User talk:Russell Potter/Archive 1

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Welcome, Russell! --Larry Sanger 02:17, 31 October 2006 (CST)

Photos...

Hi Russell,

It looks like you figured out. :) That's strange that the filename was in red but that usually indicates that the photo didn't upload or the path to the filename was misspelled. It happens sometimes.

For future reference a lot of pictures on Citizendium will not show up on the page if you use a thumbnail for some odd reason. I find that if you use a frame instead it works.

About the photo, given that Franklin died in 1847 it would put it in the public domain, but I don't know if the Scott Polar Research Institute or the National Maritime Museum purchased the rights to the photo. Scott Polar Research Institute only had a photo that was a drawing while I couldn't find anything for the National Maritime Museum. I will look around to see if there is a copyright restriction for the photo. I have been very conservative with what pictures I choose to upload but I just wanted to help you out. :) If I can find that one of the two institutes own the rights to the photo I will ask for formal permission if you would still be interested to use it.

Do you know the policy for getting written permission of pictures only for the use of Citizendium? Wikipedia has a policy where it can only be added to wikipedia if the photo is put in the public domain, regardless if you have permission only to use it for wikipedia. This is very unfortunate because usually the best pictures have copyrights but I find that if you ask for formal permission it’s usually granted. If you know and can get back to me I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks for the heads up on the photo and if you have any questions with photos just let me know.

Eric Pokorny 13:59, 1 November 2006 (CST)

Many thanks (was: Photos ...)

Eric, thanks so much! Yes, you are right, frames are the way to do it (the image I chose is already only a bit larger than its thumbnail anyway). The other trouble was that, apparently, WP had an image of a "Franklin Business Park" which had the same filename as the one I was trying to upload and place!

It is tricky with permissions -- it seems that for images from outside, you almost need two layers, one being "use permission" and the other being the permission to release the item used under terms of the GFDL. I'm also hoping that CZ can come up with a smoother way to navigate this!

best,

Russell Potter 14:04, 1 November 2006 (CST)

Russell, that's great! I'm glad I could be of service. :) As for the Franklin image it looks like a sticky situation. The copyright has expired so I feel that they are little bit overextending when they want to secure the rights to the photo, however they seem to have a case in their favor when claiming continuing proprietary rights for derivative images. I think our best bet would be to ask for formal permission for the picture to be used for Citizendium, and emphasize that the picture will only be used educational use and that the Museum will be credited. Museums are usually generous in this regard, especially if they are assured that the photo will not be redistributed and that the recipient will not receive any financial benefit. Personally, I don’t think they would make a case if you used the photograph stating that the copyright has expired; I was just looking around and have seen the image on several websites obviously taken from the Museum, so it appears that any enforcement is lax for this picture. But I would ask for permission and hope they say it’s ok.

It can really be a pain to get permission for images but I feel that we get what we put in. If we work hard to get the best images for Citizendium it will definitely show and boost the reputation of the project, so I definitely think it's worth it!

Thanks for the update,

Eric Pokorny 23:21, 4 November 2006 (CST)

Image Permission

Eric et. al.,

I will contact a friend of mine who is a curator at the National Maritime Museum, and see what he can tell me about getting perimission. Fingers crossed -- it would be a great image to have, and perhaps other institutions might be more willing if someone "breaks the ice," so to speak.

Russell Potter 16:44, 6 November 2006 (CST)

Deep image

It looks like you have it figured out now. :) Everything looks fine but I think your problem was that you used a thumbnail instead of a frame or the path to the filename was incorrect. In the future the best thing to do is to check the path to the filename or just play around with the picture and see if you have any luck. If worse comes to worse you can always just re-upload the photo under a different name which will usually fix the problem. This is usually what works for me. I re-uploaded a resized photo and slightly cropped the image for you. I looked at the image talk and Larry Sanger said that you needed an image caption so I thought that I might help if I could.

Final scene of the death of "Wardour" (played by Dickens, in the play "The Frozen Deep." Illustrated London News, 1857

Articles have a limited amount of space so personally I think it's best to crop unnecessary borders or in general crop the picture as much as you can get away with to save size. If you want a very simple program I would recommend irfanview which is free and very easy to use for simple resizing and cropping. If you are interested you can get it here:

http://www.irfanview.com/

As for the Franklin image that is great. It’s a coincidence because I was going to ask you the other day how that turned out. Glad everything is ok. If you need anything even if it is very small just let me know. :)

Eric Pokorny 00:01, 20 November 2006 (CST)

Category:Literature Workgroup (Top)

Russel, do you think that in all of these Authors should be included the category "Literature Workgroup (Top)"? --Versuri 15:23, 23 November 2006 (CST)

Authors

Yes, thanks for the comment, I think we should add at least those on the list for which one editor/writer or another has signalled interest (by adding their initials) It may help us get going. I'll do it.

Russell Potter 15:31, 23 November 2006 (CST)

Bringing articles to Top level in Literature (and elsewhere)

Hi Versuri,

Thanks for tagging these articles. I haven't checked, but do be sure to add a CZ_LIve tag as well, else when the CZ is "refreshed" from WP these tags will be overwritten (see Peter Blake's note above). That's why I only want to tag articles that really will be taken live, that is, articles that someone has committed to and will be substantially improving!

Cheers,

Russell Potter 16:58, 23 November 2006 (CST)

  • Russel, take a look at Larry's email. It is not necessary that the article is live to tag "Category:XYZ Workgroup (Top)". --Versuri 17:16, 23 November 2006 (CST)
  • Versuri, yes, I'd read that e-mail, but while I think it's great to bring articles that the Lit Editors and Authors can work on to the Workgroup space, if we just tag every seemingly "major" author we may well end up with more on our plate than we care to eat! I'm happy, at any time, to see Poe, Cervantes, and Dante joining Shakespeare and Chaucer! So let's wait a bit just for now and let the authors and editors catch up with the goodies we've highlighted on the Workgroup page.

Russell Potter 18:14, 23 November 2006 (CST)

Joan of Arc's voices

Hello Prof. Potter,

First of all, it is nice to see that someone else is actually watching this work on Joan of Arc! Sometimes it can seem kind of lonely here which has both its good side and its drawbacks.

Admittedly, the splitting off of the visions section was a pretty radical step. It has been my intention, honored more in the breach than not, to explain such major edits on the article talk page and perhaps I should pay more attention to doing that in the future.

That said, it was my feeling that the analysis of Joan's visions / voices is not so much about Joan as it is about how people, then and now, have responded to Joan. And I would say the same is true of the clothing section. As well, the legacy section maybe should be split off (as it is in the bio of George Washington).

Whenever one approaches a truly transcendant personality such as Joan, her significance lies not only in her life and deeds, but also (maybe more so, in some respects) in how people have responded to her. And that is the case with her voices. It is for that reason - that the section is almost more about how Joan has impacted others than about her - that I elected to split it off into a new artilce.

I feel far more confident of my decision to start new articles on the two trials - the Trial of Condemnation and the Rehabilitation Trial - neither of which receive their due in the main Joan of Arc article (nor can they for simple reasons of length).

There is a huge amount of work needed on the Joan of Arc related articles, And given my style of editing where I poke away a few sentences each day (it took me longer to do my revisions of the Siege of Orleans article on WP than it did for Joan to lift the siege), it could take a while!

James F. Perry 20:55, 7 January 2007 (CST)

I have just added a section to the Joan of Arc article entitled Modern perspectives with sub-sections on clothing, voices / visions, and legacy. Provisionally, my plan is to have only a brief introduction to each of these subjects on the main Joan of Arc page, with one of two options from there. One option is that there could be a full-length article on each of the sub-topics. The other option is for an article Modern perspectives on Joan of Arc which would subsume all three of the above sub-topics (and possibly others). Currently, I tend to lean towards the latter option as it would appear to be more flexible. Please let me know your thoughts on this. James F. Perry 09:48, 8 January 2007 (CST)

On my talk page, you wrote:

. . . if you take the section on Visions out of the main entry altogether, you render the main entry far less valuable, I fear. Some summary, or shortened version, should remain in any case; if there is to be a separate article on Joan's visions, it should be clearly cross-referenced with the main entry.

It would in fact be my plan to have a summary of important issues raised by Joan of Arc's life in the main article. This would include not only the voices / visions, but also issues related to clothing, politics, nationalism and other matters not presently discussed in the main artilce, such as G.B. Shaw's depiction of Joan as the first Protestant. In short, all major issues raised by Joan's life in the minds of those of later generations. But this would be just a summary and would point to a major (separate) artilce - Historical perspectives on Joan of Arc. Crossreferencing between the two articles would of course be done.

It might be preferable if any additional comments on this matter were to go on the talk page of the Joan of Arc article. That way, anybody else who is interested in this issue might be able to read them. I would definitely like some feedback on my work given the major changes which I am making to that artilce.

James F. Perry 15:10, 9 January 2007 (CST)

Bonnie Hicks

Hi Russ. Please see Bonnie Hicks and Citizendium Pilot talk:Literature Workgroup. Stephen Ewen 02:37, 14 January 2007 (CST)

Welcome back :) Chris Day (Talk) 15:44, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Seconded. :) Stephen Ewen 21:37, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Categorizing John Logie Baird

I'm sorry if I've tagged your article wrongly. The "CZ Live" tag requires substantial changes in three areas of an article (or three substantial changes total, depending on which page you read), and to my untutored eye, there appeared to have been major changes to only two areas when I checked.

But, you know what's going on with it better than me-- and that's why you should adjust the checklist. Hey, wait, come back here! I'll stick to the minimum you need to know to edit it in this instance.

So, go and edit the talk page. Look for "status = 4" in that top block. Change that number to 1, if the article just has minor cleanup left to do, or 2, if you have big plans yet to fulfill for it. Then go down a couple lines to "by =", erase that stuff about me, and replace it with 4 tildes so that you have "by = ~~~~". Then save, and there you go!

Petréa Mitchell 21:03, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

Thanks, Petréa - no problem. It is actually hard to see at a glance how much the entry has evolved from WP, epecially since, now that CZ is public, some bits end up being copied back to WP from CZ. Russell Potter 22:31, 16 April 2007 (CDT)

Piping links and case sensitivity.

Following on form a comment you made to Jessica Pierce. The system is case sensitive - Except for the first letter! so Novel and novel are the same article. Only the letters that come after the first one are case sensitive. So SuSE Linux and SUSE Linux are different articles. (Both are technically correct names. Originally the odd caps with the small u but changed to all caps last year.) As proof of concept, User:Russell Potter and user:russell Potter are the same page. Derek Harkness 08:43, 8 April 2007 (CDT)

Hi Derek. Thanks for the clarification! I had tested this and was not sure if it was consistent, or specific to some particular implementation of the wiki software. I think we should still list the convention, though, as capitalizing first letters, as this looks and feels stylistically consistent with the entries themselves. Russell Potter

Life

Thanks, Russell. Nancy Sculerati 12:23, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

Gilad Atzmon article

Hi Russell...I have just added a link to GA's site, where he has listed several reviews of his books. He has had two novels published so far, in 22 languages, and has written more than 200 political papers published on many sites on the internet.

Do you know the process to get Gilad's listed as topic informant (as he has indicated his willingness to do so)? Edna Spennato 09:00, 17 April 2007 (CDT)

Hi Edna, thanks for the update. It looks to me as though this entry still should have its main home with the Music workgroup, but should also be cross-listed with Literature; having the extra editors from both areas should help, as I'm the only currently active Literature editor. Atzmon's music seems to be his main area of artistic endeavor, followed by politics, followed by literature (of course they all overlap somewhat).
I'm not at all sure about how CZ will handle topic informants --we need a policy at the moment specific to biographies of living persons, which WP has and we should develop. I might suggest contacting either Larry, Zach, or one of the constables to see what they think. Russell Potter 10:54, 17 April 2007 (CDT)
CZ:Policy_on_Topic_Informants. I'll follow up on her talk.  :-) —–Stephen Ewen 12:03, 17 April 2007 (CDT)

Stephen, thanks, good to learn we have this policy in place! Russell Potter 12:11, 17 April 2007 (CDT)

English grammar

I've rewritten a substantial part of your introduction, but I don't think it's been lost entirely. You are right about the problem of common-sense definitions making inroads on these pages (e.g. Verb - "Verbs define action"); but at the same time we should keep away from the Wikipedia gobbledygook; starting pages with things like "Noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions" just alienates most readers. We need to steer a middle course. Also, I think a lot of what you've said could go on the Grammar page, which I'll try to start. John Stephenson 04:29, 19 April 2007 (CDT)

Problem with image

Russell, the image you uploaded from WP Commons has a problem. See Help:Images#Images_from_Wikipedia.2C_Wikimedia_Commons.2C_Flickr.2C_etc.. Specifically, the image at WM Commons is not released under a real name, meaning that there is no legal basis for its release. You can email the user at WP to get him to re-release it to CZ and we need not include a link to WM Commons in that case; or here are free images of the New Scotland Yard we can use from flickr whose uploaders have their real names in their profiles:

Stephen Ewen 22:50, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Hi Stephen - thanks for the heads up on this image. I actually think that, real name or not, the ultimate question is whether the actual person who *took* the photo agrees to a GFDL licence, but I do understand that this is a legal "grey area," and that the image is one that CZ can't currently host without explicit permission. Give me a day or so; I think I will probably adapt one of the Flickr images for this entry for time being, though I will also try e-mailing the author of the original image, as it is a more dramatic one. Russell Potter 23:32, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

But who's "the actual person"? And I like the original one best, too. Oh, but I'd love to see someone with a wide-angle take a shot of that. :-) Stephen Ewen 23:53, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Ships

Thanks for the ideas about these. Right now I'm concentrating on making all "my" ship articles as good as they can be. Mostly at this point that means making them more consistent and filling in some of the more common red links. I DO want them to be "all together in one place" somehow, but that's not on the front burner at the moment. I'm trying in my own way to create a top-notch "family" of interrelated articles, optimized by using the various features of the wiki and the web. Louis F. Sander 20:57, 30 April 2007 (CDT)

Telephone_Newspaper

I have contacted a constable. Russell, could you kindly write out your opinion on the article's talk page? You must indicate there that you would like to nominate the article for approval, you are also welcome to offer a critique. Best, Nancy Sculerati 09:56, 3 May 2007 (CDT)

Fair use

Hi Russel. I wanted to invite you to help draft User:Stephen_Ewen/Policy_on_fair_use_-_media_(draft)#, if you are interested and have the time. Stephen Ewen 03:06, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Individual editor rule

Hi Russell, wouldn't you know it, I decided to leave out the link and you call me on it:-) Good to see someone actually reads my notes! Here's the link. Let me know if you have any questions. --Matt Innis (Talk) 06:52, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Literature

Please see Approvals for an answer.[1] Please e-mail me at doctorsculerati at mac dot com if you need Margaret's e-mail address. She is busy with her new project and not regularly on the wiki at the moment. Nancy Sculerati 14:48, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

Russell, now that the Lit page has been approved, and is in a stable state, should you clean the slate on the "talk" page for the "draft" article? Might encourage further contributions. Don't know what the general practice is on that. --Robert Rubin 19:06, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

Re comments in respose to mine

Yes,Yes Yes. I would judge that every editor that goes through this feels exactly as you do. The best thing is to voice your opinions and advocate changes to standard procedures as you are. I will strongly endorse any change to make the process smoother. Working with Nancy S and editors in other workgroups can be productive in making this work efficiently. In my judgment, we understand the issue better than anyone because we have been doing the approvals. David Tribe 17:07, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

approval

see my comments [2] --Matt Innis (Talk) 19:37, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

I just read literature. Very illuminating and so much better than last time i saw it. Nice work, you certainly kept my attention. Chris Day (talk) 14:54, 9 May 2007 (CDT)
Thanks! I had a lot of help in the home stretch from Robert Rubin -- and a helping proofreading hand from several others. I think it's off to a great start. Russell Potter 15:04, 9 May 2007 (CDT)

Hey, you did the hard part ;) Thanks for your understanding and patience as we work through all these issues. Your efforts were important in the process, too, so stay involved and keep giving us feedback (and keep writing good articles!) --Matt Innis (Talk) 23:00, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Congratulations, Russell. Thanks for your note, and thanks for pushing forward on this. I think it's a strong start to this section of CZ. I'm looking forward to working on some more topics with you this summer. Best, --Robert Rubin 21:35, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

Northwest Passage

Russell, Your article is awesome. Have you thought about asking Richard Jensen to perform an indivdual approval? --Matt Innis (Talk) 21:49, 16 May 2007 (CDT)

My mac mail is not working. I can see the messages but cannot open them, so I can only read the first few words. I cannot send e-mail today from there. In regards to your question, I have not heard from him again, I have brought up the issue on the Approval policy talk page and asked our Editor in Chief to comment. You are welcome to comment there as well. Nancy Sculerati 15:14, 19 May 2007 (CDT)
Nancy, thanks for the update -- and I saw your query on the Approvals talk page -- hope we can find a consensus here that will help this Approval get started. Many thanks, Russell Potter 15:18, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

Matt will approve it today. If Richard does not specify a change in the pointer Matt will use the pointer. If Richard then wants to change it, we can do that. Don't worry. Nancy Sculerati 19:48, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

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