User talk:Larry Sanger

Larry Sanger

Current talk page

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Resolution 12

I'd like to cosponsor this along with David Volk, if that's okay. --Robert W King 18:32, 30 June 2008 (CDT)

This is always OK with me. --Larry Sanger 23:48, 15 July 2008 (CDT)

Way to go

...with the Write-a-Thon blitz, thanks!

Wonder if we can have a stub-a-thon/stubmania day sometime?

Aleta Curry 20:59, 2 July 2008 (CDT)

It's not a bad idea... --Larry Sanger 23:48, 15 July 2008 (CDT)

Happy birthday to you, dear Larry

I started Maxwell equations earlier than I intended, in honor of your fortieth birthday. Happy birthday! --Paul Wormer 11:18, 15 July 2008 (CDT)

Thanks, Paul! But...OK, what are the equations themselves? They aren't on the page!  :-) --Larry Sanger 15:56, 15 July 2008 (CDT)

Your wish is my command, see here.--Paul Wormer 04:12, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

Happy SIPRNET, point of presence (hit "minor" by accident), and a stubby Saudi Arabia. The day is still middle-aged. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:57, 15 July 2008 (CDT)

I started Netiquette and filled up at least one entry in each of the subpages, in honor of your birthday! Supten Sarbadhikari 22:30, 15 July 2008 (CDT)

Thanks, Howard and Supten! --Larry Sanger 23:48, 15 July 2008 (CDT)

Started a Hermeneutics stub as a present for you, Larry. Happy birthday! --Tom Morris 07:32, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

Larry, a new chemical that you probably have never heard before, Thiophosphoramidite, for your birthday. Enjoy, but don't smell it, cause it ain't roses, believe me! David E. Volk 10:02, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

And I open a bottle to drink to your next forty years, cheers! --Paul Wormer 10:24, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

It's still pretty stubby, but I don't think I'm going to get through the requisite reading for an expansion before your birthday is over: Miguel Ángel Asturias. ¡Felicidades! --Joe Quick 10:27, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

Congrats, youngster. Here is my birthday article for you: Ama Ata Aidoo. --- Regina Bouillon 19:11, 16 July 2008

40 yrs is very young. Is a new article still okay - 1 day late ? (Chunbum Park 13:08, 16 July 2008 (CDT))

here's a new article: happy birthday ! Yi Sunshin. (Chunbum Park 13:30, 16 July 2008 (CDT))

For a young guy like you, I made a stub. Just remember, next year, you turn 0x29. Anthony Argyriou 13:43, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

Unwrap Marcello Malpighi, kid, accessories to follow. --Anthony.Sebastian 19:23, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

Happy Birthday Larry! I didn't realize you were only 11 years older than me; that is truly young! --Robert W King 23:52, 16 July 2008 (CDT)

Happy Birthday Larry! I began the ENSTA article yesterday as a little gift :) (for you and Citizendium !) ! sebastien.worms 06:41, 17 July 2008 (CDT)

Thanks so much to everyone! --Larry Sanger 12:27, 17 July 2008 (CDT)

A bit late from me (of course). And an apology. I did write you an article, but found when I tried to insert it that the topic had been blocked for Eduzendium, so I'll keep that back. So the best I could do was take Thomas Kuhn up a notch. Hope you'll accept that for now and forgive me. Gareth Leng 16:29, 27 July 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for your work on philosophy of science topics, Gareth! --Larry Sanger 20:44, 27 July 2008 (CDT)

Georges Cuvier now live (at 40 he showed that dinosaurs could fly; so some of us are hoping you'll do as much for us).Gareth Leng 14:56, 28 July 2008 (CDT)

good points

http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1791.0/topicseen.html I would investigate and see what else this user suggests. Tom Kelly 16:39, 15 July 2008 (CDT)

Replied on the forums. --Larry Sanger 23:48, 15 July 2008 (CDT)

Everything?

Larry,

Somewhere today you asked about the Public/Related Articles: " Isn't "everything" a little too broad as a parent topic? And will we have an article titled "everything"? Interesting question...)" I saw your comment on the "Recent Changes" list for Sociology, but I'll be darned if I can find an original memo to reply to, so I'm posting here in the expectation you will see it.

I did that deliberately in part as a belated birthday present for you! And it got much the reaction I was expecting: interest. And yes, it seems to me a case can be made for at least a brief article by that title. I've long been intrigued by one of the management ontology projects in Toronto a few years ago (TOVE) that began an elaborate branching diagram with the term "Thing" and this is in much the same spirit. It's hard to get more parent than that!

One thing is clear and that is that Society most definitely is not a Parent topic of Public/Private and I will be removing it shortly. That usage throws neutrality right out the window and walks screaming and flailing right into the middle of some of the oldest and longest running theoretical issues in this area. The State/Society issue is a major part of it, but with respect to publics there are other issues as well. So, Society is definitely not a suitable parent for public.

As I thought about it, most dichotomies of public and private are, indeed, offered as universals to the extent that they do indeed seek to dichotomize everything. (Hence, the provocation.) What we really need here, I think, is some help from an epistemologist; No wait, we have one! And he's interested.

In short, I posted Everything in a rather lighthearted vein, and I would welcome any suggestions for alternatives, but there are some really meaty issues involved here, more than a few of which go right to the heart of your interests in this project. E.g. public domain

P.S.: I think both Thing and Everything are probably most appropriate topics for the philosophy workgroup. Suggestions for how we get them involved?

Roger Lohmann 20:47, 24 July 2008 (CDT)

Hi Roger, let me reply on Talk:Public so others can benefit. --Larry Sanger 09:35, 25 July 2008 (CDT)

EC Resolution

Will you please make a Resolution out of CZ:Proposals/Pilot_to_allow_Citizens_to_take_credit_for_pages and place it to the EC? Supten Sarbadhikari 23:16, 30 July 2008 (CDT)

Well, I'm not sure I'm so excited about it anymore. I'll have a look again though. --Larry Sanger 17:16, 31 July 2008 (CDT)

biology week

so when should the announcements and press releases go out? Surely, we should have advertisements of some sort out 1 month prior to the actual week itself. august 22 is rapidly approaching Tom Kelly 10:17, 13 August 2008 (CDT)

I totally agree, Tom. It's something I've been intending to get started on myself, and I was hoping our new hire would also be working on it...we'll get moving soon, one way or another. --Larry Sanger 22:14, 14 August 2008 (CDT)

Ronnie Drew

Just after noticing you mention that you like traditional Irish music. Would you be familiar with other Irish folk artists? I'm just curious because I'm thinking of writing articles for Phil Coulter and Tommy Sands. Denis Cavanagh 10:45, 18 August 2008 (CDT)

Well, I'm not really into "Irish folk" but Irish traditional. I don't know much about Coulter or Sands...but I did know about Ronnie Drew! --Larry Sanger 21:31, 18 August 2008 (CDT)

Subpages and code words

Moved section to this talk page section. --Larry Sanger 11:02, 21 August 2008 (CDT)

Jimbo Wales

... is now labeling challenges of his claims as sole founder of Wikipedia as trolling. See this.

While you're at it, would you mind modifying the "+" tab that adds a new section to "New section" or something similar?

Cheers, Thomas H. Larsen 19:27, 5 September 2008 (CDT)

Who cares?  :-) --Larry Sanger 12:39, 6 September 2008 (CDT)

True! Thomas H. Larsen 19:06, 7 September 2008 (CDT)

The folks who maintain the Wikipedia article on you have managed to keep the opening sentence reading Lawrence Mark "Larry" Sanger (born 16 July 1968[1]) is an American philosopher, co-founder of Wikipedia, and the creator of encyclopedia Citizendium.[2][3][4] despite attempts by Jimbo fanboys to mess with it. It's actually an example of how Wikipedia works, when it works - the folks defending that position have overwhelmed the other side with references, and if an uninvolved party gets called in to look at the dispute, he sees the references, and keeps the article saying that you co-founded Wikipedia. Anthony Argyriou 12:27, 8 September 2008 (CDT)

But think of the man hours wasted. That could also be cited as an example of why it does not work. Who has the time for such fights? Chris Day 12:53, 8 September 2008 (CDT)

Man centuries, you mean. But it *does* work, in the way that a Rube Goldberg contraption works, at least on paper.... Hayford Peirce 13:01, 8 September 2008 (CDT)

Well, there are some excellent Wikipedians out there - in fact, I've had the opportunity to work alongside them, and a truly good, honest, kind, and productive Wikipedian is a blessing to the Wikipedia project. Unfortunately, the project is also spoiled by "editors" who are arrogant and fancy themselves as know-alls. Thomas H. Larsen 04:10, 11 September 2008 (CDT)

My point is not addressing the many users that genuinely want to write content. That part works very well. The problem is the random noise from the drive by vandals, some who are very good at making subtle changes. That is where the time is lost. Chris Day 09:13, 11 September 2008 (CDT)

What are Man hours and Man centuries? Could someone explain the terminology? When I was in Wikipedia, I did defend Dr. Larry's claim to have co-founded Wikipedia. (Chunbum Park 07:17, 12 September 2008 (CDT))

Thanks, Chunbum. A man-hour (or person-hour) is one hour of work performed by anyone...similarly with man-days, man-years, etc. --Larry Sanger 08:30, 12 September 2008 (CDT)

(unindent) I started at Wikipedia around late 2001, and there was no question then that Larry and Jimbo were co-founders. I've updated Conservapedia's LS article accordingly. Hey, Larry, was that you who signed in the other day? --Ed Poor 16:10, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes it was--my first and probably only edit there.  :-) --Larry Sanger 23:04, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Sending off Endorsement Letter for Biology Week

Hi Larry, please see User_talk:Anthony.Sebastian#Endorsement_Letter and let us know whether it would be possible to send these mails from a citizendium account, preferably something like Biology_Week (at) Citizendium.org . Besides, I wonder whether there will be a press release on Biology Week and whether anyone is working on it. I think our PLoS text may provide a good basis for that. Thanks, Daniel Mietchen 03:34, 13 September 2008 (CDT)

Excellent!

Do you want me to set up that e-mail address then, Daniel? I will if you want me to.

As to the press release, the answer is that we want one but it doesn't exist yet. Basically, there's no need to ask me; I set up the Biology Week pages so anybody could dive in and get to work organizing it! --Larry Sanger 06:58, 13 September 2008 (CDT)

Actually I didn't add the header but I can fix it. It does not have to be at the top of every page. It could be restricted to the talk pages. Chris Day 14:31, 14 September 2008 (CDT)

That would be a reasonable solution (talk pages only). I do like having it on every page, though. --Larry Sanger 12:25, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Is there any way I could horn in on the Citizendium email address thing in order to send out announcements to bloggers? Thanks, Brian P. Long 22:51, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

It's a good idea, but I need to access the login info at my computer at home (I'm on the road). E-mail me on Friday for it or simply start sending it out...you can quite legitimately say in the e-mail that you are a representative of CZ's Biology Workgroup. --Larry Sanger 23:15, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Why don't we do both. I'll start sending out emails, and then we can send the same folks reminder emails from an official address once the week starts. Thanks, Brian P. Long 00:52, 18 September 2008 (CDT)

Right...remind me if I don't set it up soon. --Larry Sanger 19:28, 18 September 2008 (CDT)

First off, this is me reminding you again, Larry. Let me know when the CZ email address is online. Secondly, I was wondering if we or 43PR were going to be sending out any announcements by fax. I've been working on compiling a list of email addresses for prominent biology departments, and most are accessible online, but there are a few that only have fax numbers. Let me know either way. Thanks, Brian P. Long 09:23, 19 September 2008 (CDT)

Power outage

All--our power here in central Ohio took a massive hit and my Internet connection may be intermittent...

Also, I've got to get ready for a talk in L.A. in a few days. --Larry Sanger 12:26, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Can't you divert some of that E-I-C power to batteries?

Semi-seriously, I talk a bit about the Ohio Valley Blackout at System Control And Data Network. Know anyone who would like to write a case study on the specific incident?Howard C. Berkowitz 12:56, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

I happen to know someone who could write the entry, but I don't know if he would like to! --Larry Sanger 13:55, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Biology Week press release

As it's getting rather urgent, I put up a page to draft a press release for Biology Week. Some quotes from you, and others, would make it ready for release. --Tom Morris 17:19, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

Yep, I know. I'm planning to put my own final touches on it on Friday morning, and send it out then. We might be able to get 43PR to send it out for us, too... --Larry Sanger 23:13, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Please join us for Biology Week!

Hello Larry, I am giving you this personal invitation to join us this week for Biology Week! Please join us on the wiki and add or edit biology articles. Also, please let your friends and colleagues who are biologists, biology students, or naturalists, know about Biology Week and ask them to join us, too. Any way you can help make it an event would be most welcome. Think of it as a Biology Workgroup open house. Let's see if we can kick up activity a notch! Thanks in advance! --Larry Sanger 08:51, 22 September 2008 (CDT)

The first Biology Week took place here from Sep 22-28, 2008.

Hmmm...not sure what to say about that :) Aaron Schulz 09:40, 22 September 2008 (CDT)

:-) Just in case I forget. ha ha --Larry Sanger 12:08, 22 September 2008 (CDT)

semiauto-move feature

Just trying to figure out how to make moving clusters move automated. Currently its really confusing even when you know what you are doing. Also note movement on the subgroup proposal. The thread in the initiatives folder is active again (subworkgroup thread). Chris Day 22:57, 27 September 2008 (CDT)

Yep, semi-automating cluster-moving would be good. We really need to make it fully automated. As to subworkgroups, I noticed... --Larry Sanger 23:00, 27 September 2008 (CDT)

You can give it a test run by moving the metadata to a new name for any article. You'll see some links appear above the subpage bar at the top. They are all the links that need to be moved. Once they have all been moved you just have to update the pagename field in the metadata. I'm going to prettyify it, and it does not have every feature i envisage yet. Also it has not been fully tested, so beware. Fully automatic would be great if you know a programer. Chris Day 23:03, 27 September 2008 (CDT)

Can you write instructions and link to them in an appropriate place or places? I'll help test it out. Then we should announce it... --Larry Sanger 23:23, 27 September 2008 (CDT)

The only instruction you need is "make sure the very first move is the Metadata template". Instructions will then appear at the top of the page and allow you to go through the whole process. What I intend to do, but have not yet, is to make it easy to place the appropriate speedy deletes. At present every redirect will be left in place. In most cases this is not so bad. But the old metadata page really should be deleted. Chris Day 23:28, 27 September 2008 (CDT)

Forget all I mentioned here for now. i have to abandon my first attempt with the semi-auto move template as I found a fatal flaw that affects any article with an apostrophe in the title (long story). Chris Day 01:06, 28 September 2008 (CDT)

How frustrating... --Larry Sanger 08:22, 29 September 2008 (CDT)

I asked a question here on a mediawiki Q&A page. It does not mean that the semi-auto move function cannot be accomplished but the most seamless solution would not be possible. The next best thing would involve having a field in the metadata template with the name of the new target. This is not that complex but i would prefer if the template kicked in as soon as any page is moved rather than requiring an entry in the metadata page. Chris Day 08:53, 29 September 2008 (CDT)

Chris, did you try localurl, as in:

{{#ifeq: {{localurl:{{BASEPAGENAME}}}} | {{localurl:Arthur's Seat}} | They are equal | NOT equal}}

I have no idea what you're trying to do, so this may well be useless. -- Jitse Niesen 09:58, 29 September 2008 (CDT)

Excellent, that works!!! many thanks. Chris Day 12:27, 29 September 2008 (CDT)

Your proposal "Article task and notification list"

Dear Larry, I'm afraid I have been slack in managing all the proposals. However, inspired by the Monthly Write-a-Thon and its theme "spring cleaning", I now want to clear out all the proposals that are merely gathering dust and push the rest forwards. I see you made a proposal "Article task and notification list" which unfortunately is still without a driver. I hope you'll find a driver within a few days, in which case, please have the driver update the proposal record at CZ:Proposals/New#Article task and notification list. Otherwise, I will remove the proposal and put it on the pile of driverless proposals. -- Jitse Niesen 16:48, 1 October 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for getting back involved with this Jitse--it was badly needed. I'm not going to be able to drive this proposal myself so I guess it goes into the pile... --Larry Sanger 16:57, 1 October 2008 (CDT)

I had not noticed this before. It is just an extension of the todo list we already have to get the metadata completed. It would be very easy to have subpage specific task etc. I just need to know what we want in the boxes. Chris Day 00:48, 2 October 2008 (CDT)

At this point I suppose all you need is an editable box? When you say standard tasks this means you want to have a bank of standardised tasks that can be switched on or off? Chris Day 00:50, 2 October 2008 (CDT)

Right--I think you have it. The key line in my brief description is "This would serve a similar purpose to WP's various top-of-page notices." I agree, it should not be very difficult. Maybe the most difficult part would be in the design, because on the talk pages, the subpages template is generating something pretty confusing and messy. You can think creatively about how to do this, but here is an idea. I'd like to see a standard metadata page section, easy to read in text format (which loads only when the talk page is loaded). All the bits are set to 0 or N, and in order to make a notice, all you have to do is set it to 1 or Y. On the talk page, where the notices display, there should be a clearly-labelled link back to the metadata section where they can be edited.

Again, you might have a better way of doing this. --Larry Sanger 07:36, 2 October 2008 (CDT)

The proposal is now on the junk pile (CZ:Proposals/Driverless), but Chris, if you want to put some work in it, I would say that you just go ahead. You're subpage supremo anyway, so I think it's more efficient to bypass the whole proposal thingy. -- Jitse Niesen 15:01, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

We are back

Sorry for the downtime. One of our servers, which doesn't usually go down, went down...it's back up. My e-mail still isn't working, not sure why.

--Larry Sanger 11:20, 9 October 2008 (CDT)

I'm outta here

Please remove my name from the list of contributors to Citizendium. I have no use for your attack dogs -- e.g., on the forum discussion about my suggested subpage to the manga article.

Timothy Perper

Timothy Perper 23:44, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

This is wholly unnecessary, and at the risk of sounding like Jimmy Wales, just one big misunderstanding. Let me get back home and deal with the situation then. --Larry Sanger 06:36, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Page moves disabled?

Larry - are page moves disabled? And where do I go to request a move be made, if I don't (want to/feel comfortable with) moving a cluster? Anthony Argyriou 00:53, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi Anthony, nice to see you. No, page moves aren't disabled, or they shouldn't be.

Are others having this problem? If so, it must be because of the recent MediaWiki update. --Larry Sanger 02:04, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, for a week or so now. No Move tab at the top of my page, either in FF or IE. Hayford Peirce 02:06, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Still? Howard moved something the other day (16th October). Chris Day 02:12, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, as of the moment of me typing this, there is no Move tab up there. I saw that Howard did indeed move something the other day and figured that he was using his old CIA and NSA contacts to lend him a helping hand.... Hayford Peirce 03:38, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Makes perfect sense. Chris Day 04:02, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I e-mailed bugs and now we just have to hope the guys will do something.  ;-) --Larry Sanger 04:21, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Testing

Testing testing --Larry Sanger 17:51, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Finalizing the approval of Accidental release source terms was supposed to occur yesterday

Larry, the finalizing of approval of the Accidental release source terms was supposed to occur yesterday. Matt Innis usually does that chore, but he seems to be unavailable. So I also tried Ruth Ifcher, but no luck there either. Chris Day has said that he would take care of it if someone would authorize him to do so. Would you please authorize Chris? Milton Beychok 21:46, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

It's all right with me if Chris does this. On account of his work on the subpages template, Chris is already a sysop and should have all the permissions that he should need in the system to approve articles. --Larry Sanger 22:29, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Done. I was not sure if I could do it, not being a constable. Chris Day 00:57, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Since so many of our constables are not responding, I think this is a perfectly suitable expedient. Thanks for taking up the slack1 --Larry Sanger 01:05, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

your assistance please...

A comment here was deleted by The Constabulary on grounds of making complaints about fellow Citizens. If you have a complaint about the behavior of another Citizen, e-mail constables@citizendium.org. It is contrary to Citizendium policy to air your complaints on the wiki. See also CZ:Professionalism.

George, please contact me and/or the Constabulary via e-mail if you have complaints about other Citizens. Complaining about another Citizen's behavior puts him on the spot, and on the defensive, which is why CZ:Professionalism doesn't permit it. --Larry Sanger 04:15, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Community boosting

How was I to know that the purpose of the page was to boost the community? --Paul Wormer 16:50, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you really mean to say it wasn't obvious? --Larry Sanger 17:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

No, it wasn't, I thought you expected an honest evaluation.

I've read in the meantime the recent discussion (I wasn't aware of its existence) and see my two main points confirmed: (i) People become irritated easily when using e-mail and/or the Web and (ii) editors are too easily overruled (or, at least, I seem to be not the only one who think so; I see now that a VIP left CZ for that reason a couple of days ago).--Paul Wormer 17:40, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, I did expect an honest evaluation; if you can't honestly recommend CZ, you shouldn't write anything on that page, I guess.

You wouldn't be aware of the existence of the cz-editcouncil discussion because the list is of the Editorial Council. I just thought in all honestly that you would find the discussion interesting and relevant, and I was evidently right!

The editor who left CZ recently was not overruled. He, for whatever reasons, likes to think and say so, but he is incorrect, and I've explained why several times. His definition of "overruled" seems to be: disagreed with by the Editor-in-Chief. Hence, whenever I disagree with an editor, I overrule him? Of course not. In fact, the problem that I personally had with the article in question still remains.

Also, even if it were a case of an editor being overruled, in this case it was the Editor-in-Chief who did the overruling. So that particular controversy isn't about the prerogatives of editors vs. authors, but about the prerogatives of the Editor-in-Chief vs. editors! --Larry Sanger 17:49, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Larry, I appended a paragraph, please have a look.--Paul Wormer 08:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks fine with me then. Thanks. --Larry Sanger 14:00, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Greetings too from Martin Cohen

Hulo Larry, and gang of editors/ authors!

Thanks for you message, glad to be here, at the best part of the project methinks. You've got the principles absolutely right, and the technology works, we just need the content now. I hadn't realised there was so much to be done before CZ reaches 'critical mass' - enough material for people to start using it as a real reference work - at which point everyone will flock here and we'll need to spend our time correcting pages rather than writing them.

I put some details of what I plan to do on the 'philosophy talk' page too, and am getting down to work straight away - we must get those key philosophers 'rolled out'!

I'm going to copy this to my own talk page as well.

Venceremos!

Martin Cohen 13:10, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

(Goodnes,, I'm an 'oldie' here...)

Excellent, thanks! Oh, believe me, we've got a lot of oldies here.  ;-)-

We definitely need a lot of work done in philosophy, that's for sure. --Larry Sanger 13:58, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

One click moves all subpages

When did the option to move subpages get added? (or has it always been there?) This is going to make moving clusters much much easier. if you don't know what I'm talking about try and move a page with clusters and note that one of the options is to move all subpages along with the article. Chris Day 04:58, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Huh? I didn't notice! Yay! It must have been included in the most recent MW update, which we did a few weeks back (as you know). Totally...basically, moving a cluster is now a simple two-step process. --Larry Sanger 05:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I'll update that move cluster link on the talk page to reflect this change (that was a nightmare procedure so I'm glad to see that go). I also note that the automated moves got messed up in that update so other functions might not be behaving as we expect. Stephens upload wizard comes to mind, although I have not seen anything odd to date. Chris Day 06:05, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds great. --Larry Sanger 14:13, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

User name change

I'd prefer to be known as 'SW Kolterman'. Can you change that? Thanks... Stephen W. Kolterman 04:56, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

We don't usually allow people to use two first initials and a last name, unless that's what they publish under. This might be better done by e-mail either to the Constabulary (constables@citizendium.org) or me. --Larry Sanger 05:19, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Help?

Hi Larry,

Sorry to "bug" you as it were, but the update a few weeks ago appears to have broken a template I was working on. Is there any documentation on the changes implemented in the new version?--David Yamakuchi 04:53, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Try [[1]]...I don't know that much about the technical details, I'm afraid. --Larry Sanger 06:07, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

CZ in French

Hello, I wish to let you know that I fully agree with your statement The people who want to hide behind pseudonyms, who want to play governance games in order to push their biases, and who want to prove their maturity and enlightenment by putting up pictures of naked little girls, can stick with Wikipedia. I have experienced that the same disfunction exists in the "WP in French". Therefore, am I waiting for the "CZ in French" creation. May I recommend not to wait until a great amount of bilingual Authors have joined CZ. May I recommend to start "CZ in French" with bilingual managers + French-speaking Authors. I believe that this push would fit the growth with quality strategy of CZ. Best regards.Thierry Henri Cauchois 13:47, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the push, Thierry--it is hard enough to manage CZ in English, but perhaps we should just set up the wikis and let those who are interested in the projects in other languages just get started. --Larry Sanger 17:10, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

There are a dozen or so articles I wrote in French several years ago for the French WP that could be imported (from the moment I stopped editing them, so that they are entirely mine), which would at least add a few items.... Hayford Peirce 17:52, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for answering. My analysis is based on two facts : 1- a huge amount of good quality articles already exists on WP in French; 2- a number of French WP contributors (or past contributors) are willing to contribute another way (a serious one). If importing articles from WP fits to CZ strategy, I would recommend for CZ to create the framework in French, then to select French CZ Authors entitled to start import (it is important to reach rapidly a critical mass of articles). In addition, being a user of the German WP, I have noticed its high quality standard. Perhaps is the same quick start possible. Friendly.Thierry Henri Cauchois 22:01, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I will certainly give it some thought (again). --Larry Sanger 05:02, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Business world

Larry, I think that your community's encyclopedic coverage of the business world is severely lacking. (As you may know, I'm the founder/operator of a site that would call itself an encyclopedic business directory, so I may be shooting myself in my own foot by communicating this to you, but...) I would like to know your policy about entities writing about themselves, or (heaven forbid) paying a third-party encyclopedist to write about themselves. As an example, I have added the (non-paid) encyclopedic entry about National Fuel Gas. Note, I didn't bother with cleaning up formatting for your environment here, because I don't know if we're on the same level-set regarding the provenance of info about corporations. What is your opinion about such content as this article, and does it matter to you whether money has exchanged hands to generate said initial content (assuming, of course, that the tone and style of the work is encyclopedic and not marketing puffery)? -- Gregory J. Kohs 16:09, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

We have already thought about this and established two relevant, interrelated policies: CZ:Policy on Topic Informants and CZ:Policy on Self-Promotion.

In short, realistically speaking, I don't think it is possible to set up a system in which PR firms are permitted to write neutral prose for their clients. PR firms are specifically paid to make their clients look good. We are, shall we say, in a different business. I should think all of this would be obvious to anyone who understands the ethics of reference publishing. Evidently, the ethics of business directory publishing is different. --Larry Sanger 16:19, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

At no point did I mention "public relations firms", and I am not in the PR business. Your jumping to the "PR" label is similar to what Jimmy Wales did in August 2006, which many feel was a big mistake, because it just "drove underground" the efforts of people genuinely interested in disseminating encyclopedic information about entities with which they were affiliated. I won't bore you with examples. I also still seek your opinion about the writing tone and relevance to Citizendium of National Fuel Gas. I will now go and read the two policies you highlighted. -- Gregory J. Kohs 16:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

It would seem that your opinion may be in contradiction with CZ policy: "You may not, even if you are a topic informant, start an article about yourself, or any company, organization, website, or other entity, especially marketable entity, with which you are closely associated." Would you consider a paid encyclopedist to have a "close association" with the organization that he (relatively speaking) briefly researches, synthesizes, and publishes about -- especially considering that the content would then be released into the CC-by-sa realm, to be managed by literally anyone? My answer would be a clear "no", but I'll await your answers to this question and the one above about National Fuel Gas. -- Gregory J. Kohs 16:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't really care what Jimmy Wales said. Sure, you didn't say PR firms; I did. Obviously, someone who is paid by a company to write about the company is acting as a PR agent for the company. But no important issues turn on whether we apply "PR firm" or "PR agent" in this case. Call them, simply, agents. My concerns still apply; they are substantive, not reducible to semantics.

You are obviously correct when you say that people affiliated with a company may sincerely wish to disseminate correct, even neutral information about the company. But that observation does not reply to the concern I have, namely, that if we adopt it as a general policy that agents of commercial enterprises (or of nonprofit or government enterprises, for that matter) may edit articles about their enterprises, we both lose credibility and have to doublecheck all information that these inherently biased agents insert. The correct answer to your question, about whether the paid encyclopedist has a close association with an enterprise, depends entirely on who pays the encyclopedist, now doesn't it? If, say, someone were sheerly out of the goodness of his heart decide to pay someone to work on CZ articles about businesses, and it could be proven that this person were not acting as anybody's agent but merely adding lots of useful information because it's so useful, well, I think that would be OK. But surely you aren't actually saying any such person, supported by a sheerly civic-minded entity, exists?

You may not understand our policy. I think any agent would be welcome to start business-related articles, post interviews, etc., in the TI: namespace. It would then be up to regular Citizens to decide whether to import those, or edited versions of them, to the main namespace.

If you think about it, for articles submitted by company agents, our Citizens would have to do due diligence in checking any potentially biased or self-serving information. Either we do this before the articles are posted in the main namespace, or we do it after. I think we should do it before, simply because we don't want to outstrip the volunteer resources we have.

After all this discussion, I'm afraid I don't have time to look into National Fuel Gas--I'm very, very busy with multiple projects these days. You could always ask on the Forums or on the talk page of that article...I'm betting some people will be willing to join in. There are several active people who understand the relevant policies. But I think I should ask whether National Fuel Gas had any understanding with you about your inserting it into CZ. In other words, were you acting as their agent, or were you merely adding information about the company? If you weren't acting as an agent, and you are trying to make a point by adding the article (I assume thanks are in order, by the way!), then what is your point? --Larry Sanger 17:11, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Your concerns about your site's credibility are of merit. I am simply going to predict, however, that by the year 2020, Citizendium will have less than 25% of the Fortune 1000 firms documented with articles, unless you or someone else decides to simply scrape them from another source. This, too, will have adverse effects on your site's credibility -- "a compendium with 25% coverage of the largest organizations on the planet?", people will chortle. Regardless, your position is actually very good for me in the long run, as a proprietor of a business directory site who would rather not have you as competition. I was mostly asking you these questions to allay any underlying pangs of Catholic "guilt" I might have, for not helping your encyclopedia with its development of business entity articles. You're coming up on two years of public content building, and you have articles only about National Fuel Gas and Nintendo in the Business Workgroup category subheading for the letter "N". Yesterday, it was only Nintendo.

The National Fuel Gas company has no idea who I am, and I have no payment relationship or history whatsoever with them. The "point" of that article is simply to demonstrate the "tone" and "style" of how a paid encyclopedist might write an article about a company, without technically being a "public relations" agent of the company. I would offer you about a dozen examples of paid articles that I've created, but then they would get deleted from Wikipedia, and after two years of their thriving there, I'd really hate to so foolishly sabotage my good content. So, I doubled your site's coverage of the "N" companies, and now I'll be on my way, since your concerns about bias and "self-serving" content outweigh your concerns about lack of coverage. I can live with that, and I still wish you the best of luck with your concept. I worry, though, that you will have a pristine but tiny compendium that only 1% of Internet users will ever visit. -- Gregory J. Kohs 17:34, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The same article exists at WP, word for word. There has been no attempt to modify it for the CZ article as it stands. So, assuming that you want to leave it here, it has to have the WP template attached to it. Hayford Peirce 17:36, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Even if the authorship of both articles is entirely my own, and the origination of the words therein predates its being uploaded to either Wikipedia or to Citizendium? I mean, if you want to get technical about chickens and eggs, let's be careful. I would be particularly offended if the article received a "WP template", when it was created on December 10, 2006, by me, long before Wikipedia copied it from my site. -- Gregory J. Kohs 17:45, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your concern, Gregory.

As to the article and crediting WP, simply put a notice at the top of the talk page saying that you are the sole author of the article (if, in fact you are!) and then nobody will check the "from WP" checkbox. But if anyone from WP has made any edits to this article, i.e., if even a comma was from a Wikipedian, we have to credit WP as a source.

You can also feel free to credit MyWikiBiz.com at the bottom of the article just as we credit Wikipedia as a source for WP-started articles. But then, people will probably also want, on the talk page, your above disclaimers to me about your lack of involvement with National Fuel Gas. --Larry Sanger 18:34, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Open letter to Larry Sanger

As per Larry's request, I have deleted this entire thread and moved it to: http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/board,73.0.html in the Non-Member's Forum Discussion. Hayford Peirce 03:06, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Specialized editor

Larry, I see some articles that are ready for approval. Could I be made specialist editor for the following categories based on my indicated experience below?

1. Boxing: 2-time state amateur champion and long-time fan
2. Bowling: 1-time city league champion and long-time bowler
3. Soccer: 10+ years playing and paid referee of youth soccer leagues for several years
4. Sailing: Have sailed on boats ranging from 16' cats to 44' yachts (island living is sooo tough!)

David E. Volk 21:47, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi David, I am impressed!

Could you send me some more details by e-mail please? --Larry Sanger 02:48, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Holy Schnikes

My edit above seems to be attributed to Chris Day. Do we have a new bug? David E. Volk 21:54, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

That is way bizarre. I will see what the tech guys say about it. --Larry Sanger 02:51, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Not bizarre, I copied and pasted it here from Talk:Larry Sanger. Chris Day 03:07, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Doh! --Larry Sanger 03:31, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

categories revisited

Larry, how did you get the talk page categories to only show the article name? Would it be possible to do a similar trick for the template namespace such that any category on the metadata template would only show up in a category list as just BASEPAGENAME (not Template:BASEPAGENAME/Metadata)? I should add, this is asking for one extra thing compared with the current talk namespace, as in that case a category on a 'Talk:Article/Draft' type page will be listed as "Article/Draft" not "Article" in the category list. Chris Day 04:12, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

A "magic word" probably, but what template are you referring to? --Larry Sanger 04:23, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

All the metadata templates, but I imagine what ever rule is in place will be valid for all templates. Do you want the long version, although, if it's not possible then the whole thing is moot anyway. See the bottom of my talk page, response to Matt, to get a bit of a feel for what I am thinking. Chris Day 04:28, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm still confused. As you know, I haven't worked on the subpage templates & metadata templates associated with subpages to any significant degree since you took them over. Do you mean the metadata templates for the userinfo system? Sorry... --Larry Sanger 04:38, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

No, the one for clusters, i.e. Template:Biology/Metadata. Here is the problem. When workgroups or a status are changed in the metadata of a cluster the categories do change on the article and subpages but these changes do not get registered in the relevant categories unless an actual edit is made to the page. Consequently, we have to make minor edits every time after a change in the metadata to make the article names appear in the correct category lists.

I am beginning to realise that this is going to be a big problem as our size increases. One solution is to have all the categories on the metadata template. Then, as changes are made to the metadata, all the categories will "register" immediately. This does not mean no category links will appear in the articles or the subpages, there can still be links based on the information in the metadata. We already do this on the draft pages, look at the top of Biology/Draft and Chemical_engineering/Draft, you'll see links to categories but there are no workgroup categories on the page. This is still a short explanation but might help you understand the problem better. Chris Day 04:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

That does sound like a prickly problem...I'd need to think more about it. It might have a server-side solution; might be a good idea to run it by the bugs guys. Well, I'm off to bed...also, if the problem would be handily solved by putting categories on the metadata page, as you suggest, then why not do that? --Larry Sanger 04:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I would, but then every category would have a list of article names stating with "Template" and ending with "/Metadata". Apart from being an eyesore, it would also be much harder to parse the information. This brings us full circle ;) See my initial comment above. Chris Day 04:58, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Gotcha. I'd have to do research, it'd take time...maybe I'll be able to help, but don't count on it...sorry! --Larry Sanger 20:31, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

By the way, you said, "how did you get the talk page categories to only show the article name," thereby implying that I had performed this feat. I was asking, where do you think I performed the feat? If you could point me to my performance I might be able to explain it.  :-) --Larry Sanger 20:32, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Great, the proverbial needle in a haystack. I'll see if i can root it out. Chris Day 20:42, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

M.C. Lake article

what's a biology editor doing by tearing out an entire section? I can't and won't have that. I won't finish the article if that's going to be the case. i thought this wasnt wikipedia. S. W. Kolterman 06:28, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I sent an e-mail to try and explain the confusion. I take responsibility here, I did not explain my edits. Chris Day 14:23, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks like Chris was just moving sections to subpages, which is something we do here...in fact, this is one of the ways we aren't like Wikipedia. See CZ:Subpages. --Larry Sanger 14:47, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Blurriness

Not "worried," Larry, just provoking thought. Russell D. Jones 18:57, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

And that you are doing, Russell. I appreciate it. Some calm, careful reflection on all these matters is definitely needed. --Larry Sanger 19:02, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Mostly my own thoughts. On the HW we are also having the same sort of sorting out "what the heck are we doing here?" Russell D. Jones

Traffic

Larry, have you been watching CZ's page views over the last month? Russell D. Jones 21:50, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I have! Pretty amazing, isn't it--I can't account for it. --Larry Sanger 04:25, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Homeopathy? Chris Day 08:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not know which measure of CZ page views you used but I had been testing an Alexa toolbar on one of my computers from about Dec 17 on (for other purposes) and switched it off on Feb 2 after I saw this discussion. I guess this explains much of the variability in their CZ page view stats during that period. --Daniel Mietchen 00:01, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Could one person have made that much of a difference? Hmm...  ;-) --Larry Sanger 01:11, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Daniel, I think that Russell and Chris are talking about the Forums page views which increased very dramatically recently... and the Alexa statistics are about Citizendium page views which hasn't changed much recently. Milton Beychok 01:17, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Could one person have made that much of a difference? Hmm... If so, then lets all add Alexa toolbars! :-) D. Matt Innis 01:54, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

If my guess goes into the right direction, this would also indicate that none of the CZ regulars edits CZ via a browser with active Alexa toolbar. My next guess, then, would be that many of the users of these toolbars also contribute to WP - yet another (though certainly minor) reason why the two projects fare differently in terms of commonly used traffic stats.

In terms of whether one person could have such a visible effect: "reach" (dunno exactly what this signifies, but perhaps the number of different IPs accessing the site) has not changed during that period but "rank" and "page views" did, so I think it is possible. And if you really wanna know, it would be easy to do an experiment of this sort: Matt could choose a few of the regulars and ask them (perhaps better in private) to use such toolbars (perhaps not always but following a suitable protocol) when editing CZ for the next four weeks or so, and after this period, their identity could be revealed and the observed pattern in the graph compared to their activity on the wiki (alternatively, if we all trust him, he could write a report without revealing the identities). But we may have more pressing things to do... --Daniel Mietchen 03:00, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Trying to understand

Hi, Larry: I note that CZ:Proposals/New lists three New proposals. I also note that CZ: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?
• And who is responsible for moving New proposals to Active proposals?

I'm not complaining ... I'm just trying to understand how the proposal system works and you are the only one I thought could explain it to me. Many thanks in advance, Milton Beychok 09:07, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm a little confused as well. My understanding is that as Secretary of the Editorial Council, I become responsible for moving these into the process once introduced, but, after they have been, it is the role of the (currently vacant, I believe) Proposals Manager (or Driver?) to making sure they progress. The role of the Secretary is, other than certain technical details when the Proposal is newly submitted, to be the parliamentary authority for that procedure. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I saw this list yesterday. I'm willing to devote some time to these proposals. Russell D. Jones 15:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Milt, thanks for asking. Many of your questions about how the proposals system is supposed to work are answered on CZ:Proposals/Policy. But we've been falling down on the job here with our proposals system. The system is meant to be a combination of bottom-up (people making proposals) and top-down (other people if necessary take over proposals as "drivers," and a Proposals Manager. But, no doubt because many people have lost interest, our Proposals Manager, Jitse Niesen, appears to have lost interest, and I have failed to follow up myself (I'm supposed to be managing him). But, especially with an active (or newly active) Proposals Manager, the system can still move forward. I've just e-mailed Jitse.

Answering some more specific items Milt above:

> How does a New proposal get to be an Active proposal?

A complete proposal needs to be made, i.e., not just the yellow box, but the page that comes up when you click on the "Complete proposal" link. If this is done and the proposal is in order, according to the system, the Proposals Manager is supposed to move the proposal to the appropriate proposal list page.

> Also, why are those Active proposals still sitting there without the Editorial Council being notified to vote on them?

Because nobody has made them into full-blooded resolutions yet. All Editorial Council resolutions need sponsors. The mere fact that a proposal appears on CZ:Proposals/Editorial Council does not make it automatically a resolution (though perhaps it should). If they have sponsors, proposals can be converted into resolutions very easily, in an almost perfunctory way. See this section.

> Who is responsible for moving Active proposals to a vote?

It depends on the type of proposal. Again, see this section, and bear in mind that not all decisions may be made by vote, though many will be.

> And who is responsible for moving New proposals to Active proposals?

The Proposals Manager.

Now from Howard:

> My understanding is that as Secretary of the Editorial Council, I become responsible for moving these into the process once introduced,

Here are what the rules say. From CZ:Proposals/Policy#Decisionmaking_groups, speaking only about Editorial Council proposals (not other kinds): "If the driver is not a Council member, and no Council member is ready to sponsor the proposal/issue and make it into a resolution, then e-mail the Secretary of the Council (Howard C. Berkowitz). The Secretary then has the responsibility of posting (if necessary) repeated calls for sponsorship. If no Council member will sponsor the resolution after three calls, it may be considered declined."

Other than that, the Secretary of the Editorial Council has no responsibility here.

> but, after they have been, it is the role of the (currently vacant, I believe) Proposals Manager (or Driver?) to making sure they progress.

I don't think Jitse has actually resigned. We'll find out soon enough.

> The role of the Secretary is, other than certain technical details when the Proposal is newly submitted, to be the parliamentary authority for that procedure.

I'd have to look, but strictly speaking the Secretary is the head of the Rules Committee (currently consisting of...drumroll please...you), which is the parliamentary authority, but it is the Chair that ultimately decides the interpretation of rules. The Secretary has nothing whatsoever to do with the rules governing the Proposals System, which is a project-wide system governed ultimately by little ol' me (with input from the Executive Committee).

As usual, this is all revisable, none of this is written in stone, and some of it will certainly have to change with some things we've been talking about in the forums recently.

And from Russell:

> I'm willing to devote some time to these proposals. Russell D. Jones

Hi Russell, thanks for your offer--do you mean you're willing maybe to take over as a driver of several proposals, or perhaps even Proposals Manager?

>>>>I mean that I'll look at them, try to resuscitate some. Proposals' Manager? Let me sleep on that one..... Russell D. Jones 19:56, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

--Larry Sanger 19:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

A user page isn't really the place to get into this, but you had told me that the role of the Editorial Council, which I had thought was defined by CZ: Editor Policy#Editorial Council, was redefined by Resolution 0001 to be limited to the approval of proposals. I believe these two sources are not reconciled, but, if the Proposal System is not under the Editorial Council, then I have difficulty understanding what responsibilities, if any, actually reside with the Editorial Council. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:49, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you must have misunderstood me, or I said something confusing myself--or quite possibly both. However that is, the fact is that there is a difference between a proposal in the Proposals System, on the one hand, and a Resolution that is before the Editorial Council, on the other. I think this is very clear from the combination of CZ:Proposals/Policy and CZ:Editorial Council Rules of Procedure. As to what responsibilities reside with the Editorial Council, please examine those two documents as well as CZ:Editor Policy#Editorial Council. And I hope there's no reason to "get into" anything at all here. Please just read the documents themselves, and if you have any quick questions, I'll be happy to answer them here to the best of my ability. If you have any objection, deeply insightful or constitutional or otherwise, the forum would probably be the best place for that. --Larry Sanger 19:58, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Larry, have you had any luck contacting Jitse regarding the logjam in the processing of proposals? Or has anyone else offered to serve as the Proposals Manager? I am sure you agree that something simply has to be done to clear up that logjam. Regards, Milton Beychok 23:16, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Milt, I've tried again by e-mail earlier today--let's wait a bit more. I agree completely about the logjam. I'm sorry for my own failure to break it up. --Larry Sanger 03:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Kid's pages

Larry, I thought that you might find a new page that I am working on of interest:

USA education, preschool

Not sure about how to classify it besides the fact that it is education. I did not want to just call it Preschool, because there is items in there that are USA centered (US History people, US Holidays, etc.), but I don't have a problem with other copying the page and modifying it for other countries.

Also, are you in charge of maintaining the MediaWiki code? If so, is there the possability to set things up so that images can be directly referenced from Wikipedia commons? I want to add images to articles, but I am not interested in downloading them from Wikipedia to just upload them here, especially if I would be required to find all contact info, licenses, etc. I know that I am being lazy, but I am also being honest.

My main gripe with Wikipedia was that there is images ( and content) that I don't think children should have access to, but they have a great selection of images. So I would like to work on Gallery pages for this site. Melissa Newman 13:58, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Melissa, first, by all means, please do compile galleries here--we love them. And since you ask: I'm not in charge of maintaining the MediaWiki code, and frankly I don't think there would be a lot of support for leaning on Wikipedia's servers in the way you suggest, especially because we do require the contact information; we're trying to be good Citizens in every sense, you see.

But now about your preschool project. It looks great! But I would ask you to do two things. The first is to move the lists to a CZ:Catalogs subpage of the preschool article, or else to the CZ: namespace (that might be better), because what you are compiling is a list of topics that preschoolers study. Possibly CZ:Kiddiwiki or CZ:Kidipedia, but I think those names might already be taken.

Some topics on the list really aren't suitable as topics for CZ articles, such as "above and below." But this isn't a problem if you are meaning to start "kid pages." In that case, what I would have you do is write at least a brief description of the project you'd like to start, put it on the forums so people can discuss it, and then announce the proposal on Citizendium-L (or, ask me to do so), so we can get as many people as possible working on it with you. I might contribute. I do quite a bit of this sort of stuff for my little boy. --Larry Sanger 20:09, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

P.S. my comment from yesterday on Talk:USA education, preschool. --Larry Sanger 20:10, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Larry, please excuse me for getting into this ... but I thought the following post by Melissa in the Forums a few days ago might better explain her idea about getting images from Wikimedia Commons:

I had recently installed a personal MediaWiki, so I have recently played around with the LocalSettings.php file. There are variables that are easy to setup to allow accessing images on http://commons.wikipedia.org. Is it possible to get this setup, so we can add Commons images to our articles? Here is the code:

$wgForeignFileRepos[] = array(
'class' => 'ForeignAPIRepo',
'name' => 'shared',
'apibase' => 'http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php',
'fetchDescription' => true, // Optional
'descriptionCacheExpiry' => 43200, // 12 hours, optional
'apiThumbCacheExpiry' => 43200, // 12 hours, optional, but required for local thumb caching );

I have tested this on my personal Wiki and it works. I am not sure for a high traffic site like this what other variables will need to be set.

Melissa Newman

Also, see Here where both Chris Day and I felt it would sure make life easier to get images from Commons much more easily than can be done now. Milton Beychok 22:10, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I will reply there. --Larry Sanger 00:57, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Catalog vs. curriculum

I understand the concept that people want the list of article names on a sub-page. I understand the concept of a catalog. The only problem that I have with that name is that most people who would be interested in the information that I would be creating in the format that I am creating would be looking for the information under the name curriculum. Even if the concept of a catalog is the same thing, the terminology is not the terminology used in the field. A list of topics on what is taught in a grade level is called a curriculum. If you are talking about several years of schooling in one or more subjects it is called a sequence. It might also be referred to as a list of topics.

If I saw catalog under Preschool, I would expect to find a list of merchants, books, or apparateuses that would help me to teach a preschooler the curriculum. Bibliography is a list of books and possibly tapes and movies. But I would not expect to find ETA Cuisenaire (a company that makes educational apparatuses) listed there or Carolina science (a company that sells science equipment).

Maybe the problem is that I have never seem a catalog page like the ones that you are creating on this wiki. When I get a catalog in the mail, it is a list of items that I can buy or a list of companies that I can buy from.

Melissa Newman 17:33, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Melissa, I may be wrong but I believe that you can name a subpage "Curriculum" if you so wish. Contact Chris Day who is our subpage guru. Milton Beychok 19:31, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Melissa, your argument is an argument for scrapping the name "Catalog" altogether, which I'm actually sympathetic with (in favor of "Tables"). Please see CZ:Catalogs and CZ:Subpages if you haven't yet. I do not encourage ad hoc names for subpages; standardization of information types is a good thing and we should stick to it as much as possible.

All this being said, again I have to ask what the purpose of this whole effort is. If (1) it is merely to develop a list of topics of interest for preschool education, then a Catalog is exactly the right place to put it, under our current system, and your frustration will then be with the name for the information type we have (alternatively described as a table, information summary, compendium, almanac, or catalog). But if (2) it is instead to develop a new system kid pages, such pages really belong either in another namespace (my off-the-cuff preference, subject to more cogitation and discussion) or possibly in a new subpage type (not so good, for a variety of reasons). Could you clarify if you want to do (1) or (2), or something else? --Larry Sanger 01:06, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Larry, please excuse me for entering this conversation and I promise not to interrupt again after this. However, CZ:Article-specific subpages indicates fairly clearly that we may create article-specific subpages ... does it not? Or am I missing something? Milton Beychok 04:24, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

That was written as part of a proposal, it has not been discussed in detail and certainly not been to the editorial council. Obviously I disagree with Larry on this point :) (I wrote the proposal), and I could expand on my reasons but this is not the place. I might add that after an extended discussion I could see the idea in a new light. The idea was precipitated from a comment about usability on Petréa Mitchell's talk page that was precipitated by an essay that Petréa wrote. In short, it is not official. Chris Day 04:41, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

By golly, let's get it in front of the Council sooner rather than later! --Larry Sanger 05:32, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I vote 100% a million times over for a separate namespace for a student encyclopedia. As for if there should be a separate one for children and students, I will leave that final decision to you as "Editor-in-Chief". I think that it can go either way. Now going into begging mode ... pretty please with cherries on top and marshmallow topping setup a separate namespace for students! I promise to put my name on the workgroup. Melissa Newman 21:22, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Just to be clear I think these are two distinct issues. Chris Day 21:25, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Chris--agreed. Melissa--starting a whole new (complementary, but also rather different) project is another issue that certainly has to come before the Editorial Council. In the meantime, I think continuing to discuss the general concept, and figuring out both what would be best according to general editorial requirements, and according to the existing community's preferences, would be a good way to spend some time...

Actually, come to think of it, what we really need to do is feel out the CZ community and other potentially interested parties to see if there is enough interest in actually starting up the project. The very last thing I want to do is start a project that there just won't be enough people to support. I would put out some feelers myself, to gauge interest, but...ugh, I don't have time right now! --Larry Sanger 21:48, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Here is a summary of things I have already written on the forums. I like the idea of a new namespace with a different unique header, to separate the projects. In that way a distinct subpages structure can be used (it could even have vertical tabs). I think workgroups should not have a role but I could see a role for K12 specific subgroups for CZ authors with an interest in contributing to both projects. I like the idea of limited links between the projects (possibly a tab on CZ articles when a K12 version exists in the other namespace). One technical issue is that the hyperlinks in the K12 namespace should automatically be restricted to that namespace rather than linking to main space. Chris Day 22:10, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Chris, what effect would your proposal of a new namespace have on our servers? Even with my high-speed cable service, CZ is maddeningly slow very often. Milton Beychok 22:39, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I have no clue. I wonder if the slowness might be due to the subpages template drawing too many resources. The sooner the subpages structure is hard wired the better but as a non-programmer I don't even know what is possible. Chris Day 22:56, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I brought out the indent, because it was going too far inwards.

First, the technical answer about the slowness. This is most likely due to the fact that the pages are not accessed that often, so they are always being processed. I think that there is a way to say that all of the pages in a certain namespace should be generated into cache. Look at the programs in the maintenance directory of the source code. The expiry of those pages can also be set to be a longer time period than the main pages (for example, a year unless we know that they are changed. If the sub-pages are always generated automatically, then there is going to be slowness issue. But again, if the pages are cached as html, there should not be an issue. Everything goes back to the cache and the expiry of the cache. There are also several different versions of cache, but I have never personally played around with a cache server.

Back to the discussion at hand.

If you plan to put out the feelers within this specific group, the only people you are going to find that are going to express a strong interest is myself and you Larry. I have not seen strong positives from anybody else. The people who would be interested are not here at the current time. The people that would be interested are currently writing their own blogs, writing their own curriculum, homeschooling their children, helping the Gutenburg project, communicating on homeschooling websites and yahoo forums, trying to start their own website without much success, or just plain given up. People have tried to start kid specific wikis, but from what I have seen, they are just not able to build a strong enough foundation to even get their foot off the ground. A person looks at the website and it just has the feeling of being dead.

In any project, there is several components. First, there is the physical source code. Second, there is the look and feel of the site. The third is the foundation of the templates. Fourth is the foundation of the images and other media (country flags, standard medical images, historical sites of interest, pictures of works of art, audio of famous music, etc.). Fifth is the foundation of the articles. What articles need to definitely be included and what is extra? Britannicas children's encyclopedia (stories) has 15 volumes with about 1000 articles. First encylopedias that I have seen have 500 at most, because what would be separate articles in another encyclopedia would be put into one article on a first encyclopedia. A student encyclopedia would have 5000 articles at most, but more likely 3000. Although in my own database adding in idioms and stories can easily bring a hard article count to over 6,000.

The main issue is images. Wikipedia has a great resource of images, but they also have a bunch of image categories that are not appropriate for children. "category: ren"? And that is just one example. There is no way to filter wikipedia images, because there is logic to the categories. "Category:Missionary position" has a parent category of "category:man on top".

Using any wiki for student research is not a good idea. The foundation of student research skills should be built upon traditional sources (aka books). Once this website is more established, will the view of this website change? I don't really know. I will personally go with the general view of how librarians and teachers respond to this project.

I like the format of how this website is setup -- a gallery page for every article. The sub-page concept makes a nice design.

How many levels of encyclopedia do we need? Preschoolers: I can't see a parent reading to their child from a computer screen. They will look at images together, and they will listen to sound together, but I have never read to my preschooler from a website. My preschooler likes to see the picture of the bear and click on the button to hear the bear growl. Plus, one can buy a preschool/first encyclopedia for $20 from ebay. I think that preschoolers needs can be met through gallery pages on a different project.

Junior level: This is the story level. The pages are presented in story format. The images that preschoolers need, this group needs. The images that this group needs, the next higher group needs. So in my opinion, this group's needs can be met through a story or read-aloud sub page of the next level up. The next level up is the student level.

Having the student encyclopedia being a sub-page of the adult pages is not a good idea, because it goes back to the original problem of images. The images that adults need and want are going to be different than what students need and want. There will be overlap, but there will also be differences. The three levels of students can share a namespace, but student and adults can't share a space.

Will the image issue make even sharing the same namespace an issue? In the end, that may be true. Adults feel very strongly about not having any restrictions on their content. Children need restrictions. This is done in movies, music, magazines, stores, and a host of other areas. To expect that not to be an issue on a website is not realistic. Although, this website was built upon the concept of family friendliness. Will the combination of that and gallery pages be enough of a general protection? It may take a couple of years to get an answer to that.

As for the catalog issue ... until the issue of where the physically place the student pages or even if they should be allowed, should be settled before the issue of catalog pages. Changing "curriculum" to "catalog" is a one line change. Even if I made 10 pages, it would still be a small change. Changing where student pages are physically located is a big change. That is why that issue should have a higher priority.

Melissa Newman 14:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

(undent more) Melissa you wrote: "If you plan to put out the feelers within this specific group, the only people you are going to find that are going to express a strong interest is myself and you Larry. I have not seen strong positives from anybody else. ". I think you need to look harder. While there are those who have said they would not have any interest in participating it is not correct to say there is no support. Chris Day 15:47, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Put me on the support list. Seeing the work that Melissa has put out in the short time that she has been here, I don't doubt she can create the interest to attract others with her passion. :-) D. Matt Innis 03:01, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Melissa--interesting thoughts, and we have similar goals insofar as I'm teaching my little boy a lot of things now, too, and we intend to homeschool him (basically, we already are doing so). But, I'm puzzled--if you think there isn't going to be any interest in the project, you're declaring that the project will not succeed from the get-go, aren't you? A community-built project requires lively interest if it is to succeed.

I'd love to do this, but when I put my manager's/boss hat on, I have to wonder if we can. The quite possible lack of a quorum is one big concern. Then, frankly, I would like to partner with a publisher, one that is also a Web publishing company with Web 2.0 experience, to create a brand new wiki. If CZ takes this on, it will overextend me, personally, even further--and that would not be good for anybody, believe me. Notice, Melissa, you say we need to do this, this, and that. Who is going to do this, this, and that, or see to it that these things are done? Who else but me? Of course, if there were someone that I knew, who I knew I could trust to do a great job (working full time--that's what it takes to start up a new project like this), and who could take on a children's project in the CZ fold, then I might support the idea. But I don't know of such a person.

I agree that most parents of preschoolers won't look at Web pages--that idea actually seems silly to me, on consideration. Instead, there needs to be individual pages, something like what you see on http://www.brillkids.com/ -- PowerPoint-type presentations. I've actually toyed with the idea of somehow partnering with BrillKids on a little kid's encyclopedia. The entries would take the form of multimedia slideshows. What they are doing at present is, frankly, pretty low-quality, and it is derivative of the work of Glenn Doman, which in my nonexpert opinion has some problems.

Finally, I agree that easy image-grabbing or -uploading is absolutely required. New software is needed to make this as easy as possible. Basically, there needs to be a browser extension that allows people to drag and drop images from Flickr & Wikimedia Commons. Without this, it will be way too hard to create the articles, and the project will probably die due to the difficulty of using the MediaWiki system to host images. This is another reason I say that we would probably have to partner with someone. --Larry Sanger 16:46, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Larry, the technical difficulties with images on this project are a result of the editorial decisions made by the editorial board, not technical issues. MediaWiki allows one to include an image from a URL, upload an image from a URL, include images from wiki commons. There is also extension on MediaWiki for importing images from flickr based on commons license. It all goes back to the LocalSettings.php file and adding a few extensions. But as you said previously, you don't want to be bound by Wikipdia comons. As for allowing uploads by URL, it should be allowed under certain groups. For example, any author / editor of the workgroup media should have access to this feature. Or maybe say all editors have access to this feature. I just tried to set it up on my own MediaWiki install. The MediaWiki part is easy. The only snag I ran into was php curl libraries.

As for who is going to be responsible. If you want somebody full time, are you going to pay them a salary? If you are willing to pay for a full-time editor/writer, I can get you somebody by tomorrow. Also, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Do we setup the foundation and look for people or do we look for people and then setup the foundation? I vote for setting up the foundation first. If things really don't work out, we merge the already written articles back into the main namespace, if appropriate. An SQL script can accomplish that in a couple of minutes. Otherwise they just get deleted. You can also develop interest by looking at numberous startups of kid wikis. Contact the owner and just ask them if they want to continue on their own or merge into one group. All of the usernames on the MediaWiki discussion about this topic is another source. Melissa Newman 21:21, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Physics editorship for Paul Wormer

Larry, Paul Wormer wants to become a Physics Editor. In my opinion, he is eminently qualified to be one. I am sure that Daniel Mietchen would agree that Paul is very qualified to be Physics Editor. I would hazard a guess that Paul has worked on more Physics articles in CZ than anyone else.

Can you please see that Paul is made an Editor? Milton Beychok 16:41, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I support the request, as previously stated on Paul's talk page. --Daniel Mietchen 13:49, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Guys--Paul Wormer is now a Physics Editor! In the future, however, please make your recommendation by e-mail...in case the answer has to be "no," as it sometimes does. --Larry Sanger 14:26, 19 February 2009 (UTC)