User talk:Rmrichman

Caution about citing yourself
Hello, Rmrichman. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may need to consider our guidance on conflicts of interest.

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For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you.-- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  15:13, 15 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I see that you have added further material in two more articles which cites a paper by an author with a name very similar to yours. If you are editing with the primary purpose of promoting your own research, then you have a conflict of interest.  Please review Conflict of interest guidelines and address the issue explicitly here.  If you wish to add material to a page where you may have a conflict of interest, try proposing it on the article talk page.  If other editors agree that it is appropriate, then they, or you, can add it after a consensus is obtained.  Deltahedron (talk) 07:32, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. I have indeed cited a publication of my own from the refereed scholarly literature in the section on “Applications to fair division” in the article on “Thue-Morse sequence.” In so doing, I have made every effort to abide by the guidelines in the section, “Citing yourself,” on Wikipedia’s “Conflict of Interest” page.

My initial edit a year ago included a reference only to my publication, since it was the only one I knew of at the time. In the last year I have learned of the published work of three other groups in this area, so I added descriptions of their work, including references, in the last week. Even though none of them treated the subject with the mathematical rigor that I did, I moved discussion of two of the other groups ahead of mine because their work is better known.

This section is about applications of mathematics to subjects that are typically not math-intensive. These applications will benefit those who can use them only if they are discussed (with links back to Thue-Morse) in the articles on those subjects. Hence I have recently edited three other Wikipedia articles for the purpose of showing the relevance of the Thue-Morse sequence to those subjects. Two of these referenced my work and one referenced the work of another. I hope to do more of this with citations to authors other than myself. The intent is to bring useful and relevant mathematics to the attention of those who can use it.

Robert Richman 21:48, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you for that clarification. It appears that you have indeed been adding material that introduces your own research and publications into articles which had not previously mentioned that subject.  This is clearly promoting yourself and your work, and looks like a violation of COI guidelines.  In future please propose this material on the relevant article talk page and wait for a consensus that it is of due weight and relevance.  Deltahedron (talk) 22:38, 21 February 2013 (UTC)