User talk:Vincent H. Bartning

Tasks: start a new article • add basic, wanted or requested articles • add definitions • add metadata • edit new pages

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start. You'll probably want to know how to get started as an author. Just look at Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, our help system and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. Be sure to stay abreast of events via Twitter. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forum is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any administrator for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun! Aleksander Stos 02:18, 19 September 2007 (CDT)

Welcome!

Hey Vincent, I noticed that you have written your first CZ article, so I wanted to stop by and say hi and welcome to the project. Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions, and I'll try to point you in the right direction. --Todd Coles 12:07, 6 March 2008 (CST)

Hello Todd, thanks for the welcome. It's been a while since I've done work on an actual wiki, probably at least six months. What about the approval process here on Citizendium? What about the image commons, if there is one? Bye for now, Vincent H. Bartning 15:33, 7 March 2008 (CST)

As far as the approval process goes, you can read about it here CZ:Approval Process. The nuts and bolts of it is, when an article reaches a completed state, an editor from the appropriate workgroup needs to nominate it. Sometimes this involves you finding an editor to look at it, other times they will find it themselves, it really just depends on the size and activity level of the workgroup (for example, the biology workgroup has a large number of active editors and authors, while geography has no editors that I'm aware of). After the article is nominated, it usually takes about a week to be officially approved, giving everyone a chance to proofread and polish it. Then the approved version is locked from editing, and a draft copy is made editable so further changes can occur and await another approval.

We don't have anything like Wikimedia Commons here, but feel free to upload appropriate images using the upload wizard. Stephen Ewen has put a lot of work into creating templates and such for the various copyrights, and is a good person to ask regarding anything concerning images.

Hope this helps! --Todd Coles 18:28, 7 March 2008 (CST)

Welcome Vince. Please take my note on the Geneva Conv talk page as witty banter. After reading it, it comes across as rather harse, not lighthearted as I meant it to be. David E. Volk 20:31, 10 July 2008 (CDT)

Please see killed in action talk page

I addressed your concerns there. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:01, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Where to find KIA editors

Hi Vincent,

At the bottom of each CZ article, if the Metadata have been filled out correctly, there are links to the relevant Workgroups. In this case, the link will take you to http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Military_Workgroup. Up at the top of that you'll see links to Editors and Authors.

As far as I know, from 2 years here at CZ pretty full time, and 5 months as a Constable, Howard is the only active editor in this group. Richard Jensen, who used to be very active, left about a year ago. I've never even heard of the others. As far as the Authors are concerned, I don't think very many of them are active, but you might try checking their contributions. Hayford Peirce 03:22, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

It looks like Richard Jensen may be the only other "editor" around. Any suggestions on the process of managing so that we at least come to agreement before someone makes changes. Already, a lot's been removed. Is there a process like on Wikipedia? Does it work well? Vincent H. Bartning 16:03, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

No, Richard left about a year and hasn't been back. As for WP processes, I seem to recall that it consisted entirely of revert wars and yelling and screaming and the guy with the thickest skin and loudest voice generally won. I'm sorry that I don't know the CZ rules better, but if you read all of the links at Welcome to Citizendium you might find some lengthy process to go through. And/or you can ask Larry, as Editor-in-Chief, to take a look and see what he thinks. But he hasn't been very active lately and, in any case, he's *very* reluctant to overrule an Editor's official decision. I haven't read the article in question, and I'm not going to, but I'm pretty sure that my Huckleberry Finn/slavery analogy is a good one. From what I've seen in the last couple of years, in *any* article about *any* subject, if an Editor officially decides that some material should *not* be in that particular article, but should be in one or more *other* articles, then I don't think I've *ever* seen that decision changed. You have to remember that at Wikipedia, to an enormous degree, and at CZ to a much lesser degree, we do have authors who come in with definite agendas that they are interested in pushing. It is the Editor's job to keep these agendas from taking over the articles. The creation of the Homeopathy article is a good example of this. We had to have Editors constantly taking clear-cut positions on what could go into it and what could not. That did make some people unhappy, but that's the way our process works. I think that if Howard has cut out a thousand words, say, and made an Editorial decision that these words should be in some other articles, then you're not going to be able to do much to change that. (There was a recent case, in Intelligent design, I believe, in which a new *author*, NOT an *editor*, came in and made *sweeping* deletions of material that had been there for a year or so, without any discussion at all before hand. A number of people were upset by this and I made a Constable's decision to revert all of the deleted material.) So please try to understand our distinction between Editors and Authors. Authors can and do make edits, add material, remove material, but in reasonable, incremental ways. Editors make the decisions about what kind of material can go into any given article in the first place. Hayford Peirce 17:14, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

If I may, I'd point out that I have suggested very little be deleted completely, only that it move to more appropriate articles. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:26, 26 May 2009 (UTC)