User talk:Bonnans

March 2010

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, please do not add promotional material to articles or other Wikipedia pages, as you did to Optimization (mathematics). Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" is against Wikipedia policy and not permitted. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. Jwesley₇₈ 08:20, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Talk Pages

Re: Your email to me.

Hello

Are you the "JWesley78" who removed the two references of mine that I added on the article Optimization (mathematics) ?

In that case please realize that these are two well-known basic references in the field, written by leading experts.

Please have a look at my publications on my web page or mathscinet if you have any doubt.

I don't have much time to spend on these issues, could you edit the page in order to come back to the previous stage.

Sincerely

--
Joseph Frédéric Bonnans
INRIA-Saclay & CMAP, Ecole Polytechnique
http://www.cmap.polytechnique.fr/~bonnans/

If you would like to discuss the content of a Wikipedia article, it would be more appropriate to do so on the article's talk page. If you need to contact me directly, you may do so on my talk page. You're welcome to use my personal email concerning any matter not directly related to Wikipedia. Regarding your request, Wikipedia has a policy concerning editors with a conflict of interest. Such policies are explicitly stated for expert users. I'm sure you are well-known in the field, but the References section usually lists only the resources utilized in writing the article. Jwesley₇₈ 16:02, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Particularly relevant is the following excerpt from WP:EXPERT:

Expert editors are cautioned to be mindful of the potential conflict of interest that may arise if editing articles which concern an expert's research, writings, or discoveries. When in doubt, it is good practice for a person who may have a conflict of interest to disclose it on the relevant article's talk page and to suggest changes there rather than in the article. Transparency is essential to the workings of Wikipedia.

Jwesley₇₈ 16:06, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Jwesley78, please consider whether in this case you might be a acting too zealously on the side of caution, inadvertantly depriving Wikipedia readers of imho the most reliable sources because of your concern about conflict of interest.

As I read it, Wikipedia policy calls for disclosure, but reminds us that the goal is to improve Wikipedia for the public. Experts and authors should feel free to add their books, if such books are among the most reliable sources. If a French author takes the trouble to write not only a textbook in English and then try to contribute to Wikipedia, then let's be especially nice! (A gentle reminder that disclosure is the best policy is perfectly sound, of course. Today, I wrote something especially gentle to a coauthor of Professor Bonnans, Professor Jean-Charles.Gilbert.)

Certainly, Professor Bonnans is accurate in describing those books as by some of the best international experts. Today I have added Bonnans, Gilbert, Lemaréchal, and Sagastizabal's well-known and internationally recognized textbook to several articles, on its own merits: I wrote a stub on Claude Lemaréchal last year, before I knew that either Gilbert or Bonnans contributed pro-bono service to (especially English) Wikipedia. I have no conflict of interest problem! Professor Bonnans is one of the world's experts in continuous optimization theory, and his books are well-regarded and widely cited. His book with Alexander Shapiro has hundreds of citations, even if it neglected statistics! ;)

Please think about perhaps letting Professor Bonnans's book(s) stay! Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 01:08, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I added the Bonnans-Shapiro book, which does discuss some of the problems mentioned (without references) in the article: See these authors' survey in SIAM Review, which should indicate that they are at the top of their profession. The WP article lists many books that have gross errors, like a (generally good) book that claims that "the subgradient" (sic.) suffices for identifying a local minimum. I would be afraid to examine the listed books that are unknown to me. Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 01:27, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]