User talk:Epiding

Please do not add commercial links or links to your own private websites to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or a mere collection of external links. You are, however, encouraged to add content instead of links to the encyclopedia. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. --Curtis Clark 14:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Impact factor
Hi there. Would you care to explain why you removed one impact factor link and replacing it with another, inferior link? Furthermore, your edit summary claimed the one being removed was "dead", but a quick check revealed it was nothing of the sort. While it certainly wasn't an ideal source of the impact factor information, it was at least as good a source as the one you replaced it with (it had longer lists of impact factors for starters; and ran over several years). Ideally a direct source would be used for these statistics, but in the absence of this (or the absence of an unprotected, freely-available source), the best one available should be used. As far as I can tell from a brief poke around, this doesn't apply to the one you've used. Could you please explain why you switched the link? It's quite possible I'm missing something here, but I notice you've been switching things across Wikipedia, and just want to check that it's for good reason (it looks like a spam-attack at the moment). Cheers, --Plumbago 09:56, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Plumbago, I am not a spammer. I am actually a Harvard researcher who likes to tabulate ISI rankings in my spare time. My ISI impact ranking list if very unique-- its breaks it down by scientific disciplines: general science, medicine, diabetes, CVD, cancer, obesity/nutrition, epidemiology and public health, etc. This information took a lot of hard work and time to tabulate, and thus, a unique useful contribution for interested readers and scientific community.

However, I made a compromise and listed both mine the other website (which wasn't that official either, and only included overall rankings without regard to scientific discipline). I hope I have convinced you i'm not a spammer.

Thanks and I actually agree that WIKI always needs watchful people like you!

Regards, ~E

Comments
Hi Epiding, your list of impact factors may well be interesting to Wikipedia readers. However, adding links to one's own website/blog is generally frowned upon, and for good reasons. Adding such links to several articles will get you labeled spammer quickly regardless of your intentions. I suggest you keep one link in impact factor, not more. – Also, please don't remove comments other people have left on your talk page, and try using the "Show preview" button which will help you notice when your edits don't work as you expect. Don't let all the negative feedback discourage you – it takes some time to learn the ropes here. ... Hmmm.... You never got a proper welcome message. Here goes:

Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! Rl 20:13, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
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that list of figures again
I just sent the folowing to Rl:
 * I do not want to get into a fight, but I will revert.  I defer to your knowedge of WP, but I do know copyright. I have suggested to our friend who does not sign his name that he send his blog to ISI and ask for permission. That's the direct and honest way to do it. Further, I believe one of the other editors said a link to one's own blog is never ok, on other grounds. Let's try to get a legal list posted.  DGG 06:33, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

on a positive note
There's lots of places here for an immunologist to work. As I've found in my own subject of biological classification, the pages will seem to be inter-related in illogical sequence, done by different editors at different times. Even a small clarification has to be done on a number of pages that you might not find except by accident. I started by corecting typos on the pages I wanted to work on, so people got used to seeing me there. I have found that putting in a new page is complicated beause of the already existing links, and I've mainly been adding to existing ones. *perhaps you should ask permission from ISI to calculate IFs for a 5 or 8 year period, and post them, for a few subject categories? That would be a real service, for ISI explains how to calculate them, but has ignored years of requests to publish them. We will probably be workingon the same pages ndefinitiely, so we would do well to have an understanding. ( and not just us, but Plumbago and Rl )DGG 06:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

thanks for everyone's comments
Thanks everyone for helping a newbie learn the ropes. An by the way, I'm a medical epidemiologist, not an immunologist. I study disease distribution, causal factors of disease in populations, and diseaes prevention. You may search PUBMED (www.pubmed.gov) and type in "Ding EL" to see that I have published multiple articles, including 3 articles in JAMA. I look forward to contributing to Wiki professionally in the future.