User talk:J. Noel Chiappa

Welcome!

Welcome, new editor! We're very glad you've joined us. Please read The Editor Role. You can look at Getting Started for other helpful introductory pages. It is essential for you as an editor to join the Citizendium-Editors (broadcast) mailing list in order to stay abreast of editor-related issues, as well as the mailing list(s) that concern your particular interests. It is also important, for project-wide matters, to join the Citizendium-L (broadcast) mailing list. 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 thank you! We appreciate your willingness to share your expertise, and we hope to see your edits on Recent changes soon. Supten Sarbadhikari 02:33, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Priority claim?

Welcome (back), Noel. "I actually wrote the very first Citizendium article, in October, 2006: Hokusai!" I think the first CZ articles appeared on the Textop wiki; did your article appear there? I'm also skeptical of any such claim if you can't prove it.  :-) --Larry Sanger 15:23, 25 February 2008 (CST)

Hey, I looked at the article. I think I remember this. You could well be right! --Larry Sanger 15:28, 25 February 2008 (CST)

subpages

Hi Noel, i noticed in the forum your were wondering how the hell the metadata page work and what can/is it supposed to do. I see you have already taken a bite at improving the instructions and information, which is great. FYI, the development of the subpages template was very organic and ad hoc. The consequence is that the documentation and the template itself are a mess and need to be streamlined. You, as someone who had to try and figure it out from scratch, can appreciate this is a bad thing. I'd say feel free to jump right in and edit an inconsistencies you notice. It is a long overdue thing on my to do list. Thanks for any help or suggestions in advance. Chris Day (talk) 14:56, 3 March 2008 (CST)

why not a catagory

I didn't start the article, only added 1 line. You should put that comment on the talk page of the article. David E. Volk 22:51, 3 March 2008 (CST)

Why template space?

You asked why is the metadata in template space. Excellent question and its not the way we wanted it. For the complete historical context of the discussion see the following thread in the forum. http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1149.0.html The short answer is that the metadata can only be read correctly from the template space.

A longer explanation can be found on a test article subpage. There is a companion sub-subpage that is slightly different and it is this type of page for which the "reading the metadata in article space" problem exists. Since these pages are useful for catalogs, timelines and signed articles I decided to keep the metadata in the template rather than abandon the sub-subpage concept.

If you know a way to solve this problem I'd be interested to hear it. I think the project is still young enough that a major change (moving metadata to the article space) might be possible. Chris Day (talk) 01:32, 4 March 2008 (CST)

Hi Noel!

I see you've been working away.

Please drop by CZ:monthly write-a-thon and add yourself to the list of participants.

Otherwise, I shall be forced to add you to my choice of categories--bwah, ha, ha!

Aleta Curry 18:18, 5 March 2008 (CST)

An important message in Calcidius discussion page...

Please, I made an important message in the discussion page from article of Calcidius, I believe that it would be interesting if you read, because it is aimed at all those who are assisting in the editing of the article. Kind regards, --Georgeos Díaz-Montexano 22:17, 7 March 2008 (CST)

just hi

thanks for your helpful suggestions. (Did you work at BBN? I did, also from the MIT-enclave tho not a grad of any school with such a pedigree!)

I have a very early draft of the Halting Problem, what is your sense of it thus far? I'm trying to make a more accessible exposition for topics typicslly explained in dry and somewhat cryptic ways, without dumbing down the topic.

So I spose i am asking your opinion as to this style and approach in general ... http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Halting_problem

(I am planning to write a small cluster of related articles : Lambda Calculus, Godel's Incompleteness, Church-Turing thesis, and 'Quining' (self-replicating computer code). The latter provides a rather simple and clear (and referencable) proof-sketch of GIT and CTT. </more-than-you-needed-to-know> Christopher J. Reiss 14:37, 8 March 2008 (CST)

Mr. Sanger has forbidden me the moral right to be recognized as the intellectual author

Mr. Sanger has forbidden me the moral right to be recognized as the intellectual author, and I have been denied the simple right to a link to my original article (see discussion page). I'm sorry, but abandoned the project. I am very disappointed. I wish the best for everyone, and having great success. My most sincere greetings and respect for all. Kind Regards, --Georgeos Díaz-Montexano 16:45, 9 March 2008 (CDT)

Eduzendium articles template

I had written a partial answer but you say you figured it out. Just to clarify to check we're on the same page. If I understand you correctly the auto template is the one mentioned in the text. But for just looking at an example of the template there is no need to use the auto version of the template. That way the "eduzendium info pages" do not end up in Category:Eduzendium articles. Does that sound right? Chris Day (talk) 10:25, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

integration

I've got some houseguests that I've gotta get dinner for right now but I'll certainly take a look at them tomorrow morning. This laundry-list of facts is something that I myself tried to avoid at WP but saw an enormous amount of that sort of stuff there. Some people who've moved over from there take a while to get it out of their system. And either they do -- or they leave.... Cheers! Hayford Peirce 21:03, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

I've got a building project that will occupy me until at least mid-afternoon -- as soon as that's finished (for the day only, sigh), I'll take a look at you stuff. Best, Hayford Peirce 12:42, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Hi Noel, I started to reply yesterday and just as I began to type my ISP went down for 18 hours or so. Grrrrrrrr! Both your articles look fine to me. The Hokusai gives a good overview to start with, tells the reader who he is and why he's important, then expands on that information in an interesting way. I don't see how it could be done any better. Ditto with the other one, which is more linear, of course, given the very different subject matter, but with a subject like this, I don't see how else it could be done. It's a straightforward chronology, but that doesn't necessarily make it a laundry list -- some things just *are* chronologies.... So, keep up the good work! At least I can understand what you're doing here -- the tech/geek/guru stuff that you *also* find time to do is mostly beyond me -- although the results seem to be impressive! Hayford Peirce 10:36, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Yes, I agree about the "artsy" content of the Hokusai article. The more the better. I gather, then, that you're like me: you can write the basic Waldo Peirce or George Jones article but then can't really do very much about the art or music side without just quoting from others or making relatively sweeping generalizations such as "He was a representationalist" or "he is a country singer who communicates intense emotions". Well, my feeling is, this is supposed to be a collaborative project -- so far, in *most* articles there hasn't been much collaboration, just not enough people here yet. When they *do* get here, let someone else put in the fancy stuff.... Hayford Peirce 14:21, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Ooops!

User:Jnc/ToDo - not a good place for that.... Stephen Ewen 21:07, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

That was fun

The last time I tried that I ended up with a mess ;-) Thanks for the push. --D. Matt Innis 22:00, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for your post on my Talk page about my article output

J. Noel, I have responded at quite some length to your post on my Talk page. Please read my response and let me know if you can help. Regards, Milton Beychok 22:34, 12 March 2008 (CDT)

help

Hi Noel, I'm not sure how good you are with the wikicode, you see pretty good from what I have seen. For the subpages I only want templates used on any given page to expand thus reducing the apparent size of the subpages template in an article. Could you check out my random thoughts on this issue. If you have any knowledge in this area could you point me in the right direction? In anticipation, Chris Day (talk) 09:25, 13 March 2008 (CDT)

Noel, i want to pick you brain some more, any idea how this expression would work using the conditional inclusion trick?

{{ #ifexpr:.. | {{a|parameters}} | {{b|parameters}} {{c |parameters}} }}

Possibly as: {{ {{ #ifexpr:.. |a|b|c}}|parameters}}  ? But that does not seem right, is there another character I should use between the b and c template names? Chris Day (talk) 00:22, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for the input. I think you missed that there are only two possible outcomes not three. One is template A the other is template B+C. So I'm looking for some character to separate the b and c that does not make it look like a third choice. Something along the lines of {{ {{ #ifexpr:.. |a|b+c}}|parameters}} . So does something equivalent to the plus exist in wikimarkup?

WP template bug

[http://en.wikipedia.org{{localurl:{{{1}}}}} {{{2}}}] this works for names with a backslash. Not sure if itcan be incorporated into the {{WP}} though. Chris Day (talk) 01:16, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

FYI

This is what i have been trying to do. You can see the results here. Talk:Test_article/Timelines the big picture is to reduce the effective size of pages for faster download times and usability. Chris Day (talk) 11:29, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Just did a bit more reading about the wikipedia processor and if that were running here there would be no need to use the conditional inclusion format. It only expands the templates that are used. Chris Day (talk) 14:16, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

popups

Hey Noel, have you tried getting the popups feature to work here? By the way, do you go by Noel? --D. Matt Innis 12:14, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Why were our parents thinking? ;-) --D. Matt Innis 01:20, 15 March 2008 (CDT)

I stand guilty as charged. We use middle names but only because the first name was so common. We reverted at age3 when there were three others in preschool with the same name. Besides, in retrospect we prefer the middle name. Have you guys ever decided to not tow the line and just put your middle name in the first name box, or would you get jail time for that :) At the end of the day we're all numbers as far as the records go. Chris Day (talk) 01:34, 15 March 2008 (CDT)

I have a number of credit cards which give my name as "J N Chiappa", but with bureacrats like the Immigration and Naturalization Service (or whatever their name is now) you have to grin and bear it... those of you who live in the US and are US citizens have no idea of how much power they have over those who aren't, and how easy it is for them to make your life miserable with it! J. Noel Chiappa 09:12, 15 March 2008 (CDT)

subpages coded in metadata

I think we had a conversation on this topic although I forget where? Anyway, I was just doing some house keeping on the subpages template and noticed that there is a little known feature that remains in there, although not used or sanctioned. I had completely forgotten it was in there. Three fields, tab1, tab2 and tab3 can be used to create an unique subpage tab in any article. This idea did not really progress and I don't recall if any discussions happened or whether the idea was cut off fast. Chris Day (talk) 02:28, 15 March 2008 (CDT)

talk page

That would be great. Minhaj Ahmed Khan Lodi 15:00, 15 March 2008 (CDT)

History editor

Noel, you're needed as a history editor and military history editor. Please apply. Richard Jensen 02:13, 18 March 2008 (CDT)

Varieties of English

Yesterday I suggested, for the sake of neutrality, English: transatlantic differences, and it was well received; but I can't find the discussion. I think User: John Stephenson & User:Louise Valmoria were involved. Anyway, what do you think? Ro Thorpe 11:37, 18 March 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for locating the discussion - the obvious place! Yes, transatlantic (as my Oxford has it - but if it can be wrong about curaçao it can be wrong) is too vague. So I'll go with your version. Ro Thorpe 12:34, 18 March 2008 (CDT)

hello

Hi Noel, Welcome to CZ, and thanks especially for authoring in Computers. Enjoy!Pat Palmer 00:18, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

Table deletion

No big deal, it's in the history if I ever want to dig it up. --Robert W King 10:57, 20 March 2008 (CDT)

erlang on the move

I can move them around. I have been meaning to do that disambiguation. what erlang_unit and erlang_language sounds good. -Eric Evers

Thanks for the help, from the Metadata challenged. -Eric Evers

Hi

I must say Noel its a breath of fresh air having you around (I've noticed you've only being here a month!) Was wondering how the application for becoming a history editor is going? If you get accepted, I'd love to help you out with nominating articles for approval. Richard has written many articles on the early US history and I think many of them could be approved. Since he has been the only active editor in that workgroup he hasn't been able to nominate them himself. Regards, Denis Cavanagh 18:00, 22 March 2008 (CDT)

Talk signature

I had to buckle and edit my preferences. It was obvious that my old skin was not going to spontaneously revert to the new default. So now, I too have no talk page link in my sig :( Chris Day 01:02, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

Hehe, I feel your pain ;-( --D. Matt Innis 09:12, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

Alphabet soup

Hi Noel, I just wanted to drop you a quick reminder. This is mostly to allow those less familiar with wiki language an opportunity to understand everything that is being said. Being a fellow wikipedian, I understand the urge to use acronyms, but do resist that urge! ;-) --D. Matt Innis 10:55, 24 March 2008 (CDT)

naming policy

Noel - I've created formal proposals on subpages. Have a look at CZ:Proposals/Naming Conventions for Biographies/Proposal2. Anthony Argyriou 16:20, 24 March 2008 (CDT)

Noel - will you be suggesting edits to Proposal2? I'd like to keep this ball rolling. Thanks, Anthony Argyriou 13:28, 2 April 2008 (CDT)

Noel, Redirect from Omega to Omega (Greek Letter Ω ω) is complete. --Thomas Simmons 17:21, 30 March 2008 (CDT)

Got your message. Yeah, normally I would have proposed a rename for discussion, but the one I did seemed so clearly necessary that I didn't think it even needed to be discussed. --Marnen E. Laibow-Koser 11:08, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

Template:Authors

Hi Noel, I have a favor to ask--feel free to say "no"--could you please adapt Template:Authors so that one name displays if only one name is listed? I figure I could do this myself, but it would probably take you one minute, and it might take me much longer... This is in keeping with the "second proposal" on the relevant proposal page. --Larry Sanger 18:51, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

re: student confusion

Thanks for your note and for taking the proactive approach! I have told my students orally that they should start articles by clicking on the red links... but apparently it didn't take. Hopefully the written notice will have a better impact. :) I appreciate your help - please let me know if you notice anything else amiss! --Daniel Folkinshteyn 22:09, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

re: duplicate articles

Thanks for pointing those out. The opportunity cost one really has no reason to be title-cased, so "Opportunity cost" would be best, as per the titling guidelines here. The GAAP one is usually capitalized, and thus would be better left in title case.

I will talk to the students for these two articles and tell them to integrate the content of the two versions into the appropriately titled articles, and then when that's done will figure out how to stick a redirect into the other ones.

Thanks again for your help, please let me know if you see anything else amiss! --Daniel Folkinshteyn 23:20, 2 April 2008 (CDT)

Thank you for your offer - I'll take you up on that! :) will let you know when they're done. --Daniel Folkinshteyn 23:36, 2 April 2008 (CDT)

re: EZarticle-closed

Thanks for the hint. Daniel Mietchen 05:26, 3 April 2008 (CDT)

You have email

..from D. Matt Innis 22:07, 3 April 2008 (CDT)

Thank you

Stephen Saletta 10:05, 6 April 2008 (CDT)

New user Lehmann

Regarding this user, it would seem that the system made a talk page for him but not the main page for him first. You might ask a systems person why the system seems to have failed for this case David E. Volk 11:33, 7 April 2008 (CDT)

Hi Noel (I hope I can call so, I am rather at a loss regarding your name and both your picture and your involvement with LISP place you in a more experienced generation than mine, if you don't mind my saying so). As you said, there are not many system admin kind of people around here at the moment. I didn't try to find out what you're talking about, but as you may have noticed, I do know a bit about the internals of MediaWiki — it was not a good experience, by the way. I feel I owe you something for your involvement into prime number and quantum mechanics, so if you need help, cry and I'll see what I can do. Cheers, Jitse Niesen 17:18, 7 April 2008 (CDT)

Borderline Personality Disorder

Noel:

Not sure what prompted your comments to Innis. I started this article, and am virtually the only one who has worked on it. There are no edit wars, of any sort, going on as your post would imply. Further, the large delete was appropriate, as the content was unabashedly anecdotal and not citable. --Michael J. Formica 11:04, 8 April 2008 (CDT)

checklisting

Joel, I hate when others do that (update every 3-10 items). I end up going to already done articles over and over again. I always try to check the "minor" change, so that users can select the "hide minor changes" option. David E. Volk 13:11, 12 April 2008 (CDT)

So, Noel, as long as you're checking out dawgs and stuff...

...could you have a read through of Miniature Fox Terrier? Thanks! Aleta Curry 03:07, 13 April 2008 (CDT)

20/20

i think Linus Pauling might agree with you. Chris Day 09:57, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

No doubt he was very close to finding the answer. Photo51 did allow Crick and Watson to get more information with respect to the physical dimensions. However, the concept of pairing and stacking came from Chargaffs Rule (A:T and G:C ratios are always 1:1 in DNA) and that had nothing to do with the quality of the X-ray picture. Basically their solving the structure was an intellectual tour de force and something that neither could have done without the other. It was a perfect collaboration, and lets not forget there were really three minds as Franklin had input too. It was her that pointed out that their first attempt at solving the structure was wrong and why (phosphates had to be on the outside due to their negative charge). It was that input from her that got them thinking about the base interactions, their first model had them all on the outside with no pairing. Once they had base interactions on their mind the rest fell into place. Chris Day 15:24, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

The double helix was just classic Watson (honest Jim was its original title, I think), even Crick complained about it. He was a showman and that rubs many scientists the wrong way. As we now know, an ignoramus too, with respect to race and sex. He did many good things but destroyed much of his legacy with poorly thought out comments throughout his career. The book of his life should be titled "The double foot in mouth". Chris Day 16:14, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

"not just scientists! :-)" And there lies his problem. Chris Day 16:39, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

Template Recursion

OK, so what about ways to truncate strings? Has Wiki markup got anything like that?--David Yamakuchi 13:07, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

Metadata hack

Go ahead. I don't own these templates. Any improvements are very welcome. Chris Day 12:27, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

We should definitely start migrating documentation to {{Subpages/Doc}} and similar, I just didn't have time to start that. With regard to the metadata template it could definitely be metadata specific but I'm not sure how much you would save since we still want the tabs at the top of that page too. Or do we? Have a go at it if you wish. Looking at {{Subpages}} documentation with fresh eyes the metadata section should be with the core function at the top. let me know if anything else there makes no sense at all. I wrote that for myself rather than for other users so i expect it looks a little odd in places. Chris Day 12:47, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

abc

Interesting you noted the Fleming problem. I missed it when I passed through. Since this was by the bot this means we have many autobiographies out there that need to be fixed. Chris Day 12:56, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

Status works fine with the space. I did that when I was trouble shooting the {{WGTable}} template. It turns out that a space after an article title, before a pipe or bracket, means the status value cannot be read from the metadata template. I just went through the biology bio's and my guess is about 50% were wrong. You're right we do not have a bio cat although I saw someone suggest a biography workgroup which would help for the future. Chris Day 14:04, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

Transparency

I changed transparency to a disambig page, and I marked the metadata page as a speedy. I didn't see any need in just deleting it when it will probably do fine in its present incarnation. --Robert W King 10:24, 16 April 2008 (CDT)

Confused students

I've got more than one. In fact, one did an article on Wikipedia by mistake. I'm probably going to submit the page in question for speedy delete on Friday (unless there is a 180 degree turnaround). Hey I noticed you went to Andover. My niece is a junior there. I actually grew up in North Reading. --John J. Dennehy 14:07, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Templates

If you make any changes to templates, can you go to CZ:Templates and make adjustments there? --Robert W King 15:20, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Also, why not just tag obsolete templates for speedydelete? --Robert W King 15:54, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Checklist_ templates

The names have historical significance rather than functional significance. I agree we should change them all to something more logical.

I've been meaning to delete all the obsolete subpage related templates for a while, since they just get in the way. i can barely remember what some of them were for so the sooner we axer the better in my opinion. Chris Day 17:22, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Template:Subpages3

That is just my test article. I need to delete all that now. Just noticed your use of "automagically". Very funny. I think i used magically in there originally as Joe Quick was so surprised that the checklist appeared as if by magic. Your usage is far better. Chris Day 21:19, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

Actually it was Aleksander Stos who coined "magic". Chris Day 21:23, 17 April 2008 (CDT)