User:Thomas Wright Sulcer

I am an independent thinker from New Jersey. I read extensively. I'm a handyman.

Welcome to my Citizendium page.

Interests

One of these days I'm going to learn how to make a cool waterfall animation better than this one.

My interests: philosophy, gender relations, politics, history, medicine, terrorism. I used to be a market researcher so I'm good with numbers. When I was in my late twenties and early thirties, I read philosophy extensively and tried to figure out what life was all about, but even at this time in my life, I realize that I still don't know. My favorite philosopher is Spinoza. I want to write articles that people enjoy reading. I love great pictures and animations in articles. I write simply, clearly, sometimes with too many stop-and-start sentences.

Sandboxes

My sandbox page: User talk:Thomas Wright Sulcer/sandbox currently "terrorism prevention strategies". Current plan: chop this up and use as material in other articles as per Howard Berkowitz, and assist with researching if asked. Urging HB to make this a real article.

Another sandbox: User talk:Thomas Wright Sulcer/sandbox2 currently "History of U.S. citizenship" (which I wrote on WP) awaiting word from User:Martin Baldwin-Edwards about how to proceed; Howard Berkowitz has suggestions as well. My status: made it into a real article. Did ancillary articles, but will keep doing more.

Another sandbox: User talk:Thomas Wright Sulcer/sandbox4 currently "Criticism of United States foreign policy" awaiting feedback from politics editors. General take: perhaps belongs in an article such as "Foreign policy of the United States". Paragraph format preferred to bullet point format. Status: waiting.

Another sandbox: User talk:Thomas Wright Sulcer/sandbox5 currently "Famous tennis players" but it's way too long; importing from WP. Status: wait and see, perhaps HP may want to do something with it. Will leave there for now.

Another sandbox: User talk:Thomas Wright Sulcer/sandbox7 currently possibilities for Panton Principles.

Another sandbox: User talk:Thomas Wright Sulcer/sandbox9 currently my way to keep track of articles needing my attention and status such as improving WP imports.

Another sandbox: User talk:Thomas Wright Sulcer/sandbox11 currently a wikitable experiment. It suggests SEO factors -- PageRank and "what links here" are highly correlated. It suggests a way to boost the web presence of any Citizendium article is to have a thicket of interlinking articles on a subject -- not just a lone article. This will increase an article's "PageRank" -- a Google metric which predicts an article's relevancy and which is a big (but not the only) factor on where an article appears on the SERP page. Moved this to a CZ article.

General approach

My approach has shifted. I like the people at CZ but my problem is that the encyclopedia has scant web exposure. For me, a big motivation in wanting to contribute is writing quality articles that people actually read; but I notice when I do a Google search, even for articles I created, that they don't appear even after ten pages; after a month or so, the articles still fail to appear on the web. So, initially my project was to try to boost CZ readership by adding "hot" articles here -- in-demand topics drawing large audiences at WP (based on traffic statistics) with a preference for unique or unusual-sounding titles, such as Acai berry or Elin Nordegren. I wanted to do this quickly while maintaining quality, so I often would start from the WP article, add new information, rewrite the LEDE, trim material I thought was unimportant, and bring it in. These efforts, generally, were viewed with suspicion by others here, with fears that I was polluting the project with substandard material. But the whole purpose of this porting project (I ported perhaps 20-40 articles, and wrote many articles from scratch) was to try to jump-start CZ's readership. By working on articles like SEO, by learning about how Google's page-ranking system, by testing out the Google PageRank tool in a wikitable, my thinking changed.

I've since come to the conclusion that this effort of porting "hot" articles was a waste of time. Articles like Lady Gaga still don't appear in a Google search, and I doubt that they're having any effect in rerouting web traffic to CZ. Rather, with Citizendium, the best approach is to create a thicket of interlinking articles built on related themes -- contextualization is the word -- to boost CZ's web exposure. Then, this will work only for specific themes or articles; I doubt CZ will ever attract as many readers as Wikipedia unless it substantially changes its outlook. Other approaches to boosting readership may help, such as putting links to CZ content on external websites, and should be explored.

Progress on specific articles

Note: see Tom's wikitable of articles in progress.

Ported "Handyman" from WP which I revamped. Added some new material. Wondering what else to do here. Handyman Also working on Philosophy of Spinoza. Curley's Spinoza translation arrived; hope to update this article in the next week or so. Wrote Julian Hatton -- abstract landscape artist. Created this article on WP, ported. Ported Dana Delany -- actor; I wrote much of the text on WP. Ported Georgina Starr -- artist from G.Britain; I revamped this article substantially a month or so ago on WP. Ported Lady Gaga -- hot topic; 12th most popular article on WP in Dec 2009 with 90K views PER DAY, but added new material and rewrote it somewhat to improve it. Wrote The Fame -- hot first album by Lady Gaga. Added new information (some references from WP) but mostly rewritten. Shorter than the WP version but with less extraneous stuff. I have no clue how to make the "Related Articles" or "Metadata" stuff work. Or, maybe I should add "Lady Gaga" to the related articles page of "The Fame" as a parent? Ported Script kiddie, rewrote it, added new references and tried to spruce it up. It's the 11th most popular article on WP in Dec 2009 with 100,000 views per day. Ported Search engine optimization from WP, rewrote it, kept references, added new pictures. This gets 6000 hits PER DAY on WP, and is also a list of "keywords driving traffic"; hopefully it will boost traffic here to CZ. There are a slew of related articles which can be added too. Also added SERP. Ported and rewrote Acai berry. Ported James M. Bennett from WP (which I wrote) and porting FairTax which I support (but will strive for neutrality) which gets 500 readers PER DAY -- not too shabby. Wrote Naruto which is a hot pop culture Japanese anime phenomenon, often gets 16K readers per day on WP, hopefully more here on CZ. Rewrote & ported Digital versatile disk better known as DVDs. Same logic. Wrote Quiz show so What is the can redirect to it. Wrote Skive and Elin Nordegren and Jamie Cullum (new material) and Sanford Levinson (I wrote originally the Levinson article on WP.) Wrote HDMI mostly fresh material (borrowed some WP sections but trimmed & rewrote). Wrote Cat adoption from scratch -- couldn't resist the pun. Ported, rewrote LEDE, added new info on Brittany Murphy -- sometimes traffic spikes to 50K viewers per day. Wrote Romantic love mostly new, with some pilfering of you know where. Wrote Scrubs (TV show). Wrote Bromance as part of the Love group stuff. Redid the Love article so now there are three related articles -- love, romantic love, and bromance. Wrote 2012, pop culture bunk like Y2K. Writing Nibiru (fictional planet forecast to bump into Earth in 2012, possibly causing skateboarders worldwide to lose their footing for an instant.

New articles done: Public sphere and The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and History of U.S. citizenship and CZ:PageRank analysis of Citizendium articles and Benjamin Ginsberg. Revamped nitrogen cycle and added a section on air about the nitrogen cycle. Also ideas for revamping Panton Principles and Panton Arms.

Possible future articles that drive traffic

Note: see Tom's wikitable of articles in progress. This has a sortable list of articles with information on WP traffic statistics, opportunities, possible future projects, and whether they need my attention or not.

My biases

The following are my biases which I'll try to keep OUT of Citizendium. I'm exposing my biases so other editors can call me on it if they creep into my contributions:

Non-partisan terrorism prevention activist and political reformer

My biases: Politically I'm non-partisan but see a need for serious peaceful political reform of the US government; there's a part of me which is libertarian, but there are socialist parts too. My view on American politics is that it's broken, dysfunctional, corrupt. I think a parliamentary approach (eg Britain's) is superior to a constitutional approach (US model). I believe citizenship is important and requires active participation by people in local government, but I don't think most Americans are "citizens" by any stretch since they're loathe to participate in politics. There are reasons why this is so. I believe in states' rights. I continue to advocate for a Second Constitutional Convention as a way to repair America. I have criticized America's strategy to prevent terrorism repeatedly. I see terrorism as "violence against individual rights" with three inter-related components: crime (terrorism by a neighbor), tyranny (by our own government) and foreign terrorism (by powerful foreign individuals, groups, or governments). My book tries to show how these types cause each other, and how one type of terrorist can morph into another (my ultimate terrorist = Hitler). And the common way to prevent all three types is with "light"; for example, to prevent crime, citizens must agree to end all anonymous movement in public but that tight privacy fences be put around this information. This permits authorities to prevent terrorism while preserving privacy. This is only one part of my rather difficult strategy which, I claim, can prevent serious terrorism such as smuggled nuclear bombs. I realize many of my views are extreme, and I'm well aware that most people don't even like to THINK about such topics, and there is a practical, cynical side to me which realizes that changes along the lines I propose will never happen. What's cool is this: the name "Citizen-dium" -- I see participation here as a form of citizenship. And I'm a big fan of exposed movement in public -- again, consistent with Citizendium's policies of using REAL NAMES. If interested in my book Common Sense II email me for a free pdf copy. I also write book reviews on Amazon (and these are highly point-of-view). But here on Citizendium I'll try to keep my biases out of my contributions, and participate in a mainstream way.

My experience with Wikipedia

I was an active Wikipedian for perhaps eight months editing under the user handle "Tomwsulcer", and I wrote many articles along Wikipedia's lines of neutrality, verifiability, and no original research. I added perhaps about 50 articles, either started from scratch, or revamped substantially. But I have major problems with Wikipedia. Biggest problem = anonymity; it permits anonymous bullies (particularly administrators) to push around contributors, and contributes to incivility, bullying, rudeness, vandalism, sock puppetry (users pretending to be other users). Wikipedia, in my view, has many pluses which I hope Citizendium has retained, such as Wikipedia's code, internal linking, pictures, most of its policies. I wrote often on a page called "Wikipedia:Areas for Reform" with many ideas for improvements which I think may possibly apply to Citizendium too, but I'm waiting to learn more how this site works before offering them. For example, a great under-used feature Wikipedia has is its measures of article readership. I think readership statistics should play a bigger role in determining what we focus on here in Citizendium (since our contributions will most likely be more neutral). Even better would be feedback from readers along the lines of Amazon's question "Was this review helpful", so we can get some kind of reader rating of article quality. What I see happening with Wikipedia, at present, is a battle within the elite of core administrators who actively participate for power; it's analogous to the infighting which happened within the leadership of the Soviet Union during its early days (1917+). In January 2010, I quit Wikipedia.

Publications

Common Sense II: How to prevent the three types of terrorism (Amazon/Kindle) free pdf if requested by email or on my talk page. And the pdf is free for everybody to distribute.

I also write Amazon book reviews. I wrote a screenplay but it needs further revisions; it's a romantic comedy ("Notting Hill" meets "There's Something About Mary". I'm working on a second screenplay called "Polar Planet" -- it's sexual science fiction.

Ideas about Citizendium

Generally, at this point, my thinking is that Wikipedia has the best overall approach except for the huge mistake of anonymous accounts; but in every other respect, Wikipedia I think has made smart choices. I have some issues with Citizendium's expert approach, subpage system (confuses Google crawlers) and reluctance to import Wikipedia articles, but other than that, I'm happy here for now, and content to go along with the way others do things here, while continuing to urge reform.

• Target disaffected Wikipedia contributors.
• Readership statistics. I like the "page view" count at the bottom of articles; if we can get a count of non-CZ traffic per day on the tops of each article, that would be great!
• Readership feedback. Amazon asks "Was this review helpful?" And prevents over-clicking. I think this would be a great idea.
• Importing good Wikipedia articles. I realize few agree with me about this, and I'll go along with the group, but people, this is the way to jump-start this encyclopedia; WP lifts our content regularly. I think the two encyclopedias shouldn't compete in terms of content but rather in terms of great place to contribute. Here, CZ wins hands down.
• CZ web presence. Boosted by the thicket approach, not the hot article approach.
• Problems with expert focus. Generally I like the idea that experts prevail. But the focus on experts can hurt us here in some ways. (1) intimidates possibly good contributors who aren't experts (2) intimidates us to try to be perfect all the time (and nobody's perfect), slows down our writing, etc. (3) it's possible for established CZ users to use so-called expertise as a way to unfairly gain advantage in editorial disputes. (4) possible bias against references (since it's like calling in a "competing expert"). (5) causes needless extra steps like this "approved" vs "draft" label on articles which, in my view, is like shooting ourselves in the foot, since it says, in effect, "don't trust this unapproved article".
• Honoring contributors. A way to find out, quickly, who an article's major creators are. It's also a quasi-reward for major contributors. Newspaper articles have bylines; why can't CZ? It can help us avoid editing disputes too.

Specific suggestions to improve Citizendium

As a nooB here, from WP to CZ, I'm noticing many things that may not be obvious to people who've been here awhile, but they're specific areas in which CZ can improve. It's a rough work-in-progress outline:

• Reduce the time lag between request for CZ citizenship and approval. This roadblock discourages potential contributors. Let's consider ways to reduce or eliminate the time lag. Perhaps we allow nooBs to contribute, perhaps five edits, but their changes would be automatically reverted after a few days unless their identity was established.

• See also: sections. Let's use them on the article page in addition to the "related articles" subpage. Google crawlers can find them.

• Consider abandoning the subpages system (too complex, confuses crawlers, unhelpful for readers, etc.)

• Simpler ways to reference. Make the mechanics of inserting a reference into an article simpler, perhaps through software or technology.

• Quick guide for converts from Wikipedia. I may write this.

• Automatically start users with the Wikipedia SKIN. A CZ user showed me how, but why not start off all Wikipedia converts with the same Wikipedia page layout, typeface, and look?

• Actively solicit quality WP contributors by leaving messages for them on their user pages.

• Enable Google web crawlers to find our user names. This increases internal linking and boosts Citizendium's web presence.

• Encourage users to add redirects. Adding redirects helps build our wikilink infrastructure. The more, the better. Misspellings, acronyms, other choices -- link these with redirects to our articles.