User talk:James Yolkowski

Welcome!

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start. You'll probably want to know how to get started as an author. Just look at CZ:Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. Be sure to stay abreast of events via the Citizendium-L (broadcast) mailing list (do join!) and the blog. Please also join the workgroup mailing list(s) that concern your particular interests. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forums is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any constable for help, too. Me, for instance! Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun! D. Matt Innis 22:15, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

Referendum

Thanks for adding your support to the proposal for a referendum on part of the Charter. John Stephenson 15:39, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Referendum rejection

Hi. The Managing Editor, Anthony Sebastian, has ruled your referendum proposal invalid, so it will not appear on the ballot for the July-August election. See reasoning here. You are welcome to make any alternative proposals, including on the same topic (for example, as an amendment to the Charter), but please be advised that a new proposal which does not take into account the Managing Editor's judgement is likely to be vulnerable to similar rejection. Thanks. From the Election Committee, including John Stephenson 20:31, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

OK. I disagree, but I'll rewrite this as a charter referendum anyway. Cheers, James Yolkowski 02:08, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Greetings from Christine Bush

Hi James, thanks for your words of encouragement with regards to my musings about identity policies. I'm glad to make your acquaintance and be brought up to speed on recent history in this area. I just replied to Peter Jackson (after adding a little structure to the page) with some possibilities for how this might work. It sounds like you have some excellent experience and subject area expertise with this topic. I hope you'll stay in touch. Christine Bush 00:19, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Planning/advisory panel

Hi James, We're putting together a non-public Google group where some of us can brainstorm about how this wiki might develop in the future. I was hoping you'd be willing to join the group and advise. If you are, please email manager A T citizendium.org so that we can add or invite you to the group (CZ-Advisory Panel). I noticed your contributions a few years back at Forum_Talk:Management#Why_close_CZ.3F especially; don't have your email and so this is the only way I know to locate you right now.Pat Palmer (talk) 15:12, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Pat. Thanks for your invitation. However, I find myself unable to accept as I don't have the time to do that as I might have had some years ago (and, to be honest, now that CZ is mostly dormant my interest has also waned).

I have had a read through the recent forum discussions. I don't have too much to say that hasn't already been said so I probably won't contribute to that conversation. One suggestion I will make though is to ensure that any successor site doesn't repeat the same mistakes that CZ did.

I've probably mentioned this on some on-site discussion before, but the most significant problem with CZ relates to its real names policy. It's not that requiring real names in itself is the problem (Facebook requires real names and, last I checked, it's doing OK); rather, the issue is the intimidating, cumbersome, manual process used to verify real names. The result is that virtually no-one ends up joining the community. As existing contributors gradually move on and are not replaced, the number of contributions to the encyclopedia decrease. Less high-quality content results in fewer visitors, which results in both fewer donations and fewer new contributors and so on and so on in a vicious circle. I think the only way to fix this problem is to scrap any verification of real names (if there are problems, users can be blocked at any point afterwards anyway). It may have been possible to focus on other links in the circle at some point in the past (e.g. adding new contributors via initiatives such as Eduzendium) but, with the current level of interest in the project being so low, these would take more energy than is currently available; the only link in the circle that can be fixed relatively easily is to make registration a lot easier. Thanks, James Yolkowski (talk) 02:13, 17 July 2020 (UTC)