User talk:Larry Sanger

Archive, project start through Jan. 2007
Archive, Jan.-Feb. 2007

Constabulary blocking procedure

Currently, one point reads:

Uploading of copyrighted material.

I believe this should read "Unauthorized uploading of copyrighted material" or something to that effect.

For example, if I take a photograph, I am the copyright owner of the photo (automatic since 1976). If I then upload the photo to CZ and license it cc-by-sa (as an example), I am still the copyright owner. The licensing does not transfer or surrender the copyright. The license provides usage rights under the terms of the license. I retain the copyright. In fact, almost all material which is uploaded to CZ is copyrighted. James F. Perry 09:51, 16 February 2007 (CST)

Right you are. --Larry Sanger 09:52, 16 February 2007 (CST)

A comment here was deleted by The Constabulary on grounds of making complaints about fellow Citizens. If you have a complaint about the behavior of another Citizen, e-mail constables@citizendium.org. It is contrary to Citizendium policy to air your complaints on the wiki. See also CZ:Professionalism.

David, I have sent your complaint to constables@citizendium.org.

OK

I only created those cats that already had members - as I thought the red links looked unprofessional. I wont do anymore, sorry Iva 14:01, 17 February 2007 (CST)

It's not unprofessional to have work to do.  ;-) --Larry Sanger 14:02, 17 February 2007 (CST)

The Big SD

Larry, I added to the page

NOTE 4: don't delete recently created placeholder articles (usually just a title), created to "de-orphan" an article.

Please remove if I am mistaken.

Stephen Ewen 19:13, 17 February 2007 (CST)

No, sounds right to me. --Larry Sanger 19:20, 17 February 2007 (CST)

While I was disconnected (flu!) the article Age (geology) was deleted. Can we recover it? It was few rows indeed, but all original (there is not such article in WP).

Deletion was partly my fault, because I created the article with the comment "made article live". I suppose it now sounds like "just put the live tag", but at that time there was the rule of making articles live only after substantial editing.

If recovery is impossible, I'll rewrite it, as short as it was, it shouldn't be much difficult.

Please reply at my talk page. Ciao, --Nereo Preto 07:56, 21 February 2007 (CST)

1911 Brittanica material

I see in the del log you have encountered a few of these by Ori, too. I have been leaving them alone (e.g., Edmond François Valentin About) when not imported from WP (and hence mixed with WP stuff), even though they were not being actively transformed. Stephen Ewen 22:36, 17 February 2007 (CST)

Template Root

That's what I was afraid of, besides, manually adding new templates would get old after a while. --Paul Derry 16:45, 18 February 2007 (CST)

Sir Michael Hardie Boys

Those categories are in relation to what Sir Michael is. There are other people from New Zealand who are jurists and judges, but there are very few people today that are retired Governors-General of New Zealand. He's the only guy I know who has served as a Judge of the Kiribati Court of Appeal. I know the man personally, as I served under him whenever he needed me (on a part-time basis) from when I was 20 until 3 months after my 24th birthday. - (Aidan Work 19:50, 18 February 2007 (CST))

Well done. But none of this bears on the question whether we should be creating large numbers of arbitrary, contextless categories (i.e., social tagging). I don't think so. --Larry Sanger 19:52, 18 February 2007 (CST)

If we remove CZ Live Tag

If we remove CZ Live tag like proposed here: "The result will be a more honest representation of what we’ve done. Also, if we do a good job with this deletion, we can then remove “CZ Live” tags from our active articles, because all articles that are in our database will be CZ Live!"

Then how will we see a list of all of the articles on CZ? -Tom Kelly (Talk) 00:01, 19 February 2007 (CST)

Just look at "Special:allpages" or that's what I had in mind. I'm not sure, though, because as I've gone through a lot of the articles I've seen that many of these are redirection pages, or whatever. Hand-maintaining a list of "Live articles" might turn out to be a pretty good idea... --Larry Sanger 07:39, 19 February 2007 (CST)

Careful with the Js

Roger that. I've found a couple, too. If there looks like there has been any recent activity, I take off the SD tag and leave a note to let the editors decide. Is there a criteria for keeping that you especially want me to watch for (i.e. snakes)? Matt Innis (Talk) 06:40, 19 February 2007 (CST)

Thanks. Just the ones that are listed under "Important Notes" (and elsewhere on that page maybe). --Larry Sanger 07:37, 19 February 2007 (CST)

I see the ones you caught. I think I would have caught the Jewish one and thank goodness on Justice somebody else got there after you. Matt Innis (Talk) 08:51, 19 February 2007 (CST)

just a heads up

You might want to see this conversation.[1] Matt Innis (Talk) 12:29, 19 February 2007 (CST)

Sandbox move

Thanks, when I went here:

http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Citizendium_Pilot:How_to_get_started_with_the_Citizendium_pilot

the section "How to start a new page!" said click on "sandbox", which I did to take me here:

http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Citizendium_Pilot:Sandbox

However it contained an article there about qigong, which I thought someone might be working on and I didn't want to mess them up.

So I experimented to try to create my own personal sandbox for doing my drafts. I searched for sandbox and found nothing.

Thanks again for solving my problem.

Perhaps, when someone joins a personal sandbox might be automatically created for them and a link provided on the welcoming email or information provided in the "How to start a new page" section on how to get to it.David Hume 20:25, 19 February 2007 (CST)

I've just noticed how you did this, i.e. by adding sandbox to my user page. Can anyone besides me mess it up? If they can, I don't think that's a good thing. I could work entirely off line but then I would not have the right formatting, unless there's a way to download this wiki format and do it that way - is there? David Hume 20:39, 19 February 2007 (CST)

It's highly unlikely that anyone will edit your copy if it's in your userspace and more over on a page called "sandbox". Do press the "watch" tab and any changes will pop out in Recent Changes, or just monitor the page history. --Larry Sanger 22:48, 19 February 2007 (CST)

Thanks for the welcome

Glad to be back! Nancy Sculerati MD 14:24, 20 February 2007 (CST)

Confused about something

Hi Larry,

When I look at the diffs for the talk page for this article, I see your comment: [Diffs of Locality of Reference Talk Page]

But when I just look at the talk page for this article, your comments (still in the head revision) are invisible: Talk:Locality_of_reference

Is this a bug, or am I using this wrong? --Nick Johnson

It's a known bug. Sometimes the server presents the old cached version of a page instead of the correct newer version. Don't know why...wish they'd fix it. --Larry Sanger 16:25, 21 February 2007 (CST)

Sources category

Why does my article Action T4 appear with the category "Articles needing sources" at the bottom? I didn't put it there, I can't delete it, and it's not true, since the article is exhaustively sourced. Adam Carr 03:15, 22 February 2007 (CST)

I can answer that. It shows up because, when you imported it from WP yesterday, the {{Fact}} tag was and continues to be in the text of the article. The {{Fact}} tag displays as small superscripted text saying [needs cite]. BTW, if any of us intend to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles, we do best to import them just one at a time and not until we are ready to work on them. Stephen Ewen 05:13, 22 February 2007 (CST)

Thanks. Adam Carr 07:05, 22 February 2007 (CST)

Besides, any such self-referential templates need to be either deleted or moved to the talk page. --Larry Sanger 07:49, 22 February 2007 (CST)

Proper names

Larry, please see my reply at Cosmetic Surgery. Can we just figure out a way to pipe things so that capital letters do not become such an issue? Nancy Nancy Sculerati MD 09:14, 22 February 2007 (CST)

Broken Link

Hi Larry,

This link on your website is broken:

"Wikipedia subset proposal" (wikipedia-l, Oct. 2002)

More importantly, the rest are all working and provided enjoyable reading material and elucidation.

I am writing to you here rather than emailing, since I don't have an emailer which understands non-spammable addresses as you have listed on your website (i.e. I am lazy). :-)

Take care,

Larry

lmcelhiney 09:41, 22 February 2007 (CST)

Here's a direct link:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006387.html

Apparently, the URLs got changed...

--Larry

Bug in system, or database temporarily down?

My userpage reads

The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "(fixme, bug)".

This is usually caused by following an outdated diff or history link to a page that has been deleted.

If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software. Please report this to an administrator, making note of the URL.

I'm especially concerned about this one Red blood cells -- it reads

Red blood cells

There is currently no text in this page, you can search for this page title in other pages or edit this page.

I edited this page earlier and added images. The page was there.

Sharon_Mooney

I was doing databse work within the window you did your edits. The missing pages should now reappear.

-Jtp, Sysadmin

Philosophy WG

I re-posted your Jan 10 letter on Philosophy WG to the discussion page of same. Hey, you said be bold. Part of it seemed outdated following the BSD. No hard feelings if you just revert! James F. Perry 10:06, 24 February 2007 (CST)

Images and copyright

In case you have not already been there, please go to User talk:Sharon Mooney and read the discussion on "intellectual property" regarding hte carbon life image. I will not be having anything more to say on the issue, but you will continually be dealing with such matters as fair use, derivative works, et al. You are going to need to find out what it's all about. James F. Perry 09:00, 25 February 2007 (CST)

Reason for me to add to big write intellectual property, for international Law, and have that as our internal reference so to speak. Robert Tito | Talk 09:12, 25 February 2007 (CST)

Actually, more than that, Rob, we need a draft of CZ policy that covers practical questions about what is and what is not permissible for uploading--something clear enough that we can enforce it. I would try my hand at this, except that I am extremely busy with everything and quite frankly I'm not familiar enough with copyright law to trust myself with this stuff. --Larry Sanger 10:07, 25 February 2007 (CST)

Since I am no lawyer, I will not even try to write anything. But as CZ is worldwide, it needs the international law's approach. Let that be the start kleading to either good practises, or a set of rules adopted by CZ. Better start somewhere than afterwards imply new rules nobody knew about. But the ease with which people misconduct and misinterpret copyrights might be a sign of bittorrent time. cheers Robert Tito | Talk 10:27, 25 February 2007 (CST)

Healing arts

Larry, when you get a chance can you look at this and give us some feedback on whether this is a viable option? -Matt Innis (Talk) 12:59, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Jesus

Hey, I just heard on the news tonight that somebody thinks they found Jesus's body and it is buried beside his wife and child. Hmmm. Matt Innis (Talk) 21:58, 26 February 2007 (CST)

To be broadcasted on Discovery channel on March 4.: the jesus tomb - the episode on discovery is named. Robert Tito | Talk 22:01, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Online Identity Verification for Collaborative Communities

I figured this was like a "sandbox" project "with a message". Perhaps a move to User:Grant Sparks/Sandbox? Stephen Ewen 11:41, 27 February 2007 (CST)

No--CZ is not the place for personal essays, even within user spaces. --Larry Sanger 11:45, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Well, it's very relevant to our purposes, which is why I wouldn't mind keeping it. -- ZachPruckowski (Talk) 13:12, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Yes, let's keep it--on the forums. It isn't an encyclopedia article, unless I'm much mistaken. --Larry Sanger 13:15, 27 February 2007 (CST)

I will contact the author, give him a day or two to salvage the contents and move it to the forums, and then delete it. Stephen Ewen 14:13, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Hi, I'm the originating author. I don't want to use the forums because its not the best way to present the information. An encyclopedia article is actually closer to my intention, but I'm happy to move it to another wiki if you prefer. My reasoning is that the issues involved are highly technical, yet a large number of people are going to need to understand it before any software-solutions can be selected or brought into play to assist with the real-names policy.

Additionally, I don't think that I have to be the sole author. Surely you haven't got this far and still don't have anyone else on board yet who can contribute to the body of knowledge in this area? A sticky post in the forums just wouldn't be the easiest way for this information to be gathered and then presented.

I'm still a noob around here, so tell me where you'd like me to move the article to and I'm happy to comply - but I'd prefer to keep it in a wiki instead of forums and there is a real scarcity of 'meta' discussion areas of this type around here. --Grant Sparks 14:31, 27 February 2007 (CST)

I would not be opposed. Stephen Ewen 14:39, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Follow-up discussions and polemics can be moved to my user talk page if you like. I have extended my argument for why this information is important reference material for the community, and thus should be assisted in construction as an article, rather than deleted off the wiki as suggested. --Grant Sparks 14:46, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Diplomacy and war

I was thinking of the aphorism that "politics is just war by another means". But I suppose by that same token, diplomacy would go in the Politics Workgroup, so there it is (or will be) James F. Perry 17:09, 27 February 2007 (CST)

using that same aphorism, you had better place it in Category:Military Workgroup

Priorities

Larry, could I ask you to clarify what is the timeline for this project? My original understanding was that you intended to make a complete copy of Wikipedia as it was at the start of this year, and then we would all work on rewriting the bad articles and creating a better encyclopaedia. This would be launched sometime early this year. Now I see that all the Wikipedia articles which no-one is working on here have been deleted, so that we have only a tiny fragment of Wikipedia's total content. That would be fine with me, if it was a fragment selected on some rational criterion, and a fragment whose quality we could guarantee. But what we have is a fragment of Wikipedia chosen at random, consisting of articles whose quality cannot be guaranteed to be any higher than Wikipedia's. Thus we have an article on Echis carinatus multisquamatus but none on George Washington. This is not a product we can put before the public. Why not draw up a list of, say, 10,000 key articles that must be got to an acceptable standard, and launch them as a "small but high quality online encyclopaedia," and then invite the world to work on getting the next 10,000 articles written, and so on. Adam Carr 03:15, 3 March 2007 (CST)