User talk:Russell D. Jones

Welcome!

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. 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! Dan Nachbar 14:07, 17 November 2007 (CST)

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Welcome, new editor! We're very glad you've joined us. Here are pointers for a quick start. Also, when you get a chance, please read The Editor Role. You can look at Getting Started and our help system for other introductory pages. It is also important, for project-wide matters, to join the Citizendium-L (broadcast) mailing list. Announcements are also available 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 thank you! We appreciate your willingness to share your expertise, and we hope to see your edits on Recent changes soon. --Larry Sanger 21:45, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Welcome and thanks

I'm just spending some time this morning thanking the newer/returned people who did weekend wiki work. So, thanks, nice to have you here! --Larry Sanger 08:17, 19 November 2007 (CST)

Metadata

(In response to this post):

Yep, that's great! Just remember, the pagename is the actual name of the page (should be the same as the URL and in the wiki) and abc is just how it's categorized by. Also, there is no precedence for categories (yet) so whatever order you wish to put them in does not affect which workgroups get priority (if any really). --Robert W King 16:04, 19 November 2007 (CST)

welcome back!

Welcome back! two items:

1. can we make you an editor? CZ policy requires three editors approve history articles and the others have vanished on us so we need your help.
2. how can we link CZ with the EMU History Wiki ?? have you seen our Eduzendium project? see http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Citizendium_Press_Releases/Jan242008

We'd love to have your students write CZ articles. Richard Jensen 16:18, 18 February 2008 (CST)

My fear is that I'd be just another absentee editor. I'm not here enough to be doing an editor's job. How dire is the situation? Are you the only historian/editor? Russell D. Jones 20:55, 18 February 2008 (CST)

in practice, yes...alas. (N=15 nominally) dire. But the excitement is to get students to work. I'm retired but next week will be talking to a VPAA about my teaching a historiography course in which the kids write CZ articles. Richard Jensen 23:00, 18 February 2008 (CST)

I don't mean to eavesdrop exactly, but Richard, the latter is great news! I hope you can swing it. --Larry Sanger 23:06, 18 February 2008 (CST)

Sure, I'll apply.

Hey great! we'll try not to seize your weekends and summer vacations. :) Richard Jensen 20:31, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Yes, great, nice to have you on board, Russell! --Larry Sanger 22:00, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Jefferson & Channing

The debate subpage is a valuable innovation in CZ! Richard Jensen 17:01, 23 February 2008 (CST)

It was already there. It was an unused subpage category. I just don't get where Channing is critical of Jefferson, though. I didn't see it in the couple chapters that I read.--Russell D. Jones 17:34, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Channing ridicules Jefferson's contempt for the navy. pp36-7 Richard Jensen 18:48, 23 February 2008 (CST)

I still don't see it. Channing is matter of fact. He explains Jefferson's attempt to entice Samuel Smith to become Secy of Navy (from which comes the oft-reproduce quote about laying up the fleet in the Potomac River), and then the appointment Robert Smith. He concludes his introductory paragraph, "Jefferson and Gallatin were certainly most desirous to limit naval expenditure in every possible way but they reckoned without the North African pirates. Indeed instead of laying up the ships high and dry on the shore they were obliged to send fleet after fleet to the Mediterranean and to build new vessels better suited for work in those waters" (37). I don't see ridicule unless one reads that paragraph as just dripping with sarcasm. --Russell D. Jones 19:41, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Channing says it reminds one of Queen Elizabeth who objected to letting the fleet sail because it might damage their paint. TJ and Gallatin hated the navy and wanted to put it in storage (and TJ even joking that it would be destroyed by their "plunderers"]Richard Jensen 19:48, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Okay, but that's not exactly what Channing writes. And really, ER has a point. They were nicely painted ships. Jones.

Definitions updates

Russel, I replied with the following on your Forum question:

Russel, the Need Def page will not update for an article with a new definition until the corresponding Talk page has been edited and saved. You might have noticed that I have lots of "blank line for Need Def" updates on every page to which I add a new definition.

So, update the Talk page with a blank line or even just a space, save the edit. Then refresh the Need Def page and you should see the article name now removed from the list. 13:04, 15 December 2008 David E. Volk

David, this is not an elegant solution. There are 784 pages in the history work group that are so tagged. I don't think that this two step process of (1) writing the definition and then (2) editing the talk page just in order to update the tag is efficient. I didn't see anywhere that this was explained, either. And, no, I didn't see your "blank line" anywhere. I'm just inclined to ignore the tag. Thanks. Jones. 18:49, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Just wondering...

Did you get a splinter Lodged in your typing finger?

You are right to differentiate. I've put up a question on the forum; I'm not sure if we have clear copyediting standards for when to use polynomials. There's a main article on George Patton, which refers to the best-known G.S. Patton Jr (comma there?); I haven't had need yet to refer to G.S. Patton III in Vietnam, but sooner or later... Howard C. Berkowitz 22:57, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Since the 14th edition (and maybe earlier), the Chicago Style has recommended dropping the use of commas in names ("John Quincy Adams Jr." not "John Quincy Adams, Jr."). I'll look at the forum. Russell D. Jones 00:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Grrr. Another step in the downward path to utter intellectual degeneration. Hayford Peirce 00:23, 28 December 2008 (UTC), Jr.

Cheer up Hayford, we still use commas for nonrestrictive adverbial clauses and introductory participial phrases. Russell D. Jones 00:59, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Here are the relevant rules.

• Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., §6.49; 14th ed., §6.53.
• http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/communications/info/jr.htm

Contrarily, see Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (Columbia, 1993).

I'm a Fowler's Modern English Usage, Second Edition, guy myself. (I note that my New York Times Manual of Style also omits the comma. No wonder I don't use it....) Hayford Peirce 16:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Well The Times is a newspaper, and newspapers are notorious for poor grammar because proper grammar (as well as proper usage) is expensive in terms of column space and ink. Newspaper publishers always know that what their journalists write doesn't ring the cash register bells as quickly as advertisers do. And if it comes down to a choice between proper English and advertising space, guess which side wins. So, for me, a newspaper style guide is a better doorstop than a style manual. -- Jones.

Vision ... blurring ... sight ... fading

I started poking around regarding models and found CZ:NOT. I don't know. Everything that I've put up here, and at WP, has been original research (I'd never admit that over there, though). Everything I write comes from my own head. Some of it is synthesized, but most of it is me attempting to understand things. I write to understand. I've been thinking about writing a series on railroad history, but too many articles would be really short stubs, definitions mostly. Not allowed here, but necessary for building comprehension and understanding a complex topic. I'm not really sold on the encyclopedia ideal. WP wasn't an encyclopedia; it was more like an "academic simulation;" The editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica called WP the "encyclopedia game." The more I think about this, the blurrier it gets. Russell D. Jones 15:56, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

You need to talk to Howard. We have been discussing the idea of allowing very short articles as opposed to stubs. For some topics only a small amount is needed to be complete. I think he has a good point and we have been thinking how to fold this into the current system. Certainly such articles would be useful for related articles subpages to give context to longer articles. Chris Day 16:15, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't over-intellectualize things to the point where utter paralysis sets in. Just write what you want, in a more or less encyclopediac way, and let, if necessary, other people have at it with axes and knives and forks and screwdrivers and other tools to turn it into something that Larry can be proud of. Hayford Peirce 16:18, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Also, it depends on what you mean by "short" -- how short is "short". If you wrote: "The Rock Island Line is a mighty good line." as an entire article, that would probably be too short. If you added a couple of more sentences to it, and maybe hummed a couple of bars, that ought to be OK. Hayford Peirce 16:22, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

It's not the stubs I'm worried about; I'm experienced enough here to know to just type. It's more the original research angle. I don't think we're writing an encyclopedia. Russell D. Jones 16:30, 31 January 2009 (UTC)