Talk:Public Land Survey System

I am going to let Howard answer your last emailed question

I am going to let Howard answer your question since it is his way of doing things and I might just confuse you.

If you have looked at some other articles, you will note that each Main article is part of a "cluster" that includes a number of "subpages" named "Related Articles", "Bibliography", "External Links" and sometimes others as well. When the main article is finally created with the {{subpages}} written at the very top, tabs with those names will appear above the main article. Then those subpages, when created by you and with {{subpages}} written at the very top of each of them, will be ready for use. I know it is all confusing at the moment ... a few weeks from now, it will be second nature. Once more, studying some other articles first is a good idea. Milton Beychok 20:47, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Apologies if I misled you; I was taking it a step at a time. If you look at Public Land Survey System now, you will see that those subpages show up on the main page; I filled out the metadata template. It's tricky to get to the metadata template; the simplest way, from the main article page, is to click on "Talk", then, at the top right, click on the "M" in a circle. That will take you to the rendered metadata page, which you can then edit to see how I filled in fields.

Also, click on the Related Articles tab. You will see that the various definition-only entries you created now show up as black names to which you can link in articles, as, for example, Land surveying. The article pages have magic that copies the definition into it. You can start adding article text to the main pages, although the definition will show at the top until the metadata template is created. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:30, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I see you managed to move Cadastral Systems to Cadastral systems, which is consistent with the naming conventions — great! Not being familiar with the topic, I didn't know if it might be a company name, for which capital C-S would have been appropriate. Many people don't pick up on those conventions and I'm happy to see you have.

Once the cluster/metadata is created, moving things can be tricky; don't hesitate to call for help. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Please review these titles

Landon, this is about the red-colored titles (of articles not yet written) in the Relates Articles subpage;

• Order of Survey: Should it be "Order of survey" ?
• Swamp and Overflowed Lands: Should it be "Swamp and overflowed lands" ?
• Fraudulent Surveys: Should it be "Fraudulent surveys" ?
• Public Land Survey System, History: Should it not be "History of Public Land Survey System" ? Or even better, should it just be a section of the main article? A good many of our articles include a History section in the main article.

Landon, the only reason why I raise the above questions is (as Howard and I have mentioned) that it is a bit of a hassle to change titles later when those unwritten (red-colored) arrticles are written. Milton Beychok 22:32, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Howard, I note that Landon redirected the definition subpage of "Cadastral Systems" to "Cadastral systems". But I see that the lemma article "Cadastral Systems" (black colored) in the Related Articles subpage and wonder if that lemma article needs to be changed or moved to "Cadastral systems" as well. I guess this is one of the reasons I like to write the main article first and then get into the tedious detail of the subpages. I have never bumped into lemma articles before.

Also, now that we are discussing a specific article, should we not move this converstion to the article Talk page? To that end, I am copying some of this page to the PLSS article Talk page. Milton Beychok 22:32, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Titles Need To Be Changed

All of the titles you mentioned need to be changed. I will do that. Also, the history sub-page should appear as a section of the main article. I thought at first that was a sub-page did, but I realize now a sub page is like a related article that is a child of the parent page.

Landon

Subpages Need To Be Deleted

How do I delete a subpage? Most of my sub pages should be sections in the main article. ...said Landon Blake (talk) 14:48, 24 March 2009

Citizendium policy is that the 3 subpages (see above tabs) of Related Articles, Bibliography and External Links must remain as subpages and such material should not be part of the main article. If you are familiar with Wikipedia, that is one of the major differences between us and them.

Also, (as noted in the blue panel at the top of the edit page), please always sign your name with four tildes like this: ~~~~ and that automatically signs with your full name and the time and date. Milton Beychok 23:14, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Not a problem. Now, some of the things under Related Articles, I agree, should be sections in the article, such as History. I moved several here, using a trick (you can see it in edit mode) to keep them from expanding here:

• {{r|Order of Survey}}
• {{r|Swamp and Overflowed Lands}}
• {{r|Fraudulent Surveys}}
• {{r|Public Land Survey System, History}}

Which subpages concerned you? As Milt mentions, we use subpages for some things that are article sections at WP. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:52, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I have moved Cadastral Systems to Cadastral systems. If you look at Cadastral systems/definition, you will see that I changed the double apostrophes, which put the text into italics, to left and right double square brackets, which turn it into a wikilink cadastral systems. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:56, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Howard: I wanted to delete some of the related articles, not the subpages. This was a misunderstanding on my part. Some of the related articles need to be sections of the main article. I will see if I can figure out how to do this. Landon Blake 00:06, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Landon, Howard has deleted all of the 4 subtopics articles listed in the "Related Articles" subpage and placed them just above in this thread. If you want to make any of them into sections of the main article, you simply write "== Section title ==" and then enter your text as shown below (except of course for my blah blah blah ...):

== Order of survey ==

The correct order of a survey is blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

== History ==

The history of these surveys began with blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Does that explain it? The section titles follow the same naming conventions regarding the use of capitals as does the article title. Regards, Milton Beychok 05:14, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Now that the main page and most of the subpages have been created, you can develop the article text in your sandbox

Now I would advise you to start developing the article text (including its various sections) in your sandbox and make all the changes you want until you are happy with it. Then you can ask Howard and I or anyone else to review it ... and finally you can copy and paste the completed text into the article main page which has now been created. Have fun! Milton Beychok 05:30, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

And again, thanks for doing this; we value both your specialized original creation and the review you can give. I really should do some more on navigation, mostly marine (navigation); I have done a bit on instrumentation. My artwork on sensor geometry in measurement and signature intelligence, I'm sure, could be improved, and there's much that could be done with geospatial intelligence. Howard C. Berkowitz 05:51, 25 March 2009 (UTC)