User talk:Chris Day/Archive 9

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The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.	The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022. Useful links on Citizendium Myths and Facts Biology Workgroup How to get started How to Edit The current policy outline Forums for discussion Biology forum News Community blog

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Definitions of redirects

When I previewed, all seemed to work as I intended. Clearly, they didn't for you. What were the symptoms? Was I running into some restriction on non-alphanumeric characters? Howard C. Berkowitz 22:04, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Just went to the top of the article rather than the appropriate section. Chris Day 22:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

What do I need to do differently? I had, I thought, written REDIRECT [[Article title#Section heading]] Howard C. Berkowitz 22:56, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

You are not wrong. But you have a special character in the three most recent cases. While "#Sarnoff's Law" and "#Sarnoff.E2.80.99s_Law" are look the same when viewed in a hyperlink on the screen they do not behave the same in a redirect, at least not in my browser. The latter redirects to the subsection, as we want, but the former stalls at the top of the article. Chris Day 04:19, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Nutritional medicine

If you are going to redirect, why not to the more specific level of the subheading "Nutritional medical techniques"? I suppose that subhead could be renamed "nutritional medicine", although at some point, it will be a full article. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:37, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I just used what was already there. i agree it should go to the more specific heading. Chris Day 19:40, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

the importance of adding an asterisk

Thanks, Chris! I still baffled by all this, however. And how that single asterisk turns everything right, is a pure mystery to me! But thanks again! (Did you see my "cri de coeur" the Forum?) Hayford Peirce 19:38, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

On the wiki one line break is not seen as a line break at all. However any type of indent will then force a line break. If you want a line break without an indent you will need to have two line breaks. I suspect this strange arrangement is to allow code, such as </ref> to exist on its own line (for clarity) without actually causing line breaks in the text. Chris Day 19:44, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help in various places. I have printed your Forum reply and will study it; will also study your various moves on the various article pages and try to figure out what has been done and why. Eventually, if I can grasp things for myself, I'll see if maybe I can make the Related Articles instructions clearer. (I remember when I got my first MS-DOS computer in 1984 and it came with an enormous binder from Microsoft with so-called instructions in it -- I was literally reduced to tears at one point. Even a year or so later, when I had become pretty adept at using DOS, the friggin' book was *still* a mystery!) Hayford Peirce 20:42, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Are those to be earnest asterisks? Howard C. Berkowitz 20:44, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

An example of why one line break alone does not interrupt the text on a wiki:

If I write:

Organic chemicals<ref>An important reference here</ref> are the basis for life as we know it.

or

Organic chemicals<ref>An important reference here
</ref> are the basis for life as we know it.

They will both appear like the following text in the wiki:

Organic chemicals are the basis for life as we know it.

Hmmm...one can visit San Francisco, not Silicon Valley, and infer from some observation that silicone may be the basis for some life. Must be those silicon-oxygen bonds. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

You must be thinking of Carol Doda and the Condor Club.... Hayford Peirce 17:42, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Two of San Francisco's greatest landmarks -- which we visited on honeymoon #2. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:15, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I visited it around '65 with my Tahitian wife. Did you see, many years later, the absolutely grotesque story of what happened one night at the club? The 350-lb manager and one of the little strippers were having fun after hours, strung out on coke, I guess, on top of the piano that mounted up to the ceiling on some sort of hoisting device. She was lying on top of him. The piano got set into motion; she was crushed to death between the ceiling and the guy. Really weird. For years I tried to cast a story around it that I could sell to EQMM or AHMM but could never find the handle.... PS in French, the club would be the Con d'Or, which has an entirely different, yet somewhat apropos, meaning. Hayford Peirce 18:37, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The dancers were so delighted at being visited for newlyweds that they were buying us drinks. I knew enough to limit my intake, and also had the body mass to metabolize them. Eventually, I am told, I was the only man ever invited into the ladies' room of the club, but it was a rescue mission.

Unfortunately, the next morning, she did not take my advice that Eggs Benedict are not good things when one is hung over. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:52, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

But I was there

In Cardiff last year for the Grand Sslam match against France! Ticket was a Christmas present... of course before the season had started. :-)Gareth Leng 22:02, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

AIS disambiguation

It seems amusing to think of androgen insensitivity and gender in the context of commercial fisheries, in which the gender of some of the catches can be a rather pliable thing. You are right, however, to disambiguate the abbreviation, regardless of how ambiguous the gender of some marine invertebrates may be. :>; Howard C. Berkowitz 18:52, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments about the sub-workgroup proposal in your User talk:Chris Day/sandbox1

Chris, I just want to let you know that I have posted comments in your User talk:Chris Day/sandbox1. Milton Beychok 23:42, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Re: your note on my talk page

>Sekhar, Just to note that the approval process is not exactly transparent. It would be great if you >have any ideas on how to make it more user friendly. Your NMR article looks great. Chris Day 16:21, >17 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I could have just ASKED someone. But I am reticent by nature and I tried to find the procedure for nomination in the 'dive in' instructions.

The procedure seems fine (now that I know what to do). It may be helpful to others if you could add the following to the end of the 'article mechanics' section in 'dive in' "....leave a message on those editors' talk pages and invite them to take a look and see if they might be ready to approve the article. You can also use the mailing lists to see if you can get others to take a look. When you all agree, then use the metadata template! ....D. Matt Innis 15:56, 17 January 2009 (UTC) " Thanks for the encouragement and help.

Sekhar Talluri 18:14, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Darwin's Health

It seems odd to describe the health of a dead person, pretty much a one line article (lol). Have you considered retitling of this article? Darwin's mystery illness? What killed Darwin? or something like that? David E. Volk 21:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the title is final. It was a title that Larry made as a stop gap to stop the topic dominating the main article. Chris Day 21:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

On the bright side, one can safely say that it will be never necessary to deliver bad news about declining health to a corpse. True story -- we had a very good surgical pathologist at Georgetown, who, knowing a patient was scheduled for a biopsy, would sometimes visit with the intent of getting insight from history and physical. Some patients didn't know what pathologists did, so didn't mind. Others really understood and liked the idea.

We had a couple, however, leap out of bed and run down the hall screaming I don't want an autopsy! Howard C. Berkowitz 21:54, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

except for the untimely dealth of the patient, the procedure went extremely well.

David E. Volk 21:56, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Seen this?

• Darwin's Gift electronic flip-book of essays written for The Lancet  :-) Gareth Leng 11:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Hayford Peirce internet link

Hi Chris, I just discovered a few days ago that the link no longer worked; evidently it was at some sort of AOL storage and, being AOL, they suddenly just folded up that particular shop with no warning to anyone. I've emailed the guy who created the original site asking if he has founded a new one, but have had no reply. :( Hayford Peirce 16:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Template

Chris, in Rubidium I see °C in the wrong font. It is hidden in a template so I cannot change it.--Paul Wormer 16:57, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

It should be a regular-sized roman capital, now it is too small. --Paul Wormer 17:54, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

It is OK now, thanks. --Paul Wormer 18:07, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Never before having thought of warfarin as a source of improv comedy

I was persuaded otherwise when you managed to connect it to the Great Depression, and wait, with bated breath, to see if you also connect serotonin agonists to the Great Depression.

Nevertheless, the trend continues with your last tweak; not many people can do a bibliographically correct link to Link. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:29, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

1. P-KR3

I noticed that one of your links in the "Chess Strategy/Related Articles" list was "Opening (chess)". There already exists a page at "Chess opening". What's your pleasure -- should the article be renamed and moved, or should the link in "Related Articles" be changed to point to the existing article? Bruce M.Tindall 21:22, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks. (It's not my naming convention, by the way -- "Chess opening" was already there, and I think it was originally titled by Jonathan Bashears.) Bruce M.Tindall 21:38, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Ideal gas law approval just finished by Matt

Chris, I note that:

• You had to jog the protected version of the article to get it to display in the workgroups (which you also had to do recently on another approved) article. Does that mean that, from now on, you will have to jog protected versions of approved articles? Is there not some way that Matt can do that when he protects the approved article so that it all gets done at one time?

• The protected version lists the workgroup and subgroup categories at the bottom of the main article page. However, the bottom of the main page of the draft article does not show the categories. Instead it displays "Contents" and "Tags" and most of them are red ... the only blue ones ar "All content" and "Chemical Engineering tag". Why is that?

Confused as to why the workgroup and subgroup categories don't also show at bottom of the draft main article page ??? Milton Beychok 01:43, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

First, no the jogging only needs to occur if the metadata is set to approved AFTER the article is protected. We must set up a protocol for approval that has the final edits and protection being on the article page.

Second, I striped the draft page of the categories since they served no purpose. The approved categories replicated the draft categories. Also every article name in the category ended with "/Draft" that is unsightly, so there is a very good reason to stick with the approved categories on the main article. Also bear in mind our readers will read the main article. Historically the old /Draft categories was actually a kludge solution to allow recent changes on the draft version to be tracked. However we now have the tags which are far more efficient and are used to track all change in any given workgroup seen by clicking on "recent changes" in the workgroup (or subgroup) page header. If you would like the categories visible it will be possible to have them at the top of each draft page. That might even be preferable?

Of course, I am only one user, but I do think making the categories visible somewhere on the Draft main article page is desirable. When I click on one of the "Tags" (e.g., Engineering tag), I am presented with a verrrry, verrrry long list of articles including all the cluster subpages ... when all I want is a list of the article main pages like I am presented with when I click on a category (e.g., Engineering Workgroup). I repeat that is my single opinion. Milton Beychok 04:47, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Lastly, the tag categories are still red links (and the content ones) because we have not systematically populated those pages. Hold off on that since I need to tweak the workgroup template so that the appropriate text appears at the top of each page. The ones that have been done, notably the Category:Biology tag, have been set up manually, rather than automatically. I'll fix this soon. i am still trying to figure out how the tag categories can be 'hidden' since they are only meant to be utilized by the workgroup "recent changes" option, not by users for browsing. Chris Day 04:17, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

two baffling items that I'm trying to REMOVE the delete status from....

Hi Chris,

I just cleaned up the entire Articles to Delete page -- all the articles except one or two had had Requests for Deletion from various Editors in the relevant Workgroups. A couple of them I reclassified, I think, and are still in existence.

Two of them, however, baffle me. Larry wondered about deleting them a long time ago but they look relevant to me and have been worked on. What I WANT to do is to simply remove any Delete Request notice. But I can't find a request *anywhere* -- I have looked over and over everywhere. And I inserted a null, saved. Removed it, resaved it, and that didn't change anything.

On the http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Articles_for_deletion page, those two items *still* show up! It's driving me crazy!

Help!

Hayford

Thank you for the sandbox information!

Bruce M.Tindall 00:37, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

About the Talk Page Etiquette

The MediaWiki source code Matt and you wrote is protected so we peons can't make any changes ... not that I am complaining, because I think you did a superlative job.

I would only suggest that the third column (titled Replies should be indented:) might be better if it read: Indent beneath the comment you are replying to by using colons :, ::, ::: and so forth as more replies are added.

My suggestion adds 5 words but it avoids inferring that replies go beneath all of the other comments. Milton Beychok 10:07, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

And it doesn't really change the appearance, either, since the second instruction, about using the "+ tab" already takes up more vertical space. Hayford Peirce 16:16, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm always open to input. :) Chris Day 16:22, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Templates, particularly infoboxes

Hi Chris, I am writing to you because you deleted Template:Template doc which I was about to use via optic tectum. I am considering to move over several articles on brain parts and species from WP. Some of the templates used in there appear to be helpful to me but I did not find guidelines on the principles used here to distinguish between templates that are desirable and those that are not. Please take a look at optic tectum (and xenopus laevis which I have stopped working on for the same template-related reasons). Thanks! --Daniel Mietchen 11:27, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I forget why i deleted it. I think it was because the structure in WP was a mess. There was a lot of history with adhoc changes, many redirects for example. It seemed better for us to start from scratch. Let me look at the details again and I'/ll try to build what you need. Chris Day 16:22, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Help!!! At a loss about moving

I want to move the Piping cluster to Piping (engineering) and I am at a loss because:

• The Move Cluster link that used to be on Talk pages (I think) is no longer to be found
• Clicking on the Move tab at top of the article main page bring up the move page with radio buttons which now include an option for moving the Talk page and all the subpages along with the main page. But the move instructions have always said move all the subpages and the Metadata page before moving the main page and the talk page.

So I am confused. When do I move the Metadata page? Before or after I use those radio buttons that will move the main page plus the Talk page plus all the subpages??? Milton Beychok 22:48, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Good question. I have not figured out the best way given we can now move all the subpages and talk pages at once with the article. I suspect the best choice is to move the template first along with changing the pagename field in the template. Then move the original article (make sure you choose move associated talk page and move all associated subpages). I need to rewrite that move template as it is obsolete since the mediawiki was upgraded (the reason for the absence of the move clister link at the talk page). Chris Day 22:53, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Chris, the system would not accept moving the Metadata template first. It kept telling me there was no such page as Piping (engineering) even though I had revised the template to have the renamed title and abc.

So I went ahead and clicked on the Move tab at page top, and used the radio buttons option (that displayed on the Move page) to move the Main page and all of the subpages ... which the system did perfectly including the definition.

I then tried to re-edit the old Metadata template, but the system still would not accept that. So then, I just created a new Metadata template with the re-named article title. All is now well. In summary, I had to first move the main page and all the subpages. Then I had to create a new Metadata template.

I note that all of the old subpages still exist and are re-directed to the new subpages. I think that those old subpages should be deleted, don't you? Now that we have a disambiguation page, Piping (disambiguation), which is why the rename/move had to be made, those old subpages are going to be confusing since they appear in the pop-up menu when someone searches for Piping using the search box in the left-hand navigation section. Milton Beychok 00:02, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Mea culpa, mea culpa, and mea hypocaffeinosis

Apropos the deletion in EAS -- I fumblefingered and tried to explain in another note. Very insomniac night, and now I am caffeine deprived. If you can make sense of the logs and not lose the detailed information I did put in on more questionable allegations by a study author, feel free.

What happened is that I was doing a lengthy entry, didn't save, checked the watchlist, saw your comment, answered it, then went back, saw the other edit window, without engaging brain, saved. Howard C. Berkowitz 14:24, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Environmental Engineering subgroup

Chris, while we are waiting for the subgroup proposal in the new proposal queue, do you think we could go ahead and create an Environmental Engineering subgroup? I could populate it immediately with at least 6-7 articles including 1 approved article. What do you think? Milton Beychok 19:28, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

At worst we have to undo it. I'd say go ahead, lets' be optimistic here. Chris Day 19:31, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Great! Now, how do we do it? If you will set up the subgroup banner and whatever else is needed code-wise, I will immediately get those 6-7 articles into it by making the needed changes in their Metadata pages. We already have an Environmental engineering article that is needed as the main article. Milton Beychok 20:04, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Need your magic touch

Chris, I have added the Environmental Engineering subgroup to the Metadata templates of these five approved articles: Accidental release source terms, Air pollution dispersion modeling, Air pollution dispersion terminology, Air pollutant concentrations and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. All of them now list the the Environmental Engineering subgroup among the categories at the bottom of the protected Main Article as they should. But:

• Neither of the five protected approved articles or their draft articles are listed in the Environmental Engineering subgroup ... not in the Articles section nor in the Approved section. They need your magic touch (since I can't add a null space into the protected aricle).

• None of the five approved articles list the Chemical Engineering subgroup or the Environmental Engineering subgroup list as a category in small font at the top of the Main Article page of the draft article.

• In fact, none of the 18 approved articles in the Chemical Engineering subgroup list the Chemical Engineering subgroup as a category in small font at the top of the Main Article page of the draft article.

Can you apply your magic touch to the above listed 5 Environmental Engineering subgroup articles and to the 18 Chemical Engineering subgroup articles?

I know that you have notified Matt that he needs to revise his approval protocol but that doesn't help with the existing approved articles unless someone goes back to apply their magic touch to all of them. Perhaps what is needed is a robot to do that?? Milton Beychok 22:03, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I just added 5 more articles to the Environmental Engineering subgroup. They are articles not yet approved, so there were no problems with them. I just used that workaround of a adding a null space to get all of them to display in the Environmental Engineering subgroup after I edited the 5 Metadata templates. Milton Beychok 22:26, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes these are problems for the subgroup concept. On this scale it is little trouble but in the future when we have more approved article we need a way to address this. Chris Day 01:09, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

You are definitely a genius!! Everything seems to be working correctly now. I checked about 7 of the articles and they were all okay. Also, all of the draft and all of the non-draft articles are now showing correctly as they should in the Environmental Engineering subgroup. Now, I think I will try to draw a logo for the Environmental Engineering subgroup banner as I did for the Chemical Engineering subgroup. Thanks mucho again, Milton Beychok 03:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Some clean-up-the-workgroup questions

Hi Chris,

Trying to do some work on my poor neglected subpage and I've run into some snags. Well, maybe they're not snags at all, just things I don't understand.

1. At the bottom of the main article, there are Categories; I notice some red links: hobbies Content | Hobbies tag | Dogs tag | Dogs content. What are these and why are the red, i.e. should I be placing something there? I assume they are generated by Metadata? Why?

1. I figured out why Dog Editors was red even though I added myself to it. But, the category Dogs approved at the subgroup page is red, even though it has content (so I put a sentence in it. Delete that if it's wrong). Also a couple of approved dog articles do not show up in Dogs Approved.
2. What is the title 'All Articles' for?

Aleta Curry 01:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, one mystery solved. All articles was a bold title rather than a link because I was here (Category:Dogs Subgroup) not here (CZ:Dogs Subgroup). I think this CZ:Dogs Subgroup is home, but I don't exactly know what the other one is. I mean, that's where I was when I edited the editors category, and it worked. I gather I should really be editing from CZ:Dogs Subgroup Aleta Curry 01:10, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, CZ:Dogs Subgroup is home (equivalent to CZ:Hobbies Workgroup). The other one, (Category:Dogs Subgroup), is the category where all the articles in the subgroup are listed (equivalent to Category:Hobbies Workgroup). Does this make sense? Chris Day 02:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Approval of Evidence-based medicine

Okay, I changed the metadata first, then the article pages. Did that work better? I'm still not clear what was not showing up correctly? D. Matt Innis 02:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, what you just did worked fine. The problem before was that the approved category was getting added to the article after it was locked since the change in the metadata was toward the end of the process. Then, as no one could edit the locked article, the categories would not be updated (jogged, re-registered, whatever the technical term is?). I've been thinking about this issue and it's becoming a real problem.

Another potential solution, other than the script method I mentioned before, is to have ALL categories on the metadata page and have links to categories at the top of article pages, similar to what we currently have on the draft pages. That would require a category on the metadata template page to show up in a category with the articles name 'only' rather than "Template:Article name/Metadata". I suspect this is possible as categories on our talk pages only show up with the article name. I'll need to do some research.

The advantage of such a system is that edits to the metadata template designed to change the clusters categories would always become current since the categories are all registered by an edit to the metadata template. I'm not sure I'm being very coherent here. Chris Day 02:51, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Holy smokes, Chris, you must get headaches! I'm glad you can keep it all straight. I hope you know you can't die.. without cloning yourself :-D. Matt Innis 02:57, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll have to check into Roslin, along with Gareth. Chris Day 03:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Hehe.

Concerning your problem with the cats and considering the robotics of the approval process. Would it be easier to create a bot that does my part and your part so you don't have to change the categories to the metadata template? D. Matt Innis 15:17, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

That's the other option along with jogging every subpage after any change to the metadata. However, this is not very elegant and creates more background work for the servers. Chris Day 18:48, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Myron C. Lake article

if I'm going to be subject to changes like that, i.e., tearing out a whole section, then I'm outta here. I had that sh*t at Wikipedia, and I won't have it here. The gallery was one thing, but the entire appendix is unacceptable. lemme know, cause i will not finish the article if i have to put up with this again. S. W. Kolterman 06:21, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

S.W. Kolterman, please believe me when I say that Chris is really one of the most helpful and gracious people we have in Citizendium. I guess he assumed you understood the subpage system that is used here. It is one of the differences between us and WP. For example:

• We have no "See also" section. Instead, we have a "Related Articles" subpage.
• We have no "External links" section. Instead, we have an "External links" subpage.
• We have no "Bibliography section". Instead, we have a "Bibliography" subpage.

There also many other subpages, like "Tutorial", "Video", "Catalogs", etc. Chris simply moved your Appendix material into an "Addendum" subpage.

So please, shake hands with Chris ... and please stay here. It is all just a simple misunderstanding. I read your article and enjoyed it very much. Milton Beychok 08:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Look at my sandbox for small image that could be used for the Environmental Engineering subgroup banner

Chris, could the image on my sandbox be used in the banner for the Environmental Engineering subgroup page banner? It is meant to represent clean air, clean water and clean land. You can view it at User:Milton Beychok/Sandbox. If you don't like it, it won't hurt my feelings. What do you think of it? Milton Beychok 08:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Chris: Not having heard from you, do I take it that you don't want to use that image in the Environmenral Engineering subgroup banner? As I said before, I won't mind your not falling in love with the image ... but I would like to know, one way or the other. Milton Beychok 16:42, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Milt, I love the image, very stylish, just no time to get your banner done just yet. :) Chris Day 17:33, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I decided to place a copy of image here (so I could free up my sandbox) for you to use or not use as you see fit. Milton Beychok 06:48, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Core List

I guess I just edit first think later. I changed that list for a simple reason really - the worry about what someone looking in would think about our priorities. Gareth Leng 20:45, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with the changes. Just musing as to what we actually want to do with such lists. I guess i have not thought about it for a while and your edits jogged my memory of the issues i was wrestling with at the time i contributed to it. Chris Day 20:51, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

- that's the way to think :-) what's the purpose? Advertise our best and inspire by example must be a part of it. Gareth Leng 20:56, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Gareth, I couldn't agree more. There are many ways to be exemplary. They include coverage of subjects that simply aren't well covered elsewhere, of potentially substantial interest, and perhaps can make good use of our flexibility of original presentation rather than original research. If the topic is more specialized, good writing, cross-linking, and references can set an example, and one never knows where research will lead: I recently discovered that if one young man had taken one choice offered to him, he who was to become known as Ho Chi Minh might have been political revolution's loss and culinary arts' gain. As soon as I finish with one reference I must get back to the library, I'll probably allow Ho to lead me into some material on Auguste Escoffier.

Great effort in wonkology, however, can reflect on priorities, as well as what might be seen as political correctness. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:32, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Like you have nothing else to do....

Chris, when you have a mo, can you take a gander at Heterosis and make sure I haven't written anything embarrassing? (Or another biologist can as well). Aleta Curry 22:49, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

need help with a non-existent (but existent) speedy delete

Hi Chris, I need help with this (I'm copying a message that Bruce just left on my Talk page):

• Mysterious speedydelete on JFK/Related Articles

No, I didn't put a speedydelete on JFK/Related, but here's what probably happened. I noticed that the former "List of US Presidents" had been moved into the Catalogs subpage of the President article; but the Definition subpage of "List..." still existed. Since it had no "main article" to belong to, I thought it should be speedydeleted, so I put the template on the Definition subpage. But then, when editing "JFK/Related," I noticed that that page links to "List of US Presidents" (which is now a redirect to "Pres./Catalog", and uses the {r} template, so it tries to display the defintion -- which, now, included a speedydelete template (which showed up in the middle of JFK/Related). This isn't very pretty, so I removed the template from "List/Definition". But apparently the fact that the "speedydelete" showed up briefly on "JFK/Related" somehow got it listed on the speedydelete list.

Whew. Got all that? Bruce M.Tindall 20:36, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Chris -- this is *way* over my head! Hayford Peirce 20:44, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Question about subpages

Chris, I started Hermite polynomials and prepared a table of these functions. For the being I put them in Hermite polynomial/Catalogs, but I wonder if that's the right subpage?--Paul Wormer 09:28, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Good question, another possible one is Addendum. Chris Day 13:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I moved the table to Addendum, now Catalogs is redundant. --Paul Wormer 13:52, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Archive box formatting

Yes, that would be preferable! I didn't know that it existed, I just copied what I found in an earlier Archive. Thanks! Hayford Peirce 19:58, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Can you please fix the mess I made?

I was trying to move Department of Commerce to U.S. Department of Commerce and made a complete mess of it after I mis-spelled the new name. I see that you fixed the move for me. But now I cannot access the Metadata page to see if reflects the move ... I keep getting a blank page instead of the Metadata template. Please Help. Milton Beychok 22:07, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Chris, I really want to learn how to move a cluster to a new name. Now that we no longer have the cluster link on the Talk pages, exactly what is the order in which to make a move? Or is there some CZ page that has been updated to spell it out correctly? Please spell it out so that a simpleton like me can follow it without messing up again. Milton Beychok 23:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

This is near the top of my to do list. Let me practice and see what works best. Chris Day 01:06, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

blahblahblah licenses

Someone is going to have to figure out the copyright issues associated with the topics that Stephen left undone. I'm willing to put some time into it but don't know if I can finish it. In any case, the first step is to point the upload text somewhere other than blahblahblah. Could you make the adjustments? Just point them to an appropriate sounding location and we'll figure it out from there. --Joe Quick 22:38, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, thank goodness, Joe, I have been worried about those, too. Thanks. If you need me for something, let me know. I'm sorry I can't help much with copyrights, but hopefully you can fill that niche! D. Matt Innis 02:16, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Subpages and uncategorized articles

I've been inching my way through uncategorized articles, putting in subpages. Should I be using a different page for problem articles?

There are a huge number of uncategorized subpages for elements, which clearly belong to chemistry. I'm not sure how the subpages should look. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

A question

Chris, I want to write an article about "concentration" which will explain the various methods of expressing concentrations, such as: percentage by weight, percentage by volume, ppm by weight, ppm by volume, molarity, molality, mole fraction, mass per volume ( e.g., mg of particulates per cubic metre of air, or grams of salt per litre of water), etc., etc.

It will not be [[Concentration (chemistry]] or [[Concentration (physics)]] or any of the many other non-science usages of the word such as "intense mental focus", "the spatial property of being crowded (e.g., compactness, denseness)", "convergence", etc.

I know it will require a disambiguation page. Now about my question: I would like to name the article just plain [[Concentration]] and have a pointer at the top that says "For other meanings, see [[Concentration (disambiguation]]" which would list [[Concentration (chemistry)]], [[Concentration (physics)]], Concentration as in intense mental focus, Concentration as in the spatial property of being crowded, etc. Is that okay in CZ? If so, how do I create that [[Concentration (disambiguation page]]? Milton Beychok 08:56, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

AN- > Related Articles > Masterlist

Noted; I can live with that as long as I remember it is there. The problem, for which there is no instant solution, is that certain articles (subpages?) have a substantial role as what I'll call "indexing nodes" rather than free-standing articles. AN/ is a little different in that it also has content about the designation system; I don't know if some of the dog list "headers" also have content. There is an awkward terminology nuance in computer science that describes the idea: a tree only has content at its terminal leaves, while a trie (alas, pronounced "tree") can have content at nonterminal nodes.

At least for this particular subpage, an ideal, obviously related to programming, is to have an automatic mechanism that creates an r-template entry every time a new "links to AN-" article is created. Of course, this has to be manual for now. Howard C. Berkowitz 09:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

You don't need to remember were it lives as when you click on the edit option in the related articles page it takes you to the masterlist. This is true for any cluster where it might live. Chris Day 09:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

lemme concentrate on this for a moment or so

Hi Chris, Shouldn't Concentration be deleted and only a disambig page exist? This is very confusing. Or are you in the process of straightening this out? Hayford Peirce 19:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Every time I see it, I think "whack-a-mole" while the mole is munching on Avogadros. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Milt has an article he will move to concentration. I was testing it since i noticed the R template was not working correctly. When i modified the R template I was anticipating that an article would not exist if there was a disambiguation page. However, this policy got changed to 'if there is a really common usage it should live at the article name AND have a disambiguation page for the other terms'. i need to reprogram the R template to be able to "See" that scenario.

In short, we do not really have a standard for disambiguation, I'll try and write a short description of how I interpret our 'standard' and see if this works for everyone else. I think this could be one of those issues where there are two philosophical camps, so we probably need to move carefully. As to Concentration, I'll deleted those test pages. Chris Day 19:18, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Are you trying to tell me disambiguation has to be disambiguated? Howard C. Berkowitz 19:33, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation is definitely ambiguous but given time we should have an unambiguous disambiguation procedure. Unless we find examples of disambiguation that do not fit into a one size fits all process. In that case we could have a disambiguation page to help us understand the ambiguities of disambiguation. But I'm pretty sure we can have a very unambiguous disambiguation process if people are willing to compromise. Or maybe not. Maybe we should start warming up the disambiguation page for disambiguation? Chris Day 20:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Redirect disambiguation to Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Alternatively, redirect disambiguation to disambiguation (disambiguation) and redirect disambiguation (disambiguation) to disambiguation. Chris Day 20:27, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

You guys are kidding, right? Right? RIGHT?! Hayford Peirce 22:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

You think this is a laughing matter? ;) Chris Day 00:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion Request page changes

Hi Chris, could you take a look at the http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Speedy_Deletion_Requests page to see if the editing, changes, and additions I put in are correct -- I wanted to make this as clear as possible for the next poor victim who stumbles across it.... Thanks! Hayford Peirce 01:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's a distinct improvement! Thanks! Hayford Peirce 17:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Subgroup proposal

Hi, Chris: I note that the subgroup proposal is now listed as a New proposal at CZ:Proposals/New. I also note thatCZ:Proposals/Editorial Council lists Active proposals before the Editorial Council (many of which have been sitting there over six months).

How does a New proposal get to be an Active proposal? Also, why are those Active proposals still sitting there without the Editorial Council being notified to vote on them? Who is responsible for moving Active proposals to a vote?

I'm not complaining ... I'm just trying to understand how the proposal system works and you are my fount of all knowledge. Milton Beychok 08:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Not in this area, I try and stay away from governance issues. Now I'll have to dip my toe in the water. Chris Day 08:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I asked these same questions on Larry Sangers' Talk page. In one of his responses, he explains how you move your New subgroup proposal to the Active proposal list. I suggest that you read what he said at here. Milton Beychok 20:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

When it has been moved to Active status and then needs a Sponsor, just let me know. I'll sponsor it in the blink of an eye. Milton Beychok 20:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm comfortable defending what we currently have. Having just glanced through the rules I now see i could have sponsored this myself, or am responsible for finding a proposer. i think it's better to have an separate sponsor and driver so thanks for volunteering as sponsor. Chris Day 21:11, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I might add that I am more than willing to be named as a co-driver or a sponsor or both if it will help to move the proposal along. Milton Beychok 23:31, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Me, too. I'll help put it into form. But for right now, I'm working on Noel's disambiguation proposal here and here. Chris, could you take a look at it and give me your advice? I was thinking that we'd keep Noel as at least honorary sponsor. I'd be willing to co-sponsor. Would you co-sponsor, too? Russell D. Jones 01:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Almost

I think we are almost done. We just need the to resolve whether affiliation occurs before/after Main Article approval. OR we can send it as is and let the ed council debate it. Russell D. Jones 15:17, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you want to send it? Russell D. Jones 18:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Move

Thanks for the explanation. I realised that was what you were doing - I had thought the box was already ticked but clearly not. Ro Thorpe 19:06, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I can't believe I forgot

Shucks, sorry about NMR!!! Old habits die hard! D. Matt Innis 03:37, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

No problem, i didn't even think to mention it. Chris Day 03:39, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunate metaphor?

How can you speak of making genetic engineering "live"? I might go with in vitro and in vivo. For dead genetic engineering, I think you have to get trained in Haiti. Howard C. Berkowitz 05:52, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

With respect to the article, it is barely live. But I'm working on bring on-line these externals. As for creating life, you need to read Science more. i think they are close to the first synthetic organism. With a goal to producing the minimal autonomous cell, i.e. the smallest set of genes required for successful replication. I'm sure there are all sorts of ethical issues that will blow up in their face but live, in this case, might be appropriate.

How about the deep south? I heard New Orleans, Louisiana had voodoo? Although, if that were the case, why didn't they use their powers to divert Katrina. Hmmm... on the other hand, may be they created her? But that would debunk the truth, the CIA were seeding hurricanes with IR rays in the Gulf of Mexico to increase their energy. Chris Day 05:57, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah...New Orleans has much better food. Go there. Apropos of CIA, did you see that I put up the start of thought reform?

Hah! You biological types think you have? What are the ethics of turning off a self-aware computer?

Biological trivia question that you might, possibly, be able to answer. As I remember, it was the Asilomar conference that established what are today's Biological Safety Level standards. My nagging recollection is that they established six hazard levels, 5 and 6 being too dangerous to attempt. Again from nagging memory, P6 was introducing the encoding for Type A Cl. botulinum exotoxin into normal enteric E. coli. If so, what was an example of P5? Howard C. Berkowitz 06:04, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I think you might be thinking of the governments implementation of the recommendations that came from the conference. See the hyperlink to ref that I just added to our Asilomar Conference stub.Chris Day 06:14, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Much closer. This has the four categories, although not the "Pn" nomenclature I remember. There is, however, "These include the cloning of recombinant

DNAs derived from highly pathogenic organisms (i.e., Class III, IV, and V etiologic agents as classified by the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare), DNA containing toxin genes, and large scale experiments (more than 10 liters of culture) using recombinant DNAs that are able to make products potentially harmful to man, animals, or plants." Howard C. Berkowitz 06:32, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I read that section but it did not seem to match with what you remembered. i suspect your memory is correct but it has been through so many revisions that the specific examples got cut and replaced with more general classes. Chris Day 06:36, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Again from vague recollection, Michael Crichton may have picked up on P6 when he came up with the Andromeda Strain premise that certain containment had to have a nuclear self-destruct. (rolls eyes) before the formal BSL series were established, I worked for a company bought by Electronucleonics, which had a multiple-negative-pressure containment for oncogenes. We did the virology information systems. When the lab opened, it was a big show -- no organisms in it. Unfortunately, the telephone lines hadn't been connected, so I had to patch my demo into the one working pay phone -- and then get through two airlocks (the negative pressure system was running) to log in before the call disconnected. Howard C. Berkowitz 06:40, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

The

My copy (OUP) is "The Origin of Species"; the original title was "On The etc". My instinct is that "The Origin if Species" is defensible as the commonly known book title. I had a similar moment thinking about "The Design of Experiments", felt that including the The marks it as an article about the book not the topic. Gareth Leng 09:22, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Note

Yes, Chris, just Dalton. I'll set my preferences and signatures straight away. So far I am surveying the pages to get familiar with Citizendium. I hope in a couple of days I'll be able to start contributing in a more active way. Thanks for the warm welcome. Dalton Holland Baptista 18:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Lol, I had seen it already. Naming conventions have been a pretty hot subject on Wiki. Yes, I'll post some thoughts there later. Actually this was my first concearn as picking a name is the first step when writing an article thus I wanted to know if there was any convention already in use before anything else. Dalton Holland Baptista 19:08, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Chris, I have started this Leptotes article, based upon this article, that is halfway done on pt-wiki which I decided would be a good start to finish writing here as it will never really be finished there and, so far, just lays on my user subpage as a sketch. So I do have a question concearning keeping hidden sections of the text while I translate it. Is it possible? <!-- --> don't seem to work here. Well, I still need to upload the English spell checker of Firefox too, but I am ready to any comment you may think is useful. Thanks, Dalton Holland Baptista 21:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure where you tried it but it is definitely possible to comment out using the <!-- text here not seen --> format. Chris Day 03:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

It's good to see your adjustments on the article, although it is just a sketch. Yet I'm sure it will need plenty of English language fixing when it's done, I haven't even checked it so far. Thanks Dalton Holland Baptista 03:20, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Navigation, etc

Wow Chris, this will help a lot. It is very good to have a handy example to start with. A lot of work you put on that. Well, I'll study the possibilities and think what's the best we can have. The taxobox itself is a sort of second navigation box, so it will also help with higher taxa. When I started on WP I did things one way but soon found another easier one to navigate. My later articles on WP used to have a navbox box at the end with the species (and sections if there was any) list. See one example expanding the genus Coelogyne tag at the end of thia article. On the other hand, something that is very useful and I got frequent and great feedback, was the possibility of browsing the species not through only their names but they by their thumbnais. This is good because the primary visitors to this kind of article look for identification of a plant before they want to know more about it. Sure they want more info but at first they want to know what it is. I maintain another website I am not updating anymore which can be browsed by photos (see). I'll make a couple of different articles to get used to the system here to see how it works before having any suggestions.

Now, regarding the taxobox itself. Sure it is inspired on WP. As is was already there when I came I never really thought of it but maybe we can make some adjustments and have our own improved system. I haven't thought much about this as it was impractical changing WP. I just ask myseld if we do really need to have the whole classification of every species, from the root, creating sometimes very long taxoboxes, of if it is better split them at familia level, so familias will have cassification up to the root and species, only familia, subfamilies, tribes, genera, sections, etc. In some Pleurothallidinae and Oncidiinae species, there will be up to 15 ranks to display and they will be repeated thousands anf thousands of times. Well, just thinking.

Is there any taxonomist group working on CZ? I see the Biology group but that is too wide to discuss these detais and most of the people probably won't care about them.

Well, my last thoughts are about naming conventions. I have placed a lot of thinking about this on WP and have researched many diferent languages discussions. I suppose spliting discussion in two groups, fauna and flora, will make it easier to get to a consensus. This happens because fauna has a sort of better established common name convention. Flora has none. Regarding flora, French, Spanish and Italian WP are doing all articles named after scientific name. English WP has been doing so during the last 3 years. I am firmly convinced scientific names are much better. Reasons are several, but I'll mention the main ones:

• For uniformity and organization of all articles creating a standartization that soon any user can get used too.
• Because users who want to learn about a given species will like to know their scientific name.
• Because scy names always have good primary sources of info and types.
• Scy names have do not vary anywhere in the world and foreigners always will look for these names rather than common ones (We must remember English is the world language now and people from all nations will use CZ, these are not likely to know most of English common names.)
• Because, if anytime CZ becomes multilanguage, all articles in every language will have the same names.
• Because many plants do not have common names and many have several, and because many common names refer to several unrelated plants.
• Because most of the times there is no good reference for common plants names.
• Because comprehensive good books use less and less common names today to name their chaptere and none of my taxonomist friends anywhere ever mention them, they do not even know most of them.
• Because we do have the redirects (we are not print on paper, where this cannot happen) and desambig pages that clearify confusions can be separated from articles making then cleaner and straighter.
• (and, particularly on orchids, they are not used almost anywhere but on WP, because of the rules and votings of people who do not know anything about them but want the common names to be used.)

Well, I just arrived so have to learn how things are settled and working before saying much. Back to work now! Thanks a lot for all your support. Dalton Holland Baptista 16:40, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

A quick response, our related articles subpage is pretty much equivalent to your use of the navbox. Our taxobox has been tweeked a little compared to WP (Kim did it) mainly to try and simplify a bit. With subages we have options not available to wikipedia to display much of the ancillary data e.g. the gallery tab and subpage. With regard to names, you're preaching to the choir here, although i am in the minority. We did not really resolve the problem, see CZ talk:Biology Workgroup for a bit of the discussion. Chris Day 17:29, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Chris, I haven't done much today besides reading, during the last three hours, all the naming debates I could find. It's sort of sad that addopting scy names for all species articles isn't an unanimity here. When I first read about CZ I was pretty sure that other possibilities wouldn't even be thought about, scy names are the only reasonable way to go! claims that people would not find their way to the articles are not reasonable. I do not know almost any scy names of animals and probably would be the one looking for parrot before getting to the species I want to know about, so what is the problem? internet users know how to find they way. Oh, well... as the discussion has been dropped for a while I suppose the choir will raise volume when more taxonomists get involved with the project. I'm afraid I'll have problems finding a good common English name for my orchid articles as they are hardly (if) ever mentioned on the hundreds of books I have (all in English). Only Withner uses common names, some that he created himself, as he wanted to have common names on his book. I have no idea where En-WP people look for to come up with all those odd names to orchids. For sure no one uses common names for any orchids in Brazil, orchids are not garden plants and the ones who collect or like them do not use common names at all (maybe with some exceptions in the US?). I am thinking of naming all orchid articles by scy names and if any of them need to be changed to the common name, someone can do it later. Anyway you know well the problem so I said enough. I liked a lot the leptotes gallery you've done, I'm really excited with the possibilities. I also fear it will be a little bit odd when I start writing several orchid articles while so many more important articles are lacking but my best contribution will be on this subject. I am also thinking of setting a page, maybe on my own userpage, while botany project or whatever closer to it doesn't start, explaining the taxonomy options will be used so anyone willing to discuss it, or just writing articles, may have a guide. Well, that's it for now. cheers Dalton Holland Baptista 05:53, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Category question

Do you know if there is a way to view a list of articles that are all in the same multiple different workgroups? I'm imagining a Venn diagram of two different categories that overlap on certain articles. I want a list of the overlapping topics.

Subworkgroups might accomplish this once they are set up, I suppose, but I'm looking for something in the short term. This would allow us to identify a subset of articles (like history of science) that a given editor might approve or that a given author might like to work on. --Joe Quick 18:29, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Military history desperately needs this; military law very well might. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

See my reply on Joe's talk page. Chris Day 19:01, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I had been thinking specifically of history of science because I believe Russell Potter and Richard Jensen both prepared articles that could be approved in short order by Russell Jones, who does history of science. In fact, that is how John Logie Baird made it into the list of articles currently nominated for approval.

Obviously, people like Dr. Jones can do all sorts of approvals, but to preempt (unfounded but probable) outsider criticism, I'd like to see as many articles as possible be approved by very qualified people. It also helps us suggest easy starting points for new editors and authors.

I guess I haven't thought too much about what else I would want to see. I'll give it some thought now. A bot that can suggest commonly paired categories would be useful; do you know how to do that? --Joe Quick 00:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

In the mean time, site specific Google searches work relatively well. See this search, for example. --Joe Quick 00:22, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Stand-alone "Related Articles"

Is it possible and permissible to create a "Related Articles" page for a topic that has no main article, no definition, no metadata, no nothin'? For example, some months ago an author wrote a bunch of bios of NASCAR drivers, which are at present "orphaned" articles. There is no article "NASCAR," but if it did exist, its parent topic might be "Sports" and among its children topics would be all of those bios, and then they would be reachable from a top-level article and thus no longer be orphaned.

So, could one create a page called "NASCAR/Related Articles" without causing a huge mess?

(Not that I'm at all interested in NASCAR; this is just a real-life example of some orphaned articles.) Thanks. Bruce M.Tindall 18:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes. You describe exactly one of the reasons it can be done. The parent topics, I suppose, would be Sports (Automobile racing?) and Engineering (automobiles/high-performance automobiles).

GO to Subject/Related Articles. I'd encourage at least introductory text, above "Parent topics", explaining this is standalone and why. Of course, you can quickly add by writing a brief Definition, then opening the article page, typing the SUBPAGES template, and get the minimalist "lemma article". This can always be converted later to a full article — I know very little about car racing, but I understand the history of the NASCAR organization, as distinct from the races, is quite interesting. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:47, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I stand corrected; the lemma process now requires a bit more. Write NASCAR/DEfinition; open NASCAR, type in SUBPAGES, save; click on "create metadata template" and do the minimum (categories do make sense); then click Related Articles once the cluster shows up. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

The "create metadata template" link should only be used if you are intending to create a cluster. If you just want the lemma then that link should be ignored. This is still an idea evolving so please make suggestions to improve the usability. Chris Day 19:32, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I kind of like doing it this way. Observe that some of the wordiest articles have no definition. It's good discipline to be forced to define first. While I no longer regard metadata as optional, I recognize that isn't universal.

For me, doing a definition, then doing Workgroups and then Related Articles, sharpens my brain when I return to the main page. Your Mileage May Vary. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:03, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I need to think some more. Another issue is quaternary definitions that milt likes to create. These are definitions of a subsubpage. See the example here and all the related articles he has pointing to it. It works but the subpages template does not like it too much. It sees it as being a "definition only" although it is within a cluster.

On one hand I want to give people the flexibility to catalog and experiment as they please. On the other hand, I don't want the subpages template to become too complex. Mmm... maybe that horse has already bolted. How about this, I don't want it to become unmanageable, and it is close to that now. More often I am finding the different needs start to collide. At some point I need to do another slimming down redesign to get rid of the bloated code. Chris Day 20:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Citation templates

Chris, perhaps this is something that you can correct? CZ:Citation templates lists and has examples of the citation templates.

Four of them, namely Cite Journal, Cite Conference, Cite Encyclopedia and Cite News Article, result in displaying black quotation marks (i.e., "hyperlink title") around the title of the external hyperlink which is colored blue. The blue color is sufficient to make it stand out ... there is no reason to have the quotation marks as well. Can those quotation marks be removed from the coding for those citations? Milton Beychok 19:03, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I just made some edits. Is that what you had in mind? Chris Day 19:30, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Perfect! They were all fixed except the one in "news" that reads "{{Citation}} newspaper (or magazine, journal, periodical)". It still displays the quotation marks that are not needed. Regards, Milton Beychok 22:03, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Homonymes

Chris, is there any right way already in use to name homonym articles when they belong to two different groups of living beings? Like leptotes, Butterflyes, and Leptotes, orchids, or Scuticaria, moreys, and Scuticaria, orchids. See the whole list here. Thanks, Dalton Holland Baptista 20:58, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

It has not come up before. I'd suggest you go with what you prefer and see how much people scream, if at all. Chris Day 21:29, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Once you have the two page names you should probably put them on a disambiguation page and redirect the name to it. For example Leptotes would be a redirect to Leptotes (disambiguation). Chris Day 21:33, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I'm used to that, but let's wait it to happen then. Thanks, Dalton Holland Baptista 21:56, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Rescuing

Hi Chris I'm trying to rescueMagnocellular neurosecretory cell for CZ I wrote it on WP then imported it here, now starting to enhance it further but it was tagged as ex WP and I can't seem to lose the tag tho I've altered the metadata - what am I misssing?Gareth Leng 23:29, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

TOC-Right

Chris, would you object if we set height to auto in {{TOC-right}}? Having a 400px height creates a large white space on a page for a short TOC. Russell D. Jones 01:17, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Amen to the request by Russell. I have had to forego using TOC-right because of that excess white space on a number of articles. Milton Beychok 01:52, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Fine by me. The 400 was an arbitrary pick before I realised there was a white space issue. Chris Day 01:54, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Done. Russell D. Jones 02:27, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposals

Chris, in looking over the proposals and resolutions I've not come across anything for subworkgroups. Have I missed it somewhere? Also, I put Noel's proposal for disambiguation into a resolution format but haven't moved it to the ed council queue yet. The proposal did not seem to have a large opposition, and Noel hasn't been here for months. Russell D. Jones 13:37, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Russell, I hadn't seen your message. I wouldn't have marked the proposal as inactive otherwise. -- Jitse Niesen 14:42, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Best; felt odd about taking over someone else's proposal. Good prop, though. Russell D. Jones 14:55, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Restart of proposal system

Hello. Due to a lack of activity and attention on my part, the Proposal System has ground to a halt and discussion on all proposals has stopped. I decided to clean out the system by marking all proposals as inactive and removing their drivers. This also happened to your proposal "Should we allow article specific subpages?". I would be delighted if you decide that you want to take the proposal up again. You can do this by updating the proposal record, which can now be found at CZ:Proposals/Driverless. Please do not hesitate to ask if anything is unclear. Yours, Jitse Niesen 22:36, 23 February 2009 (UTC) (Proposals Manager)

Hi Jitse, good to see you active again. I have signed up as driver for two of the proposals. What is the next step on my behalf? I think we might want to get some more feedback on the proposals since they have been sitting a while and there are new people here now. I can then clean them up with to refelct the community input.

A third one I am driving, the subgroup proposal, is pretty much ready to go for a vote (that one is currently in the new proposal section. Chris Day 22:59, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Excellent! I'll put the proposals back. I think it's a good idea to try and get some more feedback, especially for the proposal on article-specific subpages. As Russell notices, this may not be that important for the disambiguation proposal. I'll move the subgroup proposal to the Editorial Council queue soon (I'm planning to do so tonight). -- Jitse Niesen 14:42, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

You should fill in the fields for "next step" and "to be done by" in the proposals records, which you can now find at CZ:Proposals/Editorial Council, so that we know what's happening. -- Jitse Niesen 14:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I've now moved the subgroup proposal to the Editorial Council queue; again, please fill in the fields for "next step" and "to be done by". -- Jitse Niesen 23:53, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Yea!! Fist pump!! I can't wait to vote yes on this one. Thanks, Jitse and Chris, Milton Beychok 00:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

It needs to be written up in the form of a resolution. I've started the process here. If I'm overstepping boundaries here, Chris, delete it. Milt, I took liberties and added you as a co-sponsor. -- Russell D. Jones; 01:35, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Chris and Russell, I am pleased to be added as a sponsor. As for the draft resolution, I would like to see one more "Whereas" added to the opening section ... that says having subgroups will encourage specialist experts to join CZ by their seeing the presence of a subgroup devoted to their special field of interest. I leave the exact wording up to you Russell. Milton Beychok 04:16, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Done. Russell D. Jones 13:05, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Russell, you're not overstepping any boundaries, the more the merrier. I just left a few more thoughts on the proposal. I'll digest these ideas a bit more. The specifics may not matter too much with regard to the resolution since it is more the concept they will be voting on. However, I would like to have it in an almost finalized state, we are so close. Chris Day 05:03, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Leptotes

Chris, I still have to expand the last three sections of Leptotes but, for the amount of corrections you made on them I wonder how are the first more complete ones (well, the last ones are just sketches). I am going to work on them and later will ask you (or anyone you advice me to) to read the whole article and make the English better. I also have to revise all its subpages for you based them just on my template, which is far from complete. Have to upload extra photos etc. A couple more of days to go. Thanks a lot Dalton Holland Baptista 16:23, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I just worked on that one section since it did not take too much time, initially I just went in to change a typo. If you are ready i can go through the more complete sections for you too. In the future are you planning on uploading a diagram of the phlogeny, possibly not too complete, there are so many genera, but possibly one with the alliances on? Chris Day 16:29, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The phylogenetic relationships of orchids genera is not really as well solved presently as one would wish. Many changes occur all the time as more DNA sections are tested. I do have most of clades info here but maybe it is a little bit premature to extend them down to genera. On the other hand higher rankings seem to be closer to consensus. It is a good suggestion to think about. On pt-wiki, before starting writing genera article I scketched all taxonomic structure of this familia, if you think it is the best to do here too, why not? Well, the first sections of Leptotes are mostly done, please feel free to correct then, and if I forgot anything just let me know and I'll complete it. It is my intention to write something larger than a key (and something that does not look like as one) to the species section, but I'll not fully describe them, for this is something to do on species articles. I thing making possible to identify each of them will be enough for the genus article, won't it? Dalton Holland Baptista 17:21, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I see what you mean, the fluidity of the tree with all these new data can be a problem. Not to mention there can more more than one interpretation with what we already have. I'll have a look at what you have done so far. i agree it would better to reverve more descriptive content for the species articles. Chris Day 17:27, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Bibliography question

Chris, I have some doubts about how to show the bibliography here. Primary sources would be original descriptions of the genera and species and, possibly, later revisions. Secondary sources, might be other articles and collections about the species. The thing is there is no comprehensive updated publication on Leptotes. Because five species have been described recently, none of ancient and even recent books will bring them or they have different information or interpretation of the species as they are accepted now (what may be somewhat confusing to anyone not familiar with the last publications). Furthermore, reading original descriptions will not help much as the species boundaries have changed ever since. Should I make a list and comment each entry? Should I just skip this subpage as I think all main books and articles are used and mentioned as references to the article? Is there any good example of articles with extense bibliography I can check as a good example? Thanks, Dalton Holland Baptista 22:51, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Just realised I missed this. i saw what you did and that is fine. Chris Day 03:49, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Weird Template behavior

Chris, I'm confused about how this page is behaving: Thomas A. Bailey. Something, probably the Subpages template, is causing a tagline at the bottom of the page to appear "Some content on this page may previously have appeared on Wikipedia." I completely rewrote the article and wanted to remove the wikipedia tag, but, having updated the metadata, I do not see how this tag is being generated, nor how to get rid of it. If you could advise, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks. Russell D. Jones 01:24, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

You need to go into edit mode and deselect the "Content is from Wikipedia?" check box at the bottom (just below the edit summary). That tag is not controlled by the subpages template. Chris Day 01:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Uh, whoops, no. After every save, it reverts back to being checked. Jones 02:54, 26 February 2009 (UTC) Okay, what it takes is an actual edit. Spaces don't count and won't save. Thanks for pointing in the right direction. Jones 02:57, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Browsing articles

Hey Chris, I see you have a list of all Biology articles put together. Is this they way they are supposed to be organized for the time being? Is there any other way of looking for a list of plants and animals articles or I will have to go all the way through the not-that-large-now but a potentialy-huge-list of articles? Is there any plans of spliting biology is smaller themes like zoology, botany, medicine, organic chemistry and such? This would make easier to place editors on the right path to evaluate articles and make easier to manage the articles so they can have some sort of rules and unity. Having a botany workgroup would allow to place some suggestions and guidance to authors writing articles such as suggested structure, taxoboxes, naming conventions, rules about caps and italics on species and families names, etc. Furthermore it will help authors and editors to know who their closest fellows are. I guess we do not have to necessarily split colaborators among the smaller categories, however, having some of future workgroups now, some that we will necessarily have in the future, will ease future categorization. I guess they are already necessary and we just have on 10k articles. Dalton Holland Baptista 01:58, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The big list of biology articles was an attempt to get some themes on the page. I'm not sure which ones you saw but I sorted into two lists, one alphabetical and another themed. That was in the early days. I now favour using the Related Articles pages to build themes. Look at Photosynthesis/Related Articles. You'll notice that while there are many red links there are some blue [r] links. Those link to other related articles subpages (note they can exist without an article). For example, you can navigate from photosynthesis up to Chloroplast/Related Articles and then up to Cell_(biology)/Related Articles. Alternatively across to related themes or down to sub themes. In this way I have been trying to build a network and identify the articles we to focus on. Another advantage of Related articles is we can start adding the definitions before the article is even written.

In the long term the related articles will be the primary form of navigation through our collection of articles (an alternative to using categories). Categories here are really only for administrative purposes. You may have noticed all the workgroup tags at the bottom, for example, we use those so you can track recent changes in a workgroup. Likewise article can be seen by status by automatically placing categories based on the metadata.

As too botany groups etc, definitely. We plan to have many subgroups. You could probably justify starting an Orchid Subgroup. She the proposal at CZ:Proposals/Subgroups_in_addition_to_Workgroups?. If you started an Orchid Subgroup it would probably be affilitated with Biology and Hobbies Workgroups. Articles would that the "Sub1=Orchid" field in their metadata. That would also give you the opportunity to have a recent changes watchlist for all pages in that Subgroup. To explore this idea more see the CZ:Chemical Engineering Subgroup or the CZ:Dogs Subgroup. Chris Day 03:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

You might find this thread in the forum useful too. There are others. Chris Day 03:07, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Great, added them to my favorites, thanks Dalton Holland Baptista 03:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Lol, Chris, I guess if I started such an especific subgroup now, I'll be grounded there alone for a long time. What about a plant taxonomy subgroup, this might focus on several kinds of related articles like description of any plants families, species and other rankings, bios of taxonomists, articles about systematics, and some about plants anatomy. I suppose this makes more sense for now as a coherent group of related subjects furthermore most authors and editors no matter what family of plants they work on will be able to help each other and contribute to some extent on articles started by other authors, i.e. an article about John Lindey is likely to be expanded by authors working on several plants families, so will an article about roots. Should I go on and propose this subgroup? I ask because I see the creation of subgroups just as a proposal so far. This might work as a test. How does it sound? Dalton Holland Baptista 03:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

It is just a proposal but it should be up for a vote very soon and you'll see we already have the Chemical Engineering one up and running. You could try and get it going if you like. The idea in the proposal is that starting of one should require less red tape but the affiliation with Workgroups would require editorial input. I like the idea of a plant taxonomy one, and in our small community it might well be all we need for a while. Chris Day 03:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Great, I won't be around tomorrow and Saturday but as soon as I come back will work on that. Dalton Holland Baptista 03:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Priorities

Chris, I need your advice again. What you think is better for CZ? I may go on writing one comprehensive orchid genus article every week, maybe 4 to 8 a month depending which genera are involved, or I may go and start doing the general structure of the family writing definitions and smaller drafts with one or two good paragraphs and one photo of the genera I have photos and sketches of the tribes subtribes, etc, first? The first is good for quality but it will take about 14 years to complete all genera, etc (not dealing with species articles), unless somebody comes to help. The second will take, I guess, about 12 to 18 months(again not dealing with species sketches). And, of course, I always can stop and write a good article now and then. Dalton Holland Baptista 12:45, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I would do what you find the most fun. Chris Day 17:31, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I second that. However, if you have specific ideas about structure, it won't hurt putting them down in something like CZ:Orchid systematics and to link there from the talk page of articles you create. This way, people who come across your work will have it easier to adjust to the system (or to criticize it if need be). --Daniel Mietchen 11:06, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

A good mix of the two approaches would probably keep things feeling fresh for you, Dalton. It would sure be nice to jump start the rate of approvals, though, so I'd love to see some well developed articles that Chris or someone else could approve. --Joe Quick 01:52, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes Joe, I think you're probably right, this is the way I have been working on WP, I write some tribes and drafts about their genera and then I pick one or two genera and make them developed articles, although even the drafs are not that bad at all, this keeps the work interesting and varied. I guess next week I'll have plenty of time to start. Dalton Holland Baptista 03:06, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

CZ invitation

Chris, I just invited to join CZ one of the best contributors of Pt-WP. He is very active and the author of some of the best articles about animals we have there, many are featured and excellent. He is a Vet. called Paulo Pareja, I am not sure what kind of application he is doing but I am pretty sure he can be a very good editor on his area. Are you dealing with of these applications too? Dalton Holland Baptista 04:58, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

At present it is primarily Hayford. I will pass on the message to him. Chris Day 05:04, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I just saw that he has applied as an Editor, not an Author. So I am unable to vet the Vet. But Larry has been approving Editors fairly rapidly these days, or so it seems to me. Hayford Peirce 14:11, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Great news! --Joe Quick 01:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Photos

Chris, I have just asked Patricia Harding for using her photos here and she has sent me an E-mail in response saying:Dalton, you may use my photographs for your educational purposes in any way you wish. I expect no reimbursement. Patricia Harding She is aware of the type of licence and everything. Is that enough for CZ or we do need anything more explicit? Dalton Holland Baptista 17:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

That should be enough. Decide the Creative Commons license and i think there is a permission subpage too, you could add her e-mail to that. Chris Day 17:45, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok, excellent, will do. I am not uploading any of her photos right now and don't have any one particularly in mind so far but, because she brought me photos of about 2 thousand species last time she visited, I'm pretty sure as I go on with the articles I'll upload many of them. I'm just asking my friends in advance as I talk to them. Thanks Dalton Holland Baptista 17:57, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

AN- masterlist

I'm not sure what you have in mind by subhead. In one sense, it's already categorized, in one sense, by being alphabetized: the first letter categorizes the platform that carries the equipment (e.g., A=aircraft, P=man-portable and usable while moving, S=ship, T=transportable (movable but can't be operated while moving), etc. "B", unfortunately retired, was "pigeon".

The second letter indicates the type of energy/information handled and the third what is done with it. So, xPY is some kind of tracking radar. xTC is a communications switch. xLE is a countermeasures dispenser or decoy.

You could probably have two columns, one for platform and one for the function described in the last two letters. Not sure how useful that would be; some equipment never fits exactly. Howard C. Berkowitz 04:00, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I think this was a question I threw out a while back. If I remember I think I saw you use subheading in another related articles subpage. I will have to have a look around and see what prompted that question. What about the title for the masterlist? I put associated, not sure what I even meant by that now. I imagine there is something more sensible. Chris Day 04:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Title? List of U.S. military electronic equipment is about the best we'll do. For some reason I have never fathomed in 40-plus years of working with the system, some pieces of equipment don't get the designation, while other one-of-a-kind items do.

You might be thinking of subheads I did for the related article pages once I was in a technology area, such as electronic warfare. That scopes a subset well enough to break it out into warning receivers, controllers, jammers, etc. I don't think there's any way to scope the master list. Howard C. Berkowitz 04:28, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

To get that information you're starting at the top, it's duplicating the principal table on the main page; it won't fit. Howard C. Berkowitz 06:04, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Media files

Chris, I was looking for some photos among the uploaded files and apparently the way to do it is using the checkbox at the end of the serching tool? is that it? Is it there any other way I am missing? Are the files placed in any easy to handle category like plant photos, animals, math diagrams, people, and such? Dalton Holland Baptista 19:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Anomaly?

Chris, take a look at this. There's two headers? D. Matt Innis 22:59, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Dalton Holland Baptista 23:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe worth preserving extending

See what I wrote at User talk:Mark Harris#You might find the "lemma" technique useful. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:16, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Moving a cluster

Chris, is the information you posted in December 2008 to http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User_talk:D._Matt_Innis/Archive_6#moving_clusters still correct? I tried to move the cluster "Tom Thumb" to "Tom Thumb (fictional character)" using those instructions. It moved the article and the Talk page. But when I tried to display the article, it gave me a message saying that I had to revert my move and move the metadata template first. I did that and it seemed to work OK, but since that's not what your instructions say to do, I fear I am doing something wrong and have left starving little orphans in some forsaken namespace. The new cluster looks OK, but I just wondered.... Thanks. Bruce M.Tindall 20:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I have nothing further to move at the moment but I'll probably try it soon. Bruce M.Tindall 20:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Spelling - change you suggested

Hi, Chris, I had a go at this [1], but... Ro Thorpe 21:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'll await your further actions/instructions then - Ro Thorpe 23:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Is the grid working for you, Chris? Because it isn't for me, at least not more than 1% of the time, and I think bottom row only. Ro Thorpe 23:54, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, work fine for me, what happens for you? By the way, the current grid is just a shell. Let me know what style changes you would like, re: size, colour and layout. I will add apsotrophe when I get a moment. Chris Day 00:38, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

It sometimes works when I click on the horizontal lines on either side of retro, but I don't know which side I'm getting, above or below, and usually it doesn't work at all. I'll think about the colour, etc. Ro Thorpe 01:42, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Can you load a screen shot, from your description I'm not even sure you are seeing the same thing? I use a MAC here and I have noticed that sometimes what I see is not the same as others. Also try one of the periodic tables in the infobox at any element page, such as calcium. That table is essentially identical, functionally, to your table. Chris Day 01:46, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

'Load a screen shot' - sorry, don't know how to do this (or what exactly it means). It's a grid of grey lines, some overlaid in black, with a space for the required square. I paste from the main page itself: List A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Alphabetical Retroalphabetical CZ cluster

And from the markup:

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Use in English
Alphabetical word list
Retroalphabetical list
Common misspellings

---

I tried the periodic table and no problem, hopping from element to element in no time! Ro Thorpe 02:03, 8 March 2009 (UTC) Ro Thorpe 02:03, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

the plunge

Thanks for the encouragement and the offer of help. I'll definitely take you up on that! Mark Harris 22:20, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Plant desambig

Article "A" is a redirect, any article that points to "A" has a term that needs to be pipelinked, although more often than not it will redirect to the "expected" term.

Article "B" is a redirect, any article that points to "B" has a term that needs to be pipelinked to the correct usage.

Chris, does CZ use minidesambiguation like WP, sometimes with a main article taking the name (with a note on the heading with the link to the other article or to desambiguation page)? I ask because, would that be the case with plant? So far we do not need a desambig. page for that, just a direct link (minidesambig) to plant (factory) would do it. Anyway is plant (organism) more important than the factory one in English? We don't have the second in Portuguese. Dalton Holland Baptista 23:55, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

For now i think it would be best to just leave it at plant. But we do have a proposed system for mini disambiguation but it is different to wikipedia. You can see the full explanation at: CZ:Proposals/Disambiguation_mechanics. In this scenario the disambiguated term will always point to either the disambiguation page (example B) or the article with priority (example A). Thus, we know that any page that points to the redirect needs to be pipelinked. See the diagrams to the right that describe the two scenarios described in the proposal. Chris Day 02:46, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, got distracted with the orchid and just saw your answer now. Dalton Holland Baptista 03:29, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Lemma articles

By now, I think I'm pretty comfortable with wiki mechanics, but the lemma articles produce an unexpected result, which confuses me each time I come across one until I realize what I'm looking at. I suspect they will be even more confusing for newbies. When I click on the edit button, all the text I was just looking at is gone.

I presume that this is because the definition is being transcluded, but there is no notification that that is what happened. Could you add a prominent note either on the page itself or on the edit screen explaining where the text has gone? --Joe Quick 20:54, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree. It's a work in progress and I have not really decided on a final solution. Possibly just having a redirect to the definition is the best solution? The goal is to remove red links from the related articles page for articles that will never develop beyond a definition and always be smaller than a stub. I'll think some more, thanks for the input it helps me to see it through your eyes. Chris Day 21:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC)