User talk:D. Matt Innis/Archive 8: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:11, 22 October 2009

Where Matt lives it is approximately: 05:45

Creating an atmosphere that attracts knowledge and encourages it to flourish.

D. Matt Innis

Current talk page

Archive 1, Archive 2, Archive 3, Archive 4, Archive 5, Archive 6, Archive 7, Archive 8, Archive 9, Archive 10

Why has CZ lost so many authors?

This is an intriguing question that, when you originally asked it, kept nagging me at the back of my mind. Of course, the definitive way of discovering the answer is to ask those who have left what were their reasons. However, here is what I believe may be a contributing factor.

One of the differentiators between WP and CZ is the latter is supposed to be expert friendly. We require experts to identify themselves and the whole scribble culture of WP is deprecated. However, there is one characteristic of experts that seems to have been missed when CZ was first designed - experts tend to work alone or in groups that fundamentally agree with one another. What I mean by that is even when there is a team working on a problem, members of the team share a common viewpoint. Experts have a very low tolerance of the committee approach to the production of explanatory text in their areas of specialization. Generally, experts in the same field with different points of view do not like each other.

People attracted to committee work generally are not experts. They are bureaucrats. They are much more interested in the exercise of power through the use of some legal or quasi-legal procedural machinery than in producing works of excellence. That is not to say there is no place for them in society. Compromise is the lubricant of democracy. Without it, societies (or in the case of CZ, communities) degenerate into chaotic mean-streets, exemplified by WP and Somalia. However, for an expert compromise on a point of knowledge is anathema. The expert deeply understands (or believes he/she deeply understands) a subject and the whole idea of using compromise as a tool for articulating that understanding is abhorrent.

So, when an expert comes to CZ and begins working on an encyclopedia article, he/she expects to develop it according to a particular understanding of the subject it covers. The idea of compromising on that understanding is intolerable. If forced to do so, the expert leaves.

This seems to me to suggest that CZ's governance must accommodate both experts and the democratic machinery that ensures the fair and neutral point-of-view presentation required for its health. As I have suggested elsewhere, one way to accomplish this is to host encyclopedia articles that are the result of compromise and which present all points of view fairly. It is unlikely that experts will spend much time on these, that time most likely being given to ensure their point-of-view is accurately represented in those articles. Experts are much more interested in presenting their own hard won understanding of a subject. These works, I think, are also necessary for the health of CZ and fit well into its article hierarchy as signed subpages associated with neutral point-of-view encyclopedia articles. Setting up this kind of structure would, in my view, attract more authors with significant expertise, who would enhance CZ's ability to attract those who are good at writing encyclopedia articles. Dan Nessett 19:54, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, see now, why don't you just put that in your nomination/statement and see if you get voted in. That way you'll know that you have others that agree and they want you to work in that direction. If you don't get elected, then that says something, too. D. Matt Innis 20:57, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

All good arguments, but they fail to address my major concern - getting sucked into a time sink with little prospect of a useful result. :-D Dan Nessett 21:18, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Definition of life: "time sink with little prospect of useful result, see: drain suck"

D. Matt Innis 21:32, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

:-D Funny. And closer to the truth than I care to admit. Dan Nessett 21:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Dan, your essay at the start of this thread is extremely well written and articulates your opinions quite thoroughly. Those of us who are Editors were given that role because we were considered to be experts. Since I am an Editor, I will readily admit that I may be biased ... with that said, your essay came across to me as saying you believe CZ would lose less people if we had less Editors (i.e., experts) because all experts are unwilling to be "team players" and compromize. Have I got that right? If that is correct, then isn't that exactly the same as Wikipedia's dislike of experts? Milton Beychok 22:55, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Milt. No, I am not saying that. There are experts, of which you are probably one, who have altruistic motives and contribute to enterprises such as CZ from a spirit of community service. I also have expertise in areas that I have not mentioned, since I find statements like "Wow, look at my credentials" to be very distasteful. So, I will modify my comments and say most experts are not interested in writing or editing collaboratively with people they don't know or trust.

I certainly don't think we need less editors. We need more. And we need them to edit, which I think you are doing. That is, editors should be working with authors to move articles to approved status. Editors should also write, but if their writing takes up so much of their time that they can't edit, then they really are not doing their job.

I decided to exit the Wikimadness after some very bad experiences with various self-appointed "guardians of consensus", who offered their opinions as established fact and generally demonstrated their ignorance. I do not want CZ to become anything close to that. I want it to attract more experts and more encyclopedia article writers. My comments were written under the assumption that everyone at CZ wants that. However, it is never useful to live in a fantasy land. CZ is not doing well. WP has more than 2 orders of magnitude more articles than CZ. Even if only 1% of those are of high quality, they are soundly beating us.

My number one goal is to attract all kinds of experts to CZ, those with altruistic motives and those who are not so motivated. It is my view that the number in the first set is so much less than the number in the second set that we simply do not have the luxury to focus on recruiting only them. Dan Nessett 23:17, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

My own feeling is that CZ would have more Authors if we had *more* Editors. Potential Authors would see that there were competent Editors in the fields that interest them and that they were actually *doing* things. I think you'd have a bunch of people writing articles about, oh, individual baseball players, say, if you had two or three highly expert Editors who were clearly knowledgeable about baseball, were doing articles of their own, *and* were encouraging Authors in various ways. Maybe not, but I don't think that anyone could argue that our current *lack* of Editors is encouraging the creation of more articles.... Hayford Peirce 23:20, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I can't speak for Wikipedians (of whom I too am a former member) but if *all* members of CZ aren't altruists, then I don't know how to qualify them. (Well, OK, some of the Eduzendium students.) Is it the lordly salaries that we command that keep us here? The high pay-per-word that we receive? The universal glory and esteem we enjoy in the outside world as being world-famous Citizens? Perhaps. Or perhaps there are other motives.... Hayford Peirce 23:25, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm here for the free booze. Jones

[unindent]

"My own feeling is that CZ would have more Authors if we had *more* Editors". Yes, I agree. In fact let me state that more emphatically. A strategy of attracting experts to write encyclopedia articles is much less likely to succeed that one that attracts encyclopedists to summarize the work done by experts. And to say this once more, an expert does not have to have an advanced degree or any degree for that matter. An expert is someone who knows a subject in depth, whether that is formally recognized by an academic institution or not.

"if *all* members of CZ aren't altruists, then I don't know how to qualify them." My point is: that currently is a significant problem. If we hope to succeed by only attracting altruists, we are planning to fail. Perhaps since we all are contributing out of a sense of community service, we think most people will do that if we can just let them know we are here. Unfortunately, it is a well demonstrated characteristic of the human condition that people generally look out after their own interests. There are very few people in the world like Mother Teresa. Dan Nessett 00:02, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

What we need is more active people and it doesn't matter if they are authors, editors, experts, non-experts, or whatever! Instead of discussing why people have left, we should be discussing how to get more new active people. Look at the list of nominees for the charter drafting committee ... a list of about 30 names, about 5 of whom are no longer active (including one or two who left under unhappy circumstances). The remaining 25 comprise about all of our really active prolific contributors ... that just is not enough! Most people in the real world are busy earning a living and/or raising a family. In my mind, we need to find a way to reach retired people who, like myself, have a lot of time on their hands and could easily devote at least 4-5 hours a day to CZ. How to do that, I don't know ... but I am convinced that is where we should concentrate our efforts to recruit now members. Does anyone know how to get an article published in the newsletter of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) or any similar organization? Milton Beychok 03:25, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Good point, Milton. Let's concentrate on the positive side of the equation and the problems will solve themselves. D. Matt Innis 03:29, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Surely, there has to be many many ways to access these people. I've brought it up to several of my patients (thinking they would like something to do), but they seem to be less computer savvy. I'm sure, though, that there is a class of retired people that this woul dbe the perfect way for them to "sink some time" :) D. Matt Innis 03:31, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

"...we need to find a way to reach retired people who, like myself, have a lot of time on their hands." I couldn't agree more. I am a retired person and I spend about 4-5 hours a day working on CZ. When I said attract experts, I didn't necessarily mean people who are working for a living. Howerver, there is something of a hole in your proposal. You say we need to recruit retired people and then suggest we put a letter in the AARP newsletter. Good so far. What do you intend to say? I have given up a lot of activities I was involved in to spend time working on CZ. Initially I did it because I wanted to do some work on orthogonal functions that I ran into while studying quantum mechanics. I then saw an opportunity to help CZ in other ways and put my study of QM aside in order to do that. I also put my music composition work aside and some fiction writing aside. You can bet most retired people have other things to do as well.

So, the question is why would a retired expert want to get involved in CZ? I am not being negative on this. In order to attract people, you have to have something attractive. A couple of retired experts I tried to recruit said no thanks. They simply couldn't see why the time on their hands should be spent writing articles for CZ when those articles were going to be changed around by someone else. Retired experts aren't any different in that regard than active experts. Dan Nessett 03:47, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm in a community that has an odd mix of retirees, tourists in summer, and fishermen. Personally, I'm underemployed rather than retired, and indeed am timesharing CZ and a consulting project on cloud computing at the moment -- my client let me put some of the basic work into an article, but now we are doing the proprietary part.

It's a bit frightening, but I'm a youngster at some of the political and related groups. Part of the challenge is that the computer-literate retirees also tend to be activists, so neutrality may be an issue. I will, however, be giving some lectures, starting with (a title picked by the publicity people) "Torture in Perspective". If I can, I'll be doing an objective series on intelligence and national security, and will be appealing to people that the best case can be an objective one.

Sometimes, the computer literacy is used to hang out at Fellow True Believer blogs. How does one convert that? Howard C. Berkowitz 03:50, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Dan, in a way, you have made my point. You are retired and despite having a number of other interests, you chose to devote 4-5 hours a day to CZ. I don't understand the viewpoint about "CZ articles were going to be changed around by others". In the almost two years I've contributed to CZ, I have written over 100 articles ... so far none of them have been significantly changed unilaterally by any others. Of course, there have been many revisions which were made after discussion and mutual agreement, but that's all. And along the way, I have had intercourse (non-sexual, of course) with a number of very interesting and very talented people. I'm a couple of decades older than you and somewhat physically limited ... and I would have gone quite bonkers by now had it not been for CZ. I am quite certain there are many other retirees out there who would join CZ if we can find a way to reach out to them. As for AARP, I am not a member and it is difficult for a non-member to have a voice there ... but I do plan to try. If you ever get down from Fremont to Newport Beach, I sure would like to get together. Milton Beychok 06:02, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

This is an interesting discussion in an unexpected place. I stumbled on it by accident. Why don't you move it to the forum, Matt? --Paul Wormer 07:14, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

shhh, we were hiding. ;-) D. Matt Innis 15:16, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

We have a current possibility to get in contact with them, since American Association of Retired Persons happens to be part of Shamira's Eduzendium course on interest groups, the initial draft being due somewhere around next week. There is certainly nothing wrong with asking them for additional materials (images, multimedia, history, vision etc.) and to post these materials at the article's talk page. Once the contact is established, it can of course lead to further interaction. --Daniel Mietchen 08:49, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Now that is clever, like a fox.. haha, go for it Daniel (but gotta wait till the class is over). D. Matt Innis 15:16, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Milt. When you said you were 2 decades older than I, you intrigued me, since I am no spring chicken. So, I went to your user page and quite frankly, I am impressed. You have written 2 books, have 25 published articles and are a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. You have made significant contributions to CZ, writing over 100 articles. You are CZ's Mother Teresa.

I am sure age and experience have taught you that just hoping something happens won't make it so. You don't just hope you can build a Petroleum Refinery. It takes planning, understanding and a lot of perseverance (because as you indicate on your user page, nothing goes according to plan). What I am suggesting is we need to apply those same principles here. And the first thing to do is take stock of the state of CZ. I have stated some of this before, but it is useful to restate these things for emphasis.

Go to Special:Statistics. There you will see that "[w]e have 12,152 live articles, of which 114 are approved and 979 are developed." I don't know how many editors we have, but I would say that it is more than 25. CZ was founded in the fall of 2006, which means it is approaching its 3rd birthday. So in the course of 3 years, (using the lower bound of 25 editors) each editor has on average moved about 4 1/2 articles into the approved state. That is around 1 per year. Now I am sure you have moved more than that and there are other editors who have moved none. But, any objective view of these numbers can come to no other conclusions than CZ's approval process is completely broken. And I think I know why.

By and large the editors of CZ have a certain amount of expertise, some more than others. When you look at what editors are doing, however, they are writing. They spend much of their time acting as authors. (This is not directed at you Milt, since it looks like you have been doing Herculean work and contributed significantly as both a writer and editor). What does that tell you about the editors that have been attracted to CZ? They want to write. In fact, from some of the comments I have read, most are refugees from WP who got tired of ignorant people stepping all over their work. So, my informal conclusion is experts come to CZ to write, not edit. When they become editors some feel at least a partial obligation to edit, but many don't, which is why we have so few approved articles. The bottom line to this very informal analysis is if you want to attract experts to CZ, you have to give them the opportunity to write without being bugged by those who lack their expertise or by people who are trying to game the system to gain control over their writing. Dan Nessett 16:14, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Very true, Dan. I regard editing as professional "paying it forward" in my fields, but also to ensure that the things I write are in a credible context. I was attracted here from WP to be able to write both with appropriate synthesis, and not having to fight constantly. I'm perfectly willing to edit, but, if I wanted to be principally an Editor, I'd do it in a different forum such as a journal or even the IETF (I've published RFCs, but I've edited a lot more).

If you think there were arguments here about Internet, try WP with intelligence and security issues, as well as military affairs. Ironically, here, they aren't terribly noticed in the Approval process as there are no appropriate Editors. I was able to get one article nominated by Milt because we agreed it was Military Engineering and mostly a documentation convention, but I certainly have at least high tens of articles that are stuck because there is no relevant Editor and I can't do it myself.

Indeed, I wish I could just get nonspecialist readers to check readability. It's one thing to get radical rewrites, and, when there was another Military editor, I found him to inject quite a bit of ideological bias. Yes, I did rewrite a number of his articles after he left, but I think most readers have felt I moved them to neutrality. I'm perfectly willing to listen to proposed revisions, but I am not willing to work with being told an article has problems -- especially one that I didn't originate -- and be given a total replacement. That isn't the practice in the IETF either, with experts generally in agreement; the mailing list discussion is very detailed, and then new drafts are written by the authors. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:30, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

[Unindent] Personally I don't care much about the approval process (although I did approve a few articles and a few of mine are approved). The main disadvantage is that an approved article is locked. Even to correct a minor typo you must bother a constable. And what exactly is the advantage? I don't know whether we have outside readers, but if we do, I'm pretty sure that they don't notice the difference.--Paul Wormer 16:53, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

The main advantage is that it can't be subject to endless and unceasing revert wars. Suppose the Homeopathy article weren't locked and we permitted people like Adam Cuerden and a couple of others I can think of to come in and fight their wars on a daily or even hourly basis. Maybe this isn't enough justification in itself, but from *some* points of view it's pretty important. Hayford Peirce 17:08, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

The homeopathy war is bad anyway. Moreover, the approved article didn't quite boost our reputation.--Paul Wormer 17:16, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

This is a very critical point in my view. Getting an article approved gives some assurance that it will not be subject to arbitrary changes. One of the major problems at WP is anyone can come in and scribble over anything they choose. This means an author has to remain eternally vigilant in regards to the articles he has written or made major contributions to. He cannot simply go on to something else. At CZ he knows that any changes made in the future will at least go through editorial review. It is that kind of guarantee that gives CZ an edge over WP (although by itself it is not probably enough to ensure CZ survives). Dan Nessett 17:23, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

[outdent]I'll save my ideas on involving external reviewers for another discussion, though I think it might draw people in if we give them a taste of what they can expect with no (even perceived) commitment to do anything more than what we specifically ask. More pertinent to this conversation, I've been thinking off and on about submitting an open letter/op. ed. piece to student newspapers around the country and maybe throughout the English speaking world. I think they are more likely to publish such items than other news outlets and I think students might be a good source of potential authors. A couple of weeks ago, I was inspired to write a first draft of a letter that might work: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dmzwd6k_42cpx43qch --Joe Quick 19:42, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Joe, I'm glad you have involved yourself in this conversation. As the Approvals Manager I assume you are interested in getting more articles approved. I have an idea about that. How about setting up an Editathon (a merge between Edit and athon, which I took from an event Sun Microsystems sponsored back in the 90s called Connectathon). This would be a CZ official event that would last for some time period (1 week? 2 weeks?) with the objective of getting as many developed articles approved as possible. We could set a stretch goal of getting all articles currently in the developed state into the approved state. We probably couldn't reach that goal, but setting high goals is the mark of a community interested in excellence. Dan Nessett 19:54, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Anyone have some ideas for the workgroups where there either is no active Editor, or the single Editor is also the author of developed articles? Howard C. Berkowitz 20:17, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

[outdent]May I share a few thoughts about the article approval process [rhetorical question mark].

We might think about approving articles that provide reliable information about the topic even though much more information needed to give the reader a more complete treatment of the topic. Perhaps the approval banner could include text that states the editors judge the article reliable but hope authors/editors will further develop the accompanying draft version of the article to cover more aspects of the topic and/or elaborate on those aspcts already covered.
- In that regard, perhaps the draft versions should be evaluated on a frequent regular basis for replacement of the approved version, even if only few, but significant, improvements have been made, assuming no damage has been done.
We might consider changing the name of approved versions to something like "Provisionally Approved", indicating further development occuring in the draft version. Anthony.Sebastian 20:40, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

In case anyone is interested, I just looked at the Editors list. There are 50 editors at CZ (of course, not all are active). That means on average each editor has approved slightly over 2 articles in the 3 years of CZ's existence. And that means on average editors are approving less than 1 article a year. I wrote this while Anthony was adding his comment, so it is a bit out of order. Dan Nessett 20:44, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

If you take into account the inactive ones, we have or had a total of around 400 editors, which certainly does not make the stats better. Re Editathon: We had a "Biology Week" exactly one year ago, with the meager results documented at CZ:Biology Workgroup/Biology Week Sep 22-28, 2008. "Provisionally Approved" goes into the direction of my proposal (yes, on the forums) to use a combination of Flagged Revisions and WikiTrust for approval, which has basically gone unnoticed. --Daniel Mietchen 00:01, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me "editathon" will work to get articles approved only in areas where three editors overlap. We could change the approval process to allow for some sort of gang-of-editors to approve outside their workgroups but that leads us to the broken proposals system. I agree with what Dan has written here above. One thing that is implicit in the WP method is that the churning at WP ("experts" guarding their pages against everyone) leads to a lot of people doing a lot of editing. I think our approval idea is what makes CZ different. But I agree again with Dan, experts are not prone to consensus (except on really narrow issues) and expecting collaboration and agreement on big topics (homeopathy) is (I think) unrealistic and not conducive to our growth. Russell D. Jones 02:20, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I am trying to understand Russell's point that editathon "will work to get articles approved only in areas where three editors overlap." I thought it only took one editor to approve an article, unless that editor was also an author. Even if an editor is an author, can't he/she bow out and let another editor do the approval? Or is the problem that there really is only one active editor per workgroup? Dan Nessett 03:27, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm immediately aware of no other active Editor in Military, but I believe that is true of several groups. As Drew observes, Hobbies are a special case; Aleta Curry is a Specialist Editor for Dogs but there's no one to approve her articles; there's no one to do his fish articles unless a Biology editor takes it on. I don't think we have active Editors for Food (Sciences); for Visual Arts, the last active Editor did only art history, not things like pastel. Almost certainly, there are other author/editors in the same position, with no one to approve. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:41, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

We haven't had an active Music Editor since 2007. Certainly there has been none willing to answer emails or do any editor workgroup duties since I started writing articles for CZ, and that was a long time ago. I've never seen anyone post to the music mailing list, and I've had to do most of the cleaning up myself. Meg Ireland 07:05, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

[unindent] I'm reading this discussion about the importance of approval with some astonishment. Indeed, for WP the system would be a tremendous improvement—I would probably still work for them had they had it. But, CZ is not WP. I wrote a few hundred articles and only very, very, rarely has somebody changed something in one of them and in (almost) all cases it was an improvement that I also recognized as such. The great disadvantage of approval is that people will not bother to make minor changes. Probably Daniel is reading this, let me ask him a question. Yesterday you changed the title of a section in Intermolecular forces and I agree that your title is better than my old title. Would you have made the change in a draft had the article been approved? --Paul Wormer 07:08, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Direct reply: I agree that the barrier to make that edit in the draft is higher than to make it in the actual document, that's why I am advocating a streamlining of the approval process that keeps approved versions editable - with some properly configured Flagged Revisions system, editors of the concerned workgroups would have been allowed to change that, but if authors had done the change, it would have to be "sighted" by an editor. No unnecessary delays, and formal procedures or the Kops are only called in when editors disagree about certain edits and cannot resolve their dispute on their own. --Daniel Mietchen 11:58, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

"Why has CZ lost so many authors?" Brief answer from one of them: because there aren't enough editors, as some people have already suggested above (but I'm answering as an insider).

Detailed answer. I withdrew from direct participation in Wikipedia (restricting myself to commnting from the sidelines) when I discovered it had no effective procedure for enforcing neutrality. Administrators and arbitrators aren't authorized to enforce it, and the community often, or usually, chooses not to. That leaves articles to war/politics/haggling among various factions (I'm talking about controversial articles on religion, politics etc.; straightforward scientific factual matters should work). The end result to be expected from this process is that points of view will be represented in proportion to their prominence among editors of the article concerned, rather than among reliable sources.

So what do I find when I come here? Editors are supposed to deal with that sort of problem. Fine where there is one. But often there isn't. Back in December (just 2 months after coming here from Wikipedia) I posted a request for editor assistance to solve just such a problem on the personal talk pages of all 15 editors in the workgroup. Not a single response, then or since.

In summary, the CZ system should work in areas where an editor is available, but elsewhere it's as bad as Wikipedia, so people who've left there for here are liable to end up leaving for the same reason.

So I hope you get more editors. My main interest is in Buddhism. If you get one authorized and willing to exercise editorial authority there then I can do some work here. Meanwhile I'm working at Wikinfo, where they have a completely different way of dealing with such problems: POV forking with hatlinks. Peter Jackson 11:00, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, it certainly seems that getting editors (or actually not getting them) is a fundamental problem that needs to be solved. The title of this section is "Why has CZ lost so many authors?" At least preliminarily, its because there is no one who wants to do the editing. So, again preliminarily, if we get more editors, we can get more authors.

Of course, that just replaces one question with another. How do we get more editors? When I was in research, editing was never something anyone wanted to do. However, it was expected that you would do a certain amount in order to remain a respected member of your profession. Generally, getting yourself on a program committee was something that enhanced your reputation. The main responsibility of someone on a program committee is reading paper submissions and writing a review. But, there is nothing similar to this tradition in the open source writing community. So, we need to think of other ways to create a similar "sense of responsibility". I think that requires some reward, even if indirect, for editing. One possibility is to more prominently display editors names when a reader comes to CZ. We could put them at the top of the Welcome page. Another is when an article is approved, we could affix the names of the editors responsible to the top of the article. Any other suggestions? Dan Nessett 14:20, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for posting twice in a row, but I think we need to address Paul's question. It was my understanding that when an article is approved, the next draft is started and people can edit it freely. The approved article is the one that the public sees, but any CZ citizen has access to both the approved version and the draft. Is this the way things work? For routine grammar and typo problems, I think an editor should be able to rule that a change is non-substantive and allow the approved version to change.

If this is the procedure, then Daniel's suggestion has merit. The Flagged Revision system allows a version to be frozen and presented as approved. Work continues on the document, but that work is on the next revision. Dan Nessett 14:49, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that is the procedure. In terms of rewarding editors, a relatively minor change we could put into effect quickly would be to use names to link to the approving editors in the template at the top of approved pages instead of simply stating how many there are. The links already point to the editors' user pages, they just don't show the editors' names. See Grand Trunk Railway, for example. --Joe Quick 15:14, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Great idea, Joe. This is a quick fix that I think significantly improves things. Whose approval do we need to make the change? Dan Nessett 15:25, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Peter. You make a good point: there are a substantial number of inactive editors, and, I'm not especially thinking of those that were active for a time and then had time or policy conflicts.

No, I'm thinking of the basic criteria for Editor status: credentials on Day 1. Given the number of Editors that never made an actual Edit to other than their user page, what is wrong with this picture? Also, we have a few horrible examples of a credentialed editor who immediately created havoc, such as Martin Cohen; not the only such.

Conversely, we have people that are productive authors and lower-case editors, but have not met the criteria of the credentialing people. Speaking personally, I find it frustrating that I've worked in several substantive areas where I am not academically credentialed, but have substantial real-world experience, and, most importantly, a body of work here that can be judged.

To break some of the Approval logjam, I'd propose, perhaps with some sort of Interim status, finding a way to agree that certain people do know what they are doing in various areas, based on their base of work here. Perhaps they could Approve (to be defined) noncontroversial articles.

Food articles are an excellent example. Does one really need a home economics or nutrition degree to approve bread, understanding that it can always be improved? Yes, barbecue would be both Religion and Controversial. I'm a pretty good baker and am confident Hayford knows how to be kneaded.

Top-level articles might well be judged by a consensus of experienced Citizens for readability and reasonability. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:50, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Following up on Howard's suggestion — why not define editor status for an article once it is nearing approval? As far as I can tell, Flagged Revisions can be set up on an article-by-article basis, though I do not know whether the right to "sight" can currently be handled on a user-by-user basis for individual articles (if not, that would be a case where a CZ variant of a MediaWiki extension would make sense). Even in the current system, it would be easy to signal one's willingness to act as an editor by simply posting it to the talk page or perhaps a new section of the metadata. Ideally, though, I would like to see this coupled with a karma system as in WikiTrust, such that previous activities in articles related to the one in question can be weighted stronger than previous activities in articles not related to it. --Daniel Mietchen 21:08, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

On the American Association of Retired Persons again: "The AARP Bulletin’s What I Really Know column comes from our readers. Each month we solicit personal essays on a selected topic and post some of our favorites in print and online." Perhaps we can keep an eye on this column and possibly even brush up our respective articles a bit (or enrich them with some signed articles), such that we would have something to be posted to the bulletin? The "October theme" is television, and submissions are probably due by October 1. --Daniel Mietchen 21:35, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

[unindent]

I think we need to add some other criteria for being an editor. For example, Peter mentions the following. "Back in December (just 2 months after coming here from Wikipedia) I posted a request for editor assistance to solve just such a problem on the personal talk pages of all 15 editors in the workgroup. Not a single response, then or since." This suggests, at least in Peter's case, that editors are not editing. We seem to have concentrated on editor credentials (either formal or informal) and have completely missed editor performance. I don't think being an editor should be an honorary position. It should come with some minimum performance requirements. For example, if an editor doesn't approve, say, 5 articles in any 12 month period or if he/she constantly fails to respond to author requests for help, then the editorship should be withdrawn. Also, I think we should avoid granting editorship to someone in more than say 2 or 3 workgroups. They may have the qualifications for more, but I question whether they have the time to do a good job in more than 2 or 3 areas. In addition, granting editorship in more than 2 or 3 workgroups risks granting one person too much overall authority.

Also, while I think Peter's input is very valuable, we need to find out from some other authors why they left. There may be other reasons authors have left and we need to fix these as well. Dan Nessett 22:38, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I only responded here because I happened to check the recent changes list at the right time. That is, it's sheer luck you got even 1 response. If you want useful information you'll have to email everyone.

A point that might be relevant in some way. I got the impression that which editors have what authority ovr which articles is pretty much a state secret. Peter Jackson 10:45, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Peter, your comment of "I got the impression that which editors have what authority over which articles is pretty much a state secret", surprises me. I don't understand how you got that impression. Everyone's user page (author and/or editor) very clearly delineates the workgroups in which each of us is an author or an editor (see bottom line of each user page). I don't see how that can be thought of as a "state secret".

As for the role of an editor and his/her authority, that is openly available in CZ:Editor Policy and CZ:The Editor Role ... so where is the secret?

I have been an author and an editor since January, 2008 and, other than nominating articles for approval, I can only recall perhaps 1 or 2 occasions where I exercised my authority as an editor in editing or commenting about an article. Milton Beychok 15:09, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Pursuing the problems that you had getting editor help, Peter, what kind of assistance did you request? Did you ask an editor for help with some technical issue? Did you ask for their help with a procedural issue. Did you ask for some other kind of help?

In response to your comment Milt, I think it is unreasonable to expect citizens to know about policy documents that do not concern them. An author probably doesn't look around for documents about editors because his/her interest is writing, not editing. I think it is unrealistic for us to expect authors to read the many different definitional documents that exist at CZ, especially those that are on topics that do not interest him/her. This is suppose to be a fun place to work, not a training exercise for lawyers.

Finally, I think we should take Peter's advice and ask some other authors who are no longer active why they left. Dan Nessett 16:31, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

(undent) May I suggest this would be more appropriate, and seen by more people, on the Forum?

A few comments though: as to number of workgroups per Editor, if, variously, a workgroup isn't being covered for Approval, either because there are no Editors (e.g., Food), one Editor who is a substantial author (e.g., Military), or Editors that won't work on certain topics (e.g., Visual Arts, with Editors that did Art History, but not technique--might not be active).

The power of an Editor can always be reevaluated, and there might be reductions in scope if we get more Editors -- but if the lack of approving, or even commenting, Editors is a bottleneck, what is most important? I suggest the critical elements are the things that limit growth. As far as power, we've been operating under a situation where the E-I-C really has the only official power, although, recently, some Constables and Editors have filled vacuums. (deferring, of course, to Milt about vacuum pumps). Howard C. Berkowitz 19:21, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

It's not entirely a lack of Editors -- it's a lack of *active* Editors. There are *frequent* new Editors joining the project. Then they entirely vanish. They don't make a single contribution, ever. Not one. Why do they bother to join and then not do a flippin' thing? That, to me, is a more noteworthy question. I could run through the Approvals Log for the last couple of months and probably tell you that maybe 14 new Editors joined -- and that maybe only *one* of them has contributed anything. This is a question that I've already brought up a couple of times in various Forum discussions and there's never been a satisfactory answer, just, "Well, that's the way it is on wikis." Great. Why bother.... Hayford Peirce 19:39, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey, Matt!! Please move this to the forums ... it looks as if it will go on forever. Milton Beychok 19:47, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Only speculation here, but I wonder if the situation would be helped if one had to be an author, and produce/collaborate on content, before being considered as an Editor. Learn how to CZ edit before trying to CZ Edit. It was very promising when we were joined by a Visual Arts Editor, but that person neither was willing to listen to pure style guidance on the person's own articles in Art History, but was not willing, when asked, to Edit (or even Approve in early form) some core technique articles, such as charcoal (art) or pastel. What's wrong with this picture? Would it help had the person been designated a Specialist Editor in Art History? I tend to believe one has to earn Editorship; there can be case-by-case decisions to start someone if they are known contributors to other electronic collaborative fora (not necessarily Wikis). Howard C. Berkowitz 19:52, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I just tried to do a cut and paste into a new Forum thread but got a red message saying that it had two many characters. (And I don't mean the contributors, hehe.) So why don't you try it yourselves, maybe some other way? Hayford Peirce 20:04, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I remember that particular Art Editor and I still grit my teeth at the thought. She was everything that an Editor should NOT be. Hayford Peirce 20:06, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm wary of placing more requirements on people in order to become editors. I just don't see the logic in how restricting the number of people who are allowed to be editors will result in more people being editors. --Joe Quick 20:07, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Hayford makes a good point. In fact, it is a point left unaddressed by some of the proposals presented here to solve the problem. We do not have a problem recruiting editors or authors. We have a problem retaining them. You first have to solve the second problem and then the first one. If you try to solve the first problem before solving the second one, you are trying to fill a bathtub with a big hole in the bottom. So, here is the flow of analysis as I see it. We can't retain authors. Why? The editors are not doing their job. Why? Because we can't retain editors. Why? That is were things get controversial. So, I will simply say that we need to address the editor retention problem and then work our way backwards toward the author retention problem.

However, I will state again that we need to ask some other authors who have left why they did that. Right now our analysis is driven from a sample of one (for which I heartily thank Peter Jackson for taking the time to supply). Dan Nessett 20:18, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Everyone is using the wrong words here: it is not a question of "retaining" Editors -- it is a question of them *doing anything.* Very, very of them have ever really *left*. Some, but few. They just don't contribute. Hayford Peirce 20:35, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Editor Forum start: http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,2898.0.html Howard C. Berkowitz 20:41, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks all (and Howard for moving this) All very interesting, I'll make one comment on the forum. D. Matt Innis 21:11, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

He hasn't *moved* it, Matt, just started a thread with a *link* to this discussion. So don't delete this.... Hayford Peirce 21:29, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Peter. If you have come here and wondered what has happened, the discussion has moved to a forum (given above). I have asked a question of you in that forum that I hope you decide to answer. Dan Nessett 21:47, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Is there a way to bulk mail all editors, including inactive ones and all citizens, including those who have left?

Hi Matt,

In order to get some input from authors and editors who have left CZ, it would be really useful to email them and ask. Is there any way for constables to bulk mail all editors or all citizens (I assume this is not something that CZ would want non-privileged citizens to do). Dan Nessett 01:53, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, your right in noting that this is not something that we want to abuse. There are several lists that essentially would get in touch with everyone who still uses their same email address. D. Matt Innis 02:01, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

We need to proceed with caution on bulk emails, but I think getting feedback from those who have left us is critical to fixing the retention problem. How would you suggest we proceed on this idea. Should I bring it up in the editorial retention thread? Dan Nessett 02:23, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

That's proabably as good a place to start as any. D. Matt Innis 02:49, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Matt, I raised the issue of bulk emails many months ago in the forums and, as I recall, Larry said he could do it. Whether he did or not, I don't know. Don't ask me to tell you what forum and when ... because I don't recall that. Milton Beychok 03:28, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Larry has told me privately that he *can* do it, but I get the impression that he is extremely reluctant to do so, fearing that it might get out of hand. My suggestion: email him privately, tell him what you would like to do, and see if he will either do it himself or set up a facility for a Constable to do so. Hayford Peirce 03:59, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I doubt that you asked Larry if you could use the email list to ask people what they thought. It is more likely you asked to use it to make an announcement such as the Charter nominations... big difference. Every use should require it's own approval process. I doubt one approval is a blanket approval. D. Matt Innis 04:03, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

That's why you're the Assistant Chief of the Greater London Metropolitan Constabulary Service and I'm just a lowly Cop on the Beat in Kensington Gardens: yes, I asked him about mass announcements, not about whether we could poll Citizens as to whether they preferred Burger King to McD. On the other hand, if you don't get the " ' " out of your "it's", it's off to the Tower for you for about seven years.... Hayford Peirce 04:09, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Its nothing personal, but its because I have to give you something to do :D D. Matt Innis 04:15, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Sigh. I'll have to get you to come here and measure out the vermouth vs. gin that goes into making martinis -- a very difficult operation, especially after three or four of them, hehe....

[unindent]

Bulk emails should be very rare and used only when there is no other way to accomplish a goal that the community finds compelling and the EIC supports. I think this may be one of those rare cases. Tomorrow is bad for me, so I will bring this issue up on the Editor retention thread on Monday, unless someone else thinks it is urgent and decides to bring it up themselves sooner. Dan Nessett 04:34, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Moving a page with its subpages without leaving behind a redirect

Matt. I feel somewhat guilty that the regrettable Internet subgroup incident imposed a lot of work on Peter Schmitt. The biggest problem seemed to be that when he moved a set of pages, a bunch of redirects were left behind that then Hayford had to delete.

However, I asked a MW software developer about this problem and he said there is a 'suppressredirect' permission that allows users to move pages without leaving redirects behind. I actually tried this on my personal wiki (I run 1.14, but this permission is supposed to exist in 1.13 as well) and it works. When I clicked the move link at the top of a test page, the displayed query page had check boxes for both "leave a redirect behind" and "move subpages". If you uncheck the "leave a redirect behind" and check the "move subpages" boxes, you can move a cluster without leaving anything behind. While I expect Peter does not have the required permission, I assume you and Hayford do. So, it seems to me Hayford could have moved the pages much more easily than Peter. Since I don't have this permission on CZ, maybe you can see if the check boxes show up when you attempt to move a page with subpages. If so, then in the future you may wish to use this feature, which saves a lot of work. Dan Nessett 22:47, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

When someone Moves a page, there's already a "Move all subpages, if applicable" checkbox at the bottom. If you check it, then all the subpages are supposed to be moved. I don't see a "leave a redirect behind" but maybe I'm not looking at a page that *has* any redirects to it. Hayford Peirce 23:02, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah, now I'm looking at http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Special:MovePage/Pancho_Gonzales, which has a redirect from Pancho Gonzalez to Pancho Gonzales, and, as you say, there are various checkboxes. But I don't see what the problem is if someone doing the Move simply checks off that "Move all subpages if applicable". Aren't people doing this when they Move stuff? Hayford Peirce 23:06, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

There are two possible explanations. The first is 1.13 doesn't support the 'suppressredirect' permission. However, according to the user rights permissions matrix (look under Technical), this permission is available in all releases from 1.12 on. So, I think that possibility is remote. The other possibility is you have not been given the 'suppressredirect' permission. I'm not sure how to determine this, since I have "bureaucrat" status on my personal wiki, which gives me all permissions. If you have the 'suppressredirect' permission you should see a box (checked by default) that says "leave a redirect behind" Dan Nessett 23:14, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Hayford, you misunderstood. Dan is not talking about "redirects to be left behind", but about moving pages (or clusters) without creating redirects to the new title. This would be useful for moves where these redirects are not wanted and therefore have to be deleted after the move. Peter Schmitt 23:26, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Okie, so I misunderstood what the precise problem was/is, but I *still* don't understand *where* the problem is. Anyone can make a Move, can't they, not just Constables? Is Dan saying that some people are/are not checking/unchecking the right boxes? And this creates messes (big or small) that have to be fixed? Hayford Peirce 23:41, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

He says that this check box is missing (at least for normal users), but could be provided. He reacts to my remark in the forum that he "left a mess" with his actions on the Internet article. Such an option would have made possible to avoid some of the speedydeletes I had to ask you to do. Peter Schmitt 23:51, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah. "I see," said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw. Thanks. So the problem is that not ALL people see the appropriate checkboxes when they're needed? Or maybe even that they don't know how to fill them out correctly? Hayford Peirce 00:03, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

[unindent]

Following on from Peter's comments. As a constable you have more privileges than a normal user. For example, you can delete pages. The way you gain these privileges is by having a system administrator give them to you. One of the privileges you could have is the 'suppressredirect' permission, which would allow you to move pages without creating a redirect. If when you move a page, a box that says "leave a redirect behind" does not appear, then you do not have the 'suppressredirect' permission. It is extremely unlikely that regular users such as Peter and I would be given this privilege, but I would imagine it is possible that a constable might have this permission. Probably the best thing to do now is wait for Matt to respond. Dan Nessett 00:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

See my comment above about the Pancho Gonzales page. It indicates that I *can* see them -- WHEN they're there. But not every page has them. Hayford Peirce 00:06, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

(EC)See this screenshot

. It appears that our version of ability to suppress redirects is to update redirects that redirect to the OLD TITLE. Bots and Sysops and above do have this feature. D. Matt Innis 00:04, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

(Update) The description of the feature under the 'group rights' is:

Not create a redirect from the old name when moving a page (suppressredirect)

This seems to be the defintion that you are looking for, but it is not the way it works for us. Maybe it has to be turned on? D. Matt Innis 00:16, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Also note that, as Hayford is telling you, the checkbox "Update any redirects that point to the original article" does not show unless the article had redirects to it previously. D. Matt Innis 00:19, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

The checkbox "Update any redirects that point to the original article" is not associated with this permission. Give me some time to research how an administrator grants rights. At present I am the only user on my personal wiki and I have the bureaucrat privilege, which gives me all possible permissions. I will create a test user on my wiki and figure out how to give (him? her? it?) the 'suppressredirect' permission. When I understand how to do that, I will get back to you and explain the procedure. Dan Nessett 00:34, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I am still researching the 'suppressredirect' permission. However, I went to Special:ListUsers/bureaucrat and selected the sysops display. The CZ citizens that are bureacrats/sysops are: Aaron Schulz ‎(Sysop, Bureaucrat), Aleksander Stos ‎(Sysop), Anthony.Sebastian ‎(editor, Sysop), Anton Sweeney ‎(Sysop), Bernard Haisch ‎(editor, Bureaucrat, Sysop), Caesar Schinas ‎(Sysop), Chris Day ‎(Sysop), D. Matt Innis ‎(Sysop, Bureaucrat), David Hume ‎(Sysop), Fred Salsbury ‎(Sysop), Gareth Leng ‎(Sysop), Greg Sabino Mullane ‎(Bureaucrat, Sysop, editor, Dark Knight), Hayford Peirce ‎(Sysop), Howard C. Berkowitz ‎(Sysop, editor), Jason Potkanski ‎(Sysop, Bureaucrat, Dark Knight), Larry Sanger ‎(Sysop, Bureaucrat, Dark Knight), Louise Valmoria ‎(Sysop), Peter Hitchmough ‎(Sysop, Bureaucrat, editor), Ruth Ifcher ‎(Sysop, Bureaucrat, Dark Knight), Sarah Tuttle ‎(Sysop), Sorin Adam Matei ‎(editor, Sysop), Supten Sarbadhikari ‎(editor, Sysop), Thomas Simmons ‎(Sysop), Tommy Ciszek ‎(Sysop), ZachPruckowski ‎(editor, Sysop).

Matt is a bureaucrat and Hayford is a sysop. Matt has the ability to put users in groups with special privileges, so once we figure out which group has the 'suppressredirect' permission, he should be able to put both himself and Hayford in that group. However, I don't quite understand why Matt, as a bureaucrat doesn't see the "leave a redirect behind" box. Maybe there is something else we have to do to get it displayed.

Just out of curiosity, which of the bureaucrats/sysops listed above are active? Greg seems only marginally involved, unless he is doing things behind the scenes and simply doesn't want to respond to technical questions. Dan Nessett 16:39, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I am able to change user rights, but I don't infer that I have the authority.

"leave redirect behind"... I agree that we are missing something -- either in our software version or we haven't gotten something activated.

As for activity of sysops, etc., I think the only way to know for sure is to leave messages for them on their talk pages.

According to Special:ListGroupRights sysops have the 'suppressredirect' permission. So, the problem isn't that you don't have the right to suppress redirects. It is that for some reason this permission has no effect. I will continue researching. Dan Nessett 17:09, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

To clarify my response above; as a bureaucrat, I am able to change other user's rights, but I don't infer that I, single-handedly, have the authority to change other user's rights. D. Matt Innis 17:29, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

In other words, as we learned back in school a million years ago, "I CAN do that, but I MAY NOT do it." Ie, "I have the ability to do that, but I do not have the permission to do that." Hayford Peirce 18:05, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

[unindent]

The "authority to change other user's rights" is a CZ governance issue. You probably want to understand the governance procedures used to determine when to change a user's rights, since you have the ability to do so. But, that is getting somewhat off-topic.

There is one possibility why the "leave redirect behind" box doesn't show, but I sure hope it isn't the case. The version of the MW software that CZ runs is modified. It is possible that the modified PHP code prevents use of the 'suppressredirect' permission. If so, I would have to get my local CZ MW installation up and running to analyze the problem. I almost have it working, but I need some information from Greg about the postgres schema and he isn't responding. Anyway, right now that is the option of last resort, since it would take a great deal of work to find any such modification. Dan Nessett 17:43, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I do understand the CZ governeance issue. D. Matt Innis 18:37, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

This is a real shot in the dark, but would one of you (Matt or Hayford) attempt to move a page and then uncheck the "Update any redirects that point to the original title" box. Then see if anything on the move page changes (like the "leave redirect behind" box suddenly appears). I would do this myself, but the "Update..." box only shows up for those in the sysop group. Dan Nessett 18:40, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Update: This request makes no sense at all. It simply reflects the frustration I am experiencing. So, if you haven't tried this, don't bother. Dan Nessett 19:33, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

If you click "move", the first paragraph mentions the option to "update". I also believe that I have seen it somewhere during a move. Probably it is shown after the move, but I do not want to perform a test move. Peter Schmitt 18:58, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Neither you nor I, Peter, are in the sysop group, so we can't perform the necessary experiments. When I click "move" the first paragraph has a sentence that states, "You can update redirects that point to the original title automatically." This seems odd, since the move page has no option to update redirects automatically. Curiouser and curiouser. Dan Nessett 19:13, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I did that yesterday and that's when I left you the first message that said that I didn't have that option. D. Matt Innis 19:46, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

[unindent]

OK, here is something odd. I run 1.14 on my personal wiki. I am in every group in view on it. When I move a page, I get no option that states, "Update any redirects that point to the original title". So, there must be some MW option that controls this. So far, I haven't been able to find it. If I did, I could see what happens on 1.14 and compare it to our experience on 1.13.2. Still working on this. Dan Nessett 19:53, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Matt. I am still trying to figure out why my 1.14 installation isn't showing the "Update any redirects that point to the original title" checkbox (so I can figure out if it is colliding in some way with the 'suppressredirect' permission). After searching around for what seems like forever, it appears that the fixing redirect feature requires a script (in addition to setting a global variable to "true"). This script is run under the maintenance user account "User:Redirect fixer". All of this appears to require configuration in DefaultSettings.php. Is there any way to get a copy of CZ's DefaultSettings.php? Greg is probably the person to ask for this, but he is non-responsive. The file would exist in the mediawiki source tree under .../phase3/include/. I realize this may be over your head, but I thought I would ask. Dan Nessett 23:00, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Corection. I need LocalSettings.php, not DefaultSettings.php. It is located at /phase3/LocalSettings.php. Dan Nessett 23:11, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Second Correction: Aghgh. Don't send me LocalSettings.php. It has sensitive information in it. Dan Nessett 23:16, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

FINALLY! I have finally managed to get both the "You can update redirects that point to the original title automatically." and "leave redirect behind" checkboxes showing on my personal wiki. I had to use a fresh download of 1.14. I don't know why the installed version didn't work, but that is no interest to anyone but me. Sorry for the over-chatty blow-by-blow account of my hair-pulling. Now I can move on to trying to figure out why CZ doesn't show both checkboxes. It can't be because there is an incompatibility between the two. Whew! I am going to take a break. :-D Dan Nessett 00:07, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Hehe, 'bout time. :) D. Matt Innis 00:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

You can say that again :-D. That problem was driving me bonkers. Tomorrow I will set up a standard 1.13.2 install and see if I can get it to show both checkboxes. No more MW tonight. Dan Nessett 01:16, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

[unindent]

Status update: After beating my head against a wall all day yesterday trying to get MW1.13.2 to work with PHP 5.3 on my Macintosh (CZ uses PHP 5.1.6 and PHP 5.3 seems incompatible with 1.13.2), I finally gave up and this moring installed 1.13.2 on my Ubuntu machine. I now have it running. When I move a page with redirects to it, I get three checkboxes: 1) Update any redirects that point to the original file, 2) Move all subpages, if applicable, and 3) Watch this page. Comparing this with the window capture that Hayford left, I am missing the "Move associated talk page" check box. Even though I am in the Sysop group on the Ubuntu 1.13.2 installation and that group has the 'suppressredirects' permission, the "Leave a redirect behind" check box does not appear (as it does on my personal wiki). So, perhaps if I can figure out how to get it to appear on the Ubuntu 1.13.2 installation, we can get it to appear on CZ. However, since the "Move associated talk page" checkbox appears on CZ and not on my 1.13.2 installation, there is the possibility that some of the modifications made to the 1.13.2 distro for CZ affect the move function. We'll see. Dan Nessett 20:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I actually had to run a debugger (using the Netbeans IDE) in order to figure it out. It appears to me that 1.13.2 does not support a checkbox for suppressing redirects. It seems to be a site-wide option. In other words, you can globally decide to always skip fixing redirects or never fix redirects. I may have it wrong, but it appears to me the code generates no HTML for the checkbox. So, if we want to support this feature, I think we need to upgrade from 1.13.2 to at least 1.14.xxx. I will double check this with someone with who has more experience with the code base. Dan Nessett 23:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

P.S. I figured out why the "Move associated talk page" check box wasn't showing. That requires the article to actually have a defined talk page (DUH!). When I created one for the article I was moving, the check box appeared. Dan Nessett 23:57, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

The MW expert just replied. It looks like the checkbox exists in 1.14, not 1.13.2. So, if we want the capability to move without redirects we have to upgrade. Dan Nessett 16:33, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

The template {{BotTable}}

Matt, when I go to your template {{BotTable}} and see this:


{{{BotName}}}	[[Purpose/{{{BotName}}}\|Purpose]]	[[Documentation/{{{BotName}}}\|Documentation]]	[[Script/{{{BotName}}}\|Script]]	[[Bot test results/{{{BotName}}}\|Bot test results]]	[[Approval history/{{{BotName}}}\|Approval history]]	[[Community input/{{{BotName}}}\|Community input]]

It is completely Greek to me. Could you explain it for computer illiterates such as me by:

Adding an example of how to use it (enclosed in <nowiki> </nowiki>
Then showing us the result

Daniel asked me to add a name and description of a robot I asked him to implement to your bot table on the Talk page of CZ:Bot Policy ... but I couldn't figure out how to do it.

P.S. There are a number of other templates like this that are incomprehensible to people like me. We could really could use a style guide of some sort to be used by template writers and requesting them to use that guidance for explaining their templates.

Thanks in advance, Milton Beychok 15:52, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Sure, Milt, I'll see if I can make it clear! I'm not real keen on this template stuff, either. It woul dbe nice if someone knew how to make it user friendly, too.D. Matt Innis 17:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Contacting those who are listed as sysops/bureaucrats

Matt. I would like to contact those listed as sysops/bureaucrats and ask them if they are still interested in contributing technically. Since I have no official standing at CZ (other than being a citizen), I wanted to run this past someone who is more connected than I. In addition, receiving an email out of the blue by a stranger may not motivate many responses. So, here is a draft of an email I would like to send those on the sysop/bureaucrat list. The mention of CZ's technical lead being swamped is based on an email I received from him. I have forwarded it to you.

Subject Line: Any interest helping Citizendium revitalize its technical work?

Hello,

I am writing you since you are listed as having either sysop or bureaucrat privileges at Citizendium. At present we are a bit thin on technical help and I wonder if you are interested in helping us alleviate that problem. CZ's technical lead is swamped and has trouble keeping up with questions. So, I thought we could help him out.

Right now we are looking both for people with system administration experience and for people who have done some software development. If you have experience in either of these and are willing to apply that experience to CZ's technical needs, please let me know. Also, if you no longer have an interest in doing sysop work at CZ, we would like to know that as well.

Thanks,

<signature>

I have not specified a signature. I am happy to send this message myself, but it may be sufficiently sensitive that you or someone else at CZ prefers to send it. Of course, the governance staff may decide that such an email should not be sent, in which case I will drop the idea.

Let me know. Dan Nessett 16:27, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dan, that's not something that I would do, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't. If I were Greg, and I didn't ask for help, but someone suggested that I needed it, I'd probably take offense. However, if it is your sense that Greg would appreciate some help, but can't get any, then maybe he would appreciate it. All I'm saying is that, since I don't know the situation, I can't comment. D. Matt Innis 17:30, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

After two weeks, Greg just emailed me again. I will try to work with him via email in order to make some progress. However, if the response rate from him is once every 2 weeks, then I really think we need to figure out how to beef up the technical staff. I realize Greg and all of the technical staff are volunteers and I don't want to irritate them. But, I can't see how we can fix bugs unless we have better communications. Dan Nessett 17:52, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Approval of Joule-Thomson effect

Matt, when Daniel Meitchen and then Karl D. Schubert joined David Volk in nominating this artcle for approval, they did not update the permanent url link for the approved version. Since I am the author and made some changes to implement suggestions by Karl D. Schubert, am I allowed to update the permanent url link? Or is this something that you or Hayford do when you perform the final approval on October 3rd? Milton Beychok 05:11, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Let me take a look at the page and I'll answer there. D. Matt Innis 12:44, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Re:CZ:BotPolicy Table

Sure, I think I can handle that. I need a bit more to go on though, in terms of what we want it to accomplish, and how we want it to look though. Here are a few of my preliminary ideas for the template/table

Automatically append a header, consisting of "Request for BOTNAMEHERE"
Have preloaded text already on each of the red-links, to give bot requesters a starting point
Make the overall appearance samller
Remove the "Script" link, at least eventually. We don't want people able to see the script of the bots, because this would allow people to modify the script to vandalize the wiki. It may not be a problem now, but when we have more citizens, we may need to look into that.
Change the redlinks to direct to a subpage of CZ:BotPolicy. The way the tables are written now, a mainspace article is created every time someone follows the links. Or rather, a subpage of a non-existant mainspace article.
Automatically append the four tildes, so we know who requested the bot.

I also think community input could be removed in favor of having the community discussion on that page.

Let me know if this is what you had in mind. Drew R. Smith 00:41, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Great, Drew! OK, here's the idea. We need to control how bots get used and approved, especially because they can so quickly damage the wiki, whether by vandals intentionally or by poorly designed or monitored bots. I'm thinking that we should require that bots have their own accounts, but in order to get one, the bot must pass some sort of tests. In the testing process, we need to be able to allow people to give us feedback, because we don't want to force even minor changes on the community without getting a feel for if it is wanted or needed. So I need you to think about how you would stop a person who was trying to create something that is going to damge the wiki or upset users before they would even get a chance to use it. I think I understand most of what you are saying above, do you think the changes you are suggesting will accomplich this? If not, what would you do? D. Matt Innis 02:11, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I was under the impression you just wanted my help with the tables, so all of the above is mostly only useful in that regard. Below are my thoughts in regards to improving the bot policy.

1. According to Daniel, the biggest plus side of giving bots separate accounts is that their edits will not clutter the recent changes view. This is a plus, but it isn't the most important plus. Giving bots separate accounts allows constables to block a broken bot without blocking the bot operator. However bot accounts should only be given out after the bot has been approved. If the bot is blocked, for any reason, it should be immediately deflagged, and the flag only returned after a constable and a bot policy administrator (heretofore reffered to as admins) agree that giving the flag back won't cause any problems.

2. As I said before, publicly displaying the script of the bot is a Bad Idea^TM. Many people don't know enough about programming to write their own bots, but do know enough to be able to adapt the script to their vandalous intents. I believe we should head this off early by having the botop send the script to a few admins, instead of publicly posting them.

3. As Daniel has mentioned elsewhere, we need to set up a test.citizendium.org to test bots. Articles can regularly be imported to simulate the actual effects of the bots. As it stands now, the testing is set within the script to only affect a certain area. I'd like to know what the bot will do when we turn off those restrictions without letting it loose in our wiki.

4. Daniel has done a fairly good job of testing his bots, and providing diffs to the results. However, from now on test results should be compiled on the "test results" page, or whatever it's titled. This should not only display a few relevant edits, but also comprehensively address every worry that has been raised by the community or admins. Any quirks that the bot has displayed should be noted on the results page as well, and in what situations these quirks could become harmless.

5. Other than the scripts that are already running, no script will be run without the express permission of community, through whatever mechanism CZ:BotPolicy decides is sufficient. A first time breach of this rule should result in a block of the botop, that can be appealed and lifted subject to constable discretion. A second time breach should result in a lengthy block, regardless of the merit of the bots edits. This block shouldn't be appealable, as it should be fairly cut and dried as to whether the user had permission to run the bot.

By the way, I have this page watchlisted, but only check the watchlist when I log on and before I log off. So if you reply again, drop a note on my talk page like you did last time in order to get my attention. Sorry if this is a burden. Drew R. Smith 03:00, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely perfect! I agree absolutely. You're probably right about the script - if I were going to design one, that is exactly what I would do :) Next, do you think the template can be modified to keep track of this information? Or do you think you can design something better? D. Matt Innis 03:08, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Depends on what you mean by "modified to keep track of this information". The Template you have now is more of a "Header", "Footer", or "Sidebar" type of template. That is, it only displays links to the information, not the information itself.

With a bit of work I could probably design something that looks similar, but instead of taking you to a different page, it would open up a "show/hide" or "dropdown" box below the template. IMO that would be easier for admins and the community in general to view all the pertinent info, without having to navigate away.

I don't mind discussing it right now, but I'm in the middle of another project ATM, so I won't actually be able to start work on it until thats finished. Shouldn't be more than an hour. Just adding the images to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion/Catalogs/Birthsigns. Drew R. Smith 03:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

The drop down sounds good. I'm in no hurry. I'm pretty much done for tonight anyway, so we can take it up again tomorrow. It always helps to sleep on new ideas! Thanks again, Drew! D. Matt Innis 03:43, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I have a "rough draft" for the template. I'll drop an example usage below, so you can see how it handles things. I have copied the contents of you entire talk page into the last tab, so we can see how it handles extremely long content.

Well... If you've opened up the community input tab, you can see why its still just a "rough draft". I never imagined it would go that far out to the right... I'm going to sleep on it, and see if I can figure out a way around it.

I think we should definitely remove community input and have the community input below the template for two reasons. One, so we can avoid the mess above, and Two, because it would be a simple matter for someone to break the template by accidentaly deleting something, or typing out of place. I'd rather avoid confusion like that. A simple solution would be to add ===Community Input=== to the bottom of the template... I'll leave that up to you though. Drew R. Smith 12:19, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

BTW, I'd remove the template from your page once you're done looking at it, since I copied the content of your talk page into one of the tabs, your talk page is now 86kilobytes long... Drew R. Smith 12:26, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm liking it so far. Can the columns be set to a certain width? And is each bot just going to have a page, or can they all be on the same page? I imagine if we put the 'community input' underneath the page would get long. Maybe the last column can link to a page? D. Matt Innis 14:15, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, we have several options for the community input section. As I said before, we could make a section below, but like you said the page could get quite long. A second option would be to put an overflow box around it, some users find editing within an overflow box confusing. A third option would be to link to a separate page, as you said.

If we set the columns to a certain width, some problems would arise. First, they would always be that width. If we set them wide, to accommodate for large amounts of text, they will always be wide, with the template reaching about four feet off the right side of your screen, regardless of whether the columns are open or not. If we set them short, to keep things together, it would make reading the longer text sections somewhat difficult.

Collapsible tables are still fairly new to me, so as I learn more, I can upgrade the template to be more functional. I'd eventually like to have it automatically close a box when you open a new one, and have the hidden content stretch beneath the other show/hide boxes. As soon as I find out how to do things like that I will. Drew R. Smith 22:25, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, that all makes sense and we can always make changes to the template later, like you say. Now we need to set up a page that is self-explanatory that a bot programmer can fill in, a constable can understand an evaluate the request and either approve or deny the request, and a citizen can easily give feedback one way or the other. I'll think about that for a bit. If you have an idea, let me in on it! D. Matt Innis 01:59, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Establishing the motivation for upgrading CZ's software to a newer version

Matt. I'm not sure if you have continued to follow the posts in the "Moving a page with its subpages without leaving behind a redirect" section on your talk page, but it is now confirmed that MW 1.13.2 (which CZ uses with modifications) does not support a suppress redirect checkbox on moves. This is supported in 1.14. In correspondence with Greg he mentioned a desire to upgrade from 1.13.2, perhaps by first factoring the CZ mods into an extension, so future upgrades would be easier. We are currently exploring ways to modernize CZ's technical support infrastructure to make future technical work easier to carry out and maintain.

However, upgrading software should be driven by user as well as technical requirements. So, may I relay to Greg that you and Hayford would find a suppress redirect checkbox on moves to be useful? That would be one additional motivation for upgrading. Dan Nessett 20:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Dan, I do believe having redirects suppressed when moving pages would be helpful. Please let Greg know I support its implementation. D. Matt Innis 21:28, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I'm in favor of that too. Let's just be sure we don't end up with a bunch of bugs to fix like we did the last time the software was upgraded. --Joe Quick 02:16, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. That is why I am trying to convince Greg to set up a technical support infrastructure that will allow us to test any changes before going live with them. I think Greg is sympathetic, but the technical staff is small and pretty stretched. I hope to help out with that. Dan Nessett 03:54, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

CZ:Bot Status

Just giving you the heads up, I did some behind the scenes work on CZ:Bot Status, {{BotReq}}, and the preloader for the click here link (located at {{BotReq/Preloader}}. Mostly just stuff to keep it running smoothly, I can elaborate if you'd like. I also added an edit link to the community input section.

Since we have multiple people working on that page and template, I think we should alert the key players of any changes from now on. For instance, moving community input back into the main table. I have no problem with it, but it threw me off, because I thought I had changed it to be under the table, saw that it was in the table today, and thought I was insane. While we're on the subject, it'll work fine for now, but when we have 256k discussions for each and every bot (like our neighboors) we may need to find a better place for the discussions. Drew R. Smith 05:08, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, that was poor etiquette! My bad... I actually was just trying out different things to see if I could make the row shorter and be able to put them under separate headers. I expected to be putting things back, but got distracted. I couldn't make them shorter, so I moved the community input back to the template. I wasn't aware of the 256k limit! You're probably right, that will likely be a problem later, huh. Can we make the template narrower and then put the 'community input' on the bottom and see what it looks like?

Hehe, now you know what it feels like to have Altzheimers! Scary isn't it :) D. Matt Innis 15:08, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

No worries. As far as the width, I added a short line of code to the template that controls the width. I have it set to 75% of the page width (better for multibrowser/screen resolution support), but it can be changed to a specific number of pixels if we want.Drew R. Smith 07:37, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi Matt, thanks for the welcome. I feel I know you as well, I heard about you lots from Gareth! Nancy Sabatier 19:04, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Uh, oh. As long as you haven't heard from my wife, I should be okay! :)

Volkpages

Thanks Matt. No just the talkpage please. The main page looked great until the moment I created the Talkpage. David E. Volk 15:50, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like you're on to it! Go get that bug!!! D. Matt Innis 15:53, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Documentation on file upload page is incorrect

Matt. I have been chasing down the problem that Arne reported in the forum thread you referenced. It appears that the documentation on the file upload page is incorrect (see: Special:Upload). It states that the maximum file upload size is 50MB and that we support the following file extensions: png, gif, jpg, jpeg, ogg, svg, mp3. We do not have the extensions installed to handle either mp3 or ogg files. So, at the very least the documentation for that page needs to be changed. Right now, the image upload page (CZ:Images) stipulates that the maximum file size is 2MB. Hopefully, Greg will tell us what is the correct value so we can correct the documentation. However, we probably should delete mention of mp3 and ogg until/unless we get the extensions that handle them installed. Dan Nessett 17:58, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

New cz bugs email list

Matt. The old bugs email list, bugs@citizendium.org was virtually unusable because it received 10-20 spam emails a day (mostly in Russian). So, Greg has created a new bug reporting email list that is moderated. This will mean that email will not go to the list unless a moderator allows it through. Both Greg and I are moderators.

We need to change all the places on the wiki where bugs@citizendium.org is referenced and change it to cz-bugs@citizendium.org. I can look around and see if I can change some, but I imagine some references will be on pages that are protected. With your permission I will change those I can and if I find some I can't change I will let you know so you can change them. Let me know. Thanks Dan Nessett 16:45, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good! You can leave me links here and I'll change them one at a time. Thanks Dan! D. Matt Innis 17:01, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Surprisingly, the 4 places I found bugs@citizendium.org referenced, I was able to edit the page and make the change. The pages I modified are: CZ:Contact, CZ:Communication, CZ:Buglist, and CZ:Proposals > Policy. Of course, there are a boatload of talk pages where bugs@citizendium.org is referenced, but obviously these shouldn't be touched.

I think the next step is to announce the new list. How would you suggest doing that? Dan Nessett 17:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Good. I'd say put it on the technical forum. D. Matt Innis 17:23, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Done. Dan Nessett 17:54, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

How would you recommend I cite this reference?

Matt, Fenske equation cited a url of the U.S. Naval Academy chemistry department website page as a key reference. Since that url is no longer working, I emailed the Naval Academy chemistry and they sent me a copy of the material that used to be on their website but is no longer available online. What they sent me is in the form of a Microsoft Word document.

I have spent hours searching and have been unable to find similar material anywhere else. Is there any way I can cite that Word document (perhaps as a Personal Communication?) to replace the url that no longer works. Milton Beychok 20:16, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. I can think of all kinds of questions that cross my mind about the type of document. How about attaching the document to an email and send it to me at dminnisATgmail.com We might be able to convert it to something that we can use. Also send me the url that it came from. We might ask Howard, too. I would think he has referenced some material that is no longer readily available. D. Matt Innis 21:03, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 |-
 |}
+{{Usertime-text|Matt}}{{Template:Utc|-4}}<br><BR><BR><BR><BR> [[Image:CZlogoConstabulary-whiteBG.png|right|thumb|Creating an atmosphere that attracts knowledge and encourages it to flourish.]]
-[[Image:CZlogoConstabulary-whiteBG.png|right|thumb|Creating an atmosphere that attracts knowledge and encourages it to flourish.]]
 {{archive box|auto=long}}
 == Why has CZ lost so many authors? ==

User talk:D. Matt Innis/Archive 8: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:11, 22 October 2009

Contents

Why has CZ lost so many authors?

Is there a way to bulk mail all editors, including inactive ones and all citizens, including those who have left?

Moving a page with its subpages without leaving behind a redirect

The template {{BotTable}}

Contacting those who are listed as sysops/bureaucrats

Approval of Joule-Thomson effect

Re:CZ:BotPolicy Table

Establishing the motivation for upgrading CZ's software to a newer version

CZ:Bot Status

Thanks

Volkpages

Documentation on file upload page is incorrect

New cz bugs email list

How would you recommend I cite this reference?

Navigation menu

User talk:D. Matt Innis/Archive 8: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:11, 22 October 2009

Why has CZ lost so many authors?

Is there a way to bulk mail all editors, including inactive ones and all citizens, including those who have left?

Moving a page with its subpages without leaving behind a redirect

The template {{BotTable}}

Contacting those who are listed as sysops/bureaucrats

Approval of Joule-Thomson effect

Re:CZ:BotPolicy Table

Establishing the motivation for upgrading CZ's software to a newer version

CZ:Bot Status

Thanks

Volkpages

Documentation on file upload page is incorrect

New cz bugs email list

How would you recommend I cite this reference?

Navigation menu

Search