Talk:Alexander Macfarlane

Consider move

The Alexander MacFarlane of this article is an unsung hero in mathematical physics; he deserves to be better known. Evidently some vested interests would rather he continue to fade into obscurity. Within WP there are some editors that practice obscurantism by moving articles. For example, read the dialogue at Talk:John Napier#Requested move. A ploy similar to that used for the famous John Napier has been done to this Alexander MacFarlane. However, MacFarlane is little known and more vulnerable. On the positive side, the defenders of John Napier were successful in fending off the obscurantism. Are there any other editors willing to contribute to a discussion on this matter?Rgdboer (talk) 20:25, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

• Hi - I'm not concerned about obscuring things; but bad page moves make finding information in Wikipedia less efficient. A simple comparison supports your argument: The list of topic pages that link to the respective page (a topic page meaning not a simple "list of...", or redirect, or disambiguation, or project tracker page):
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Alexander_Macfarlane_%28mathematician%29 : 16
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Alexander_Macfarlane_%28politician%29 : 1 (ironically, this one article link is from A. Macfarlane the mathematician)
• If you include "list of ..." type articles, then the mathematician receives two more links, and the politician receives one more. Either way, clearly the mathematician has been very influential across different domains of science, and substantially received more attention. This makes him much more notable. I support your suggestion to move the article back to its original place, remove the disambiguation, and leave the articles as-is (including the note at the beginning that links the two). Looks to me, on first look, that someone may have just taken too quick of a step. Thanks, Jens Koeplinger (talk) 21:58, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Prominent scientist

Due to his writings, both biographical and substantive, this Alexander Macfarlane is the usual one sought in searches. There is a disambiguation pages for the other persons; I have requested that this article be titled without the disambiguation (mathematician).Rgdboer (talk) 22:37, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

The scientist now has his namespace, but still lacks a Talk since this page has not yet been moved to Talk:Alexander Macfarlane, which is now a redirect. A db-move request has been placed.Rgdboer (talk) 23:56, 28 July 2010 (UTC)