Talk:Equivariant cohomology

Jargon

I agree that this article is full of jargon, but I'm not really sure what could be done about it beyond just deleting the page. Sure, I could go in and add more examples of classifying spaces, and motivate localization a little better, but the bottom line is that a certain amount of background is required to understand the importance of this topic at all, and I really can't imagine how I would write a terribly enlightening take on equivariant cohomology aimed at people who don't already have a solid understanding of, say, de Rham cohomology and group actions. This page simply has some prerequisites and there's nothing to be done about that. What are we supposed to do in such cases? Either we flag it as appropriate for undergrads and don't worry about a bit of jargon, or we delete it; either way is fine by me in this case. --JimR 11:29, 8 January 2010 (EST)

Start by describing de Rham cohomology and group actions, then. If you can't handle that, we can always userfy the article. I don't like to delete works in progress, but if none of our readers can understand what you've written, then you are not communicating. --Ed Poor ^Talk 11:34, 8 January 2010 (EST)

This doesn't appear to be a work in progress -- no one has touched in more than a year, and I have no interest in working on it (nor have I ever touched it). I don't think pages on de Rham cohomology or group actions are a high priority here and so I'm not going to write those either, unless someone would like to see these and requests that I do; certainly a fairly accessible page could be written on either, but I'm not sure it would be enough to save this page. I'm merely interested in the policy about jargony articles like this -- there is simply no way to say anything about this subject without assuming the reader is familiar with certain language. Is some jargon in articles permissable as long as the relevant terms are defined on other pages on CP? Or should advanced material never appear here? --JimR 14:20, 8 January 2010 (EST)