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Hello, Riccardopoli! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! Dirk Beetstra T C 10:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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Your question

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I answered on my talkpage. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wait. Riccardo Poli, you said .. In that case:

If you have a close connection to some of the people, places or things you have written about in the article Estimation of distribution algorithm, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred from the tone of the edit and the proximity of the editor to the subject, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:

  1. editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;
  2. participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors;
  3. linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam);
    and you must always:
  4. avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially neutral point of view, verifiability, and autobiography.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Business' FAQ. For more details about what constitutes a conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest. Thank you.

Please stop adding the link to content parts of the wikipedia, and discuss the information on talkpages only, or e.g. on an appropriate wikiproject. You are a specialist in these subjects, and I am sure you can contribute content, and not only links to more information. Thanks again. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Hi Dirk (Dirk Beetstra), many thanks for the pointers to further reading (here and in your talk page). I did read them and I did learn many useful things. A couple of points:

a) regarding the point you made above, there is no conflict of interests in relation to the Estimation of distribution algorithm edit I made. I was referring the readers to the "A Field Guide to Genetic Programming" book because it contains an entire chapter that reviews the application of estimation of distribution algorithms to the automated generation of computer programs. There we review ten or twenty different systems, invented by different people with whom I have no particularly close connection. Only one system is my own. But this is treated like everyone else's (and we have covered ALL systems of that type). So, I'm not sure why you deleted the information I had added there.

b) regarding the comment in your talk page "The link was massively spammed to many, many wikis. The book may be of interest as a reference, and hence does not clasify as something we can put on a blacklist, but I do not believe it is a good external link, and its pushing is certainly something that has to be looked into.", I'd like to thank you for recognising the web site should not be put in the blacklist. I am also happy with your wanting to look into my edits, since I recognise that, at first sight, it looks as if I have been spamming. However, if you look carefully you will see that all the wikis I've edited are related to evolutionary computation, genetic programming, search algorithms and the like. That is, areas where I'm a specialist. These are areas where fellow scientists invite me to give talks and tutorials at international conferences on a regular basis. I'm not inserting these links to make a name for myself in this field: I have it already. Also, in its first month since its presentation, the book has been downloaded over 7,500 times, of which perhaps 5 to 10% were referred from wikipedia. So, we don't really need to push the book in wikipedia (but people find it useful, so I'd like readers in wikipedia to have a chance to consult it, if they choose to do so).

So, I'd like to claim that I have not been spamming. (In fact, having covered the areas where I felt the book could be of interest, I had already stopped making any further edits.)

I did check what the wikipedia says about good and bad external links, and I still feel that the web site is a good external link. Specifically, under the "what should be linked" section I find

1) An article about a book, a musical score, or some other media should link to a site hosting a copy of the work if none of the "Links normally to be avoided" criteria apply.

and

2) Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues, amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks) or other reasons.

These two criteria apply to the "field guide" book web site. The web site is there only to provide the book to those interested in it (note, if people want printed copies, they can get them "at cost", i.e., we are making no money with it). Also, the material is neutral and simply cannot be included in Wikipedia because there is 250 pages of it (i.e., the level of detail is inappropriate).

In the light of this new information, I hope you will reconsider your opinion regarding my activity.

Best wishes.

Riccardopoli (talk) 11:13, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Replies:

re a) Yes, there is, because you have written the book. It may be a fine reference, but I don't think you (alone) should judge that. Therefore, please discuss further additions first (per the guideline).

re b) There the same reasoning applies. You added it mainly in external links sections, and did not contribute a lot of information. I understand that you want other people to see this book (You say you have 7,500 downloads in a short time, how many more after this promotion of your book here? .. that is exactly what Wikipedia:Spam is about).

So yes, you have been spamming, the links may be wanted, but the way they are presented is a nono (Monty Python may very well have wanted to eat spam, but they did not get much of a choice). Also, your book is in English, it may very well be appropriate here, but it is less appropriate on non-English wikipedia, believe me, in countries like Italy most people don't speak English.

I know which criteria apply to the book, still, as most people, you have by far passed the intro of WP:EL:

"... Some external links are welcome (see "What should be linked", below), but Wikipedia's purpose is not to include a comprehensive list of external links related to each topic. No page should be linked from a Wikipedia article unless its inclusion is justifiable. The subject of this guideline is external links that are not citations of article sources. If the website or page to which you want to link includes information that is not yet a part of the article, consider using it as a source for the article, and citing it. Guidelines for sourcing, which includes external links used as citations, are discussed at Wikipedia:Reliable sources and Wikipedia:Citing sources. ... ".

Therefor I ask you to reconsider the way of editing. I am sure that you can help us by adding content, which does much more credit to the book you have written than only a link. In that way you also help wikipedia!

All in all, I still would like you to discuss your edits before adding links only (either on talkpages, and/or with an appropriate wikiproject, see Wikipedia:WikiProject), and to go through your latest edits, also to the other wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In a way, your domain exists as a front to lulu.com, and is hosted on a free hosting (blog) site. I am actually considering blacklisting again, as you seem mainly interested in the promotional part of having your link around. The reference also exists without the link, have you considered using the ISBN? --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Dirk, (our messages crossed, so I did not address your final comment above). I did not think about just using the ISBN, because I did not see a problem with using the web site. I'd be happy to fix the changes I made to various pages to use ISBN instead. The book is not only freely downloadable, but people are also allowed to copy it and distribute it (because of the Creative Commons Licence). So, I would not have any problems actually placing the PDF in some neutral place of your choice and pointing to it that way. We directed people to only one site (lulu) because this site offers a way of counting the number of downloads, but on reflection, that may have been a bad choice. Would ISBN alone or ISBN plus a pointer to the PDF in some acceptable site (e.g., arXiv.org) OK with you? Many thanks, -- Riccardopoli (talk) 13:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Riccardo. ISBN alone would be fine, as it links to the internal linkfarm at [Special:Linksearch]]. In that way there is no bias to choice on where to find the link. Hope you find some articles to contribute to, happy editing! --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:29, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unreferenced BLPs

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Hello Riccardopoli! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 1 of the articles that you created is tagged as an Unreferenced Biography of a Living Person. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to insure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. if you were to bring this article up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current 52 article backlog. Once the article is adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the article:

  1. Riccardo Poli - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Thanks!--DASHBot (talk) 22:07, 8 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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