User talk:Scott Thompson

Tasks: start a new article • add basic, wanted or requested articles • add definitions • add metadata • edit new pages

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! John Stephenson (talk) 10:07, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Christian Science

Hi. Feel free to completely rewrite Christian Science, which currently reads like an advert. We have no rule against a member of an organisation writing about it as long as it's not one-sided or promotional, since it is clear who the author is. Thanks! John Stephenson (talk) 13:59, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi, John. Thank you for the invitation. We may well take you up on that. I appreciate the need for entries to be neutrally written and am mindful of the need for balance and intellectual integrity. Scott Thompson (talk) 14:08, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

welcome

Hi Scott, Welcome to Citizendium.Pat Palmer (talk) 18:17, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Pat! Scott Thompson (talk) 18:20, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Write-a-thon this weekend

This Sunday, we're getting together on the wiki for the first time in a decade to create and edit articles loosely themed on planets, stars, galaxies and cosmic entities - or anything that involves words like those! For more information, see What's a Write-a-thon? etc. Hope to see you there! John Stephenson (talk) 18:09, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Learning to add references

Hi Scott. Some help with the <ref></ref> tags is at CZ:How_to_edit_an_article#References_and_citations. Another good thing is to go to an article that has good references and go into edit mode and look at the markdown for the references. For web references, for example, we like to end the reference with a "last access date". An example article to look at might be Coal mining; find a reference that looks good and click on it to see which part of the article it's in, then go into edit mode on that section of the article and see how the reference is coded. It's a chore for sure, but worth it. Hope this helps! I will read your article when I get a chance. Thanks for writing here.Pat Palmer (talk) 13:58, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks, Pat! Scott Thompson (talk)

Encyclopedia comparisons on Christian Science topics

I have asked my printer to print out, in hard-copy for me, three encyclopedia articles from Wikipedia, and also from the online Britannica, on three topics: Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Those are the benchmarks against which we have to measure articles in Citizendium. Can we write those articles better, here? That is the challenge. We all know the problems with Wikipedia--people "controlling" an article, and you have no idea who they actually are. They defeat people by providing a million rules and references, and on complex topics such as these, no good results from the crowd-sourced authorship. Britannica, on the other hand, signs their articles, so they are typically the output of one or two people and we can at least see who they are, and they tend to have some useful qualifications for scholarship. Here in Citizendium, we can get (hopefully) a collaboration leading to better balance than either of those platforms. These topics could be a critical test case of that idea. I'm willing to help with these articles. I hope it won't drive you crazy.Pat Palmer (talk) 15:24, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Alternatively, if you wish to control the article with little collaboration, you can sign on as its "lead author" and we can add your article to a disambiguation page which would allow other authors to make their own efforts. In that case, it *could* contain more of an advocate's tone. John S. mentioned that option at the top of this page.Pat Palmer (talk) 15:49, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate the standards you are aiming for and am very friendly to a collaborative approach. From my perspective, the Britannica articles on Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy are strong examples of what's possible.Scott Thompson (talk) 13:15, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

How to link to external sites

The general format is [URL Display text]. If you want the external site to open in a new tab (I prefer this one), you have to put span tabs around it like this: <span class="newtab">[URL Display text]</span> There are two ways:

• About The Christian Science Monitor online, last access 3/25/2021 -- this link takes your browser window to the external site
• About The Christian Science Monitor online, last access 3/25/2021 -- this link opens a new tab in the browser for the external site

I asked our IT guy to provide the "span" tags for opening sites in a new tab. It is a recent customization to The Citizendium and not too many people know about it yet.Pat Palmer (talk) 16:33, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Pat. With a little help from my daughter, the links have been added. Scott Thompson (talk) 21:47, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Adding photos

Part of Pable Picasso's famous 1905-06 portrait of Gertrude Stein.

There is an Upload file link in the menus on the lower right. When you upload the image file, the wiki will ask you questions about permissions, such as whether the image can be reused by anyone else, with or without attribution. Fill out everything you can, and then at the end after you've saved the page with the image on it, it will show you the code which needs to be added to the article to display the image, something like this: {{Image|Gertrude stein-1.jpg|right|150px|Part of Pable Picasso's famous 1905-06 portrait of Gertrude Stein.}}, which would display as shown on this comment. The parts are: {{filename.ext | placement (left,middle or right) | pixel width of thumbnail | caption}}. Whatever you do, don't lose the link to the image before you get it placed on the article; it can be difficult finding those later.

Note also that it is important to have rights or use permission to any images that are uploaded here.Pat Palmer (talk) 23:27, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

I tried to upload an image of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, MA but got a message saying, "This image is bigger than the server is configured to allow." It says the maximum sixe is 2 MB. The image, however, is less than 1 MB. Not sure what the real issue is. Scott Thompson (talk) 17:21, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm, not sure what the issue is. If willing, email me the image and let me try it. If I can get it uploaded, you'll be able to edit the metadata later. manager A T citizendium.org Pat Palmer (talk) 18:49, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for working on M. B. Eddy!

Hi Scott, I am delighted to see you doing cleanup on the Mary Baker Eddy article. Yay for collaboration! I've been hoping to get around to a closer reading of Christian Science so this gives me inspiration. I really appreciate the second set of eyes.Pat Palmer (talk) 19:38, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Okay with me to change USA as you suggested

Scott, I'm okay with the change you suggest at Talk:United_States_of_America#Religion_section_edit. Pat Palmer (talk) 17:12, 22 March 2023 (CDT)

Thanks! Scott Thompson (talk) 07:45, 23 March 2023 (CDT)

Policy matters

Scott, When I first began editing here, I was not aware of the policy prohibiting people from writing about their own businesses or employers. I have temporarily archived (on its Talk page) some of the text you added to Mary Baker Eddy, as I feel it muddies up the purpose originally in the article, which was to provide a very short overview of why she was important. Please do not edit the page directly from now on but do feel free to contact me on the article Talk page or my Talk page to let me know if you think something is wrong or needs to be changed. This is a painful policy but necessary; note in Wikipedia, for example, how many places have trolled their articles as if they were written by a Chamber of Commerce. Hateful history has been disassociated (in those kinds of articles) from the place where it took place. I'm not saying you are personally not objective, but as a matter of policy, you should not yourself contribute to articles in Citizendium about Christian Science or its major leadership. Yet, you are free to request intervention and changes of another contributor in this wiki. Pat Palmer (talk) 09:34, 4 September 2023 (CDT)

Hi Pat,

I hope your summer has gone well. Thanks for the heads up on changes to the Mary Baker Eddy article. I appreciate your archiving what was removed. I'm surprised to hear of this policy, given the following message that I received just after registering on Citizendium:

Hi. Feel free to completely rewrite Christian Science, which currently reads like an advert. We have no rule against a member of an organisation writing about it as long as it's not one-sided or promotional, since it is clear who the author is. Thanks! John Stephenson (talk)

Has there been a more recent update to the Citizendium policies?

Thanks.Scott Thompson (talk) 13:20, 11 September 2023 (CDT)

Scott, here is the policy that I was not initially aware of: CZ:Policy_on_Self-Promotion. Earlier this year, I took over handling membership applications from John, who is away indefinitely on family matters, and I've needed to enforce this policy on several applications who tried to promote their own research, their own businesses, etc. Experience has shown me that you are reasonable personally and I intend to re-incorporate your contributions on Mary Baker Eddy where I can, but I feel I should enforce this policy evenly going forwards. I'm sorry that there is a need for it--you have not done anything except good things. Please feel free to urge me to include specific points that I may have "archived". At some point, I'll get around to the Christian Science article also; I really appreciate how you've fleshed it out and at most, I might remove, or at least put into a quote, some sentences that use doctrinal types of language specific to the church. I am open to your arguments about anything I do. Best regards - Pat Palmer (talk) 09:22, 12 September 2023 (CDT)

Thanks, Pat, for the helpful clarification. I appreciate your need to keep things even-handed. Best regards - Scott Thompson (talk) 10:07, 12 September 2023 (CDT)