User talk:Loc Vu-Quoc

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Returning to Citizendium: an update on the project and how to get involved

Hello - some time ago you became part of the Citizendium project, but we haven't seen you around for a while. Perhaps you'd like to update your public biography or check on the progress of any pages you've edited so far.

Citizendium now has over 16,000 articles, with more than 150 approved by specialist Editors such as yourself, but our contributor numbers require a boost. We have an initiative called 'Eduzendium' that brings in students enrolled on university courses to write articles for credit, but we still need more Editors across the community to write, discuss and approve material. There are some developed Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Engineering articles that could be improved and approved, and some high-priority Natural and Applied Sciences articles that we don't have yet. You can also create new articles via this guide, and contribute to some Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry or Engineering pages that have been recently edited here, here, here and here - or to any others on Citizendium, since you're a general Author as well as a specialist Editor. You may like to contribute to discussions in the forums, and might consider running for an elected position on the Management and Editorial Councils that oversee the project.

If you have any questions, let me know via my Talk page or by leaving a message below this one. Thank you for signing up and reading this update; I hope that you will look in on our community soon. John Stephenson 07:21, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Nguyen_Ngoc_Bich_(1911-1966)

Loc (is this the right thing to call you?), I changed the article name to Nguyen Ngoc Bich to fit Citizendium's naming conventions and manually created the Metadata page and other associated subpages for you. Sadly, the automation for creating these does not work. TI'm happy to do it for you on any new articles you create, or you can learn the method yourself by reading CZ:Creating_an_article_with_subpages. Thanks for contributing to the wiki! Pat Palmer (talk) 10:05, 10 June 2023 (CDT)

Template:Ping Thanks, Pat, for changing the article name to Nguyen Ngoc Bich, for creating the subpages manually, and for the link CZ:Creating_an_article_with_subpages, which I will read.

I wonder whether some useful templates in Wikipedia could be implemented here. Loc Vu-Quoc (talk) 10:18, 10 June 2023 (CDT)

Sometimes we can copy WP templates over and they work; other times, not (because, probably, they rely on some extension we're not running). Let me know which ones you'd like and I'll give it a try.Pat Palmer (talk) 11:28, 10 June 2023 (CDT)

Thanks, Pat. The missing templates in the article Nguyen Ngoc Bich are highly useful to organize Notes, Citations, References in an article, much better than using <ref></ref>, as I have extensively used them to organize and reorganize several WP articles: ◉ Mongol invasions of Vietnam ◉ Paul Mus ◉ Archimedes Patti ◉ draft article Draft:Nguyen_Ngoc_Bich (which I am writing), etc. See the Contributions of User:Egm4313.s12. Here are the templates that I found highly useful: {{sfn}}, {{efn}}, {{notelist}}, {{reflist}}, {{refbegin}}, {{refend}}, {{harvid}}, {{citation}}. Loc Vu-Quoc (talk) 11:56, 10 June 2023 (CDT)

I will check on those templates, but I'm pretty sure those are ones that require a complex mix of extensions to be run. I tried that before and I wasn't able to obtain all of the needed extensions. I understand that many people prefer these templates, but I actually do not like them because, to me, their presence within the article text makes maintenance editing very difficult. Instead, I prefer to group all the references at the bottom and name them; the text then only needs to refer to the name, and multiple places within the text can use that reference. For an example, see the code of the Donald Trump article. However, when I get time, I'll take another look at these templates. It may take me awhile and I don't guarantee success. I also tried, and failed, to get the templates for chemical formulas used in WP to work here. Sorry! Pat Palmer (talk) 13:35, 10 June 2023 (CDT)

BTW, some of these DO work here; I'm pretty sure {{reflist}} works, just for example, and probably {{citation}} also.Pat Palmer (talk) 13:38, 10 June 2023 (CDT)

Pat, the problem with doing the references as in the Donald Trump article is that it is not convenient to cite the same reference (e.g., a book) multiple times for different pages, or in many different Notes. See, e.g, Draft:Nguyen_Ngoc_Bich. Loc Vu-Quoc (talk) 15:47, 10 June 2023 (CDT)

A last note--unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium does not require a reference on every statement. We suggest using them mostly when it might be helpful to the reader (or if someone expresses doubt and there is a need to show verification).Pat Palmer (talk) 13:42, 10 June 2023 (CDT)

Your User page has a bad link

When you get a moment, you might update your User Page, which has a dead link on it. Pat Palmer (talk) 10:09, 10 June 2023 (CDT)

Reference templates

Regarding this list: {{sfn}}, {{efn}}, {{notelist}}, {{reflist}}, {{refbegin}}, {{refend}}, {{harvid}}, {{citation}}. Citation and Reflist both exist and are used. I spent about an hour this morning attempting to get Sfn and Efn working, but despite copying over multiple templates with their documentation (and having to change things just to get that over), plus several Lua modules, I ended up with a whole bunch of Lua error messages. Eventually I may learn enough about modules and Lua to get this morass working in Citizendium, but for the time being, we won't have them. Thus, I made a start at converting the Efn and Sfn templates at the top of Nguyen Ngoc Bich so you can see what would need to be done to work without them. I hope this will not prevent you working in Citizendium. I haven't given up, but I'll need to spend a lot more time if I'm ever going to get those to work. Very sorry.Pat Palmer (talk) 09:42, 13 June 2023 (CDT)

Thanks, Pat. I still have a lot more work to develop the content for the draft over in WP anyway. So there is no rush to continue the article in CZ, since the conversion of the templates takes some work. Once these templates are ready in CZ, owing to your effort, it will be just copy and paste from WP to CZ. Loc Vu-Quoc (talk) 13:47, 13 June 2023 (CDT)

Sorry about Bao Dai

Hi there, Sorry that John deleted Bao Dai when it was pertinent to your current work. You are partly correct in why we deleted it, in that is was unlinked and long unimproved. But, it was also written almost exclusively by Howard C. Berkowitz who is no longer with the wiki and was found to have misrepresented his qualifications at the time. Howard appears to have written extensive histories of Vietnam related to the run-up of the U.S Vietnam War, in which he was highly interested. Some of these articles are inaccurate, unobjective, and provide an very detailed history with no sources whatsoever. Given that Howard was NOT a historian and did not source his long treatises on history, I'm afraid we now take them as generally unreliable. He also had a contentious relationship with many contributors so that they were afraid to weigh in on his work at the time, and I also saw where he had taken over articles from others and bullied them into leaving. So when you get a chance, might you please take a look at that Bao Dai article and see what it needs in terms of improvement? Pat Palmer (talk) 17:32, 7 April 2024 (CDT)

Also, in general, would you be willing to review some Vietnam related articles for me? HCB wrote a large pack of these, and without an informed opinion, my bad impression of HCB is going to get them deleted unless someone with better knowledge than me can say no. I think it is fine for non-historians to undertake writing history, but they really ought to try and provide references, or at least a bibliography, when doing so. Real historians do this. The lack of references on Berkowitz articles, and his entire history in the wiki, has made us regard much of his work with suspicion. Pat Palmer (talk) 17:37, 7 April 2024 (CDT)

Hi Pat Palmer, I agree with you that there should be a lot of references as in the article Nguyen Ngoc Bich, which I have just finished for review. Could you have it reviewed and move it to Citable Version, which for some reason I could not do. Thanks. Loc Vu-Quoc (talk) 17:44, 7 April 2024 (CDT)

It may take me some time to get this done, so please be patient. I think no one is likely to mess with the article in the meantime. The process to move an article to Citable status is supposed to have TWO outside experts review it. I am not really an expert on this topic, though I will do my best to review the article, and I will look for a second person to help with the review also with an eye to get it, eventually, to Citable. Do you know another person who might be willing to come to the wiki and help review the article? Pat Palmer (talk) 18:13, 7 April 2024 (CDT)

Hi Pat Palmer, I saw User:Howard_C._Berkowitz in the page Talk:Bao_Dai. Interesting. Loc Vu-Quoc (talk) 17:52, 7 April 2024 (CDT)

Hi, Loc. Sorry about the deletion. I had a huge batch to clear and I missed your message but, if you think of any more that have gone, they're easily restored. I suggest you look through Category:Articles for deletion March and Category:Articles for deletion April to see if there are others pending that interest you. If you find any, please feel free to remove the PropDel tag from the first line of the article. I'll check them as well and untag anything that's obviously about Vietnam.

Thanks for all you are doing. Best of luck. John (talk) 00:48, 8 April 2024 (CDT)

Remove poor articles, link to Wikipedia

Hi Pat and John, Pat made some changes in the article Karl S. Pister that I am working on, in particular a link to University_of_California,_Berkeley, which is so poor. I suggest removing all poor Citizendium articles such as University_of_California,_Berkeley, which is in no way comparable in details and depth to University of California at Berkeley on Wikipedia, and which just makes Citizendium look bad.

It has been (widely) known that Citizendium (Wikipedia) has been in decline. So instead of linking to poor Citizendium articles, I also suggest to link to Wikipedia articles in Citizendium articles.

Thank you. Best, Loc Vu-Quoc (talk) 11:44, 23 April 2024 (CDT)

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Hi Pat and John, here is a new idea. Why not import, from Wikipedia again, all Citizendium articles that are either poor or on the delete lists? These articles were imported back in 2008, they can be imported again. A problem would be the relatively newer Wikipedia templates that Citizendium does not have. See for example the article Nguyen Ngoc Bich on Citizendium versus Draft:Nguyen Ngoc Bich on Wikipedia, or even the article Karl S. Pister on Citizendium versus Draft:Karl S. Pister on Wikipedia. Loc Vu-Quoc (talk) 14:49, 24 April 2024 (CDT)

It is permissible to import articles from Wikipedia. However, it is important when doing so the also do the following:

• add an Attribution section at the bottom (just above references) and add the {{WPAttribution}} template in that section, to give public notice in a standard way that the bulk of the article came from WP
• remove any templates not supported by Citizendium
• remove from the article to subpages things like Bibliography lists or "see also" lists (to Related Articles)
• make any other adjustments needed so that the imported article complies with Citizendium's editorial requirements
  • assign the correct designation in Metadata (i.e. 3 = Stub, 2 = Developing, or 1 = Developed)
  • in particular, simplify the introductory paragraph if need be. Wikipedia has very bad introductions, full of extraneous detail such as how to pronounce a word, and often including a long laundry list of roles belonging to the person or topic, when more help would be a simple explanation of the factors MOST IMPORTANT about this person or topic; many people do not want to read a long treatise when looking up a topic, they just want instead for the article to get to the point and tell them the main things to know
• it's also worth taking a look at the WP Talk page to see if there are discussions there worth preservingPat Palmer (talk) 09:33, 25 April 2024 (CDT)

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I did not delete the University of California, Berkeley article so far because I had hoped that I would find time to visit all the main state university system articles and update them in a standard way with the most important things to know, which *I think* includes the following:

• how many students (undergrad, graduate, and post-doc)
• how many faculty
• approximate tuition costs (and, is there in-state rates that are lower than out-of-state)?
• is this university, or this campus within the system, particularly famed for certain specialties?
• what is important about the physical campus itself, and its resources and surroundings

While the above information may be in the Wikipedia articles, it is often quite difficult to find. State universities are often the only possible affordable college for lower income students, and a comparison of them across all 50 states would be very interesting. Private colleges and universities, while great, are unfortunately out of reach of the vast majority of people who would like to go to college. However, in reality, who knows if I will ever get around to doing this project? Feel free to update the Berkeley article by replace it with the WP version if you are willing to do the work to adapt it.Pat Palmer (talk) 09:38, 25 April 2024 (CDT)