User talk:George Swan

George Swan

Current talk page

Archive 1

upgrade happening soon, new accounts allowed

Hi George! In response to your message, we certainly are accepting new accounts. Currently that request is made via a Google Docs form linked on the main page. However, since the wiki is on the verge of upgrading its software any day now (probably later this week, for sure), I recommend that you have him wait a few days, because the user interface is likely to look a bit different. And hopefully when we upgrade, account requests will also be easier and won't require us to use Google Docs at all. Our software is over ten years old at this point, so upgrading is important. Please bear with us as we make this transition. I am so glad to see you active in here again!Pat Palmer (talk) 15:15, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks for the prompt followup. Cheers! George Swan (talk) 15:44, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

porting from Wikipedia

George, It is perfectly acceptable to port articles from Wikipedia and then work on them here. Be sure to mark the flag on the /Metadata page as coming from Wikipedia when you first bring them over. After a number of changes have been make, you can then undo that flag. It might be useful also to note on the Discussion page for the ported article that you brought it from Wikipedia on a certain date (and why, if you like--such as, that you wrote much of it anyway). That can be helpful for future reference.Pat Palmer (talk) 02:11, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

subpages not working yet

Hi George! Thanks for testing the new wiki. Thanks for your report in the forum. It is not currently possible to create articles with subpages; we're working on that. If we can't get it working, we'll find an alternative option for those who want it. Pat Palmer (talk) 08:41, 18 March 2022 (CDT)

• Thanks for getting back to me. George Swan (talk) 11:36, 18 March 2022 (CDT)

articles about living people known to the public

George, For any articles about living people who are in the public eye (as in politics or famous for any reason), we now need to add them explicitly to the Topic Informants workgroup. This has to be done, at present, manually by adding the appropriate directive at the bottom of the article, which would be: [[Category:Topic_Informant_Workgroup]]. Formerly, the metadata page took care of this. I added directives to the bottom of the Sara Moonves article, which you can look at as an example. For Sara Moonves, I also added [[Category:Journalism_Workgroup]]. Pat Palmer (talk) 08:08, 23 March 2022 (CDT)

• Okay...

Stephanie Mack - done

Laurie Sandell -done

Clayton Trivett - done

Nina de Gramont - done

Catherine Hooper - done

Finding new BLPs is trivial for the period between now and March 17th. I ported a dozen or more in early March. Do you have a suggestion on how to find them? George Swan (talk) 09:10, 23 March 2022 (CDT)

Pat - I found the following through the new pages special page. It seems to go back to 2022-02-27, with a few items from early this year, and late December. Were there only a few additions over those months? Is it only capable of showing the last 500 edits? George Swan (talk) 09:48, 23 March 2022 (CDT)

Kate Macdonald Butler - done

Kate Armstrong (memoirist) - done

Rochus Lokinap - done

Leo Nuia - done

Robert Porter - done

Nick Luna - done

Park Eun-Mi - done

Peter Gornstein - done

E.J. White - done

Jeremy Boxen - done

Rachel Ricketts - done

Wayne Clarkson - done

Maxine bailey - done

The Metadata subpages still work. You just need to add 'Topic Informant' to one of the 'cat' entries at e.g. Template:Laurie Sandell/Metadata and it will display Category:Topic Informant Workgroup on the article. We don't generally add categories to the article itself. John Stephenson (talk) 09:45, 23 March 2022 (CDT)

• Okay, I manually added Topic Informant here as cat4. Are four cats allowed? George Swan (talk) 10:03, 23 March 2022 (CDT)

Three is the maximum, so in that case you would have to add [[Category:Topic Informant Workgroup]] to the article itself. John Stephenson (talk) 10:07, 23 March 2022 (CDT)

1. Template:Stephanie Mack/Metadata
2. Template:Laurie Sandell/Metadata
3. Template:Clayton Trivett/Metadata
4. Template:Nina de Gramont/Metadata
5. Template:Catherine Hooper/Metadata
6. Template:Kate Macdonald Butler/Metadata
7. Template:Kate Armstrong (memoirist)/Metadata
8. Template:Rochus Lokinap/Metadata
9. Template:Leo Nuia/Metadata
10. Template:Robert Porter/Metadata
11. Template:Nick Luna/Metadata
12. Template:Park Eun-Mi/Metadata
13. Template:Peter Gornstein/Metadata
14. Template:E.J. White/Metadata
15. Template:Jeremy Boxen/Metadata
16. Template:Rachel Ricketts/Metadata
17. Template:Wayne Clarkson/Metadata
18. Template:Maxine bailey/Metadata

workgroup designation

George, the correct way to add an article that has subpages to a workgroup is via the metadata page. And note, do NOT add the word Workgroup in the metadata page; there, you only need Topic Informant. But with the category directly on the main article, you need [[Category:Topic_Informant_Workgroup]]. Open up the editor for some existing articles and look how this is done. If there are no subpages on an article yet, then please continue to use the [[Category:Topic Informant]] kind of code at the bottom of the page. Topic Information is a workgroup, just like Mathematics is a workgroup. To see if it's done correctly, look at the bottom of the main article and see if the link to the workgroup is working. Thanks! Pat Palmer (talk) 12:37, 25 March 2022 (CDT)

• Okay. Thanks. George Swan (talk) 13:16, 25 March 2022 (CDT)

adding links to articles

George, I love that you are adding links to your articles. Well done! To make them more accurate, there are two methods. The old way was first to search on the term and then go copy the exact spelling of the article name. The new method is to let the "Popup" extension show you article names. Just type [[term, and the popup feature will offer to complete the link for you. That way, you'll get more accuracy. And the last step, or course, is to look at the linked word after the Edit is complete to make sure it works. Thanks a bunch. I mention this because in looking at your articles, I found several links that did not reach a real article, where just a tweak of spelling would get the link right. These things are case sensitive. Pat Palmer (talk) 12:40, 25 March 2022 (CDT)

• thanks! George Swan (talk) 13:17, 25 March 2022 (CDT)

about subpages

George, I benefited from your comments on the instructions for how to create subpages clusters. Just want you to note, however, that it is normally NOT acceptable to go and comment on anything in a user's sandbox unless you have been invited by that user to do so. I had invited John S, and I guess you saw it in the Recent Changes and just jumped in. In this case, it was helpful, but people might not like it unless you ask them first. In fact, technically, it's bad form even to LOOK at what's in a user's sandbox unless they tell you to. Of course, being a wiki, we can always peek anyway, but maybe don't let them know you did! Sandboxes are not collaborative areas except by special invitation :-) Now that the house training is done with, let me reply to the questions you posted about subpages today.

You wrote, "People who can't figure this out - we want them to feel okay about not using subpages, correct?" And the answer is, not exactly. Citizendium still has a policy of requiring the use of subpages on major articles (beyond stubs that were just created). We actually kicked a person out last year because he was going around undoing subpages article clusters because he didn't like them. But you're right that not everyone can be expected to learn this cumbersome manual process, in which case they will need to ask for help in getting it done for them. We'll try to get it automated at some point in the future. I'm working on it. And yes, the old form that automated filling out the metadata page is too old to work. The original extension was in PHP (version 5) and we're now on PHP 7 (which is not at all friendly to code written with PHP 5 in mind), and many other things has changed as well. I'm impressed that you've figured out how to do it. I worked in this wiki for many years with no understanding of how subpages worked, nor did I really like them. But now, I've grown used to them and for consistency, I hope we can stick with them for the long haul.Pat Palmer (talk) 15:36, 31 March 2022 (CDT)

• Thanks for the heads-up. George Swan (talk) 17:26, 31 March 2022 (CDT)

there is a template for archiving User Discussion pages easily

Hey George, I just found the {{Archive box|auto=long}} template. If you name the archive subpages like this: User:George_Swan/Archive 1 (and just change the digit at the end for additional archives), then put the template in the top of your User Discussion page as well as the archive, it will establish links back and forth from the Discussion page to all the archives. I just moved and converted mine to use this. I found the instructions here. Pat Palmer (talk) 16:07, 31 March 2022 (CDT)