User talk:Jack S. Byrom

Welcome to Citizendium!

Jack, Welcome to the wiki. Just jump in anywhere and let me know if you need any help by putting a message on my User Talk page. Pat Palmer (talk) 14:58, 26 February 2023 (CST)

THANKS =-JACK

Hi Jack! When you respond to a comment such as above, please start your comment with : which will indent it. And end it with four tildes which will sign it with your user talk page and the date/time. I added the indention for you this time. And note how two colons indents yet more (edit this page to see). Pat Palmer (talk) 10:24, 27 February 2023 (CST)

thanks, Will do. Just like Wikipedia :-) but hopefully better. Jack S. Byrom (talk) 10:35, 27 February 2023 (CST)

Please expect subpages to appear on your new articles when I get time

Jack, I love the new articles you are adding. On Citizendium, we use "subpages" for things like External links; those are in separate tabs along the top of the article. I will try to set that up on the new articles you create. You'll see it and I didn't want you to be shocked. It takes a little getting used to, but I came to be quite fond of it after some use and I hope you will also. For documentation, you can see what I'll be doing at CZ:Creating_an_article_with_subpages. It used to be automated but that is broken at present, so we have to do it manually.Pat Palmer (talk) 10:24, 27 February 2023 (CST)

Giving attribution to things copied from Wikipedia

Hi Jack! By license, we are supposed to add the {{WPAttribution}} template to articles where some of the content is the same as over in Wikipedia, even if we wrote it there. I usually stick that under a special section at the bottom of the article called "Attribution". See John A. McDougall for an example. Pat Palmer (talk) 17:25, 27 February 2023 (CST)

Thanks, Jack. Pat Palmer (talk) 09:48, 20 May 2023 (CDT)

thanks. Noted. This was heavily edited and rewritten by me, and the heavy Wikipedia bias has been removed. Jack S. Byrom (talk) 19:39, 27 February 2023 (CST)

You don't actually need to acknowledge prior publication on WP. The licence requires only acknowledgment of authorship. Of course there's no harm doing it anyway. Peter Jackson (talk) 05:29, 28 February 2023 (CST)

Jack, it would be best to place a note on the Talk page of the McDougall article about bringing it from WP and why, in which case there is no need to include the WPAttribution template in the article itself. Peter, thanks for clarifying that we don't have to give attribution. I still prefer to give attribution of things we *didn't* write most of ourselves, because in at least some cases, Citizendium shows up in Google searches right next to Wikipedia and it's obvious that one copied the other. Giving credit is the nice thing to do, and I want us to "be nice" merely because WP so often isn't. But I've started putting the attribution at the bottom of the article rather than at the top like they did in the old days.Pat Palmer (talk) 08:56, 28 February 2023 (CST)

thanks for the suggestion about an attribution note on the Discussion at John McDougall. I think I had planned to do that and just hadn't quite gotten around to it, but I will. These articles are kind of fun because they're alive and works in progress. Best, Jack S. Byrom (talk) 09:38, 28 February 2023 (CST)

let's rename the Gandhi article

Jack, I propose to rename Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to Mahatma Gandhi. Not that "Mohanda Karamchand" is not accurate, but almost no one will know it. Whereas, most will know "Mahatma". All the links currently in this wiki point to "Mahatma Gandhi" and not "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi". Do you have any major argument against that, or shall I do it? I will also set up a Gandhi disambiguation page and entering simply "Gandhi" in search will take a reader there first. Pat Palmer (talk) 10:18, 2 March 2023 (CST)

pat, that sounds reasonable to me. I was kind of wondering about that...thx. Jack S. Byrom (talk) 11:20, 2 March 2023 (CST)

Superfund and the long stringy definition of CERCLA

Jack, on the Superfund article, I had deliberately placed CERCLA and its long stringy expanded meaning in a footnote (in contrast to Wikipedia), because in my opinion no one uses that term except possibly deep specialists in environmental cleanup and I felt that it clutters the opener. Let's move that back to a footnote, please. Pat Palmer (talk) 09:39, 3 March 2023 (CST)

OK, sure thing. The article looks pretty good. Jack S. Byrom (talk) 09:54, 3 March 2023 (CST)

Thank you! Sorry to be picky, and thanks for working on that article.Pat Palmer (talk) 10:08, 3 March 2023 (CST)

your photo!

Love the attitudinal photo (though hope you are not still smoking). Pat Palmer (talk) 11:14, 3 March 2023 (CST)

no, it's a movie prop. I'm in front of a famous setting in W. CO where John Wayne jumped a horse over a fence. A friend loaned me his Marlboro :-) Jack S. Byrom (talk) 11:32, 3 March 2023 (CST)

good! Pat Palmer (talk)

Could you look again at "We aren't Wikipedia"?

Hi Jack, I have been editing a lot on CZ:We_aren't_Wikipedia and just noticed your comment, left on its Talk page, made right before I changed a whole lot of it. Do you have time to take a look at it now andgive me any needed feedback? I'm considering renaming it or, more likely, merging it with CZ:Introduction_to_CZ_for_Wikipedians. Pat Palmer (talk) 10:51, 6 March 2023 (CST)

HI Pat. Thanks. I did go back and look at that page and see your new changes and it still looks really good to me. It's just my opinion, though, but from my perspective, I think you should leave the page specifically addressed to the differences between this platform and Wikipedia, but maybe you will still do that if you merge it with the 'Introduction to CZ for Wikipedians'? My two cents...Jack S. Byrom (talk) 11:19, 6 March 2023 (CST)

Thanks!

What is the best article name for Coors Classic?

I've left a comment about this on the article's Talk page. What do you think? Pat Palmer (talk) 15:33, 6 March 2023 (CST)

Image display code

Hi Jack! Please take a look at the code for displaying the state flag on California_(U.S._state). I changed it from File: and thumb to and Image template with sizing and placement, which I much prefer, because it lets all the images be made a uniform width, AND it shows the caption correctly. Anyway, you may do as you please but I changed it so see which one you prefer.

pat, thanks for doing that. It looks great. We had to have the grizzly bear flag on there! Jack S. Byrom (talk)

Would you be interested in undertaking an article about the harm being caused by fossil fuels?

Please see my comments at Talk:Nuclear_power_reconsidered#a_new_article_is_needed_to_highlight_the_harm_being_caused_by_the_mining_and_burning_of_fossil_fuels. It seems you might have the kind of background that would be helpful in writing such an article, so I though I'd ask. Pat Palmer (talk) 09:37, 19 May 2023 (CDT)

hey Pat, that sounds like a good idea. Probably not right now for me, but maybe if things get slower in the winter.// We have a local issue that's brewing that's relevant...someone in the Uintah basin in northeastern Utah wants to extract five or six train loads of crude oil and ship it through Colorado on its way to somewhere else to be refined. That's 5 or 6 miles a day of black crude, running along the Colorado river, subsidized transport by the taxpayers.. what the hell? Cheers, Jack S. Byrom (talk)

reminder on how to sign comments

Hi Jack, on Talk:Graham_Hancock you recently signed a comment with two tildes, and your name did not show up. Looking at the history of the page, I saw it was you who had commented, and so I sort of faked your signature on that comment. Please try to use four tildes; that signs both your name and time/date stamp. Pat Palmer (talk) 09:49, 20 May 2023 (CDT)

Klamath River?

Jack, I started an article on the Klamath River, which is interesting because they are actually, really, truly removing dams from it instead of building them. I wondered if you might have any interest in trying to clean up and shape that article, as you are more knowledgeable than I am about environmental things. I have read that about 60% is the river's water is still being drawn off for agriculture, and that (in part due to recent wildfires) the river may not become healthy in time to save the salmon--if so, that's really heartbreaking--and that the issue of how, or even if, to buy up land to lower agricultural draw-off is still frought in the public's mind. Wikipedia has a long article full of details that still manages not to highlight the most important things about the river, in my opinion. I hope Citizendium can do better. But still, it feels weird to me to be writing about a river I have never seen in person in my life! Pat Palmer (talk) 11:52, 18 December 2023 (CST)

pat, thanks for the heads up. That's really great that you got the ball rolling on that river article. I don't know if I can help or not, but when I am here now and then I may take a look at it. You are right that water is a critical issue here in the west, including the Klamath river. Jack S. Byrom (talk) 09:41, 22 December 2023 (CST)

Thanks for updating John A. McDougall

I saw the news of his passing. For someone who had a serious stroke so early in life, he survived a lot longer by living well than he would normally have done, and likely helped a lot of people. Hope this finds you staying well and busy. I miss you in here! Pat Palmer (talk) 20:38, 29 June 2024 (CDT)

thanks Pat! Yes, Dr. McDougall was a living legend, I guess people are already saying he was killed by eating too many potatoes! L O L. Jack S. Byrom (talk) 22:49, 29 June 2024 (CDT)

ON U.S. intelligence activities in Chile

Jack, I agree with you that this is a topic worthy of an article. However, not this article. It has been left in a state with reference errors and a non-conformant-to-CZ-standards introduction, and its sole author was a person eventually banned from wiki for lying about his credentials in order to become an Editor in Military, Politics and several other workgroups (he actually *was* expert in computer networking), but also for a long history of aggressive and rude interactions with other writers in order to assert his idea of how things ought to be. In my opinion, he ought to have been thrown out of the wiki years before he actually was just because he constantly exhausted everyone with long-winded arguments which he would prosecute until the end of the world. It is this author's articles that I am now having to purge, including unwise articles with details about how to build nasty chemical weapons and a whole lot of other didactic material about history and politics for which he had, in my opinion, absolutely zero qualifications to assert his dominance of knowledge. He was personally the reason I did not work in this wiki for many years, and I have zero confidence in anything he writes about history, politics or the military. He was beginning to assemble a catalog of technical specs for U.S. weaponry in this wiki--stuff that *may* be published elsewhere, but really ought not to be published at all, given that some or much or it may still be in use in wars around the world and, why should we advertise it to people like those Houti militias? His articles about people are often written in present tense. His articles about military subjects are U.S. centric without bothering to say so. Terrible writing. It's hard to know where his anger, his bad judgement, or his poor writing skills ended or began. To top off my resentment--he wrote parallel histories of several wars furtively and hid them from the main articles. Now, we have a big, duplicative snarl of a mess of articles on Vietnam, WWII, everything to do with Nazis, etc. All thanks to this one (insert your favorite bad name). In the end, people just avoided interacting with him, but he would still look at Recent Changes and follow us around in the wiki meddling with stuff he knew exactly nothing about as if he were an expert on everything in the world. Pat Palmer (talk) 10:05, 31 July 2024 (CDT)

understood. Then I have no problem with deletion. Later, I may try to revive the topic because it's definitely one that's been of academic and political interest. Just the S. Allende thing alone is a big deal... and Kissinger,,, Nixon. Yikes. Jack S. Byrom (talk) 12:02, 31 July 2024 (CDT)

Feel free to have a go at the topic. Do you want to archive any of this article before it gets zapped?Pat Palmer (talk) 12:47, 31 July 2024 (CDT)

About the personal section of Donald Trump

Jack, Thanks for taking the initiative and adding this material. Now that you've got it there, would you be offended if I reorganized the info somewhat? I would like to catalog his education and family structure only briefly, then concentrate more on his professional endeavors, bankrupcies, TV career (important to him becoming well-known enough to run to president), and legal fights. Didn't want to just go in and mangle what you did without discussing it first. It's tough writing about this guy! But important, I think, to strive for an objective overview. Pat Palmer (talk) 10:16, 31 July 2024 (CDT)

hey, that's fine, Pat. You're the one putting all the effort into that article; rearrange it however you like. Just for fun, after a while I may insert a line or two about the Tour de Trump bicycle race, from about 1989 and 1090. Best regards, Jack S. Byrom (talk) 11:56, 31 July 2024 (CDT)

There was a Tour de Trump?! In this household, we love watching bicycle racing sometimes. Pat Palmer (talk) 12:48, 31 July 2024 (CDT)

yes, there was a Tour de Trump for two years and then it became the tour of Dupont. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_DuPont. I was pretty impressed with Donald Trump at the time for his sponsorship. And another interesting thing was that a Mexican national won the race one year, Raul Alcala. Donald Trump never said a bad thing about Mexicans then. Jack S. Byrom (talk) 14:12, 31 July 2024 (CDT)