User talk:Michael J. Formica

Welcome!

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. You'll probably want to know how to get started as an author. Just look at CZ:Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. Be sure to stay abreast of events via the Citizendium-L (broadcast) mailing list (do join!) and the blog. Please also join the workgroup mailing list(s) that concern your particular interests. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forums is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any constable for help, too. Me, for instance! Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun! Larry Sanger 12:41, 4 November 2007 (CST)

Hi Michael, Sorry. I just noticed your post on my discussion page. What exactly is the problem you are having? Gary Giamboi 17.36, 11 November 2007 (CST)

Re CZ Live

You're welcome, but there I was doing the stupid part only :) Aleksander Stos 17:59, 7 November 2007 (CST)

Yoga categorization

One of the really neat things about the subpages scheme is that it automatically places articles into categories according to what is listed in the metadata template. So if you fill in "cat1" on the metadata page, the article will automatically be placed into the corresponding workgroup category. The same is, of course, true if you fill in "cat2" and "cat3" as well.

The reason that Yoga was still in the Hobbies workgroup until yesterday is that someone had typed [[Category:Hobbies Workgroup]] at the bottom of the page. This is how we managed things before the introduction of subpages, but it is no longer necessary and sometimes even gets in the way now. I removed that tag and you can see if you click on "edit" on the yoga page that there are no longer any categories listed at the bottom. "CZ Live" and workgroup categories still appear when you look at the article, because they are placed by the subpages template. In the future, you can do everything you're likely to need to do through the metadata template (unless we come up with an even better system :-)) --Joe Quick 22:03, 10 November 2007 (CST)

I understand your frustration. As far as I can tell, I'm the only person around who knows anything about most of the topics that I've been writing on (mainly anthropology of Mesoamerica). I try to branch out where I can and I've started a couple of articles that I was pretty sure others would be able to add to but people are still pretty sparse around here in the social sciences. I'll be sure to keep an eye on your contributions and jump in where I can, but unfortunately, my interest in psychology goes well beyond my knowledge of it.

As far as new workgroups go, this is something that keeps getting put on the back burner in favor of other projects. The power to create new workgroups is more or less limited to the editorial council in order to avoid an unmanageable proliferation and I hope that a resolution will be passed soon but none has come up yet. There are a whole bevy of interdisciplinary groups that I'd like to see created (cognitive studies, gender studies, etc.) but I suspect the first round of new workgroups will be limited to area studies, biography and a few others. Hopefully, this happens soon. --Joe Quick 12:27, 11 November 2007 (CST)

Pranam, Michael. IMHO, the reason we have a hard time writing a concise piece about the MAs is because MAs has become user friendly and politically correct. It is what it is, not what we want it to be. I listed lama pai only to include something from as many countries as possible. Tibetan White Crane can also be used.

I noticed you also deleted the mention of fighting to acquire mating rights. If you look at todays larger primates, the baddest dude gets the women. As many as he can keep the others away from. I am sure that tokk place in our history before we started inter-group warfare or even large scale hunting for meat.

As for deleting MAs as the driving force behind much of science, so much of what was discovered was to make one country's army better than the next one's. Everything from the Roman system of roads to metallurgy to chemistry was driven by war and in modern times, physics, metallurgy, chemistry and most everything else has been greatly influenced by military spending. If someone doesn't tell it like it is, people will keep on believing what is pleasurable. The whitewashing of our instincts will never give us a chance to rein them in.--Gary Giamboi 15.04, 12 November 2007 (CST)

Subpage issue response

By putting the subpage template on the talk page, you get the subpage headings at the top of the talk page (not just the main article page) which can aid in navigation amongst all the subpages. Also you get the area that allows you to show the checklist and unused pages. See CZ:Using the Subpage template step 4. Matt Mahlmann 17:31, 12 November 2007 (CST)

Article authorship

Hello Michael. I noticed you removed my note of authorship from the article depersonalization disorder, and I was a little confused as to why. It was not my intention to take credit for someone else's work. Perhaps you could point out which sections I've erroneously taken credit for, and I will take them out. The concern here is not who takes ownership of the article. The concern is that we have some identical text as WP, and so either I take credit for having written part of the article on WP, or we need to release this specific article under the GFDL. I'm not too familiar with the CZ, but I believe the preference is to avoid using the GFDL (since we may be deciding on a different license in the near future).

On a different note, I'm glad to see someone editing psychology articles. Richard Pettitt 18:48, 12 November 2007 (CST)

To be clear, I was following the instructions about how to convert an article from WP to CZ. As far as I can tell, I only copied the information I personally wrote. Richard Pettitt 19:46, 12 November 2007 (CST)

Martial Arts categorization

Pranam, Michael. IMHO, the reason we have a hard time writing a concise piece about the MAs is because MAs has become user friendly and politically correct. It is what it is, not what we want it to be. I listed lama pai only to include something from as many countries as possible. Tibetan White Crane can also be used.

I noticed you also deleted the mention of fighting to acquire mating rights. If you look at todays larger primates, the baddest dude gets the women. As many as he can keep the others away from. I am sure that tokk place in our history before we started inter-group warfare or even large scale hunting for meat.

As for deleting MAs as the driving force behind much of science, so much of what was discovered was to make one country's army better than the next one's. Everything from the Roman system of roads to metallurgy to chemistry was driven by war and in modern times, physics, metallurgy, chemistry and most everything else has been greatly influenced by military spending. If someone doesn't tell it like it is, people will keep on believing what is pleasurable. The whitewashing of our instincts will never give us a chance to rein them in.--Gary Giamboi 15.04, 12 November 2007 (CST)

Someone would be hard pressed to convince me that the statement "and possibly his predecessors, struck upon useful techniques for hunting or fighting that eventually evolved into defensive and offensive methods that were then taught to others. The introduction of tools probably led to the development of early weaponry." would be accepted by the scientific community just as it is written. IMHO, my statement about mating is the same kind of statement as this one. So we need to be consistent in applying the rules for editing.

Sure we can come up with an idea for listing the MAs of various countries. I suggest we list at least one Ma for as many countries as possibble.Gary Giamboi 08:25, 13 November 2007 (CST)