[HN Gopher] The Stacks Project: A Wikipedia of algebraic geometr...
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       The Stacks Project: A Wikipedia of algebraic geometry (2022)
        
       Author : gone35
       Score  : 98 points
       Date   : 2024-04-13 19:29 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (news.columbia.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (news.columbia.edu)
        
       | eimrine wrote:
       | I would like to see better quality of graph pictures.
        
         | 48864w6ui wrote:
         | Why don't you make some?
        
         | barfbagginus wrote:
         | What do you mean by better quality of graph pictures? If you're
         | talking about 2D string diagrams/box and wiring diagrams/ or
         | functorial box/tube diagrams a la Meilles or McCurdy, I agree!
         | If there is something else you have in mind, I am curious!
         | 
         | Can you give me some examples of articles we could improve, and
         | describe what you'd like to see?
        
           | eimrine wrote:
           | For example, I want to see any text on the picture named "An
           | alternative visualization of how the Cohen structure theorem
           | and related concepts intersect. " Seems it has to be a way to
           | see high-res but a click doesn't work.
        
             | defrost wrote:
             | Those PNG thumbnails don't have any higher resolution,
             | they're literally there as examples of what users of The
             | Stacks Project produce as visualisations using the lemma
             | tags:
             | 
             | https://stacks.math.columbia.edu/tags
             | 
             | So to create your own visual you'd pull the metadata and
             | create a graph on concepts that link to (say)
             | https://stacks.math.columbia.edu/tag/032A
        
         | ykonstant wrote:
         | Better quality than this?! Can you link to a picture you think
         | is lacking?
        
           | eimrine wrote:
           | https://news.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/styles/cu_crop.
           | ..
           | 
           | I do not see a way to observe higher resolution picture of
           | this
        
             | jacoblambda wrote:
             | Oh those images aren't from the project itself. The news
             | article just uses some pictures from some of the blog posts
             | that are at a meta level about the project. From a reverse
             | image search that specific image can be found on this post:
             | 
             | https://www.math.columbia.edu/%7Edejong/wordpress/?m=201204
             | 
             | Specifically this image I believe:
             | 
             | https://www.math.columbia.edu/~dejong/wordpress/wp-
             | content/u...
             | 
             | The other images seem to be from the project author's home
             | page:
             | 
             | https://www.math.columbia.edu/%7Edejong/
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _The Stacks Project, a new model for organizing and visualizing
       | mathematics_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30222302 -
       | Feb 2022 (24 comments)
       | 
       |  _Stacks project hits 5000 pages_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11054837 - Feb 2016 (1
       | comment)
        
       | jessriedel wrote:
       | > And it's de Jong's exacting standards that also set the Stacks
       | Project apart from other crowdsourced publications on the web.
       | "Johan gets very mad when I call it Stackopedia," said Kedlaya.
       | "He reads every line that goes in."
       | 
       | > The one-editor model allows the Stacks Project to maintain one
       | voice and a high level of quality control. But unlike the peer-
       | reviewed literature that it attempts to corral into one place,
       | the Stacks Project is designed to evolve. Long after de Jong is
       | gone, this accumulation of knowledge will continue to grow.
       | 
       | Is there any path to this scaling beyond one contributor? It
       | sounds like after de Jong stops contributing it will just become
       | frozen.
        
         | ccppurcell wrote:
         | OEIS is perhaps the best model. I'm not sure if Neil Sloane
         | looks at every sequence that goes in but he approved my
         | entries. It's now in a trust and will definitely continue once
         | he stops contributing.
        
           | jessriedel wrote:
           | Are there any specific lessons you think would apply to a
           | collaborative encyclopedias of scientific topics? It seems to
           | me that OEIS can only scale because it enjoys some of the
           | same advantages as Wikipedia: the individual articles are
           | highly compartmentalized (non-leaky abstractions), and there
           | is very little need for adjudication of technical disputes.
           | These would not apply to Stack Project or other comprehensive
           | technical encyclopedias.
        
       | nyc111 wrote:
       | The title says "A wikipedia of algebraic geometry" but the site
       | is organized more like a book not like Wikipedia. Do we know what
       | publishing platform he is using?
        
       | nyc111 wrote:
       | "As we build theory we adhere to the following basic rules: [...]
       | (5) every statement explicitly states all of its assumptions..."
       | 
       | This is great, but is it possible?
        
         | pfortuny wrote:
         | Yes, through nomenclature. Algebraic geometry has a lot of
         | terms. Almost anything having two properties gets a name.
        
       | ykonstant wrote:
       | My favorite example of mathematical typesetting on the web. I
       | sent them some emails asking for directions to mimic their design
       | for my personal webpage, but did not get any replies. My crude
       | attempt at web mathematics in that style is here:
       | https://ykonstant1.github.io/power-draft.html
       | 
       | But I would love if they made a tutorial or blog post describing
       | in simple terms how to get a design like that going; many many
       | professors could incorporate that and make mathematical resources
       | much easier to access for students. I always have an online Class
       | Diary for my classes, and my students would love to have rendered
       | equations directly in the webpage.
        
         | bonefolder wrote:
         | Stacks project is available on github, so in theory (if you're
         | bored enough) it should be possible to reverse engineer their
         | design from their make-project file
         | https://github.com/stacks/stacks-project/blob/master/documen...
         | 
         | At a high level they use plastex
         | https://github.com/plastex/plastex to convert latex to html
         | (you seem to be using pandoc?) and so can control the rendering
         | to any fine accuracy they want. I liked this general style as
         | well, so I tried using plastex but couldn't get my head around
         | it and so started using LateXML
         | https://github.com/brucemiller/LaTeXML
         | 
         | My usecase: I wanted to have a "dependency graph" of lemmas to
         | make it easier to see proofs without having to jump back and
         | forth through a pdf, and this was sort of similar to lean
         | formalization blueprint graphs
         | https://teorth.github.io/pfr/blueprint/dep_graph_document.ht...
         | (which also uses plastex) but without the lean parts. There's
         | still a lot of work to be done, but I think I have a pretty
         | okay implementation using latexml which meets 50% of my
         | requirements for now, so I'm happyish
         | https://texviz.arsricharan.in/ghrss24/
        
       | librasteve wrote:
       | i wonder if you can train an ai on this?
        
       | hzay wrote:
       | Does anyone know if there's something similar for plain old
       | geometry? I need some proofs beyond basic ones (for ex, I need to
       | know how to find out intersection points of 2 rotated ellipses on
       | Cartesian space).
        
       | generationP wrote:
       | The Stacks project is meant to be a comprehensive Bourbaki-style
       | textbook, not an encyclopedic survey, so the Wikipedia comparison
       | is a miss. (The WP has a textbook level of detail on some topics,
       | with proofs and examples, but these are few and far between and
       | come from enthusiastic editors going above and beyond the WP's
       | declared goals.)
       | 
       | Stacks is _not_ finished, however -- still a lot of  "Proof.
       | Omitted.". From what I understand, the goal is to fill them all
       | in (otherwise there would be references to the literature in
       | their stead), but ultimately it is still mostly a one-person
       | project (see https://github.com/stacks/stacks-
       | project/graphs/contributors ).
       | 
       | I once filled in one of those missing proofs, only to see Johan
       | replace it by a much better one that I would never have thought
       | of. And this was (for him) a technical lemma, not one of the
       | crown jewels of the project. His dedication to the project is
       | truly incomparable to anything except Bourbaki and Serre. And the
       | usefulness of the work extends far beyond algebraic stacks, just
       | like Bourbaki is much more than a textbook on Lie algebras.
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-14 23:02 UTC)