User:Robert Munafo/Name and date on links

Early in 2013, the question came of of whether someone should put their name (along with a date) when they add a link to a web URL or an academic paper / article / etc. to the %H and %D fields (respectively) of an OEIS record.

The correct format for a name/date tag is:

 [From _Robert Munafo_, Jan 26 2013]

Although we have the %H and %D fields in mind, I imagine it would be equally useful for other fields like %C.

I think this is a good idea, because if the URL link is dead or if the paper/article becomes hard to find, an OEIS user knows who to contact. In general, I keep a printout or PDF copy of everything that I link to (because if it's worth going to the effort of editing the OEIS, I probably already decided it was worth keeping in my own library)

N.J.A. Sloane always tags his references and links with his name and date, and explained his reasoning in this email to the associate editors:

 Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2013 15:11:35 -0500
 Subject: Re: Name and date on references and links
 From: Neil Sloane
 To: "T. D. Noe" 
 Cc: (list of OEIS associate editors)
 .
 On Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 2:39 PM, T. D. Noe <noe@sspectra.com> wrote:
 > I notice that you have been put your name and the date on references and
 > links you enter.  I think you are the only one who does this.  I have
 > consulted with a few other editors, and we do not think this is necessary.
 > If someone wants to learn who entered a reference, they can look at the
 > sequence history.
 >
 > Best regards,
 >
 > Tony
 .
 The argument in favor of it is that you can see who
 contributed the link or reference.
 .
 Point 1: if it has my name on it then it is
 less likely to be deleted by a random editor who can't see any connection
 with the sequence - not having access to the reference or being too lazy to
 look at it, and who judges just from the title that there can be no
 connection with the sequence, and deletes it. This has happened and
 valuable and obscure references that I have tracked down have been deleted.
 .
 Point 2. If i see a bunch of references to an obscure paper by X and they
 were sent in by X, that is valuable information, and decreases my
 interest in looking at the reference. Whereas if they are sent in by
 Sloane, say, they are probably worth looking at.
 .
 Yes, the info is buried in the history, but for the big entries that is a
 jungle that is hard to navigate.
 .
 So I will continue to sign my refs and links, and I encourage all the
 editors to do the same thing.
 .
 Neil

Later, Russ Cox strengthened the assertion that we should use NJAS's format for these name/date tags:

 From: Russ Cox
 Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2013 06:49:40 -0800
 To: Communication list among associate editors of the OEIS
 Subject: Re: A controversial experiment
 .
 Please keep using the long text in the actual sequence data. Please don't
 introduce ambiguity into the underlying database by shortening these by
 hand. We can always tweak the way it gets displayed; ambiguities introduced
 into the database itself are harder to fix.