Talk:Hall plane

Proposed merge of Hall plane of order 9 into Hall plane

This is a nice, short article, most of whose contents are already at the (also nice, short) proposed target. If this content were merged, after removing duplication, the result would be a single nice, short article. The scope for expanding specifically on the topic of the plane of order 9 seems limited. JBL (talk) 20:20, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Mathematically, the Hall plane of order 9 has several important properties which do suggest it is worthy of individual attention. First, it is one of the smallest non-Desarguesian projective planes, and of those is the most easily understandable to a general audience. Second, it has a rich history of its own, having been discovered as a finite nearfield plane by Veblen and Wedderburn before being absorbed into Hall's infinite family. Third, it is the unique projective plane, finite or infinite, of its Lenz-Barlotti class indicating it has an automorphism group that acts in a way like literally no other.

But from an encyclopedic perspective, I certainly understand the desire to consolidate. I had a vision of adding more interesting projective planes with their own pages, similarly to the way that several particularly interesting graphs have their own pages. I realize in hindsight that there is just not enough general interest to warrant such an approach. So I when I get time I will work on consolidating the order 9 page back into the Hall plane page. Jeremydover (talk) 13:26, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

I have made the proposed text merger, and agree that this is a better approach. Suggest deletion of the page Hall plane of order 9, or setting a redirect of it to the appropriate section in this article. Jeremydover (talk) 18:48, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi Jeremydover, sorry for the delayed response. I think it is often a good idea with a topic like this to build the main article up piece-by-piece; if eventually it gets too long (e.g., you add so much about particular examples that they overwhelm the discussion of the family qua family) then it makes sense to start splitting things off (leaving short summary-style sections at the parent article). It looks nice now that you've merged, thank you. I've converted the other article into a redirect pointing here. --JBL (talk) 21:06, 1 June 2021 (UTC)