Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Point-Line-Plane Still in Jeopardy?

Last entry I told you about a wikipedia entry which had been permanently deleted, concerning the point-line-plane postulate. Since this postulate is the accepted way of visualizing any number of spatial dimensions, and its logic is easily related to the line-branch-fold that I based my project on, I've talked about it a number of times since 2008, which was when I first happened across this entry. It was kind of amazing to me to see how quickly it disappeared from google once the deletion occurred, it was like this postulate was now a figment of my imagination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-line-plane_postulate
Today I'm happy to report that the wikipedia entry is back! Thank you to everyone who pointed out to the wikipedia administrator who made the deletion that this was a mistake, and that the point-line-plane postulate is a real thing, an accepted concept from basic geometry. It's interesting to me that one of the arguments put forth by the admin who deleted the entry was that it didn't have any supporting links to other "reliable sources".

I see now that the restored entry has just been flagged for possible deletion because it doesn't include any links to "reliable secondary sources". Several friends sent me a link to an Andrews University online course in basic geometry that lists this postulate:
http://www.andrews.edu/%7Ecalkins/math/webtexts/geom01.htm#POST

Does somebody with wikipedia experience have any suggestions on how to keep this entry from being removed again? I helpfully went in yesterday and added the above link but it was almost immediately removed by a bot. I've undone the bot's revision but I expect it will be removed again as I don't have a wikipedia account. This time the admin in question is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wcherowi. Unlike the previous administrator who had a music background, Wcherowi does have an interest in math and geometry, so the "notability" arguments this admin has raised today need to be dealt with directly or this entry is most likely doomed once again. Anyone else with supporting links and a wikipedia account who can help out here?

Thanks!

Rob

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