User talk:Milton Beychok

Milton Beychok

Current talk page

Archive 1, Archive 2, Archive 3, Archive 4, Archive 5, Archive 6, Archive 7, Archive 8, Archive 9, Archive 10, Archive 11, Archive 12

 Where Milt lives it is approximately: 11:07

Updated article on TSCF

Milton, I just made small updates to the article on The Social Capital Foundation, corrected links. Could you please approve the new version. Thanks Koen Demol 19:18, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Koen. I moved your posting to the bottom of this Talk page where it belongs. For a new article to be approved, or for re-approving a revised version of an existing article (which is the case with The Social Capital Foundation), requires that it first be nominated for approval or re-approval by either:

• A single editor who has not participated significantly in creating the article, or
• Three editors who have participated significantly in creating the article.

In either of the two cases above, the nominators must be editors in the workgroup categories specified in the article's Metadata template. In this case of The Social Capital Foundation. the categories specified in the Metadata template are Sociology, Politics and Anthropology. Since I am not an editor in any of those categories, I cannot nominate the article for re-approval.

You should read CZ:Approval process. In some cases, if the revisions to an approved article are very minor (like adding or revising wiki links or fixing a few typos), I believe that a constable can do a re-approval without going through any formal nomination and approval procedures. I know that Matt Innis has done that in the past. Perhaps other constable have also done that, but I really don't know if they have. Milton Beychok 19:46, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Milt, I did make some *very* minor changes to Approved articles while I was a Cop. But they were incredibly trivial matters, removing a comma, changing two spaces to one space, correcting the spelling within a link, etc. And even those changes generally had to be run pass three or four editors or authors in an informal manner, generally on the Talk pages.... Hayford Peirce 20:09, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Valve

Milt, are you writing or planning to write an article on Valve ? If so, let me know, so I will not bother to do it. Otherwise, I may write a Valve article. I'm trying to avoid interferences between us and duplication of effort. Henry A. Padleckas 05:34, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

We could use an articles about valves ... please go ahead if you wish to write one. We could also use an article about pressure vessels. Milton Beychok 16:56, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

your pH scale pic modified

Milt, I modified your pic Image:PH scale.png. If you don't like it, you can revert back to your old one. The gradient colors I used were supposed to be reminiscent of litmus paper color change.

I got some software that can make linear or radial color gradients. Windows-Paint does not make such gradients (easily). If you ever need any color gradients, tell me whether you want linear or radial, and what colors you want. I can then e-mail them to you. Then you can use Paint to scale them, skew them, and apply them to any drawing you want. Also, if you want them at a certain angle, I have software that can rotate too. Henry A. Padleckas 12:07, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Its a nice improvement, Henry ... thanks. Milton Beychok 16:49, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

HUBO

Milt, I've looked at your edits on HUBO and see that they are only copyedits, so you can not only join in the approval (you could do that even if they were content edits), but you can still approve as a "single editor approval" if necessary (should Alexander not return to update the version number to include any new changes). D. Matt Innis 23:41, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Matt, I had planned to update the version number when I sign on as a co-nominator. Is that okay? I had always thought that any of the nominators could change the version number. Milton Beychok 23:54, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

All editors have to approve the same version, so if there were some changes since the first editor endorsement, he/she would have to agree to the new version. That way their name doesn't end up on something they may disagree with. In this case, though, since you have not made content edits, you don't need the other editor necessarily, but, should he return, he can join you in the approval as well. D. Matt Innis 00:17, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Query on links to WP

Hi Milt:

The article Schrödinger equation on its External links page connects to the article on WP. Is that a customary practice? It seems to me to go against the notion of linking to a reliable source. John R. Brews 20:03, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

John, that was a reference at one time and it was created back in 2007 ... and later moved to the External Links subpage. It should be deleted. We do not use Wikipedia articles as references or external links. Milton Beychok 21:05, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Vacuum

Hi Milt:

As you know, there are a lot of articles about vacuum in physics. They include Vacuum (laboratory), Vacuum (partial), Vacuum (quantum electrodynamic) Vacuum (classical) Vacuum (disambiguation) Vacuum (science) Free space (electromagnetism). I hope I've got them all. I think they should be pared down to three (apart from a revamped disambiguation page): Vacuum (quantum electrodynamic) Vacuum (classical) Vacuum (partial). The first is pretty straightforward and probably is OK as is. The second would be instead of Free space (electromagnetism) and I'd pretty much copy that article under the new name. The third, Vacuum (partial), would be intended to cover terrestrial vacuum as in Vacuum (laboratory) and Vacuum (science).

The question is how to approach this project. It requires some reorganization and possibly making redirects out of several articles and putting their content in the surviving articles. It appears that John Stephenson, you and I are the only ones at all interested in this matter. Do you think this has to be taken to a general airing, or shall I just go at it and let you and John pick it over? John R. Brews 18:16, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

If you look at John Stephenson's user page, you will see that he is no longer with CZ ... unless he changes his mind and returns.

So that leaves you and I ... and I think you should just go ahead and do what you think is best. I might also point out that we also have a Vacuum distillation article which I wrote quite some while ago ... altho that really isn't too relevant to what you are proposing to do. - Milton Beychok 18:37, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi Milt: I've made these changes, and I hope you will check out the various cross links etc. and add Vacuum distillation to the disambiguation box if you wish. John R. Brews 20:34, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

John, when you redirected Vacuum (science) to Vacuum (partial), you still left the subpages Vacuum (science)/Definition and Vacuum (science)/Related Articles. I will request that those two subpages be speedy deleted unless I hear differently from you. Are there some links in Vacuum (science)/Related Articles that you want to salvage (copy and paste) and use in Vacuum (partial)/Related Articles before I ask for speedy deletion?

Are there any other redirects that left behind some some subpages? Milton Beychok 21:07, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi Milt: Thanks for bringing this up. I transferred the Related Articles to the new pages. I didn't find anything else.

The disambiguation page Vacuum uses the definition of the redirect Vacuum (laboratory)/Definition, so maybe that should be kept unless this category is removed from the disambig. Likewise for Free space and Free_space_(electromagnetism)/Definition John R. Brews 22:03, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that only existing main articles (or red links to articles yet to be written) should be listed in the DAMB page. Redirects and/or definitions that exist for any redirects should not be included. Milton Beychok 02:35, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I love this!!

Milton: thank you for all the help so far. Mostly I wanted to let you know I've contacted a good friend and encouraged her to join us. She is also a PhD candidate in philosophy and has an MA in Classics. She's an expert on the philosophy of Plotinus, for whom Citizendium does not have a page. I have asked her to consider creating one. ...said Maria Cuervo (talk) 20:29 April 2, 2011

University host

Milton: I am finally thinking about the request for monthly donations and want to first understand CZ's long term plans. Where can I find details of the efforts to find a university to host CZ? Thanks - Robert Badgett 12:39, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Robert, the best person for you to contact on that is Dan Nessett. He has handled the efforts to find a university. Milton Beychok 15:12, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I didn't know about this effort but I had already considered last week speaking with someone at VU about this. It seems like something my university would really appreciate. I was also wondering if students could work on basic definitions and sections under the supervision of an editor who also happens to be their teacher. But maybe that is too out there. I for one would be tempted to get my students working on this project.--Maria Cuervo 16:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Maria, our current hosting costs are $320 per month. The money we raised in our recent donation drive will carry us through for almost 6 more months. Please contact Dan Nessett on our Management Council about the possibilty of being hosted by Villanova University ... please do so as soon as possible. Milton Beychok 16:48, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Milt, similar as Robert, I was thinking of asking this for some time, but in face of our current discussions I do not want to raise it on the forum right now:

It would be nice to have some information on what hosting options have already been checked and why they failed or were rejected. I am aware that last year a quick solution had to be found, but now there is still half a year, and this information could helpful when thinking about options.

Maria, CZ is open for collaboration with teaching -- the project is called Eduzendium. How this collaboration is organized may be adapted or changed, reflecting past experience (some problems exist) and the needs of the course.

--Peter Schmitt 17:20, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I am curious why so expensive. Is it bandwidth then? I have my own virtual server that I am setting up through a host for my own web projects and I imagine that the reason it is less than 50 a month is because I expect the traffic to be comparably low compared to something like Citizendium and don't need as much memory, space or other resources. I'll contact Dan and see how I should approach this and who I should approach.--Maria Cuervo 18:18, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Maria, keep in mind that we have the various forums as well as the live wiki and the test wiki. Dan is our computer guru and he has all of the technical specifications for what we need. Milton Beychok 19:29, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Peter, keep in mind that when Larry Sanger was still with us and our server costs were being handled by the Tidewater Foundation, they were $709 per month. The MC did nothing in haste ... Dan considered every alternative very carefully (in the U.S. as well as Europe) and he finally negotiated our current price of $320 per month with Steadfast. He explained it all to the other 4 members of the MC at the time and we all agreed that he made a good choice at that time. Please don't burden Dan with asking him to explain all of the searching he did. We have more pressing problems that need to be handled ... as you well know. Regards, Milton Beychok 19:29, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

All, I have responded to Maria's request for an explanation of our computing service requirements here: CZ service requirements

HUBO

Hello. I last spoke to Daniel on e-mail chat around April 4th. I made one correction that he pointed out on the spot, but there are certainly more that needs to be done. He asked me to remind him again before deadline. I sent him an e-mail again, but he seems to have overlooked it. I sent him a chat message as reminder just now, although he is marked as offline. I hope he will be able to notice it soon.

But in the meantime, just to be safe, we should extended deadline, but not too far back because that might allow Daniel to procrastinate, and that would mean the article would never get approved.. Thank you very much! (Chunbum Park 02:24, 9 April 2011 (UTC))

Hello. Could you set the article's status to a scheduled approval? Or do I need to repeat the process by asking the other editor for his permission as well? I changed the article per the pdf Dan sent me. He did send by April 15th deadline :) Thank you. (Chunbum Park 01:19, 16 April 2011 (UTC))

Edits on metre

Hi Milt:

I'm happy to see your interest in the article Metre (unit). This article has caused me some problems, as my editing history indicates. I'd like to discuss a few of your changes, and get some feedback.

First, you apparently object to my characterization of LORAN as obsolete. The basis for this statement was a book I did not cite that, of course, suggests the GPS has pretty much taken over. Maybe you can explain to me what you are thinking about here, and why you decided to omit reference to GPS, and the links to the articles on GPS and on LIDAR?

Those items are perhaps matters of taste. However, the reinsertion of the wavelength of the electron as λ = c₀ / f is actually an error. This wavelength in fact is related to the electron beam energy, and the relation to the metre has to be established, say by comparison of two measurements of the same object using both electrons and photons. For example, this article discusses traceability of standards, which I take to mean connecting to the basic definition of the metre in terms of wavelengths of light. John R. Brews 20:31, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

John, I am completely confused. I made no edits having anything to do with LORAN, GPS or LIDAR ... at least not intentionally. If such edits occurred, they must have happened accidentally or through some strange software bug. Please feel free to undo them.

The only edits I made to Metre (unit) were to correct an incorrect conversion, add some wiki links, and a few other minor copy edits. Regards, Milton Beychok 21:55, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi Milt: As you can see, my attempts at metre (unit) took me past any pretense of considering myself an "expert". I do believe I have properly understood the sources and made a reasonable presentation. It must be said, however, that the basis for the switch in definition of the metre in 1983 is described by the officiating BIPM and NIST in a very confusing manner, and I am led to believe what we are seeing here is "a camel is a horse designed by a committee". John R. Brews 20:47, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not criticizing the 1983 resolutions, but the incoherence of the explanations for it. John R. Brews 22:45, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

John, in my book, you are still an expert and I would still urge you to apply for an Editorship in the Physics workgroup. Milton Beychok 23:14, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Category:Sailing Subgroup

Hey Milton, I was looking at CZ:Engineering Workgroup and the template that is at the top of the page has items that do not appear on the Sailing subgroup template, especially the auto-generated cleanup lists. Have you any idea how I add to the Sailing template, or do you know if the template is fixed in that position? David Finn 10:10, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

David, I didn't even know there was a Sailing subgroup. Is it a subgroup of the Engineering Workgroup??? Should it not be in the Hobbies or the Sports Workgroups instead?

In any event, I don't know the answer to your question. That is something that Chris Key normally took care of. Since he has now resigned, you may have to ask Dan Nessett for help or perhaps even Peter Schmitt. I don't have any Sysops privileges and I really don't know how templates are created. Milton Beychok 14:36, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough, I'll look further. Yes, the Sailing subgroup falls under both sports and engineering, sports for the recreation side and engineering for the technology. Nowadays sailing is more recreational, at least in the West, but a little further back in history it was much more utilitarian. David Finn 15:48, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Article moved.

"Vacuum cleaner" has been removed. Thank you for the Editorial ruling. I hope the EC comes up with a way to deal with this kind of "painful case," as Joyce would call it, wholesale. Bruce M. Tindall 00:40, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Bruce. Milton Beychok 01:17, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Speedydeletes

Sed tantum dic verbo! Done, avec plaisir. Bruce M. Tindall 02:56, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

"Avec plaisir" I understand. But my three years of high school Latin were in the 1930s (about 72 years ago) and I have forgotten all that I may have learned. Merci! - Milton Beychok 03:03, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

"But only say the word." Bruce M. Tindall 03:05, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Boiling points

Milton, I would really like to end this practice of having multiple separate subpages for each element with one datum only. It seems like a really huge waste of computation/storage space to have these pages. Do we really need separate subpages for melting point, boiling point, molecular mass, etc?

However, I see that you have been busy working away at these singleton pages lately and so would like to know your thoughts on this before I consider annilating them all and fixing all of the elements in a more manageable "manual" fashion. David E. Volk 02:54, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I was going through some of them to correct that same dead hyperlink to LANL. I found the correct link. But going through all of them was going to be a very tedious job that would take me days. If you can find a way to delete all of those singleton pages, it would be great. It would also be quite job for the constables to delete all of them, would it not? Or do you have some other way of deleting them?

I will finish the few I started on and then quit to await whatever you can do to simplify things. Milton Beychok 03:02, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

See also CZ:Chemistry style guide on which I have now included actual text that one can copy and paste to start one's own chem infobox or elem infobox for new articles. One simply types in the correct values for the variables. David E. Volk 03:48, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

David, please look at the talk page of CZ:Chemistry style guide, where I explained some changes that I just made in the writeup about the Elem Infobox. I hope that you will agree with my changes. - Milton Beychok 20:57, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

As for that very large number of multiple subpages with only one datum, the problem with removing or deleting them is that the properties tables in the Properties subpages of each element would disappear. The tables would then have to be reconstituted one-by-one. That would be a really big, tedious chore. None-the-less, I agree with you that it should be done some day by someone ... but who?

As matters stand now, those properties tables are not visible on the Edit pages of the Properties subpages and therefore cannot be easily edited. If some value (say a boiling point) of some element needs to be changed, the user must find the specific single datum subpage to make the change. What a mess!!! I think that somebody in the past just got carried away with using templates and transclusions to automatically generate tables without thinking about how complex it would be for future users. Milton Beychok 20:57, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

See my query

Milton: See my query at Technetium Talk Page. —Anthony.Sebastian 00:31, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

HUBO

Hi Milt, thanks for the heads up on HUBO. We're going to use the article as an opportunity to walk Bruce through an approval tomorrow. D. Matt Innis 01:56, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

HUBO has been approved -- at least it looks like it to me. But as you know, this is the first time I've done this complicated process so if something doesn't look right, please let me know! Bruce M. Tindall 18:03, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

If it was done correctly, Bruce, then you can thank both Matt for the hands-on and me for the *really* detailed instructions that I wrote over and over and OVER again so that I myself could understand what the hell I was doing (or trying to do) with this incredibly unintuitive process! And I'm sure that you can tweak them a little yourself, to make them even clearer.... Hayford Peirce 18:21, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Yep, the instructions were probably more fun to use than they were to write! Thanks! Bruce M. Tindall 18:28, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

That's fer sure! Hayford Peirce 19:14, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you all for getting the approval complete. :) (Chunbum Park 20:30, 25 April 2011 (UTC))

Boiling point?

Hi again Milt,

I see from http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Template:PTofE/Sandbox that you have been updating the boiling points of the elements. At the moment, it looks as though you have made it into the "lanthanides", going more or less by atomic number.

If you could take a peek at the "Tables" on the link above, you can see what the {{Unit}} template was made for. When the data (boiling point, electronegativity, whatever) is available as a "number" instead of as "text", the wiki software can do some simple math operations to it.

In those graphs, the cells colors are based on the electronegativities and boiling points. Being "unitless" electronegativity has no problem, but the boiling point graph is currently sort of incomplete.

It will be simple for me to add this feature back in, and I will be happy to do so at some point, but I figured I'd check with you first to make sure there were no objections.

I updated Tin/Boiling point as a prototype/example of what I was trying for David Yamakuchi 17:36, 29 April 2011 (CDT)

Hi, David: I have not been changing the numeric value of the boiling point or the melting point. What I have been doing is:

• Adding the comma to the temperatures as a delimiter. That is, for example, changing 2590 to 2,590
• Making changes in the two pertinent subpages (the "ElementName/Melting point" subpage and the "ElementName/Boiling point" subpage) so that the reference to the LANL website does not get transmitted to the main article subpage as a reference. By the way, your original links to the LANL website such as http://periodic.lanl.gov/elements/66.html no longer work. The current, correct link is http://periodic.lanl.gov/66.shtml
• Expanded the shortcut electron configurations such as [Neon]3s¹ to the full configuration.
• Changing the two pertinent subpages so that the smaller font in °C* and °C are transcluded to the properties table in the properties subpage as the typical, normal and usual size of °C and without the asterisk. If you can do whatever it is that you do behind the scenes with those undersized symbols and still have them show as the normal size symbols (without an asterisk) in the properties table in the main properties subpage (as I have now done) ... then I certainly have no objection whatsoever to that.

I have also been changing all of the articles so that they all use {{Elem_Infobox}} instead of {{Basic elemental info}} and David Volk agrees that is more desirable. That way the lede in the articles is editable. Please see CZ:Using the Elem Infobox template for the reasons for doing this.

David, you did a tremendous amount of admirable, ingenious work on those chemical element subpages and infobox templates. I have only managed to understand a small part of what you have done ... and it has taken me many, many hours to do so. However, in the end, it became just too darn complex to understand and it made it impossible to edit the ledes of many of the element articles and to rid the main article page of the link to the LANL. The primary purpose of what I have done was to simplify things. For the 64 element articles that I have now modified, the main article ledes and the infoboxes on the main article page are now editable.

I hope this clarifies what I have done so far and intend to do with the remaining element articles. Please let me know if you need further clarification. Just be aware that it is now approaching our dinner time in California and I may not be able to respond any further for the next few hours ... or perhaps until tomorrow. Regards, Milton Beychok 18:46, 29 April 2011 (CDT)

Great news! I love what you're doing. :-) I had always hoped that someone would take the initiative and make the {{Basic elemental info}} obsolete. I even said so in the instructions. I only used it to get some of the elements articles started quickly, (it was kind of a "gimmee" once some of the other properties stuff was in place.)

As for the "small" c, I will try and fix it.

Also, the comma in the number might pose a problem for the arithmetic unit as well. A comma is not a number, and that could make it confused if we try to treat it as one. I'd like to try and stick that (the comma) in a 'unit' template too. That way, I think it should display on the properties page as you desire, and still do what I want.

David Yamakuchi 22:26, 2 May 2011 (CDT)

Hi,again. As I said before, if you can stick to those guidelines of mine,then I really don't care what your do behind the scenes. If not, then we will have problems to work out. Milton Beychok 22:34, 2 May 2011 (CDT)

OK, it looks like there is a compromise. The units are now typical, normal and usual size of °C and without the asterisk, per your request, and we can still make neat graphs from them.

The commas are coming thru same as the units. Problem solved.

David Yamakuchi 23:14, 2 May 2011 (CDT)

Very good. Milton Beychok 23:18, 2 May 2011 (CDT)

References

Hi Milt:

I'm scratching my message - thanks, Milt. Don't want to be a bother. John R. Brews 18:03, 12 May 2011 (CDT)

Search function

Milt:

I searched for "citation templates" in the CZ search box, but it didn't turn up CZ:Citation templates, so I used the WP page instead. It appears that you have to put the CZ prefix in the search box to find it, which never occurred to me. It would seem that a writer would find it useful to be able to find this kind of info when a question comes up, so these pages should be aliased without the CZ prefix. John R. Brews 13:10, 13 May 2011 (CDT)

I am not enough of a computer geek to know how that could or could not be done. As I recall, even in Wikipedia, you have to put the WP prefix in the search box to find such articles. Now that you know about the CZ prefix, you probably will remember it in the future.

Also, some of our Help articles require the prefix Help ... so watch out for that as well. - Milton Beychok 13:30, 13 May 2011 (CDT)

After four flippin' years here I *still* can't ever find anything! The CZ prefix continues to baffle me.... Hayford Peirce 13:53, 13 May 2011 (CDT)

Help:Index/Formatting/References

Hi Milt:

I made some changes to Help:Index/Formatting/References without consulting you. Please take a look and make any modifications you see fit.

A philosophical difference that may crop up is this: the phrasing of the original was focused upon corroboration, which also is a preoccupation of Peter Schmitt. My experience in reading technical work is that references do serve this purpose, but also are used very often and especially in the preamble to technical papers as a way to supplement a terse outline of the present status of the topic discussed. Of course, in that context, one has a word count limit, so ways to get the context across with only a few words is paramount.

Nonetheless, I believe there is also this role for footnotes on CZ. For one thing, the reader needs some context, but different readers will have different questions, and footnotes can provide a flexible method to fill in background or find discussions pitched at a more technical or more popular level than the CZ article itself. As the number of CZ article proliferates (which looks like it may be a quarter century or more) there may be so many extensive articles on all phases of a topic that links to other CZ articles can fill in for such discursive references, but that day seems far away right now.

It is possible to separate discursive or amplificatory references from corroborative ones, if that seems desirable. The pro is that the reader would know which was which, the con is that it makes authorship more complex. John R. Brews 09:53, 14 May 2011 (CDT)