User talk:David Hoffman

Welcome!

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

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start, and see Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, our help system and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forum is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any user or the editors for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun! -- Stephen Ewen 13:44, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

A few words about workgroups

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

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

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

• Start by checking the various workgroups we have at CZ: List of Workgroups. This link can also be found in the left navigation-bar in the 2nd box (Project Pages), 3rd link in that box (Workgroups). The Workgroup Home(s) can be found in the 2nd column in the List of Workgroups.

• For the purposes of this tour, please take a look at the Biology Workgroup Home: CZ:Biology_Workgroup.
• Now let's take a look at the first table on the Biology Workgroup Home (below).

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

Biology article	All articles (1,623)	To Approve (0)	Editors: active (1) / inactive (46) and Authors: active (441) / inactive (0)	Workgroup Discussion
	Recent changes	Citable Articles (25)
		Subgroups (12.5)

Checklist-generated categories: Underlinked (753) Cat Check (506) Cleanup (0) Subpage categories: Definitions (1,562) Related Articles (1,441 to check 710) Bibliography (400) External Links (446) Gallery (30) Video (33)

Missing subpage categories: Definitions (34) Related Articles (15) Bibliography (32) External Links (33) Article statuses: 104 Developed (status=1) 673 Developing (status=2) 699 Stub (status=3) 105 External (status=4) 128 Advanced (status 0-1) 801 Nonstub (status 0-2) 1,500 Internal (status 0-3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Introduction to CZ for Wikipedians

-- Stephen Ewen 13:44, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Imports

You should stop importing and start improving. Then import more.  ;-) Stephen Ewen 18:56, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Steve -- yes, I understand this approach. Perhaps you could comment on my "strategy." But don't worry, I'll only import a few more sections that I think are part of the major core. David Hoffman 18:56, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

See CZ:Article_Deletion_Policy, first point. To change policy, do feel free to start a discussion at http://forum.citizendium.org/ . ---Stephen Ewen 18:59, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Sure, that's fair (and I noticed something along those lines before). I've started to make revisions to what I've imported, sometimes quite drastic ones. But I trust you and the others to know what's best for CZ. I don't think I'm trying to change a policy, am I? Well, that's not my intent. Maybe I should vet with you, or a veteran who could "adopt" me, before I import more. David Hoffman 19:03, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Just don't import more, David -work on what you've got. What's happened again and again is that somebody becomes a new citizen, they import loads of stuff from wikipeida, meaning to eventually change it, or thinking some one else will, but nobody does and then somebody ends up having to go through the wiki and delete it a couple of weeks from now. Work on what you have already imported,and when you have, then import more. But wait- I have a "jewish question" for you (very bad joke which is actually a query prompted in the most respectful way)which perhaps you can answer first - I don't know if you know the traditional Jewish law- but for Natural family planning I wanted to go through how the very orthodox rules for touching between husband and wife increase the chances of pregnancy, but I have forgotten exactly how it works- I think its 7 days after last visible blood- and then mikvah? I also do not know the history of that tradition, how it started, which passages in which books are referred to? I'd like to include this in a scholarly fashion for that article. In any event, no "sin of Onan" means high sperm count, timing of togetherness after abstinence means likely intercourse at time of ovulation, and I would like to refer to this all properly. Can you help? Nancy Sculerati 19:23, 10 May 2007 (CDT)