Note: This is an archive of past discussions. Current discussions are at User talk:Espresso Addict
Helen Baker [email protected]
After a few days incommunicado, I find that the entry about me in wikipedia has been deleted. Can I ask you please to reconsider for the following reasons.
1. I am not an academic and have never claimed to be (just teaching at a university does not make me an academic!). One person commented about WP:PROF. Quite inappropriate. I am practical and experience-based, which is much rarer. Nor am I writing on academic subjects. No academic would have had the experience to write on the parts of finance I cover, like the female perspective or expatriate life. When I write seriously on language learning, it is with a humorous slant which would be totally unacceptable to publishing houses where academic learning and jokes are dealt with by departments which are not on speaking terms with each other. 2. I am criticised for using Lulu. I earn far more per book from Lulu than I ever did from Penguin or could from any other publisher. Another example of my practicality. 3. I have never paid a penny to see my name in print – quite the contrary. But, even if it had been vanity publishing, history is full of great authors who paid for themselves, like Proust. 4. Publishers are interested in huge sales and huge profits but that is no guarantee of quality. 5. The people who decided to close the entry about me have no idea how many books I sell or how wide is my readership. The internet shortcircuits the traditional role of the reviewer. 6. They cannot deny that I cover an unusually broad range of subjects nor infer from it that I must know little about any of them. 7. Maybe only 15 libraries still hold my 1993 Penguin book, but they are in 7 different countries (and in 4 continents), while it was only published in 2! 8. All your reviewers seem male, US, academic-biased; Wikipedia will be much impoverished if they are allowed to take over. 86.77.136.33 (talk) 18:07, 28 December 2008 (UTC)