User talk:WiseWoman

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[edit] Welcome

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Again, welcome! - UtherSRG 03:27, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Welcome, WiseWoman! Regarding Birgit Prinz, would you think you could ask her for a photograph to be used in the article...? --Palapala 21:50, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't have an address for her, sorry! WiseWoman

I'll see what I can do from here. Keep you posted... --Palapala 08:23, 2004 Apr 28 (UTC)

I found a fan page and wrote for permission to use one of the pictures, but no answer... WiseWoman 11:26, 2004 May 17 (UTC)

I'm already in touch with the source, might take a couple of days longer than I thought, they're very busy. --Palapala 13:29, 2004 May 17 (UTC)

I've uploaded one picture of Birgit Prinz this morning, it's yours to go to the article source and un-comment it... --Palapala 05:23, 2004 May 26 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a lovely picture! Sorry that it takes me forever sometimes.... WiseWoman 18:29, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Standard gauge#gauge

No need to widen the gauge to 4' 8 5/8" on tangent track, because the measure from flange exterior to flange exterior is 4' 7¾" and back to back of the wheels is some 4' 5⅛" (N American practice). Peter Horn 00:08, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Give One Get One

Thanks, WiseWoman :-) I can't wait to hear what you think of it. Yet another reason to get the offline wiki projects better coordinated. +sj + 02:35, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] IGI Global

hi and thanks for the message. Honestly, I just don't consider them a scam. From what I know they are one of the leading publishers in IT&management. Prices in academia are exorbitant and IGI is definitely to blame, but so is e.g. Oxford University Press, selling philosophy books for about 100 USD, or encyclopedias for close to 700 USD). IGI's business model is not to sell to individuals, but to universities and libraries. As an individual user you may regret this policy, but I don't think it has anything to do with notability and it does not, in my view, make them any less reliable - its a free market, after all, and if they were not publishing high quality academic books, the libraries would not buy them. The dictionary you mention is probably this one and it is indeed extremely pricey, but still less expensive than Encyclopedic Dictionary of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Information Processing from K. G. Saur (2448 USD), Computer Science and Communications Dictionary from Elsevier (1475 USD), Information Security Policies Made Easy from Information Shield (795 USD), or World Dictionary of Grasses from CRC Press (695 USD).

The criteria for notability for publishers should not include the pricing model they use, but rather coverage and recognition in academia. This may be difficult to determine, but for me a useful and easy to apply criterion is e.g. the number of books in libraries at Harvard University, where I'm currently located. This brings close to 100 their publications at Harvard - if you are calling them a scam, then probably Harvard librarians are in this scam, too. They are also partnered with EBSCO, indisputably one of the biggest online academic publishers of electronic versions of books and journals. They are known around the world (google brings many examples of this). As you probably know, it is time consuming and difficult to find third party sources on any publisher - just because of the sheer volume of google hits that bookstores bring up. Nevertheless, there are 7 sources given now. Even if you might have been right in guessing that some of them could have based on the information submitted by the publisher, still the third party takes responsibility for the accuracy of this information and they, to be reliable themselves, have to check their sources. Also, 6 different sources of information should be more than sufficient. As a result, in the current state, IGI Global is better rooted in third-party sources than Blackwell Publishing, Cambridge University Press, Walter de Gruyter, Lexis Nexis, or Wolters Kluwer, to mention just a few.

Numbers do not always count! There is a dpa report out "quoting" me on saying something about plagiarism (I am the plagiarism "expert" in Germany because I am always quoted, but does that make me an expert?). Actually, they are quoting a line from an online publication, but it looks better to be quoting me. There are now 6 newspapers, including one major one, who have picked up and published this article. Still makes it not true, they did not interview me. --WiseWoman (talk) 13:44, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, this is a case of second-hand referencing/quoting, I would argue that this is still "you" being quoted - after all in academia it happens pretty often that someone has a really nice sentence, and then needs to find somebody to attribute it to ;) Pundit|utter 15:20, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for motivating me to looking for more sources and have a happy new year! best, Pundit|utter 15:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

  • PS Per your doubts on ACM Portal not referring to them - I think the reason is for their recent name change, as "IDEA Group" shows up in the searches abundantly (as I explained in the discussion of the article). But their focus, as I know it, is more on the boundaries of IT and management, rather than mainstream computing (although they may be seriously into it, I'm just not familiar with the field). Pundit|utter 16:12, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi Pundit, thanks for the info. I am still a bit doubtful, as I know how our book ordering process works: Prof orders book for library - librarian looks to see if there is still money there - if so, book gets ordered. No one checks the "notability" or "correctness" or "usefulness". Normally, if third parties get stung, they plead "oh-we-didn't-realize-that", people seem to get out of verifying things these days. I am very curious as to how we actually determine which publishers are "reputable", if that is at all possible. The tip with "IDEA Group" is good - I get 27 hits on this in the ACM Digital Library. Not much to write home about, but at least non-nil. However: I tested 3 of the entries (10%) and found that the references quoting a book published at the IDEA Group were the authors of a paper quoting themselves. Okay, 27, I can test all of them. Turns out that 15 of the 27 are self-citations, 5 were hits that did not actually have a reference to an IDEA Group book (the words "idea" and "group" show up a lot....) and only 7 were citations from one researcher (group) to another. I did not check if the individuals were at the same school or had published together on other papers. Just for reference, the German-Language "Springer Verlag" is found over 25.000 times in this English-language database. I stand by my opinion: this is not a "leading" publisher, and I will amend this in the article. --WiseWoman (talk) 12:37, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi WiseWomen (funny how our nicknames correspond). Fair enough, I totally agree there is no grounding to say they are a leading publisher of any sort. You may also be right about the business model. They are in publishing for 20 years, so they are probably about 100 short of Springer Verlag ;) Also - remember, they have 5 different prints (sort of "publishing houses" for different topics) so some publications may go under their names, and not under the umbrella organization's. Self-referencing is a sign of our times - everybody needs to get cited :/ All in all, the article seems to get better - thank you for starting this process. We should do it more often ;) But seriously - adding third party sources on Blackwell Publishing, Cambridge University Press, Walter de Gruyter, Lexis Nexis, or Wolters Kluwer may be a good idea. Happy New Year! Pundit|utter 15:20, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Pundit, yes, somehow we choose appropriate names :) This discussion is, IMHO, one of the reasons why Wikipedia is so important - we can constantly improve the articles. I myself am an Open Access convert, so I may be nitpicking a bit here. But I blogged this incident and yesterday a reader left a comment that authors only get a 50% discount on all the books they purchase, not even one author's copy free. That makes some of the books about regularly priced. He noted that he wanted his grad student to have a publication.... --WiseWoman (talk) 09:12, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
This is weird, but I think this must have been the case of co-authorship - then it is a relatively common practice to give one copy to both authors... And a discount on any other copies they buy. The google search on IDEA Group, author's copies brought as first this result which says they give one copy and discount on all others. Not that it matters... Pundit|utter 04:11, 3 January 2008 (UTC)