rejected sequences

[Michael Somos]

Dear seqfans

Neil has ( implicitly ) brought up important issues. They are:

Q1. What is the reason for existence of the EIS?
Q2. Who is responsible for adding to and maintaining EIS?
Q3. What rules or criteria are used for accepting a new entry?
Q4. What standards are used for accepting modifications to an entry?

It would be very desirable for good answers to these questions to be
made available. Here is my brief version which are my own conjectures.

A1. Neil J. A. Sloane wanted to have a reference list of interesting
    sequences for his own use. It grew and grew.
A2. Neil J. A. Sloane is the person responsible for additions to and
    modifications to the EIS. There may be examples of delegation.
A3. This is based primarily on scientific interest. Published sequences
    are especially welcome. Unpublished sequences are suitable if they
    are of publishable quality.
A4. Typos and inconsistencies should be reported. Duplications should
    be consolidated. Evidence of numerical verification is welcome.

In my opinion, EIS could work somewhat like the model of a journal. It
could have editors and referees. The purpose of referees is to have an
independent check of the validity of information supplied. Checking on
everything would be tedious, but would be nice to do. In other words,
a sequence entry is like a little article in a journal.

Junk sequences, like junk DNA and junk food, is just junk. They lower
the value of the database. I would prefer to deal with only higher
quality sequences. There is no sharp dividing line, but there has to
be some lines drawn to prevent severe loss of value. This reminds me
of the analogy to the WWW with the proliferation of web servers.

Left open is the big question "What is an integer sequence?"

-- 
Michael Somos <somos at grail.cba.csuohio.edu>     Cleveland State University
http://grail.cba.csuohio.edu/~somos/            Cleveland, Ohio, USA 44115