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Schmitz

Hi Pat,

Great minds! I was just about to ask YOU if you approved of all my niggling little edits. Glad that you do! This, actually, is how CZ and WP IDEALLY should work, at least from MY point of view. Someone like you (or me, for that matter) starts putting in a LOT of basic material that maybe is jumbled and disorgangized and without precise sources and then someone else(s) comes along and dots the Is and crosses the Ts. I'm certainly happy to do so in the present case! Hayford Peirce (talk) 16:45, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Templates for acknowledging contributors

I've unearthed a couple of old templates here and here that could be used for acknowledging article authors in the future. John Stephenson (talk) 17:57, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Interesting, and yes maybe. Pat Palmer (talk) 18:05, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Data visualisation / visualization

Hi Pat

Thanks for your comments. I'll leave the spelling of visualis/zation up to you. I'm British so have my habits, no doubt those in the US have theirs :-)

I didn't apply any links or citations at this stage as I was unsure if you believed the article was ready for that yet.

Thanks! Andrew Watson (talk) 06:00, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi Pat

I've only just seen the message you left about images - all emails from this site (and quite a few others) were put into my spam folder. Agreed, images would help and I don't know how to add them. Is there a guide on how to do this?

Andrew Watson (talk) 16:00, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Pali Text Society

Initial draft of article now complete, though I may well think of changes later. Peter Jackson (talk) 09:44, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Paris TN

Dear Pat. I respectfully suggest that you perhaps have a "conflict of interest" regarding slavery / confederate statues connected with slavery in this town. Pradyumna Singh (talk) 18:09, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Signed Articles

I'm sure you've figured out by now that there is no official / approved policy on signed articles which gives anyone special priviliges to capture topics for themselves. So what say we edit collaboratively and mutually respect our respective editorial skills, inputs and feedback ? Pradyumna Singh (talk) 03:25, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm a bit rusty...

I'm a bit rusty...

and I am having trouble uploading properly licensed images taken by other people.

The upload page tells me I have to select a license, but the field for doing so is blank.

I tried putting an explicit {{CC-BY-3.0}} in the notes section, in case the upload page was clever enough to scan the pages for permissible licenses. Okay, that was grasping at straws. It didn't work.

I considered initially uploading it as PD, and then trying to manually correct it later.

What do you recommend?

Can I circumvent havin to go through the upload page? Do you recommend just filling out the template? I can do that.

Cheers! George Swan (talk) 16:44, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

• Oops. Pilot error. I seem to have clicked on "open access journals" , not from WMF. I think I would still like the option of just filling in a template though. Cheers! George Swan (talk) 16:50, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

• Do definitions include wikilinks? Thanks! George Swan (talk) 17:50, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

They can do. I tend to use them, but a little more sparsely than in a main article. John Stephenson (talk) 15:40, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

• Thanks! George Swan (talk) 03:09, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Help with footnoting

My apologies if you're not the one to ask about this topic. If that's the case, perhaps you could point me in the right direction. I added an article this afternoon, but I have been searching in vain for how to add footnotes to it. Where could I get assistance for doing so? Thanks you! Scott Thompson (talk)

Adding photos

We do have a photograph of The Mother Church that can be added to the Christian Science article. Thanks for any pointers you can provide on that process. Scott Thompson (talk) 22:17, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Part of Pable Picasso's famous 1905-06 portrait of Gertrude Stein.

There is an Upload file link in the menus on the lower right. When you upload the image file, the wiki will ask you questions about permissions, such as whether the image can be reused by anyone else, with or without attribution. Fill out everything you can, and then at the end after you've saved the page with the image on it, it will show you the code which needs to be added to the article to display the image, something like this: {{Image|Gertrude stein-1.jpg|right|150px|Part of Pable Picasso's famous 1905-06 portrait of Gertrude Stein.}}, which would display as shown on this comment. The parts are: {{filename.ext | placement (left,middle or right) | pixel width of thumbnail | caption}}. Whatever you do, don't lose the link to the image before you get it placed on the article; it can be difficult finding those later. Pat Palmer (talk) 23:23, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Wakefield article

Thanks for the welcome and the assistance. This is my first attempt at an article so any help or advice is appreciated. I actually have a number of pictures, some of my dad and his shipmates, some of the ship and some of the ports they visited. I will see if I can figure out how to move the part about my dad down to a "Talk" section as that sounds like a good idea. I want to do another article on an interactive TV project I was involved in 1994-1998 in Orlando Fl. I think it would fit in the computer section of Citizendium. I tried to get it on Wikipedia but kept getting it rejected because of various reasons. There is an article there on the Full Service Network but it is about a different company but does include a section on the FSN I was involved with. I digress. Sorry for being so wordy. Thanks again for the assistance.

I tried to add the first part of the article to a talk section but now can't seem to get back to the original article to take that section out so it isn't in 2 places?

I think I figured out how to delete the first paragraph but did I add the talk section correctly?

I will start checking out the public dominion pictures and compare them to what I have and try to determine which ones to add. Thanks again. User:Warren William Mahan Mar 28, 2021

CZ: ad blurb

Pat, I just read this little bit on your Sandbox (and removed a word that looked to be left over from a previous sentence). It's a nice, sincere, gentle, welcoming statement. Good work! Roger A. Lohmann (talk) 11:48, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Talk:Gaius Iulius Caesar (name)/Draft

For some reason the system won't let me edit that page. (Maybe all Draft talk pages?)

That's an error which I'll fix. John Stephenson (talk) 13:26, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Someone seems to have mixed up different things. Czar/tsar and Kaiser are derived from Caesar, but that didn't originally mean ruler or anything like that. It meant something like hairy. Chess comes from Persian Shah, king. Peter Jackson (talk) 10:15, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

WikiIndex

You might want to have a look into updating [1]. Peter Jackson (talk) 11:37, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

your assistance please...

I saw you have been active recently, maybe you can help me.

I ported a few articles yesterday. I was a bit rusty, but the special skills for Citizendium are coming back for me.

I first signed up over a decade ago. I spoke to my young neighbour about encouraging him to sign up, build some good skills...

But when I checked out the signup page, to see what has changed, it seems to be out of service. Do you know what that means? It doesn't mean the Citizendium is closed to new contributors, does it?

Cheers! George Swan (talk) 15:01, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Intel 4004

Let me know where I should ask questions like this.

I worked on the Intel 4004 stub article, in 2012. I looked at it again, and saw one of the two references I provided, in 2012, had gone 404. So had webcitation.org, the cite where I thought I could mirror those references.

Luckily archive.org had archived versions, as well. However, the {{cite web}} template does not seem to have field to force the link to the archive to show, instead of linking to the original 404 location. Am I doing something wrong?

And, can you tell me where I should ask questions like this?

Cheers! George Swan (talk) 18:54, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Deferring to the big cheese

Back when I was active here, a dozen years ago, I remember one contributor discussing with Larry his option to follow the Nelson Mandela / George Washington model of leadership... He explained, and I think he agreed, that Jimbo Wales generally did not follow this model. Both Washington and Mandela had fans, often who had worked closely with them, who first praised them, and then encouraged these two first Presidents to forget about all this democracy nonsense, and re-elections. They told Washington and Mandela that the only way to really make sure their vision came to fruition was to hold on to power, and declare themselves "President for Life".

Since reading that discussion I saw many instances where I thought Mr Wales was holding on to too much power. Discussions where he voiced an opinion stopped being about the original substantive issue, but instead polarized between whether one supported Mr Wales.

Larry, my hats off to him, saw the wisdom of the Mandela / Washington model.

Nevertheless, you took on the official leadership cap here. Thank you very much! And, I think I need to tell you I will do my best to defer to suggestions from you.

I don't know you, but so far you seem to be a very tactful considerate leader. So, thank you for that!

I am sure you remember Howard Berkowitz. He was extremely critical of many things about my contributions here, including, he didn't like me choosing to write about topics that he considered of relatively low importance, just because they were things that interested me, until after the topics he considered of higher importance had been written.

Right now I have been porting articles from the wikipedia because I am concerned my bad faith challengers will try to delete articles just because I wrote them. which means, of course, I have ported a lot of articles that are way down the hierarchy.

Pat, I don't want you to notice this, get concerned about it, yet feel uneasy about raising that concern with me.

If you think it would be better to have additional people weigh in, in one of the fora, feel free to say so.

I guess I am repeating, a third time, my thanks for you taking a leadership role...

Cheers! George Swan (talk) 23:44, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

New Server Feedback

Pat, Received the memo on the trial of the new server and the separate second mailing. Log-in worked well with no problems. Everything else seems as it should be. Roger A. Lohmann (talk) 07:38, 17 March 2022 (CDT)

• Thanks to everyone who is working hard on the upgrade!

I tried creating a new article... John Wordsworth (1776-1805). No problems there, until I tried creating the subpages.

Template:John Wordworth (1776-1805) got created on the old server.

I tried cutting and pasting that here. Maybe I did that wrong. It doesn't seem to work.

So I went to leave a description in the Technical Forum. But that sent me to the old server too.

I am not complaining. I know it is growing pains, from the port. You might already be well aware. But I thought I should document it, somewhere.

Again, thanks for all the hard work everybody!

Cheers! George Swan (talk) 12:51, 17 March 2022 (CDT)

• Looks like the upgrade is complete(?) Let me repeat my thanks to everyone who worked on that! George Swan (talk) 13:05, 19 March 2022 (CDT)

Got it...

Um, sort order is in the metadate page. Duh. Got it. Thanks... George Swan (talk) 02:53, 26 March 2022 (CDT)

https://citizendium.org/wiki/index.php?title=Kate_Macdonald_Butler&diff=next&oldid=865761

Yes! Good spotting.Pat Palmer (talk)

Returning

Thanks for the welcome message! I tried unsuccessfully to create a subpage tothe Montana article. Oh, well, I'll try again. Meantime, so as to not delay actual content creation, I decided to start the bibliography on the main article page. It can easily be moved using the cut and paste tools later when I figure out how to createt the subpage. James F. Perry (talk) 14:56, 5 November 2022 (CDT)

Login / logout problem

Every so often (like right now), I get logged out (repeatedly) while trying to make edits. James F. Perry (talk) 14:50, 14 November 2022 (CST)

Could you please explain...

I got email advisories today that you deleted several article I started:

recently deleted

page	when	log entry	question
Steinberg Award	2022-11-28 08:48	promotion of sympathy towards criminal	This Steinberg series of awards has annual winners. I started articles on multiple awardees, including Eboni Booth, Jeff Augustin, Ike Holter, Clare Barron, Haruna Lee, Paola Lázaro. Are they also at risk of deletion?
Harold and Mimi Steinberg National Student Playwriting Award	2022-11-28 08:46	promotion of sympathy towards criminal
Steinberg Emerging Playwrights Award	2022-11-28 08:42	promotion of sympathy towards criminal
9 Circles	2022-11-28 08:39	no explanation for this deletion was offered...	The deletion log entry contains the first couple of hundred bytes of the article - not an explanation as to why it was deleted
Nikolas Cruz	2022-11-01 08:13	by policy, not encouraging articles describing people who commit atrocities or mass murders
Steven Dale Green	2022-11-01 08:11	Copied from Wikipedia: by policy, not encouraging articles describing people who commit atrocities or mass murders

Can topics, themselves, be biased? What does it mean to "promote sympathy towards criminals"?

Way back in September 2005 I had only made about 2000 wikipedia edits. I had never encountered a wikipedia administrator, and I was unaware of the wikipedia's deletion policies and procedures. Over the previous six months I had started stubs on a small handful of the individuals who were being held in Guantanamo. At that time it was US policy to keep their identities a secret - not even telling their families.

Then, all of sudden, four articles I started were nominated for deletion. One nominator's sole justification was the two letters "NN", and he declined to answer my request for an explanation as to what that meant.

Another person asserted that the topic of Guantanamo was "inherently biased", and could only serve for "America-bashing".

I thought about that one all afternoon. I concluded that topics are not, in and of themselves, biased. I concluded the only thing that can be biased was how we covered them.

I concluded that there was no topic so controversial that good faith contributors couldn't agree on the wording of an article about it that everyone agreed measured up to the standards of neutrality, verification, authoritative sources, provided everyone tried hard enough. I committed myself to the extra effort to measure up to those standards, whenever I tackled a controversial topic.

I am really surprised you characterized the articles I wrote on the Steinberg Awards as "promoting sympathy towards criminals". The Steinbergs, like Pullitzer, like Nobel, like the Motion Picture Academy, created a competition that grants awards to promote works of art.

Consider Schindler's List - a highly admired work of art. Yet Oskar Schindler, the protagonist, employed slave labor. He corruptly bribed government officials. The movie doesn't try to be neutral. It portrays him as a hero, because he made sacrifices, in the end, and he saved lives.

But someone else could have made a film that portrayed Schindler as a pure villain, and his saving of lives as motivated purely by cynicism.

You deleted the articles on the Steinberg awards. I am guessing that this is because they awarded Bill Cain an award, and, among his works was his play inspired by the Steven Dale Green case. Well, would you delete an article on the Academy Awards because Oscars were awarded for Schindler's List?

Your deletion log entries refer to a policy. I scanned your revision history, to see if you had drafted policy on when and how articles should or should not cover criminals. I didn't find anything.

Consider Alfred Dreyfus, convicted on innuendo, racism, and forged evidence, he spent decades imprisoned on Devil's Island, prior to his eventual exoneration. If someone tried to write a neutral article about him, during the period between his conviction and his exoneration, would this policy require its deletion? He was officially a criminal, then.

In many wikipedia discussions I argued that an article was neither a punishment or a reward. Sometimes the person arguing for deletion was some variation of "but Joe is basically a good person, they don't deserve to have stuff that makes them look bad talked about like this..." Alternately the deletion proponent would say some variation of "but Joe is basically a bad person, they shouldn't be rewarded with an article..." Articles are neither punishments or rewards. Individuals or topics become candidates for articles when reliable sources write about them. Period. If we are writing neutrally then the article is neither a hagiography or demonization.

What about Richard Jewell, the heroic security guard at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta? FBI director Freer ruined his life, by naming him as the prime suspect in that bombing. Director Freer implied the security guard wanted to be a hero so badly that he planted a bomb that he would later discover. Most press coverage was unfair to him. As I am sure you remember, more than half a decade later he was definitively cleared, when an anti-abortion kook, who mainly bombed abortion clinics, turned out to be the actual bombing. Jewell had been a bona fide hero, who saved dozens of lives.

The extremely unfair demonization of Jewell took place before there was a wikipedia or citizendium. I used to think that, if they had been around, a truly neutral article about Jewell would have helped to cool the hysterical leaping to the conclusion he was guilty. And, if Freer's innuendoes had contained a kernel of truth, a neutrally written article would still have served the public good, in helping to prevent an over-reaction.

Yes, there are ugly things in the world, like mass-murderers. I too am not that interested in supporting detailed coverage of murderers, where there is nothing more to their story than that they were murderers. But while Steven Dale Green seems to have been a simpleton, who couldn't finish high school, and who racked up some misdemeanor crimes, prior to enlisting, he is worth covering because he became central to other issues. I tried to explain this when we discussed him before. Scholars have cited his case in other contexts. I read an academic paper who cited his case when discussing the policy of not allowing the openly gay to serve in the military. The author argued that if the military had not been barring openly gay individuals from serving they would not have had to lower their standards to admit guys like him. Other scholars cited his case when discussing that lowering of standards - admitting dropout and criminals. I suggested then that the other wider issues his case was entagled with made it worthwhile to cover him, when it wouldn't be interesting or worthwhile to cover a murderer who was simply a murderer, and had never been covered as anything more than a murderer.

Wikipedia's COATRACK essay and wikipedia's notion of DUE WEIGHT

The wikipedia has a widely read essay known as COATRACK. It is often treated as if it were a policy, when it is only an essay. And those citing it routinely ignore its actual advice when citing it in deletion discussions.

The essay warns about articles whose first sentence, or first paragraph, says the article is about one thing, generally an actually notable topic, but then quickly shifts to covering something else. One of the colorful examples cited was "wongo juice".

The advice of that essay that is routinely ignored by those who cite it in deletion discussions, is that it never recommended deletion as a solution the problem of a contributor hi-jacking an article to talk about something else. Its advice was that, if the underlying topic of the article was notable the solution would be to trim back, or maybe even entirely trim out, the paragraph(s) that were really talking about something else

I don't have those Steinberg Award articles in front of me. But I am sure I didn't start talking about them, only to shift over to promoting Steven Dale Green. I drafted those in August. I don't remember whether I mentioned Steven Dale Green, by name, in the portion of those articles that mentioned Bill Cain. But, if I had, surely it was only a sentence or two. How could that justify the deletion of two whole articles?

Those who ignored what the COATRACK essay actually advised also ignored WP:DUE, a link to a subsection of the Wikipedia policy on neutrality. What I generally concluded was that the passages I had included in articles that triggered those COATRACK complaints, because they touched on something else, were short enough to comply with the DUE portion of NPOV. Topics are inter-related, and that means articles should mention related topics, and link to them, and, sometimes that requires a brief passage of coverage of that other topic, to provide context.

If you thought I went beyond that, in 9 circles, or the articles on the Steinberg awards, I suggest your choices included: (1) voicing your concern first, possibly on Talk:9 circles, on Talk:Steinberg Award, on User talk:George Swan, or via email; (2) shortening, or maybe even eliminating the specific passage(s) that triggered your concern, and then leaving an explanation on the talk page.

Given that there was no warning how would I know what policy I violated, so I could know how to avoid violating it somewhere else? George Swan (talk) 15:23, 28 November 2022 (CST)

MY RESPONSE: We shouldn't have articles on the lives of people who are *only* known for taking life

Mass murderers do not deserve fame or to have an encyclopedia article. This is known for encouraging more people to commit outrageous crimes in hopes of becoming famous. There exists on your Talk page this thread in which I discussed with you that I'd like to remove the first mass murderer article you had imported and expressing my distaste for it. Neither article placed any emphasis on victims and did not even name them. You asked for three months to rework the article and change its emphasis. But then as a result, you also created another murderer article stub, which you also failed to improve per my request, and you added articles about the play about the murderer and more articles emphasizing one particular award this play had one. I was frustrated yesterday to find TWO versions of the article about the play (each differing by a single letter in the title), so I couldn't tell which version to delete--and both pointed at the murderer article. And then, I found there were at least three different articles about the minor award, which was little more than a modest monetary grant as near as I can tell, with no one publicizing it except the group which granted it. Duplicating information across multiple articles on a wiki is not a good idea; the versions diverge and then no one can tell which one to edit. So yesterday, assuming you would not object because you seemed to have left the wiki, I removed the entire cluster of articles relating to the murderers. Those peripheral articles should I feel have been included in the stub murderer article anyway, and they pointed back to the now-missing article, inviting someone to create those again in the future. I understand very well how it hurts to have one's work deleted, but I am not willing to restore any of those articles right now. IF you return to the wiki and are active here, I will consider restoring the "9 Circles" article (whichever one you want), but with restrictions: I will not have it name the murderer except once in one footnote, nor will I have that name be an active link inviting for an article to be created about said murderer. Any information about the award can be included in the article about the play. You had included around a dozen excerpts of the play's reviews in the footnotes, and I read those, after which I still wanted that article gone as well, because most reviewers pointed back to the murderer as having been the main model for the play's protagonist. And, should it matter whether an author worked as a priest or a waiter to put food on the table? It seems like an attempt to add moral justification to him writing a play sympathetic to a brutal killer. But he could have set his play in any number of other times and places and still provided a setting for his version of Dante's nine hells as represented by a Kafka-esque bureaucracy. By choosing this sensational case to model, even if his intention was to lambast the lameness of the law, the government, the military, or psychiatry (and I don't KNOW what his intentions were, but even if they were "good" intentions), his results are muddied and weakened by the fact that his play engendered a certain degree of sympathy in reviewers for the murderer. And that's why I deleted that article. I couldn't have gone through the normal process of warnings without proliferating and attracting yet more attention to these murderer's names, so I have made an editorial decision, which is my right to do because I am, right now, personally and almost single-handedly keeping this behemoth of a wiki afloat because I believe deeply that it is still a better place to write than Wikipedia. If you have more objections after this explanation, I urge you to private message me. I will listen sincerely to everything, but I will not have these murderers names in the wiki any more than they already are, because as you know, nothing ever written in a wiki really disappears. George, I sincerely hope you will put up with our disagreement about this and return to The Citizendium, where you have informed and delighted me many times over the years. Pat Palmer (talk) 09:38, 29 November 2022 (CST)

You are of course in charge here & can make policy as you wish, but you might like to think about this. It's certainly true that reports of crimes can cause copycat ones. But should the news be censored? It's not just that. Every time there's a news report of an Islamist terror attack it's followed by a spike in violence against Muslims. Every time there's a news report of Israelis hurtin Palestiisns it's followed by a spike in violence against Jews. In recent years there's been an uptick in violence against Chinese, and in recent months against Russians. We accept all this as part of the price we pay for free press & democracy. Proportionate coverage seems to me reasonable. What application that might have here I'm not expressing any opinion. See also [2]. Peter Jackson (talk) 05:07, 30 November 2022 (CST)

Peter, I welcome your and George's comments, because it's a gray area. Wikipedia (WP) has long articles on all the mass killings. The WP articles have unrelenting detail, though they are not all under the names of the killers. I was unable to sleep for two nights after reading WP about SDG, the killer who got a sympathetic play written about him by a Jesuit priest. Any twelve-year-old might stumble across that article while reading about Iraq, and it would tempt reasonable parents to confiscate their kids' cell phones immediately. Clearly, George tried to do better here, and I appreciate that. *If* these articles get restored, I would like that the murderer's name not the title of the article if at all possible (though in some cases, it may have to be). If there are legal/social aspects making the case of interest, that should be made clear in the introduction. In other words, I am tentatively open to restoring any or all of these articles *if* my editorial requirements are honored.Pat Palmer (talk) 10:22, 30 November 2022 (CST)

It occurred to me afterwards that we already have articles on Osama bin Laden & a number of his associates (nothing to do with George; probably written by Howard). Could it be said they're known for anything other than killing people? Peter Jackson (talk) 05:50, 1 December 2022 (CST)

Bin Laden touched off a war, founded an international terrorist organization that occupied much of the world for decades, and thus is a figure who will for better or worse appear in history books. SDG (and his associates) are soldier criminals who murdered four people on their day off. Crimes of similar horror happen around the world at regular intervals though thankfully not "often" statistically, and we don't cover them usually. This particular crime got lots of press in part because of the play and its publicity, but also because at first there was a question of whether the crime was part of systematic behavior by troops in Iraq while doing their jobs. It turned out not to be, and there was no deliberate attempt by higher-ups in the military to cover anything up. SDG is only one example of a psychotic personality who should never have been allowed into the military--THAT topic might deserve an article. As for mass gun murderers such as NC, at most I think we might list their names in a catalog somewhere, but certainly not giving them a biography and an article of their own, because to do so is inconsistent--are you aware of how MANY of these take place every year? If we covered all of them, we would soon double the size of the wiki--and greatly increase the chance of children stumbling upon the descriptions of their brutal acts. That is what is happening over in Wikipedia right now--they ARE largely covering all of them, and it's a feedback loop creating an ever-expanding set of horrible descriptions of crimes. The more I think about this problem in such terms, the clearer it becomes to me that we ought not to grace every one of these cases with a distinct article. But as I told George last June, if there IS a compelling reason why a certain case is of special interest (and not just to lawyers), detail why that is true in the introduction to the article. That had not been done in the articles I have deleted.Pat Palmer (talk) 08:15, 1 December 2022 (CST)