User talk:Mal McKee

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Welcome!

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 CZ:Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. Be sure to stay abreast of events via the Citizendium-L (broadcast) mailing list (do join!) and the blog. Please also join the workgroup mailing list(s) that concern your particular interests. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forums is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any constable for help, too. Me, for instance! Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun! Kjetil Ree 18:18, 12 May 2008 (CDT)

Thank you Kjetil Ree. I'd like to thank whoever was responsible for e-mailing me too.

From the outset, I'd like to announce the fact that I am an editor of Wikipedia and I have not been without my problems and conflicts there. I may become a former editor of Wikipedia at some point, as I have become jaded with a few things in regard to that particular 'encyclopaedia'.

On a more positive note however, I see this as an opportunity for a fresh start, in a sense, in my desire to learn and to collate, disseminate, organise and present information on topics I am interested in so that others might also benefit.

I had been impressed with what I perceived as being a more mature approach to some of the policies I've read up on so far, which convinced me to apply for an account here. I also like some of the facilities or procedures, such as that installed to create drafts which are then approved (or not).

It may take me a bit of time to get used to the differences, though I feel confident that people here will guide me in terms of policies and approaches. I look forward to working with experts and hobbyists alike, in an effort to produce ultimately a product which surpasses its rivals. Although a mere human, I plan to work as part of a large team with what ever time I can afford to, or decide to, spend here - all with a similar goal in mind.

This is my statement of intent. I hope I can become a useful author and source here.

Anyway, over the next couple of days or weeks, I intend to find a selection of articles which I can improve and/or start and at the same time, to read up on some of the guides and regulations. --Mal McKee 19:13, 12 May 2008 (CDT)

What a winner!

Hey, good job on tagging that left over def redir for speedy! :-) Way to go! J. Noel Chiappa 13:54, 13 May 2008 (CDT)

Cheers - I'm learnin'! Still trying to get to grips with things here, but hopefully some of you will catch my mistakes as I go! --Mal McKee 14:37, 13 May 2008 (CDT)

vertical version

Echo the sentiment above. Also did you see the vertical version of the subpages template? Funny you should bring that up on the subpages talk page as Larry Sanger was just mentioned that vertical might have been the better route.

If we did have a non-disappearing Definition tab, I'm thinking that writing out "Definition" would be better than "Def" -- the former is clearer and more user-friendly rather than contributor-friendly. But it would make me worried that, as on articles like Life, there would be too many tabs! I'm sure you have worried about wrapping tabs. Remember, I warned this would be a problem with horizontal display of subpage links!!! Source

I left you a link at the subpages talk page with an example of what it might look like. Chris Day 13:03, 14 May 2008 (CDT)

Thanks Chris. It does rather squish up the beginning of the article, though the template looks good that way. Obviously it's missing the status bar and "draft" blurb too though, as you say, it's an old version. The 'buttons' give the template a more 'modern' look too. I wonder if there's a case for trying to develop and update the vertical version for comparison, or even trying to merge elements from both in some way. --Mal McKee 13:49, 14 May 2008 (CDT)

I could try and get a useful version up and running again. Note that hardly any of the recent features like status are incorporated into that vertical version. Chris Day 17:10, 14 May 2008 (CDT)

CZ:Unchecklisted Articles

I moved some content from CZ:Subpages to CZ:How to add a new subpage type, and so I'm checking everything that linked to that page to see if it linked to that section, and if so, edit the link to go to the new page. And while I'm at it, I'm cleaning up some other stuff.

As you your pages, a few things:

• You have to put "{{subpages}}" (what you see here, not what I typed to get that) at the head of every page in a cluster, which is why the one page didn't have the subpage tab navigation header.
• Don't put categories in the main article; they are added automatically by the {{tl|subpages}] template, based on the info in the metadata.
• The metadata supports, at the moment, at most 3 workgroup categories. (We may increase this in the near future.) So I deleted "Economics" from the metadata (alas).

Other than that, looked OK. You do have to check the 'Content from Wikipedia' box if you're including any work from someone else, but you can click that on at any time, not just the first edit. J. Noel Chiappa 15:09, 15 May 2008 (CDT)

Thanks Noel - that's a great guide. And thanks for looking at it for me. As for the Wikipedia stuff, I had read that if the work was solely my own (which it was in the case of Belleek Pottery), that box didn't need to be ticked. --Mal McKee 15:13, 15 May 2008 (CDT)

Oh, OK. If it really is all yours (i.e. not a single typo, etc from anyone else) you can uncheck the 'Wikipedia' box next time you edit it. J. Noel Chiappa 16:13, 15 May 2008 (CDT)

Yup - I copied all the work I had initially done (there was an intermediate edit, which I subsequently reverted in its entirety).. so it's all my own original work. --Mal McKee 17:47, 15 May 2008 (CDT)

Troubles

Should be fixed. When in doubt; adjust the height. Let me know. --Robert W King 00:27, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

in order to fix that, adjust the "height" value in the {{timeline}} initialisation at the very top of the entire code. That adjusts the main "stem". --Robert W King 17:21, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

If you have any other suggestions or issues do not hesitate to point them out, ask, or forward. --Robert W King 01:50, 17 May 2008 (CDT)

Edit count

Hi! Thanks for your message. Responded on my talk page. Aleksander Stos 16:24, 24 May 2008 (CDT)

just to let you know, I continued my replay on my talk. Cheers! Aleksander Stos 09:49, 26 May 2008 (CDT)

Britain/United Kingdom

Mal, you simply can't say that Claudia Rufina and Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus came from the United Kingdom. The UK is a political state that has only existed since early modern times, long after the first century BC. The geographical term Great Britain is the most appropriate to describe where they came from. --Patrick Brown 13:29, 1 September 2008 (CDT)

Thanks Patrick. I've been in discussion with Martin Baldwin-Edwards about this and I think we agree that there needs to be some policy fleshed out.

The problem is that the articles describe the people as British. In the context, that is correct. However, it is inaccurate to describe the British as being solely from the island of Great Britain, which is what the articles in question currently suggest. --Mal McKee 14:19, 1 September 2008 (CDT)

In the context of those articles, "British" means "from the island of Great Britain". It may mean different things in different contexts, and any links should reflect those contexts - so if you were to describe a modern person's nationality as "British" then linking "British" to "United Kingdom" would be absolutely right. Use of the word relating to a geographical feature might be better linked to "Great Britain". I think we're intelligent enough to work out the best link according to the context without needing a policy. --Patrick Brown 18:44, 1 September 2008 (CDT)

Just on this issue Mal, I noticed a lot of the articles on my watchlist have been altered to say 'UK' instead of 'Britain'. Is there a rationale behind this? It isn't proper in every context. Denis Cavanagh 17:18, 1 September 2008 (CDT) (P.S - You are doing good and diligent work, I'm just curious if there is a good reason behind the change. Regards!)

Yup Denis - the rationale is partly as I described above, and partly because links were made to the island "Great Britain" when they should be linking to United Kingdom. It depends on the context though, as Patrick indicates above. I'm freely open to the possibility that I may have been more correct with some of my recent stream of edits, and perhaps less correct with others, by the way.

Patrick, there are many, many people who are not quite sure what the terms "British", "Britain", "Great Britain" and "United Kingdom" refer to. Those terms even get confused with "England" quite often. This is an encyclopaedia, which should offer terms with the absolute minimum of ambiguity - while we (authors, editors, most residents of the country in question, and those who have an interest or background in the subjects of history and politics) might understand perfectly what might be meant by "British" in any given context, there may be those who don't. The term "British" can refer to many different incarnations, and to an ethnicity as well as a nationality.

All that being the case, I would strongly suggest that we at least discuss the matter: there is obviously some difference of opinion already. I also notice that one editor/author changed one of my edits of [[Britain|British]] --> [[United Kingdom|British]] to [[England|English]], not long after my initial edit, on an article about a rock group in the latter half of the 20th century, which I found bizarre! I think we should try to establish some sort of guideline with regard to the multitude of definitions and labels, before it becomes any kind of issue. --Mal McKee 19:28, 1 September 2008 (CDT)

Not bizarre at all. Led Zeppelin are an English rock group - they do not come from Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. Using England reducse that ambiguity you just mentioned. There is no mistake over the use of that term. Meg Ireland 19:31, 1 September 2008 (CDT)

Hi Meg. I didn't suggest it was a mistake. It does solve the ambiguity problem (although, is there one, considering everyone would appear to agree that the term "British" applies to the United Kingdom from at least the Second World War?), but is it consistent with the usage throughout other articles with regard to other nationalities? Does one refer to Lyndon B. Johnson as a Texan, or an American? Are Jefferson Airplane American or San Franciscan? --Mal McKee 19:44, 1 September 2008 (CDT)

Led Zeppelin are an English band, Budgie are a Welsh band, Nazareth are a Scottish band. Sounds perfectly acceptable to me and used on other music encyclopaedias. Meg Ireland 19:50, 1 September 2008 (CDT)

I'm not saying they're not English. What nationality are Girlschool, Deep Purple and Def Leppard though? What nationality was Marillion in 1985? Doesn't Budgie have an American in it? By the way, I've got a question for you, separate from this discussion, which I'll ask on your talk page shortly. --Mal McKee 20:04, 1 September 2008 (CDT)

All members of Led Zeppelin are born in England. Meg Ireland 20:08, 1 September 2008 (CDT)

I have started a Forum discussion on this general topic: http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1841.0.html Martin Baldwin-Edwards 20:44, 1 September 2008 (CDT)

White metal

Over the usage, "White metal" is a common term for light-coloured metal alloys. They use the term "Christian metal" in other encyclopaedia articles to avoid confusion with the alloy. Meg Ireland 20:14, 1 September 2008 (CDT)

IRA

Would you like to take the IRA article I have in my userspace and work with it together? While I can claim expertise about insurgency and guerilla warfare strategy and tactics, I don't have as detailed a knowledge of Irish dynamics as, say, Southeast Asian or Middle Eastern. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:54, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Sure - copy it over to my user space here and I'll see if I can develop it a bit more. I'd appreciate your input while I'm developing, if you have the time or inclination. --Mal McKee 22:16, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Redlinks

Civil Rights Movement definitely needs disambiguation. It was not clear what you had in mind on improvised explosive device and assault rifle -- these are terms, unfortunately, where the media tends to oversimplify and sensationalize, but there's a fairly specific military definition. 13:51, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Hey Howard. I hope my recent edits have made my intention(s) more clear. Feel free to adjust, edit, remove, add to or discuss anything I have done. --Mal McKee 15:37, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

No problem -- I simply wasn't sure what you meant for the latter two (IED and assault rifle). I did update M16 rifle for the AR18 series, of which not many were actually made (20,000 is a very small number for a military rifle). Do you need AR18 (AR-180, AR-180B) in assault rifle? Howard C. Berkowitz 20:20, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure. I think we should be asking what the readers would expect to find the model listed under. If there were only twenty thousand made, maybe it shouldn't be. Glancing at the article, I notice it mentions one of the most common rifles - the AK-47. Then again though, I'm not an expert on weaponry. Maybe the AR-18 series was particularly notable for one or more reasons, even though only a small number were produced. --Mal McKee 08:23, 17 July 2010 (UTC)