User talk:RichardDenney

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Promoting your book
Richard, I have noticed that pretty much every edit you have made so far involves inserting references to your book into various articles. While that is not necessarily a bad thing, please note that Wikipedia is not a soapbox for promoting or advertising you or your work. If I may offer some friendly advice, you will need to be careful to ensure that you do not present the appearance of promoting your book or business. In that vein, I have just rewritten the Formal methods article to provide a more balanced view of lightweight approaches to formal methods (i.e. one that mentions more than just your approach). --Allan McInnes (talk) 18:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)


 * RichardDenney 18:58, 7 February 2006 (UTC) Allan, thanks for the re-write of the formal methods section; I like it much better than what I did. No, my intent is not to promote the book, but I do want to put forth the ideas where they add to existing articles; I certainly have energy around the ideas. For better or worse, the book's intent from the get-go was to help build bridges between the use case community and other existing disciples, so by its nature the book touches on a wide variety of topics for which there are existing articles in Wikipedia. In each case I have only added to an article when there was (IMO) value added (i.e. I have not added anything that says "me too!"). I do understand the "appearance" of it being promotional, although I don't really know how else to contribute, and cite the source other than how I'm doing it? While nothing in the book is original research (period) it does make connections between disciplines which, again not being original, don't have much of a basis for citing in the literature. I could remove the citations ?


 * I don't think it's necessary to remove the citations. They are certainly appropriate in some cases (the formal methods article being a good example). In other cases, you may need to consider whether your book is the best or only reference for a particular claim. For example, in the Reliability engineering article, you put an inline citation to your book after a claim about software reliability eng. However, Shooman's book (or one that focuses exclusively on software reliability) is an equally appropriate reference - perhaps more appropriate, since it deals with reliability alone. The appearance of promotion will exist if you only seem to be putting in references to your book, rather than (where appropriate) the work upon which it builds. Ultimately, it will come down to a judgement call on your part. I'm afraid that's about the only advice I can offer.
 * Personally, I think your book sounds interesting, and that the work you have done in drawing disciplines together is much-needed. I also think it's great that you've chosen to further that work by contributing to Wikipedia. I just don't want to see you become mired in endless arguments about self-promotion (as I have seen happen to other contributors), which would make it harder for you to fruitfully contribute. Hence my "friendly advice". --Allan McInnes (talk) 19:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

RichardDenney 20:58, 7 February 2006 (UTC) and "Friendly Advice" that is much appreciated. I have been a Wikipedia use for quite some time, on topics ranging from software to panentheism. The contributing bit is new and I do appreciate there is a fine line I need to be conscious of.

RichardDenney 21:08, 7 February 2006 (UTC) Allan, by the way; your comment about reliability engineering is well taken; I've added a pointer to Musa's re-released book also. Thanks

Wikiproject Computer science
Since you have an interest in formal methods and software development, you may be interested in joining WikiProject Computer science. The project aims to bring together people interested in computer science and software engineering so that we can coordinate the development of articles, and find consensus views on sticky questions regarding content or style. --Allan McInnes (talk) 19:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)