User talk:Chris Day

Notes to self
[ movelink]




 * Fix move cluster - partially done, fix approval page bug
 * Write proposal for subgroups
 * Lemma idea, see Test lemma too. Experimenting with On the Origin of Species/Related Articles subpage and Sewall Wright.  That article has only a definition and an a main page. The main article consists of only the subpages template.
 * optional photo credit
 * Article task and notification list
 * Metadata edits always current so should tie speedydelete etc to that one page. This will get around the maintenance categories often being out of date.
 * Think more about /Catalog/Masterlists See User_talk:Aleta_Curry for examples. Fix the same page blank code, At present there is a capital letter requirement bug as well as need to get second string if used.
 * Figure out utlity of transcluding refs with the r template redirects.

See - /Notes to self
 * /Wanted

Need to figure out the disconnects between the rare earths elemental classes and the template:periodic. Did uranium, but others need fixing too. See Uranium/Elemental Class


 * Category:False Start Move
 * Category:Incomplete Move
 * Category:DeleteMove


 * List of agricultural methods topics
 * List of biology topics
 * List of code generation topics
 * List of compiler optimizations
 * List of famous Canadians
 * List of humanities journals
 * List of important publications in biology
 * List of inorganic compounds
 * List of languages using the .NET Framework
 * List of library associations
 * List of medical schools
 * List of music psychology topics
 * List of notable evolutionary biologists
 * List of notable paleoanthropologists
 * List of notable primatologists
 * List of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance experiments
 * List of operating systems
 * List of organic compounds
 * List of organic reactions
 * List of scholarly journals in international relations
 * List of scientific journals
 * List of seminal concepts in computer science
 * List of snake scales
 * List of social science journals
 * List of space advocacy organizations
 * List of states of matter
 * List of topics related to agriculture
 * List of viperine species and subspecies
 * List of youth orchestras in the United States

Definitions of redirects
When I previewed, all seemed to work as I intended. Clearly, they didn't for you. What were the symptoms? Was I running into some restriction on non-alphanumeric characters? Howard C. Berkowitz 22:04, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Just went to the top of the article rather than the appropriate section. Chris Day 22:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * What do I need to do differently? I had, I thought, written REDIRECT Article title Howard C. Berkowitz 22:56, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You are not wrong. But you have a special character in the three most recent cases. While "#Sarnoff's Law" and "#Sarnoff.E2.80.99s_Law" are look the same when viewed in a hyperlink on the screen they do not behave the same in a redirect, at least not in my browser.  The latter redirects to the subsection, as we want, but the former stalls at the top of the article. Chris Day 04:19, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Nutritional medicine
If you are going to redirect, why not to the more specific level of the subheading "Nutritional medical techniques"? I suppose that subhead could be renamed "nutritional medicine", although at some point, it will be a full article. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:37, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I just used what was already there. i agree it should go to the more specific heading. Chris Day 19:40, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

the importance of adding an asterisk
Thanks, Chris! I still baffled by all this, however. And how that single asterisk turns everything right, is a pure mystery to me! But thanks again! (Did you see my "cri de coeur" the Forum?) Hayford Peirce 19:38, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * On the wiki one line break is not seen as a line break at all. However any type of indent will then force a line break. If you want a line break without an indent you will need to have two line breaks.  I suspect this strange arrangement is to allow code, such as to exist on its own line (for clarity) without actually causing line breaks in the text.  Chris Day 19:44, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for all your help in various places. I have printed your Forum reply and will study it; will also study your various moves on the various article pages and try to figure out what has been done and why. Eventually, if I can grasp things for myself, I'll see if maybe I can make the Related Articles instructions clearer. (I remember when I got my first MS-DOS computer in 1984 and it came with an enormous binder from Microsoft with so-called instructions in it -- I was literally reduced to tears at one point. Even a year or so later, when I had become pretty adept at using DOS, the friggin' book was *still* a mystery!) Hayford Peirce 20:42, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Are those to be earnest asterisks? Howard C. Berkowitz 20:44, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

An example of why one line break alone does not interrupt the text on a wiki:

If I write: Organic chemicals are the basis for life as we know it.

or Organic chemicals are the basis for life as we know it.

They will both appear like the following text in the wiki:

Organic chemicals are the basis for life as we know it.


 * Hmmm...one can visit San Francisco, not Silicon Valley, and infer from some observation that silicone may be the basis for some life. Must be those silicon-oxygen bonds. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You must be thinking of Carol Doda and the Condor Club.... Hayford Peirce 17:42, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Two of San Francisco's greatest landmarks -- which we visited on honeymoon #2. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:15, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I visited it around '65 with my Tahitian wife. Did you see, many years later, the absolutely grotesque story of what happened one night at the club? The 350-lb manager and one of the little strippers were having fun after hours, strung out on coke, I guess, on top of the piano that mounted up to the ceiling on some sort of hoisting device. She was lying on top of him. The piano got set into motion; she was crushed to death between the ceiling and the guy. Really weird. For years I tried to cast a story around it that I could sell to EQMM or AHMM but could never find the handle.... PS in French, the club would be the Con d'Or, which has an entirely different, yet somewhat apropos, meaning. Hayford Peirce 18:37, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The dancers were so delighted at being visited for newlyweds that they were buying us drinks. I knew enough to limit my intake, and also had the body mass to metabolize them. Eventually, I am told, I was the only man ever invited into the ladies' room of the club, but it was a rescue mission.


 * Unfortunately, the next morning, she did not take my advice that Eggs Benedict are not good things when one is hung over. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:52, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

But I was there
In Cardiff last year for the Grand Sslam match against France! Ticket was a Christmas present... of course before the season had started. :-)Gareth Leng 22:02, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

AIS disambiguation
It seems amusing to think of androgen insensitivity and gender in the context of commercial fisheries, in which the gender of some of the catches can be a rather pliable thing. You are right, however, to disambiguate the abbreviation, regardless of how ambiguous the gender of some marine invertebrates may be. :>; Howard C. Berkowitz 18:52, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments about the sub-workgroup proposal in your User talk:Chris Day/sandbox1
Chris, I just want to let you know that I have posted comments in your User talk:Chris Day/sandbox1. Milton Beychok 23:42, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Re: your note on my talk page
>Sekhar, Just to note that the approval process is not exactly transparent. It would be great if you >have any ideas on how to make it more user friendly. Your NMR article looks great. Chris Day 16:21, >17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I could have just ASKED someone. But I am reticent by nature and I tried to find the procedure for nomination in the 'dive in' instructions.

The procedure seems fine (now that I know what to do). It may be helpful to others if you could add the following to the end of the 'article mechanics' section in 'dive in' "....leave a message on those editors' talk pages and invite them to take a look and see if they might be ready to approve the article. You can also use the mailing lists to see if you can get others to take a look. When you all agree, then use the metadata template! ....D. Matt Innis 15:56, 17 January 2009 (UTC) " Thanks for the encouragement and help.

Sekhar Talluri 18:14, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Darwin's Health
It seems odd to describe the health of a dead person, pretty much a one line article (lol). Have you considered retitling of this article? Darwin's mystery illness? What killed Darwin? or something like that? David E. Volk 21:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't think the title is final. It was a title that Larry made as a stop gap to stop the topic dominating the main article. Chris Day 21:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * On the bright side, one can safely say that it will be never necessary to deliver bad news about declining health to a corpse. True story -- we had a very good surgical pathologist at Georgetown, who, knowing a patient was scheduled for a biopsy, would sometimes visit with the intent of getting insight from history and physical. Some patients didn't know what pathologists did, so didn't mind. Others really understood and liked the idea.


 * We had a couple, however, leap out of bed and run down the hall screaming I don't want an autopsy! Howard C. Berkowitz 21:54, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * except for the untimely dealth of the patient, the procedure went extremely well.

David E. Volk 21:56, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Seen this?

 * Darwin's Gift electronic flip-book of essays written for The Lancet :-) Gareth Leng 11:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Hayford Peirce internet link
Hi Chris, I just discovered a few days ago that the link no longer worked; evidently it was at some sort of AOL storage and, being AOL, they suddenly just folded up that particular shop with no warning to anyone. I've emailed the guy who created the original site asking if he has founded a new one, but have had no reply. :( Hayford Peirce 16:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Template
Chris, in Rubidium I see °C in the wrong font. It is hidden in a template so I cannot change it.--Paul Wormer 16:57, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * It should be a regular-sized roman capital, now it is too small. --Paul Wormer 17:54, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It is OK now, thanks. --Paul Wormer 18:07, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Never before having thought of warfarin as a source of improv comedy
I was persuaded otherwise when you managed to connect it to the Great Depression, and wait, with bated breath, to see if you also connect serotonin agonists to the Great Depression.

Nevertheless, the trend continues with your last tweak; not many people can do a bibliographically correct link to Link. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:29, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

1. P-KR3
I noticed that one of your links in the "Chess Strategy/Related Articles" list was "Opening (chess)". There already exists a page at "Chess opening". What's your pleasure -- should the article be renamed and moved, or should the link in "Related Articles" be changed to point to the existing article? Bruce M.Tindall 21:22, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks. (It's not my naming convention, by the way -- "Chess opening" was already there, and I think it was originally titled by Jonathan Bashears.) Bruce M.Tindall 21:38, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Ideal gas law approval just finished by Matt
Chris, I note that:


 * You had to jog the protected version of the article to get it to display in the workgroups (which you also had to do recently on another approved) article. Does that mean that, from now on, you will have to jog protected versions of approved articles? Is there not some way that Matt can do that when he protects the approved article so that it all gets done at one time?


 * The protected version lists the workgroup and subgroup categories at the bottom of the main article page. However, the bottom of the main page of the draft article does not show the categories. Instead it displays "Contents" and "Tags" and most of them are red ... the only blue ones ar "All content" and "Chemical Engineering tag". Why is that?

Confused as to why the workgroup and subgroup categories don't also show at bottom of the draft main article page ??? Milton Beychok 01:43, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * First, no the jogging only needs to occur if the metadata is set to approved AFTER the article is protected. We must set up a protocol for approval that has the final edits and protection being on the article page.


 * Second, I striped the draft page of the categories since they served no purpose. The approved categories replicated the draft categories. Also every article name in the category ended with "/Draft"  that is unsightly, so there is a very good reason to stick with the approved categories on the main article. Also bear in mind our readers will read the main article. Historically the old /Draft categories was actually a kludge solution to allow recent changes on the draft version to be tracked.  However we now have the tags which are far more efficient and are used to track all change in any given workgroup seen by clicking on "recent changes" in the workgroup (or subgroup) page  header. If you would like the categories visible it will be possible to have them at the top of each draft page.  That might even be preferable?


 * Of course, I am only one user, but I do think making the categories visible somewhere on the Draft main article page is desirable. When I click on one of the "Tags" (e.g., Engineering tag), I am presented with a verrrry, verrrry long list of articles including all the cluster subpages ... when all I want is a list of the article main pages like I am presented with when I click on a category (e.g., Engineering Workgroup). I repeat that is my single opinion. Milton Beychok 04:47, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Lastly, the tag categories are still red links (and the content ones) because we have not systematically populated those pages. Hold off on that since I need to tweak the workgroup template so that the appropriate text appears at the top of each page. The ones that have been done, notably the Category:Biology tag, have been set up manually, rather than automatically. I'll fix this soon. i am still trying to figure out how the tag categories can be 'hidden' since they are only meant to be utilized by the workgroup "recent changes" option, not by users for browsing. Chris Day 04:17, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

two baffling items that I'm trying to REMOVE the delete status from....
Hi Chris,

I just cleaned up the entire Articles to Delete page -- all the articles except one or two had had Requests for Deletion from various Editors in the relevant Workgroups. A couple of them I reclassified, I think, and are still in existence.

Two of them, however, baffle me. Larry wondered about deleting them a long time ago but they look relevant to me and have been worked on. What I WANT to do is to simply remove any Delete Request notice. But I can't find a request *anywhere* -- I have looked over and over everywhere. And I inserted a null, saved. Removed it, resaved it, and that didn't change anything.

On the http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Articles_for_deletion page, those two items *still* show up! It's driving me crazy!

Help!

Hayford

Thank you for the sandbox information!
Bruce M.Tindall 00:37, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

About the Talk Page Etiquette
The MediaWiki source code Matt and you wrote is protected so we peons can't make any changes ... not that I am complaining, because I think you did a superlative job.

I would only suggest that the third column (titled Replies should be indented:) might be better if it read: Indent beneath the comment you are replying to by using colons :, ::, ::: and so forth as more replies are added.

My suggestion adds 5 words but it avoids inferring that replies go beneath all of the other comments. Milton Beychok 10:07, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * And it doesn't really change the appearance, either, since the second instruction, about using the "+ tab" already takes up more vertical space. Hayford Peirce 16:16, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm always open to input. :) Chris Day 16:22, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Templates, particularly infoboxes
Hi Chris, I am writing to you because you deleted Template:Template doc which I was about to use via optic tectum. I am considering to move over several articles on brain parts and species from WP. Some of the templates used in there appear to be helpful to me but I did not find guidelines on the principles used here to distinguish between templates that are desirable and those that are not. Please take a look at optic tectum (and xenopus laevis which I have stopped working on for the same template-related reasons). Thanks! --Daniel Mietchen 11:27, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I forget why i deleted it. I think it was because the structure in WP was a mess.  There was a lot of history with adhoc changes, many redirects for example.  It seemed better for us to start from scratch.  Let me look at the details again and I'/ll try to build what you need. Chris Day 16:22, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Help!!! At a loss about moving
I want to move the Piping cluster to Piping (engineering) and I am at a loss because:


 * The Move Cluster link that used to be on Talk pages (I think) is no longer to be found
 * Clicking on the Move tab at top of the article main page bring up the move page with radio buttons which now include an option for moving the Talk page and all the subpages along with the main page. But the move instructions have always said move all the subpages and the Metadata page before moving the main page and the talk page.

So I am confused. When do I move the Metadata page? Before or after I use those radio buttons that will move the main page plus the Talk page plus all the subpages??? Milton Beychok 22:48, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Good question. I have not figured out the best way given we can now move all the subpages and talk pages at once with the article. I suspect the best choice is to move the template first along with changing the pagename field in the template. Then move the original article (make sure you choose move associated talk page and move all associated subpages). I need to rewrite that move template as it is obsolete since the mediawiki was upgraded (the reason for the absence of the move clister link at the talk page). Chris Day 22:53, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Chris, the system would not accept moving the Metadata template first. It kept telling me there was no such page as Piping (engineering) even though I had revised the template to have the renamed title and abc.


 * So I went ahead and clicked on the Move tab at page top, and used the radio buttons option (that displayed on the Move page) to move the Main page and all of the subpages ... which the system did perfectly including the definition.


 * I then tried to re-edit the old Metadata template, but the system still would not accept that. So then, I just created a new Metadata template with the re-named article title. All is now well. In summary, I had to first move the main page and all the subpages. Then I had to create a new Metadata template.


 * I note that all of the old subpages still exist and are re-directed to the new subpages. I think that those old subpages should be deleted, don't you? Now that we have a disambiguation page, Piping (disambiguation), which is why the rename/move had to be made, those old subpages are going to be confusing since they appear in the pop-up menu when someone searches for Piping using the search box in the left-hand navigation section. Milton Beychok 00:02, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Mea culpa, mea culpa, and mea hypocaffeinosis
Apropos the deletion in EAS -- I fumblefingered and tried to explain in another note. Very insomniac night, and now I am caffeine deprived. If you can make sense of the logs and not lose the detailed information I did put in on more questionable allegations by a study author, feel free.

What happened is that I was doing a lengthy entry, didn't save, checked the watchlist, saw your comment, answered it, then went back, saw the other edit window, without engaging brain, saved. Howard C. Berkowitz 14:24, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Environmental Engineering subgroup
Chris, while we are waiting for the subgroup proposal in the new proposal queue, do you think we could go ahead and create an Environmental Engineering subgroup? I could populate it immediately with at least 6-7 articles including 1 approved article. What do you think? Milton Beychok 19:28, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
 * At worst we have to undo it. I'd say go ahead, lets' be optimistic here. Chris Day 19:31, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Great! Now, how do we do it? If you will set up the subgroup banner and whatever else is needed code-wise, I will immediately get those 6-7 articles into it by making the needed changes in their Metadata pages. We already have an Environmental engineering article that is needed as the main article. Milton Beychok 20:04, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Need your magic touch
Chris, I have added the Environmental Engineering subgroup to the Metadata templates of these five approved articles: Accidental release source terms, Air pollution dispersion modeling, Air pollution dispersion terminology, Air pollutant concentrations and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. All of them now list the the Environmental Engineering subgroup among the categories at the bottom of the protected Main Article as they should. But:


 * Neither of the five protected approved articles or their draft articles are listed in the Environmental Engineering subgroup ... not in the Articles section nor in the Approved section. They need your magic touch (since I can't add a null space into the protected aricle).


 * None of the five approved articles list the Chemical Engineering subgroup or the Environmental Engineering subgroup list as a category in small font at the top of the Main Article page of the draft article.


 * In fact, none of the 18 approved articles in the Chemical Engineering subgroup list the Chemical Engineering subgroup as a category in small font at the top of the Main Article page of the draft article.

Can you apply your magic touch to the above listed 5 Environmental Engineering subgroup articles and to the 18 Chemical Engineering subgroup articles?

I know that you have notified Matt that he needs to revise his approval protocol but that doesn't help with the existing approved articles unless someone goes back to apply their magic touch to all of them. Perhaps what is needed is a robot to do that?? Milton Beychok 22:03, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I just added 5 more articles to the Environmental Engineering subgroup. They are articles not yet approved, so there were no problems with them. I just used that workaround of a adding a null space to get all of them to display in the Environmental Engineering subgroup after I edited the 5 Metadata templates. Milton Beychok 22:26, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes these are problems for the subgroup concept. On this scale it is little trouble but in the future when we have more approved article we need a way to address this. Chris Day 01:09, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You are definitely a genius!! Everything seems to be working correctly now. I checked about 7 of the articles and they were all okay. Also, all of the draft and all of the non-draft articles are now showing correctly as they should in the Environmental Engineering subgroup. Now, I think I will try to draw a logo for the Environmental Engineering subgroup banner as I did for the Chemical Engineering subgroup. Thanks mucho again, Milton Beychok 03:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Some clean-up-the-workgroup questions
Hi Chris,

Trying to do some work on my poor neglected subpage and I've run into some snags. Well, maybe they're not snags at all, just things I don't understand.


 * 1) At the bottom of the main article, there are Categories; I notice some red links: hobbies Content | Hobbies tag | Dogs tag | Dogs content. What are these and why are the red, i.e. should I be placing something there?  I assume they are generated by Metadata?  Why?

Aleta Curry 01:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) I figured out why Dog Editors was red even though I added myself to it. But, the category Dogs approved at the subgroup page is red, even though it has content (so I put a sentence in it.  Delete that if it's wrong).  Also a couple of approved dog articles do not show up in Dogs Approved.
 * 2) What is the title 'All Articles' for?
 * Okay, one mystery solved. All articles was a bold title rather than a link because I was here (Category:Dogs Subgroup) not here (CZ:Dogs Subgroup).  I think this CZ:Dogs Subgroup is home, but I don't exactly know what the other one is. I mean, that's where I was when I edited the editors category, and it worked.  I gather I should really be editing from CZ:Dogs Subgroup Aleta Curry 01:10, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, CZ:Dogs Subgroup is home (equivalent to CZ:Hobbies Workgroup). The other one, (Category:Dogs Subgroup), is the category where all the articles in the subgroup are listed (equivalent to Category:Hobbies Workgroup). Does this make sense? Chris Day 02:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Approval of Evidence-based medicine
Okay, I changed the metadata first, then the article pages. Did that work better? I'm still not clear what was not showing up correctly? D. Matt Innis 02:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, what you just did worked fine. The problem before was that the approved category was getting added to the article after it was locked since the change in the metadata was toward the end of the process. Then, as no one could edit the locked article, the categories would not be updated (jogged, re-registered, whatever the technical term is?). I've been thinking about this issue and it's becoming a real problem.
 * Another potential solution, other than the script method I mentioned before, is to have ALL categories on the metadata page and have links to categories at the top of article pages, similar to what we currently have on the draft pages. That would require a category on the metadata template page to show up in a category with the articles name 'only' rather than "Template:Article name/Metadata". I suspect this is possible as categories on our talk pages only show up with the article name. I'll need to do some research.
 * The advantage of such a system is that edits to the metadata template designed to change the clusters categories would always become current since the categories are all registered by an edit to the metadata template. I'm not sure I'm being very coherent here. Chris Day 02:51, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Holy smokes, Chris, you must get headaches! I'm glad you can keep it all straight. I hope you know you can't die.. without cloning yourself :-D. Matt Innis 02:57, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll have to check into Roslin, along with Gareth. Chris Day 03:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hehe.


 * Concerning your problem with the cats and considering the robotics of the approval process. Would it be easier to create a bot that does my part and your part so you don't have to change the categories to the metadata template? D. Matt Innis 15:17, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * That's the other option along with jogging every subpage after any change to the metadata. However, this is not very elegant and creates more background work for the servers. Chris Day 18:48, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Myron C. Lake article

 * if I'm going to be subject to changes like that, i.e., tearing out a whole section, then I'm outta here. I had that sh*t at Wikipedia, and I won't have it here.  The gallery was one thing, but the entire appendix is unacceptable.  lemme know, cause i will not finish the article if i have to put up with this again.   S. W. Kolterman 06:21, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * S.W. Kolterman, please believe me when I say that Chris is really one of the most helpful and gracious people we have in Citizendium. I guess he assumed you understood the subpage system that is used here. It is one of the differences between us and WP. For example:


 * We have no "See also" section. Instead, we have a "Related Articles" subpage.
 * We have no "External links" section. Instead, we have an "External links" subpage.
 * We have no "Bibliography section". Instead, we have a "Bibliography" subpage.


 * There also many other subpages, like "Tutorial", "Video", "Catalogs", etc. Chris simply moved your Appendix material into an "Addendum" subpage.


 * So please, shake hands with Chris ... and please stay here. It is all just a simple misunderstanding. I read your article and enjoyed it very much. Milton Beychok 08:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Look at my sandbox for small image that could be used for the Environmental Engineering subgroup banner
Chris, could the image on my sandbox be used in the banner for the Environmental Engineering subgroup page banner? It is meant to represent clean air, clean water and clean land. You can view it at User:Milton Beychok/Sandbox. If you don't like it, it won't hurt my feelings. What do you think of it? Milton Beychok 08:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi, Chris: Not having heard from you, do I take it that you don't want to use that image in the Environmenral Engineering subgroup banner? As I said before, I won't mind your not falling in love with the image ... but I would like to know, one way or the other. Milton Beychok 16:42, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Milt, I love the image, very stylish, just no time to get your banner done just yet. :) Chris Day 17:33, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Core List
I guess I just edit first think later. I changed that list for a simple reason really - the worry about what someone looking in would think about our priorities. Gareth Leng 20:45, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I have no problem with the changes. Just musing as to what we actually want to do with such lists. I guess i have not thought about it for a while and your edits jogged my memory of the issues i was wrestling with at the time i contributed to it. Chris Day 20:51, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * - that's the way to think :-) what's the purpose? Advertise our best and inspire by example must be a part of it. Gareth Leng 20:56, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Gareth, I couldn't agree more. There are many ways to be exemplary. They include coverage of subjects that simply aren't well covered elsewhere, of potentially substantial interest, and perhaps can make good use of our flexibility of original presentation rather than original research. If the topic is more specialized, good writing, cross-linking, and references can set an example, and one never knows where research will lead: I recently discovered that if one young man had taken one choice offered to him, he who was to become known as Ho Chi Minh might have been political revolution's loss and culinary arts' gain. As soon as I finish with one reference I must get back to the library, I'll probably allow Ho to lead me into some material on Auguste Escoffier.


 * Great effort in wonkology, however, can reflect on priorities, as well as what might be seen as political correctness. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:32, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Like you have nothing else to do....
Chris, when you have a mo, can you take a gander at Heterosis and make sure I haven't written anything embarrassing? (Or another biologist can as well). Aleta Curry 22:49, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

need help with a non-existent (but existent) speedy delete
Hi Chris, I need help with this (I'm copying a message that Bruce just left on my Talk page):
 * Mysterious speedydelete on JFK/Related Articles

No, I didn't put a speedydelete on JFK/Related, but here's what probably happened. I noticed that the former "List of US Presidents" had been moved into the Catalogs subpage of the President article; but the Definition subpage of "List..." still existed. Since it had no "main article" to belong to, I thought it should be speedydeleted, so I put the template on the Definition subpage. But then, when editing "JFK/Related," I noticed that that page links to "List of US Presidents" (which is now a redirect to "Pres./Catalog", and uses the {r} template, so it tries to display the defintion -- which, now, included a speedydelete template (which showed up in the middle of JFK/Related). This isn't very pretty, so I removed the template from "List/Definition". But apparently the fact that the "speedydelete" showed up briefly on "JFK/Related" somehow got it listed on the speedydelete list.

Whew. Got all that? Bruce M.Tindall 20:36, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Chris -- this is *way* over my head! Hayford Peirce 20:44, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Question about subpages
Chris, I started Hermite polynomials and prepared a table of these functions. For the being I put them in Hermite polynomial/Catalogs, but I wonder if that's the right subpage?--Paul Wormer 09:28, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Good question, another possible one is Addendum. Chris Day 13:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I moved the table to Addendum, now Catalogs is redundant. --Paul Wormer 13:52, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Archive box formatting
Yes, that would be preferable! I didn't know that it existed, I just copied what I found in an earlier Archive. Thanks! Hayford Peirce 19:58, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Can you please fix the mess I made?
I was trying to move Department of Commerce to U.S. Department of Commerce and made a complete mess of it after I mis-spelled the new name. I see that you fixed the move for me. But now I cannot access the Metadata page to see if reflects the move ... I keep getting a blank page instead of the Metadata template. Please Help. Milton Beychok 22:07, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Chris, I really want to learn how to move a cluster to a new name. Now that we no longer have the cluster link on the Talk pages, exactly what is the order in which to make a move? Or is there some CZ page that has been updated to spell it out correctly? Please spell it out so that a simpleton like me can follow it without messing up again. Milton Beychok 23:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This is near the top of my to do list. Let me practice and see what works best. Chris Day 01:06, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

blahblahblah licenses
Someone is going to have to figure out the copyright issues associated with the topics that Stephen left undone. I'm willing to put some time into it but don't know if I can finish it. In any case, the first step is to point the upload text somewhere other than blahblahblah. Could you make the adjustments? Just point them to an appropriate sounding location and we'll figure it out from there. --Joe Quick 22:38, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh, thank goodness, Joe, I have been worried about those, too. Thanks.  If you need me for something, let me know.  I'm sorry I can't help much with copyrights, but hopefully you can fill that niche! D. Matt Innis 02:16, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Subpages and uncategorized articles
I've been inching my way through uncategorized articles, putting in subpages. Should I be using a different page for problem articles?

There are a huge number of uncategorized subpages for elements, which clearly belong to chemistry. I'm not sure how the subpages should look. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

A question
Chris, I want to write an article about "concentration" which will explain the various methods of expressing concentrations, such as: percentage by weight, percentage by volume, ppm by weight, ppm by volume, molarity, molality, mole fraction, mass per volume ( e.g., mg of particulates per cubic metre of air, or grams of salt per litre of water), etc., etc.

It will not be Concentration (chemistry or Concentration (physics) or any of the many other non-science usages of the word such as "intense mental focus", "the spatial property of being crowded (e.g., compactness, denseness)", "convergence", etc.

I know it will require a disambiguation page. Now about my question: I would like to name the article just plain Concentration and have a pointer at the top that says "For other meanings, see Concentration (disambiguation" which would list Concentration (chemistry), Concentration (physics), Concentration as in intense mental focus, Concentration as in the spatial property of being crowded, etc. Is that okay in CZ? If so, how do I create that Concentration (disambiguation page? Milton Beychok 08:56, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

AN- > Related Articles > Masterlist
Noted; I can live with that as long as I remember it is there. The problem, for which there is no instant solution, is that certain articles (subpages?) have a substantial role as what I'll call "indexing nodes" rather than free-standing articles. AN- is a little different in that it also has content about the designation system; I don't know if some of the dog list "headers" also have content. There is an awkward terminology nuance in computer science that describes the idea: a tree only has content at its terminal leaves, while a trie (alas, pronounced "tree") can have content at nonterminal nodes.

At least for this particular subpage, an ideal, obviously related to programming, is to have an automatic mechanism that creates an r-template entry every time a new "links to AN-" article is created. Of course, this has to be manual for now. Howard C. Berkowitz 09:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * You don't need to remember were it lives as when you click on the edit option in the related articles page it takes you to the masterlist. This is true for any cluster where it might live. Chris Day 09:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

lemme concentrate on this for a moment or so
Hi Chris, Shouldn't Concentration be deleted and only a disambig page exist? This is very confusing. Or are you in the process of straightening this out? Hayford Peirce 19:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Every time I see it, I think "whack-a-mole" while the mole is munching on Avogadros. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Milt has an article he will move to concentration. I was testing it since i noticed the R template was not working correctly. When i modified the R template I was anticipating that an article would not exist if there was a disambiguation page. However, this policy got changed to 'if there is a really common usage it should live at the article name AND have a disambiguation page for the other terms'. i need to reprogram the R template to be able to "See" that scenario.


 * In short, we do not really have a standard for disambiguation, I'll try and write a short description of how I interpret our 'standard' and see if this works for everyone else. I think this could be one of those issues where there are two philosophical camps, so we probably need to move carefully. As to Concentration, I'll deleted those test pages. Chris Day 19:18, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Are you trying to tell me disambiguation has to be disambiguated? Howard C. Berkowitz 19:33, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Disambiguation is definitely ambiguous but given time we should have an unambiguous disambiguation procedure. Unless we find examples of disambiguation that do not fit into a one size fits all process. In that case we could have a disambiguation page to help us understand the ambiguities of disambiguation.  But I'm pretty sure we can have a very unambiguous disambiguation process if people are willing to compromise. Or maybe not.  Maybe we should start warming up the disambiguation page for disambiguation? Chris Day 20:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Redirect disambiguation to Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
 * Alternatively, redirect disambiguation to disambiguation (disambiguation) and redirect disambiguation (disambiguation) to disambiguation. Chris Day 20:27, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * You guys are kidding, right? Right?  RIGHT?! Hayford Peirce 22:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * You think this is a laughing matter? ;) Chris Day 00:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion Request page changes
Hi Chris, could you take a look at the http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Speedy_Deletion_Requests page to see if the editing, changes, and additions I put in are correct -- I wanted to make this as clear as possible for the next poor victim who stumbles across it.... Thanks! Hayford Peirce 01:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think that's a distinct improvement! Thanks! Hayford Peirce 17:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Subgroup proposal
Hi, Chris: I note that the subgroup proposal is now listed as a New proposal at CZ:Proposals/New. I also note thatCZ:Proposals/Editorial Council lists Active proposals before the Editorial Council (many of which have been sitting there over six months).

How does a New proposal get to be an Active proposal? Also, why are those Active proposals still sitting there without the Editorial Council being notified to vote on them? Who is responsible for moving Active proposals to a vote?

I'm not complaining ... I'm just trying to understand how the proposal system works and you are my fount of all knowledge. Milton Beychok 08:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Not in this area, I try and stay away from governance issues. Now I'll have to dip my toe in the water. Chris Day 08:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I asked these same questions on Larry Sangers' Talk page. In one of his responses, he explains how you move your New subgroup proposal to the Active proposal list. I suggest that you read what he said at here. Milton Beychok 20:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * When it has been moved to Active status and then needs a Sponsor, just let me know. I'll sponsor it in the blink of an eye. Milton Beychok 20:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm comfortable defending what we currently have. Having just glanced through the rules I now see i could have sponsored this myself, or am responsible for finding a proposer. i think it's better to have an separate sponsor and driver so thanks for volunteering as sponsor.  Chris Day 21:11, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Move
Thanks for the explanation. I realised that was what you were doing - I had thought the box was already ticked but clearly not. Ro Thorpe 19:06, 5 February 2009 (UTC)