, however, is not content merely to name one equation after himself; he has produced an entire gaggle of them, about fifty, if I understand his numbering correctly.

Perhaps for this grand gesture alone, he deserves an entry about him in Wikipedia, which, after all, does open a wonderful vehicle for others to similarly attain instantaneous recognition, in their own perception, by such self-iconization. --R_Physicist (talk) 05:23, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm not going to pretend I've read much of the article, because it's far too technical for me. However, from the into and the massive number of red links in it, I doubt its notability. All the refs besides the last four are articles written or co-written by the person whom the equations are named after. It's got problems, sure, but as far as I can see they can be fixed. If these things are real (and I'm assuming they are), there should be some more refs lying around. The technical parts of it can be trimmed, and red links removed. I'm gonna' say weak keep, pending a whole ton of copyediting, wikifying, and citations. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 14:35, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, though I do not like it. Nothing much changed since the last AfD: the text still looks horrible and notability is still borderline. Twice mentioned on google books (the authors do not seem to belong to the same clique: [1]), 28 times mentioned on google scholar ([2]), and although the quotes are from the same clique, I notice that here in Belgium Google tells me I can find the quotes on an online reference base of Brussels University. That kind of thing takes work and time devoted by someone to put those things accessible online and there are three of them. The number of googles has naturally gone down since January as the article was in the spotlight in January due to deletion drives on English Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia and the Online Soviet Dictionary, and it got indeed deleted on the last two. I do not like the article either, it needs to be substantially rewritten in order to look like an encyclopaedic entry, there is probably some COI involved, probably not by the author himself but by one of his associates, who desperately wanted to keep this thing on Wikipedia. That reflects not on (the limited number of) external references, but mostly on the content: some of the equations are not even Myrzakulov's (in fact a good idea would be to just give a mathematically sound summary of the whole kaboodle and only literally quote the first one which according to google seems to be noteworthy as the "Lakshmanan-Myrzakulov equation" - 69 googles of the total of 217 for Myrzakulov equation). All that is wrong with this article (and you do not need to be a scientist to see that almost everything is wrong with it) does not justify deleting it. As the guy is Kazakh, writes primarily in Russian (having studied at Tomsk University, yes, I've done my homework) and seems to have struck a chord only with Chinese scientists, this may also be a case of WP:BIAS. What really gets me over the edge to propose keep, is that the guy may be a freak, but not a fraud or a fringe theorist. Have a look at this. Now google for "De Witt Sumners" or "Avraham Soffer" (Abraham is a common Russian mistake here) to know who they are, and add "nonlinear wave" to see what they do. They do not seem to think Myrzakulov is a fraud. Of course, if after their visit, the equation count continues to go down, that may mean this name is not going to catch on. In the meantime, it is just a question of fixing it, and I gave an indication how it could be done, but sorry, I am not a mathematician. --Paul Pieniezny (talk) 15:00, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • With all due respect, if Wikipedia is to have any credibility whatsoever on matters of scientific content, it is not by "popular vote" that such things can be decided. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but if the conclusion about retaining/deleting articles that have been found by experts in the field to be unsuitable is to be determined by "popular vote", in which the opinion of experts that are knowledgeable in the field counts for no more than those who admit to not having read the article, and being without qualifications to judge it, this would reduce the process to something quite silly. I am curious to see if this really is the case, since it will give me a better idea of whether Wikipedia is a reliable mechanism for transmitting knowledge or just a sandbox in which all and sundry may have the pleasure of playing out their fantasies of wisdom and knowledgeability in a semi-public forum, but of no reliability whatsoever as a source of knowledge. R_Physicist (talk) 15:50, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • With all due respect, it is not up to us to decide whether you are more knowledgeable in this nonlinear wave field than De Witt Sumners and Avraham Soffer - or any scientist outside Myrzakulov's entourage who quoted his equations, for that matter. Talking about boxes - WP:SOAP. If you are knowledgeable, why do you not fix, sorry, tear apart the article until all fantasy is removed? The argument here is not about whether we like the article or not, the argument is whether it is notable enough to deserve an article. I do not like the article in its present state either, but it is about something that has indeed been mentioned in a number of scholarly reviews. And in any case, it is not a vote. --Paul Pieniezny (talk) 16:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Exactly right; it is not up to you to decide who is more, or less knowledgable, nor whether this article is notable or not, since you have agreed that you don't have the competence to do so. But there are others who do; it is not an empty field, but one in which there are many qualified experts. These, generally speaking, know of each other, via their publications, conferences, schools, etc., and there are others, who are less specialized as experts in the area, but nevertheless have the qualifications and judgment to understand what is in question. If you agree that matters of scientific content, validity, notability cannot be decided by popular consensus amongst those without the qualifications to do so, it is best to leave it to those who do to discuss and decide such questions amongst themselves.
The reason why I do not trouble to fix the article is given in my above explanation; it cannot be fixed, and it would take more than fixing to render such self-promotion into a valid criterion for notability. I won't tear apart the article either, because I have no reason to spend the time, or effort, to do such a thing, when my argument for deletion is clear on general grounds, and does not need a more detailed analysis to convince those who have the necessary expertise in the field.
That said, I don't plan to register any further comments until the end of the allotted five day period, and would prefer to see what others, those with the necessary qualifications, have to say. I may then write a brief summary of what I regard to be valid, or invalid arguments that have been expressed, and explain more precisely why the retention of such material is more damaging to Wikipedia's credibility than the mere fact of having another superfluous, self-promoting article in the system. R_Physicist (talk)
  • Keep! But with improvements. I'm the author of the article Myrzakulov equations and I'm not Myrzakulov. My english not enough to improve this my article. So I would like to ask anybody who have a good english in order to improve the article and to keep it. Ngn — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.46.72.14 (talk) 17:55, March 20, 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep Not a high-priority article, but legitimate. The assertion that Myrzakulov himself created this should be backed up with evidence. People who cite that reason in AfD nominations usually seem to get it wrong. Until evidence is given, the denial alone is sufficient to reject that particular proposed reason for deletion. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:32, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm gonna' go ahead and bite the bullet here, at least a little. I'm going to work on copyediting and generally cleaning up the page. If anyone with more technical knowledge of the subject could help me with the math itself, that'd help tons. Let's see if we can get a WP:HEY here. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 23:44, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, done as I'm ever going to be. Still needs a lot of technical work, which I just can't do. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 00:45, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The article should be rewritten. It's now a list of equations. It should at the very least read like a review article by the author on this topic. But this deficiency is not a good reason to delete the article. Deletion is only appropriate when an article violates wiki rules in such a fundamental way that it cannot be fixed.
E.g., the article on Heim theory is far more problematic, yet it survived two VFDs. It may look better than this article at first glance, but it is closer to being unacceptable according to the wiki rules. And from a physics point of view it is certainly horrible, because a pseudoscientific theory is given too much respect. However, even these much more serious objections were not good reasons to delete that aticle. I voted to keep it and then rewrote most of it, but it still has severe POV problems. The fact that it can be written up in such a way that it becomes acceptable was the reason why it was kept.
So no, this article should not be deleted. People who do not like it should just make the effort to rewrite it instead of putting it on VFD. Count Iblis (talk) 00:33, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The previous AfD can be found at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Myrzakulov equations. It was closed as no consensus. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 00:45, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed above. Benjiboi 01:16, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Answer: As indicated in the article history page, the article was originally created by G.N. Nugmanova. The references given are two joint papers by her, Myrzakulov, and two other authors. She has, in all, three published papers mentioned in the Scientific Citation Index, dated 1997, 1998 and 1999, all of which are jointly with Myrzakulov. She works at the same 'Institute of Physics and Technology', Almaty, Kazakhstan, and is evidently a junior colleague, probably a former student. There are six other preprints by her, posted at the ArXiv, [3] of which two are jointly authored with Myrzakulov, and the third has his name in the title. The first of these, dating from 1994, while she was presumably a student, and probably remained unpublished, may be seen as a preprint posted at the ArXiv [4]. It looks much like a sketch of an early version this article, with the same coinages. Furthermore, the anonymous postings by the main contributors to this article, from IP addresses 89.218.75.26 89.218.78.249 89.218.75.26 89.218.76.146 92.46.70.181 89.218.68.182 89.218.78.59 92.46.69.25 92.46.69.209 89.218.68.194 89.218.75.34 89.218.76.21 89.218.75.34 89.218.75.34 89.218.78.218 89.218.75.101 212.154.189.114 89.218.75.222 89.218.75.157, as well as the one from 92.46.72.14 by the unsigned contributor to this page who claims to be the author, are all from the same location, in Alamaty, Kazakhstan, or from Astana, Kazakhstan, as may be verified by consulting the ip-address.com locator page [5]. R_Physicist (talk) 11:11, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong delete. There is a claim that these equations have no particular notability in physics, and no evidence otherwise. Lots of scientists develop equations, but they only become notable when they are widely used by others. I can't see anything to indicate that this is true. That it needs cleanup, and that there are COI claims should have no bearing on whether it should be kept; it was nominated on notability grounds. Mostlyharmless (talk) 03:16, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete The main part of the article (excluding the lead) does not contain any encyclopaedic, or even useful, information. The claim that these formulas are known as "Myrzakulov equations" within the physics community is questionable at best. The lead can serve as a seed for an article on the Landau–Lifshitz equations. Arcfrk (talk) 05:05, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Google Scholar finds about 28 results for "Myrzakulov equations", a number of which are cited by authors other than the 5 writing papers on these equations. Just for information, I'm still not sure where I'm coming down on this article. SamBC(talk) 11:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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