User talk:Peter J. King

Welcome

Tasks: start a new article • add basic, wanted or requested articles • add definitions • add metadata • edit new pages

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start, and see Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, our help system and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forum is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any user or the editors for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun!

You can find some more information about our collaboration groups if you follow this link Citizendium_Pilot:Discipline_Workgroups.You can always ask me on my talk page or others about how to proceed or any other question you might have.

Kind Regards, Robert Tito | Talk 05:51, 11 February 2007 (CST)

enjoy browsing here roaming here, adding bits and pieces, and start articles yourself. enjoy and have fun telling your science to others. Robert Tito | Talk 14:36, 11 February 2007 (CST)

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Welcome, new editor! We're very glad you've joined us. Here are pointers for a quick start. Also, when you get a chance, please read The Editor Role. You can look at Getting Started and our help system for other introductory pages. It is also important, for project-wide matters, to join the Citizendium-L (broadcast) mailing list. Announcements are also available via Twitter. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forum is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any administrator for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and thank you! We appreciate your willingness to share your expertise, and we hope to see your edits on Recent changes soon. --Bernard Haisch 17:52, 11 February 2007 (CST)

Bitis parviocula

Hi, Peter. I saw your edits to Bitis parviocula. I suppose you're not really happy with the formatting, but I assure you that it was entirely intentional. There are about 100 other viper articles that are exactly like it. Unless you have some really good reason for doing it this way, I'm just going to change it back to the way it was. --Jaap Winius 05:26, 13 February 2007 (CST)

My problems were:

1. To place a "common names" line before the article rather than in the article looks very odd.
2. To use abbreviations rather than full names of unites is less clear for potential users (as is omitting a link to the relevant article).
3. To leave in Wikipedia templates that simply show up as red "template" signs is surely undesirable.
4. Why have something in "see also" which is already in the article? --Peter J. King 09:49, 13 February 2007 (CST)

Actually, I'm happy that you brought this up. I believe there needs to be some discussion, even though not many people seem to take the underlying issue that seriously.

1. Indeed it is odd, but it's for a good reason. I'm one of those people who believes that scientific names should be used as titles for articles on biological organisms. I started doing this over at WP, but it turns out that I'm not the only one doing this, nor was I the first to do so. However, I may be the first to have gone a step further. To answer criticism that it was difficult for layman to quickly spot the common names in my articles (which were usually somewhere in the introduction), I came up with the current format. Yes, it's different, but it's also efficient. This way we can use scientific names for the titles, but it's always immediately clear to the reader what the various common names are of a particular species (and there are sometimes many common names).
2. We could write the units of measure in full, but that can easily become tiresome for the reader and the abbreviations I've used are very well established. Perhaps you should discuss this idea in the forum.
3. Regarding the red "template" tags, I hate that too, and believe me, these articles didn't start out that way. The links were there to begin with, but some time during the last month or so, they all got deleted! It's pointless if you ask me, but I'm not in charge around here. Do I feel like removing all those links from about 100 articles? No way! Here's hoping the blue will just come back by itself later on.
4. As for the superfluous genus link in the "See also" section, I guess when I did that I was thinking that it would be a good idea to remind the reader that more information can be found in the article for the genus. Yes, there's already a link to the genus in the taxobox, but it's also typical for authors at WP (and CZ?) to write articles about a (sub)species, but pretty much ignore the higher taxa. So, perhaps readers no longer bother to look. This was, perhaps, an attempt on my part to ask them to try and have a look anyway.

The scientific names vs. common names debate is far from over (see my talk page for further discussion of this issue). It's been discussed on the CZ forum, but the issue has not yet been settled. Actually, I'm amazed that the discussion is even taking place at a project like CZ that claims to have a more academicly oriented approach than WP. (By the way, you can answer here, as I've temporarily added your talk page to my watch list). --Jaap Winius 12:20, 13 February 2007 (CST)

On the whole I agree about article titles (I suppose that the most common of the common names couldn't be added in brackets, as a compromise?). Perhaps some standard table form could be found for the common names if they're going to be placed where you've got them now? A shaded box, or something. It just looks untidy as it is, as though it's a mistake. --Peter J. King 17:23, 13 February 2007 (CST)