User talk:D Haggerty

Removed comment

I have removed your comment (diff) from Talk:David Eppstein because it consists of an opinion with no actionable proposal and no reference to policies. It may well be true that you could name hundreds of mathematicians who should have an article, but that is an argument that additional articles should be created and is never a reasonable comment with respect to some other article. I would not normally remove a comment like this but that article has had a steady stream of editors wanting to make some point with regard to the subject of the article (who, as you know, is a well established editor), and consensus has shown that the claims were groundless (see the archive on the talk page). If you want to recommend that the article be deleted, please consult WP:N and WP:PROF and consider whether the notability policies are not satisfied for this article. Then, you might like to recommend that the article be deleted (see WP:AFD), but please be aware that generic opinions are not suitable for any talk page, particularly not when dealing with a biography of a living person—comments should be based on policies. Johnuniq (talk) 02:28, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate your letting me know that you removed my comment. By pointing to the dearth of articles on notable mathematicians, I was merely trying to point out that this article was certainly created by its subject, which (if I'm not mistaken) is a conflict of interest. I am a scientist by trade, and I am familiar with the journals in which Eppstein usually publishes. His work is interesting but, in my professional opinion, not worthy of a Wikipedia article. I understand that he has many friends who are well-established in the Wikipedia community who will likely support the existence of this article, but I firmly believe that its presence makes Wikipedia less credible as a scientific source. D Haggerty (talk) 04:52, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a very open place and there is an extraordinarily wide range of people here. However, it takes quite a deal of experience to work out what is ok, and what is not. Making unsubstantiated claims about other editors is not ok, and a claim like "was certainly created by its subject" should not be made without evidence. In fact, that claim is totally wrong, as can easily be seen in the history of the article. When writing about other editors (or any living person, or most things actually), please imagine you are publishing a paper that will be critically examined by your professional colleagues, and avoid any claims that you cannot prove. You can see an analysis of what edits the user has made to the article in this old discussion (see my comment starting "This report is due to a misunderstanding of procedures").

Your comment about "not worthy of a Wikipedia article" is expressed as your opinion, and it's fine to express a personal opinion. However, the WP:N and WP:PROF links that I included above demonstrate beyond doubt that the policies of Wikipedia are satisfied in respect of this article. Johnuniq (talk) 07:48, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I apologize for my erroneous claim that Eppstein himself wrote the article. I had thought that since the article is written much like a promotional piece written for a news outlet. Sentences such as "he is known for...." hint that Eppstein is a go-to expert for such subjects, which seems more like an opinion than objective fact. I have no doubt that Eppstein's contributions to Wikipedia are invaluable, and that many of the mathematics articles are better for his input. However, I do not believe his research (at least, thus far) warrants an article. I believe that, although he's only made a few changes to his own article, he has used Wikipedia for self-promotion; something which seems to run contrary to the mission of the site. As an example, in the talk page for Antimatroid, he links to a blog post he wrote, saying it could be incorporated in the article at a later date. Perhaps I simply do not fully grasp the rules / standards of Wikipedia. Anyway, I won't bring up the issue again, and thanks for your correspondence. If I need to read an article on computer science or mathematics in the future, I'll go to Conservapedia (kidding, obviously). D Haggerty (talk) 08:03, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to have sounded harsh earlier, but we are fairly used to seeing users express an opinion that is at variance with standard procedures, and there had recently been an irritating example of that at the article. Thank you for taking on board my comment and giving a very reasonable response (many others would fail to address points that had been made to them). There is probably no need to continue this discussion, but I thought I would finish by mentioning that it is considered good practice for an editor with a COI to present a suggestion on an article talk page so other people can choose whether or not to use the material. Of course anything can be overdone, and we sometimes see a new editor who abuses that by doing very little other than add links to their website, but that is not the case for Eppstein's blog. Johnuniq (talk) 10:06, 6 August 2011 (UTC)