Talk:Renewable energy

Review comments and other guidance

John, you are doing what I did when I first came here from Wikipedia, you are porting to CZ many of the articles you created or worked on at WP. That is quite okay by me, but you should be aware that some CZers don't like the porting of articles from WP. Therefore it is quite important that they be updated, modified/edited/improved and put into our CZ format of using subpages. After some 2+ years here and over a 150 CZ articles, I have come up with some personal guidance on how to import WP articles:

• At the bottom of the Edit page of a new article, there is a check box and "Content is from Wikipedia?" which should always be checked for articles ported or partially ported from WP.

• Then on the new article's Talk page, I always enter a comment stating that the article or part of it has been ported from WP. Then I go on to explain what I have done in the way of updating/modifying/editing/shortening/expanding/improving the WP article.

• Over time and dozens of edits by various registered and/or anonymous people at WP, some knowledgeable and some not the least knowledgeable, the WP article reflects varying styles and varying types of formatting (quite often of references) and varying degrees of paying attention to using wiki links. So I strive to re-write and reformat the article in one consistent style.

• I also check all of the references to see that they are still active and available. For example, in this article, a reference (originally #27) was no longer to be found; another reference (originally #28) just would not download; and yet another (reference 29) required a subscription to read. Instead of deleting them, I commented them out. If you can find replacements for them, then please do so ... or else simply go ahead and delete them completely.

• Some of the references were newspaper articles and one was a blog. It is my personal opinion that such references are not always correct or credible. I personally would never use a blog as a reference. I did not delete them, but I urge you to consider deleting them.

You're objecting to the use of newspaper articles as a source? My view is that when discussing non-technical issues they are a major source of reliable information. John Foster 21:34, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

John , what I said was that I *personally* avoid them. You are free to use them if you wish. Milton Beychok 22:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

• For some of the articles you ported, there is no Definition subpage ... and there should be. One rule about definitions is that they don't start with the article's title. In other words, the definition of the "Anti-nuclear movement" should not be "The anti-nuclear movement is ....". Instead, it should be "A movement that is ...". Another rule is that it should one sentence and very brief, less than 100 words if possible.

• Wiki links for a particular word or phrase should only appear once in an article. In other words, China should be wiki linked when it first appears in an article and it should not be again at any later point in the article.

• CZ only has about 13,000 articles whereas WP has millions. Thus, we don't have the "infrastructure" yet that WP has. So a great many of the wiki links in a ported WP article will include links to articles that don't exist in CZ. That's okay. Red links are useful because they tell us what we still need. But in some cases, we do have an article that could be replace one of the WP links. So I always spend quite a bit of time looking for CZ articles that could be used as links to replace WP links.

• Since your many renewable energy articles refer often to the many forms of electric power plants, I strongly suggest that you look at Electrical power plant which lists the existing CZ articles and lemma articles (definition only articles) for almost every type of electric power plant. In fact, perhaps you should bookmark Electrical power plant so that you can easily refer to it when entering wiki links into your renewable energy articles.

My "many renewable energy articles"? Come on, Milton, I've only been on CZ a few days and have written few articles. John Foster 21:34, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I meant no disrespect by that phrase. I just thought that your reading Electrical power plant would help you avoid a number of red links. Milton Beychok 22:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

• We have a known bug. When a new article is created, it often does not appear in the pertinent Workgroup(s) list of articles. If you make a "null" edit in the main article (like adding a space at the end of a paragraph), that usually jogs the system into displaying the new article in the pertinent Workgroup(s) listing.

• I suggest that you read and study CZ:The Editor Role and CZ:Lemma article.

I may from time to time review and edit some of your renewable energy articles, but other than the above notes, I don't think you need my help or guidance any longer. Regards, Milton Beychok 17:47, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Milton, to be honest I have found some of these comments quite discouraging.

I wasn't aware, until now, that "some CZers don't like the porting of articles from WP", so thanks for explaining that. Unfortunately, the whole process you describe for comprehsively doing and justifying WP imports seems quite onerous to me. To be honest, I don't think I could be bothered putting myself through it. I would have thought that where high quality GA or FA Wikipedia material has been written by a CZ editor who then wishes to import some of it, that this should be encouraged, not frowned upon. John Foster 21:34, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

John, as I said at the start, a great many of my articles were also ported from WP. Some CZers don't like using ported articles unless they are carefully upgraded. That's just a fact of life. So I have personally learned how to do that. I did'nt mean to discourage you. I was just telling you what I have done with my articles ported from WP. Milton Beychok 22:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Milton, As I say your comprehensive procedure for WP imports seems way to elaborate for me. And I've decided not to contribute any more articles in the area of renewable energy for now. I still hope to contribute in the Politics and Sociology areas more generally, but this will require me to refer to newspapers such as The New York Times and The Guardian at the very least. John Foster 22:31, 14 May 2010 (UTC)