User talk:Rdaguirre

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Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Inappropriate links include (but are not limited to) links to personal web sites, links to web sites with which you are affiliated, and links that exist to attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam policies for further explanations of links that are considered appropriate. 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. Please add book references only specifically about the topic of the relevent article.

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Hello. You added the same book title as a reference to a number of diverse articles. The title did not indicate that any of those articles were the specific dominant subject of the book. The author of the book "Robert D. Aguirre" closely resembles your user name. Therefore it looked like you were using Wikipedia to plug your own book. This is frowned on; see Conflict of interest. Your edits to help build and improve a free content encyclopedia are welcome; if you are interested in participating please try to avoid self promotion. Hope this helps, -- Infrogmation 23:06, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

You wrote:
 * Is there such a thing self-promotion that is useful? If one has written something that is of interest to diverse communities, is one prohibited from mentioning it? You say this is frowned on in this space, but it is common practice in the wider scholarly and journalistic worlds, with which this space--I presume--connects. Please clarify

No doubt there can such a thing as information that improves articles added by people with a conflict of interest. I hope, however, you can understand that the great potential for abuse which has led to the policy of strongly discouraging what appears to be self promotion. The policies on spam and conflict of interest, linked above, I think are pretty clear.

If promoting your book is the sole purpose of your presence here, I don't think it will go well. My advice is: Don't. That said, on a personal note your book sounds interesting. Your short edit on my talk page explains more about the relevence of the book to Copan than your edit to the Copan article did. If you wish to improve Wikipedia and if your book has interesting information not commonly doccumented elsewhere, possibly adding a few sentences to the article summarizing that information, with the relevent chapter of the book as a reference, IMO might be acceptable-- but none the less some other editor might judge it a conflict of interest. Possibly such a judgement might be made on the basis of whether your future edits do more to improve the content of articles than give the appearance of self promotion. I hope you'll take time to review the policy pages linked above. If you have questions about the policies, the talk page for those policies is the place to discuss them. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 23:52, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

further comments about perceived conflict of interest
I'm not really that interested in having a debate about what counts as a conflict of interest (often a question of splitting hairs) or whether one can add to the world of publicly accessible knowledge without in some way engaging in self-promotion. I'm a pragmatist, and so believe that self-promotion is neither good nor bad but only useful or not useful. Of course, anyone making the decision to spend precious time to contribute to an on-line source engages in some self-promotion; this is not reserved for writers of books. Writing for publication necessarily involves putting oneself forward--call it self-promotion if you like. Again, is it useful or not?

Now to the question of references or lists of further reading. Take the Copan article, for example. It lists two printed sources, one from the 1970s and Bill Fash's standard work. Then there are some websites, two of which, when you click on them, bring up lists of adds related to Google. These pages are interested in selling something. Why that passes the self-promotion sniff test and a reference to a scholarly book does not eludes me. No one who writes scholarly books makes any money on them. One does it for the love of knowledge and the desire to share information with a wider audience. Wikipedia seems an excellent place to share with readers some of the new books and articles that may take them deeper into a subject than Wiki permits. The chapter in my book on Copan is nearly 15,000 words long--obviously too long for Wiki. Yet since I wrote it, my placing it on the list of references smacks of self-promotion. Here we are again, the dog chasing its tail.

I've read the policies on conflict of interest. Here is what they say about citing oneself:

"You may cite your own publications just as you'd cite anyone else's, but make sure your material is relevant and that you're regarded as a reliable source for the purposes of Wikipedia. Be cautious about excessive citation of your own work, which may be seen as promotional or a conflict of interest. When in doubt, discuss on the talk page whether or not your citation is an appropriate one, and defer to the community's opinion."

A critical question here seems to be external regard, or what we in academia call peer review. If you want, or have time for, a list of book reviews in reputable academic journals across the spectrum, I can provide them. Is this what is required to insert a reference for further reading on to Wiki? Another question is relevance. Who determines that? What counts as "excessive citation"? One reference?

Let me be clear. As a university professor I know lots of my students turn to this source for information. I tried to contribute because I would like to see it improved. Lots of academic colleagues I've spoken to have nothing but disdain for Wiki, such as those now well publicized historians at Middlebury who have banned it as a source. My pragmatism doesn't permit me to go this far. I'm still waiting, however, to see whether it's worth the trouble.

Reponses welcome.