User talk:David E. Volk

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Resigning Biology Editorship

I signed up for CZ and requested to be a Chemistry Editor, based on my PhD in Chemistry. After looking over my publications, Larry Sanger approved me to be a Biology Editor as well. Given the mood of the current Editorial Council, a council on which I once sat, and their new standards, I feel it only appropriate to resign this editorship. I do so not to make a public statement of any kind, but because I am unsure that my education, research interests and publications would necessarily qualify me under the current standards. David E. Volk 19:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

New Chemistry editor, Joel M. Williams

Hi, David:

We have a new Chemistry editor. Perhaps you may wish to post a welcome message on his Talk page. Regards, Milton Beychok 02:49, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

David, Your opening quote is still true several hundred years later as I can attest!! My observation is that most scientists are the most rigid folks imaginable; spouting the party lines rather than thinking - PhD's being proof that they know the party lines. Has to do with peer-pressure and the desire to maintain one's job. Thus, few are reluctant to challenge the status quo! Frankly, the folks who should be most able to evaluate matters and come up with new approaches are the retired.Unfortunately, most are too tired or just no longer give a crap! Joel M. Williams 20:04, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the nudge on adiponutrin - it had flown below ny radar, but I've added a para.Gareth Leng 10:16, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Liquefied natural gas

David, I would appreciate any comments/edits/discussion you may offer on the new article Liquefied natural gas (LNG). Milton Beychok 05:03, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

About Hydrogen sulphide

David, if you have the time, I would appreciate it if you reviewed Hydrogen sulphide. It could use some more content. Milton Beychok 22:08, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

New author you may want to chat with

Hi, David -- we have a new author, Samuel Herec, an undergrad at Northeastern who is a musician and is insterested in biomedical devices as well as audio technology. You seem to be just the guy to welcome him. Bruce M. Tindall 23:56, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Financial Report as of March 15, 2011

Please read our Financial Report as of March 15, 2001 for complete details on our financial history and our current financial situation. If you have any questions, please ask them on CZ Talk:Donate. - Milton Beychok 22:25, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

The missing mini-periodical tables from the element articles.

David, as of yesterday morning, all of the element articles had a mini-periodical table in the infoboxes. Shortly, after Dan Nessett upgraded our Mediawiki software yesterday evening, I noticed that all of the mini-periodic tables had disappeared from the infoboxes. I immediately informed him by posting in the "Technical Issues" forum board (see Topic 3978.0 and by sending him an email as well.

As he has told you, he has found out why this occurred but has not yet figured out how to resolve it ... but I am confident that he will do so in the near future. Milton Beychok 22:12, 27 April 2011 (CDT)

Finished revising 112 of the chemical element articles

Hi,David: I just finished revising all 112 chemical element articles (from Hydrogen through Copernicium. They all now use the Template:Elem Infobox and they are now all editable.

During the course of that work, David Yamakuchi contacted me as to what I was doing ... which I explained and told him why I was doing it. We came to an amicable agreement and he revised some of the templates he had created. You can read our exchange of postings on my Talk page.

David had done a tremendous amount of ingenious work that involved about 5 or 6 subpages for each each element (a total of about 560 to 672 subpages). As I found in going through all of the articles, it is simply not possible to come up with any automatic "one size fits all" method for creating 112 chemical element articles. It required manually editing of each of them. It is a complex system and it took me many hours to get familiar with it.

I agree it would be nice to make it much more simple, but I don't know to do it. In any event, they are now all editable and consistent, although most of them (90% or more) are "bare bones" articles that need much more content.

Milt

Blocked account showing inappropriate categories

This account is no longer a member of the categories CZ Editors | Chemistry Authors | Chemistry Editors | Biochemistry Members | Biology Authors | Physics Authors | Mathematics Authors | Music Authors | Health Sciences Authors but the userpage has been protected preventing Citizens from remedying this situation. David Finn 07:43, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you're right about that. My understanding is that an Editor stays an Editor unless the EC says so, even if they leave or are banned. Peter Jackson 11:15, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

CZ:Editors should be a complete list of active CZ editors, and David is listed at the chemistry Workgroup as being an active Editor, which is of no use to anyone using the Chemistry workgroup to find active Editors as well as being a misrepresentation. Why would it be desirable to list someone who has gone through our formal resignation process as an Editor, active or otherwise? David Finn 11:34, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I think in this case your understanding is mistaken. You would be referring to this EC motion where the outcome was clearly stated that only an official resignation from CZ would be enough to have ones categories removed. It could be argued from the poor wording of the Motion that a separate resignation was needed for the EC, but that is not supported by the statements of the people who voted for it, and would in any event be a ridiculous proposition. We already have enough hoops for people to jump through to become ex-Citizens without requiring that resignation letters be made in duplicate.

It would appear that EC:2011-017 makes it clear that the categories listed above should be removed immediately. David Finn 08:02, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

"Only an official request for nullification of one's Editorship, to be eventually carried out by the Constabulary, is valid." seems clear enough. On the other hand, it does seem reasonable that David should not be listed as an active editor. Peter Jackson 11:16, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

No less unreasonable than having a list of Editors, active or otherwise, that consists partly of non-Citizens who have requested they be removed from the project. As you will know that Motion was initiated because Martin had resigned on the Forum, resigned on his userpage, but was still making flyby Editor "Rulings" when it suited - the Motion was intended to quantify that a formal resignation was required before the resignation was taken seriously. It was never meant to become a list of non-Citizens. I also seriously doubt that the many Citizens who have voluntarily resigned have been informed that they must resign in triplicate. Like I said, I hope your interpretation is incorrect because it would not only be a ridiculous situation but probably illegal under the Charter. David Finn 07:42, 2 December 2011 (UTC)