User talk:Matthew Cornell Woods, Jr.

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Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start. You'll probably want to know how to get started as an author. Just look at Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, our help system and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. Be sure to stay abreast of events via Twitter. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forum is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any administrator for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun! -- Stephen Ewen 21:20, 22 May 2007 (CDT)


A few words about workgroups

We are indeed happy to have you in the community. We would also like to introduce you to Citizendium's Workgroups and encourage you to--

  1. Join a workgroup if you haven't already
  2. Help us add workgroup category tags to articles, especially any articles you create
  3. Help us spread the word about workgroups within the CZ community

What are workgroups? To answer that question, I'd like to give you a quick tour.

  • Start by checking the various workgroups we have at CZ: List of Workgroups. This link can also be found in the left navigation-bar in the 2nd box (Project Pages), 3rd link in that box (Workgroups). The Workgroup Home(s) can be found in the 2nd column in the List of Workgroups.
  • For the purposes of this tour, please take a look at the Biology Workgroup Home: CZ:Biology_Workgroup.
  • Now let's take a look at the first table on the Biology Workgroup Home (below).


Workgroups are no longer used for group communications, but they still are used to group articles into fields of interest. Each article is assigned to 1-3 Workgroups via the article's Metadata.

Biology banner.png
Biology article All articles (1,642) To Approve (0) Editors: active (1) / inactive (46)
and
Authors: active (441) / inactive (0)
Workgroup Discussion
Recent changes Citable Articles (25)
Subgroups (12.5)
Checklist-generated categories:

Subpage categories:

Missing subpage categories:

Article statuses:

  • In the 2nd column, find the link that says, "all articles," which lists all articles that users have placed [[Category:Biology Workgroup]] at the bottom of their articles.
  • Now click on the "recent changes" link underneath the "all articles" in the 2nd column in the top table. This lists all recent changes in articles that have been tagged [[Category:Biology Workgroup]]. In one glance, you can view all the changes that happened while you were away! Feel free to click on all the links to get an idea how the information for your workgroup is organized. All these lists are populated by articles that have the categories properly placed at the bottom of their pages.

This completes your virtual-tour of CZ workgroups. I hope you can see the usefulness of having all articles in Citizendium tagged properly with your Workgroup categories. Make sure to add the Workgroup category labels to your new articles. This is an important part of the Approval process.

Be sure to join a workgroup and take part in this opportunity to collaborate with others who have similar interests as you. You can see what others are working on in the Workgroup recent changes and join in! Remember, we want you to be bold in your contributions at Citizendium.

To add yourself to a workgroup, use the form [[Category:Education Authors|Smith, Bob]], etc., and add it to your user page. Substitute the proper work group for "Education" in the example, and your name-Last, First for the names in the example.

Do not add yourself to the Editors list, only CZ staff add "Editors" to user pages after proper review of applications is completed. To apply to become an editor, please see Editor Application Review Procedure.

To add a workgroup category tag to an article, use the form [[Category:Education Workgroup]] at the bottom of the article. Substitute in the proper workgroup for "Education" in the example.

If you are from Wikipedia originally, you may want to check out this article:

-- Stephen Ewen 21:20, 22 May 2007 (CDT)

Political spectrum

Hi Matthew - just saw your request for an article on the above, and your request that it be three-axis rather than the traditional 'left-right'. Just wondering if your're aware of politicalcompass, which has done a fair bit of work on a two-axis model? Might be a good basis to start an article from? Regards, Anton Sweeney 12:03, 25 June 2007 (CDT)

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of the NationStates spectrum.

Astrobiology Problems

In fact, I just started the article, as an experience with Citizendium.

I used the most authoritative source on the field. If you seek through the referential sites listed on the article, you'll see that all of them refer do Nasa. Indeed there are other visions, but they aren't as widely accepted as Nasa's. I just didn't want do risk the trustness of the article from its beginning.

And yes, I based it on press releases, moving around sentences and paragraphs. Because I didn't intend to write a well crafted wiki encyclopedia entry. I just wanted to start the process that eventually would lead to such a good article. After creating it, I just sat back to watch how it would evolve. (Unfortunately, it did not evolved so much...)

In short, feel free to improve it! I will just interfere in case someone makes any big damage to it.

Sairjohn 14:15, 27 June 2007 (CDT)

Role-playing game

Hi Matthew. I've done some work on expanding the above. Can you think of anything major I've left out? I'm still not sure the lead actually gives a good overview to the uninitiated of what an RPG actually is... Anton Sweeney 08:15, 30 August 2007 (CDT)

Sorry about the tardiness, preoccupied with college and all. I've but glanced at the article but I like what I see. Good work. :) --Matthew Cornell Woods, Jr. 18:53, 2 September 2007 (CDT)