User talk:Tim Westbrook

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 04:43, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

your article

Hi Tim,

Glad to see you at work! But please read my comments on the discussion page of the article before you go any further. Thanks! Constable Hayford Peirce 20:12, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

This article

This article is a restoration of several articles largely written by me, but significantly and constantly modified and damaged in WP. It is now not possible to maintain a quality version in WP. Tim Westbrook 00:35, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

So what else is new about WP, hehe? Welcome to Citizendium! Hayford Peirce 01:41, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Tim, are you listening to me?

I asked you to do some things on the discussion page of this article. Before you do any more editing, would you please address the concerns I raised? Thanks. Constable Hayford Peirce 03:52, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Formatting your articles, etc.

Hi, Tim, I can understand that too many discussions etc. don't leave time for the true business of creation, but in the long run it will be easier for all of us if you can follow our conventions right from the start -- that way we won't have to have any discussions at all! One problem at the moment is that our various History editors seem to be taking vacations at the moment and I, the lowly Constable, am left to guide you through some of this stuff.

• Any time you make an edit to an article, at the very bottom of the edit box, under a couple of lines of boilerplate are three boxes: This is a minor edit, Watch this page, and Content is from Wikipedia. If you're bringing the material in from WP please check the WP box and DON'T FORGET TO SAVE.

• Any time you create a new article with material from WP, even though you've checked the box mentioned above, please click on the Talk tab and then, on the blank screen that you'll find there, put in the WPauthor template that we discussed yesterday. Please take a look at another one that I did myself: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Talk:Tommy_Hambledon You will note that you see my own name and date within that box. You can insert your own name there, which is a favor to readers, by typing four tildes ~~~~ after you've written your own little text.

• In any articles that you create, please remove any images that are clearly not in the public domain or that don't show up on the page that you have just created.

• Later, when you've got the hang of this, I'd like to show you how to fill out the "metadata" and subpage stuff, so that the various categories of Workshops and so forth show up at the bottom of the screen. It's easy enough to do and only takes about 30 seconds once you get the hang of it.

All the best, Hayford Peirce 17:03, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Metadata

It really isn't very difficult, it just *seems* a little strange at first.

Let's do it the easy way:

The next time you start a new article, on the 23rd Congress, say, I believe that you will be starting from a blank page. At the very top of the page, before you paste in anything or write anything else, write the subpages template, which is like this {{subpages}}.

Once you've done that, you can paste your own material in a line or two below it and click SAVE (and having checked the WP box if necessary).

The article will be saved, more or less, but you may see some screens in which you're asked to do a couple of more things (you may have to scroll down to the bottom of some of these screens to see exactly what they're asking). One, of them, I know, asks you to click HERE and create a metadata template. Another part, I believe, asks you to create a Talk page.

On the talk page all you do is put in exactly the same subpage template at the top and then click SAVE.

Once you're on the metadata page, one way or another, you can fill in some of the info that it asks you to do.

Just off the top of my head, you want to put in the name of the article up top, ie, 27th Congress of the US

Below that is Language Variant -- you put in AE for American English

Below that is ABC with some gibberish -- delete the gibberish and put in the name of the article again, in this case 27th etc. (This is an important bit of data for other articles. If we have a Pancho Gonzales article, for instance, down here at the ABC we type in Gonzales, Pancho, so that on the Workgroup page of articles listed, it's listed under the Gs instead of the Ps.)

For Status, put in 2 for developing or 1 for developed or 3 for a very short one.

Some of the other stuff, if you don't understand it, you can leave blank.

But what you *do* want to do is where it says Cat1 and Cat2 and Cat3 -- this is where the Workgroups are listed and the categories that you see at the bottom of the article pages are generated. In your case, you might put Politics in Cat1 and History in Cat2, or vice versa. If there were a third workgroup that applied, you'd put that in also.

And be sure to SAVE, I'm pretty sure....

I think, off the top of my head, that's enough to get you started. Don't worry if you make any mistakes while doing this -- they can always be corrected! Hayford Peirce 19:53, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Biographical directory of Congress

I understand some of this material is not from Wikipedia. Nothing wrong with importing from a public document, but, as Hayford mentions, it does need metadata. As I did for George Poindexter, it also needs to be put into the CZ format. That means, for example, that the first sentence contains the article title in bold.

The bibliography and related articles can be created once metadata exist.

You do need to credit the actual source (i.e., the Biographical Directory). Howard C. Berkowitz 21:54, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Might I ask that if you are going to import more raw articles, you put them in your userspace rather than putting them directly in the main space without metadata and not in CZ format? The metadata is less important than the basic formatting, not having sentence fragments, and a standard introductory sentence (e.g., state the name of the article in bold in the first sentence). Others can clean up the metadata. Howard C. Berkowitz 11:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

 OK, And I will clean up the ones I've done ASAP. Tim Westbrook 19:18, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Biographical Dictionary

Hi Tim,

Are those direct quotes that you're using for the articles such as Bedford Brown?

I see two problems here:

1.) It's not CZ style to simply quote a source such as this and to reproduce it in the article, particularly not at the very top of the page -- we can derive information from other sources, of course, but we have to rewrite to our own standards.

2.) If it is a direct quote, there is a copyright issue -- it is illegal to simply quote a reference source until the copyright has expired and it is in the public domain. In this case, since the source given is 1955, the copyright has almost certainly not expired.

Please review of your articles with these two comments in mind. Thanks! Hayford Peirce 23:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The Congressional Biographical Directory is a U.S. government document not subject to copyright, but the points about rewrite are relevant. Rewrite, if for no other reason, will be needed to link the article to others in CZ. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)