Toratopes on Wikipedia - not?

[cloudswrest]

FYI I entered some summary info on toratopes into the Wikipedia "Torus" article under the pre-existing subheading of "n-dimensional torus". It seems to have provoked some vigorous objection by an editor claiming it was "irrelevant", "no justification", "not mainstream mathematics", and of course, "no reliable source." Go figure. Read all about it on the talke page.

-CW

[Keiji]

Hi Cloudswrest!

Firstly I'd like to welcome you to the site and forum, it's always good to see new people interested in higher dimensional geometry.

However I've had a look at the Wikipedia page and have to say I agree with Daqu. Toratopes may be very relevant to us, but they're not relevant to the average Wikipedia reader. We are basically a small community exchanging ideas about what might exist, and many things on the Higher Space wiki have not been rigorously proven to exist, relying mainly on intuition. While we are lucky enough to have some serious mathematicians here like Dr. Richard Klitzing who may write a paper about or mentioning toratopes or some other subject of our wiki (well, more likely the CRF polytopes!), I haven't seen any thus far meaning there are no reliable sources for anything that originated here. In addition, many objects described on the wiki have been renamed over time, some more than once, or recategorised due to the discovery of a new pattern, or even essentially erased from existence after finding out that the reasoning that led to their existence was flawed.

To put it another way, we're like the bleeding edge of software development: hobbyists and others interested in the field like to look into the newest ways of doing things, but only those that stand the test of time make it into enterprise systems: there's a reason that brand new enterprise software usually derives from sources that are already 5-10 years out of date. If an object discovered and described here lasts ten years of scrutiny without being rethought from the inside out, and maybe gets a mention in a paper, then it might become a candidate for a mention on Wikipedia.

Until then though, it's probably best to keep the niche parts of the field on a niche site, rather than trying to force it onto Wikipedia in its infancy.

I hope this incident hasn't put you off though - we're always appreciative of new, untested ideas on this forum!

[quickfur]

Yeah, Wikipedia policy is that there must be at least one reliable, third party source for anything you add. Of course, due to the huge number of users submitting new material, sometimes things do slip in unnoticed that don't have a reliable source, but generally these are deleted as soon as they are noticed. The Original Research policy is especially relevant here: a lot of what we discuss on this forum qualifies as Original Research, because they are new discoveries, ideas, or inventions that, as Keiji has said, haven't withstood the test of time yet. As such, the information on this forum is regarded as "first party" as far as Wikipedia policy is concerned, so it fails the third party source requirement.

Don't be discouraged, though! If the stuff on this forum truly has merit, sooner or later it will be referenced by reliable, third party sources, at which point it will qualify to be added to Wikipedia.