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.

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: waiting.

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.

Another sandbox: User talk:Thomas Wright Sulcer/sandbox7 currently "Howard C. Berkowitz" possible article -- status; waiting for permission to upload picture of cover of book.

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.

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.

Even within this limited community, I think there are two opposing philosophies about how the encyclopedia should work:

• Academic orientation. The thinking is that this encyclopedia isn't for the public, rather, it's for professionals, scholars, academics, grad students. For these CZers, the agenda of attracting traffic here is unimportant; rather, it's producing professional dissertation-like material.

• Popular orientation. These CZers want to reach out, be interesting, topical, informative. I'm one of these folks. I think I'm in a minority here. Readership is important.

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.

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

These are tentative thoughts from a nooB here (and 8 month Wikipedian) which I'm still thinking about and am not sure about but I'm putting them here so I can keep thinking about them so please understand they're not solid opinions yet but just stuff in my head.

• Target disaffected Wikipedia contributors. How recruit more Citizendium editors? Wonder if it's possible to target disaffected Wikipedia editors and pitch them to join us here? For example, suppose there are good Wikipedia contributors who haven't contributed on Wikipedia for a few months -- is it possible they're disaffected? And how can we reach out to them?

• Readership statistics. Does Citizendium have any way to measure article traffic? Wikipedia has this. But I don't think they use this information effectively. What this information shows is a rough guide about what articles are most useful to readers. They can point us to topics which readers, at least, feel are important. It might be possible to do this: find Wikipedia's list of the top 100 articles (in terms of readership (not quality per se)) and try to encourage CZ authors to offer something comparable (or better) to WP's entries.

• Readership feedback. Amazon has this in their book reviews; they ask "Was this review helpful?" And they make sure that people can't abuse the button by over-clicking (making sure each feedback giver is unique). This is one area where Wikipedia and Citizendium could both benefit, I think, by encouraging readers to give feedback with some kind of simple-to-click button. It would help us know how we're doing, and give one measure of article quality (and could help point to problem areas as well).

• Importing good Wikipedia articles. I wonder if somehow this process could be automated somehow, perhaps with some kind of bot tool, that sucked in an article, converted it to CZ style. For example, on Wikipedia I wrote perhaps 50+ articles (created articles or serious revamps), but the process of converting them to CZ seems rather tedious; removing wikilinks; removing "quote=" parts of reference citations; moving pictures from Wikimedia Commons to CZ; etc. I wonder if somehow this can be automated, or whether it's worth it to do. In general, I sense opposition here to importing WP articles, as if somehow it's only okay if we can improve the imported article; but I'm not sure if this is the best strategy. Wikipedia, like it or not, is the powerhouse online encyclopedia, with a mammoth share of all kinds of information, and huge readership. They're a juggernaut. If we're fussy about importing WP articles (which are free) but don't have enough basic articles to attract readers, then I see that as counter-productive. CZ needs a critical mass of readership so it can win the best contributors, and grow, and until it gets this mass, I think importing WP articles is sensible and smart.

• CZ web presence. My general sense is few readers visit Citizendium. If I google a topic, rarely does CZ come up in the first page (unlike Wikipedia, which is usually on the first or second page.) Is it important to have a greater web presence? Or maybe this doesn't matter -- like, what we're striving for is quality and not trying to be the most popular site. The redlinks suggest that many articles remain unwritten, suggesting the experiment is stalled somehow. I don't like seeing redlinks in articles but perhaps it's CZ policy to encourage redlinks so that more articles get written?

• WP vs CZ. Interesting that the two free encyclopedias "borrow" from each other. Anybody check out this: A Wikipedia project to import CZ articles. So I'm not understanding how two "free" encyclopedias can compete with each other when both are giving everything away. I think if there is any real competition, it's in terms of usefulness, and eyeballs, and article traffic, and quality. What I'm coming to realize is that there's lots of thinking, at both Wikipedia and Citizendium, about how to build an even better online encyclopedia. And I'm realizing how LITTLE I know about such a complex issue such as this one.

• Competing with WP. Look at this list of the top 1000 most viewed articles in Wikipedia: Most viewed articles on WP Dec 2009 Some of the biggest articles (in terms of viewership): Brittany Murphy (starlet who died), Avatar, Script kiddie, Lady Gaga, Tiger Woods, YouTube, The Beatles, Elin Nordegren, Glee (TV series), United States, Hanukkah, Michael Oher, Facebook, Sex, Penelope Cruz, Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, Enimem, Sexual intercourse, Google, Vagina, Penis, World War II, Human penis size, List of sex positions, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama, The Big Bang Theory, World War I, House (TV series), Playstation 3, Australia, Anal sex, Susan Boyle. Now, I realize many of these are inane pop-culture topics, but some aren't. Albert Einstein gets about 11,000 views per day. I'm wondering: if Citizendium imported and improved some of these articles (of the serious nature), wouldn't it help readership of other articles here on CZ? My hunch is that it would. When I do a Google search for articles I've written on Citizendium, I can't find them very quickly -- Wikipedia always comes up on the first or second page. I think CZ needs much better web exposure.

• Problems with perfectionism. My initial thinking is that the huge emphasis on "approved" articles vs "draft" articles is possibly undermining the project here, but I'm still thinking about this. My experience here, somewhat unlike Wikipedia, is that I'm intimidated somewhat by having to create or do "perfect" articles -- like I know I'm not perfect, and this standard scares me a little bit, and puts a damper on my willingness to contribute, since I'm worried that stuff I do might not make the grade. With Wikipedia (despite its numerous faults) I didn't have this worry; I could create an article, or modify an existing one, knowing that others would fix it later, or catch mistakes if I made any, or fix grammar or spelling errors. There's a book by Ben Stein title I think was "How Successful People Win" (or close) which suggested that perfectionism sucks, that "the BEST is the enemy of the GOOD", and my sense is that trying to be perfect undermines our efforts towards being, in fact, perfect; rather, trying to be GOOD (ironically) helps us efforts be more PERFECT. But absolute perfection is a pipe dream, an impossibility, since there is no such thing as a lock on the truth, as everybody knows. There's more fallout here: articles which haven't been "approved" give a disclaimer that says, in effect, don't trust this stuff -- isn't this like shooting ourselves in the foot here? Doesn't it warn readers not to trust some of our articles? (and is the warning a good one?) So, in a way, my initial sense is that the whole distinction between "approved" and "draft" articles is nebulous. Wikipedia has a process something similar between "Featured Articles" (which have been reviewed for overall quality according to a checklist) which get a small star off to the corner; but I had concerns that this effort was overdone. Wondering if something similar wouldn't work here too -- like, perhaps a note at the top of an article, saying something like "Expert John Doe approved this article on Feb 19, 2010".

• Identification of major contributors to an article. One thing I thought would be helpful would be to be able to find out, quickly, who the article's watchers & contributors are. I can find this now somewhat by looking through the contribution history. I like the idea of being able to contact them and be able to get some kind of green light before adding stuff; the whole idea is to avoid a situation in which I do a lot of research and work but then it comes to nothing. This is one of the things which really irked me about Wikipedia -- that I could do several days of work, produce what I thought was a high quality article, and have it dismissed (in my view arbitrarily) by an "administrator" who didn't like it. While I'm not as much of an expert as most others here on CZ, I want to be able to contribute without wasting my time.

• Honoring contributors. A related idea, I think, is thoroughly consistent with CZ's practice of insisting contributors work under their real names. It's this: honoring contributors by putting their names (and possibly faces) on articles they've created. So, an article about a certain subject might have, at the bottom (or possibly at top right) a short list of the article's creators, major contributors, and major watchers. This might motivate more editors to contribute. One big fault with WP, in my view, is that it doesn't celebrate contributors -- a major shortcoming, in my view, and I'm wondering whether this would be one way for CZ to compete effectively with WP.

• Wikipedia is stalled in being unable to get over a quality hump. It's having trouble keeping contributors, and finding new ones who can contribute well (using references) without getting burned out or wearied by the infighting. Still, it sits atop a mountain of impressive and accurate and informative content; it doesn't have to strive much at this point. And it's a veritable link farm since every article links with every other article in an impressively useful arrangement.

• WP quality superior to CZ. Generally, while I think the caliber of contributors here at CZ is higher on average than WP, the huge numbers of contributors to WP more than make up for it and result is a vastly superior product. The sheer force of numbers gives WP a huge edge, as well as having been started earlier. Generally, in most cases instances when I compare a CZ article and a WP one, the WP article is (1) more thorough (2) better written (3) simpler (4) has more drawings and diagrams (5) more useful (6) better linked (7) accurate (8) longer (9) more comprehensive. The huge size of Wikipedia is amazing, with the vast numbers of subjects it covers on all kinds of topics. I still think CZ has a superior approach in having identified users, and a more collegial atmosphere, which works against vandalism, POV-pushing, edit-warring, sockpuppetry. WP has serious problems corraling errant administrators, and my hunch is that this will lead to serious infighting in the top ranks.

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:

• Time lag between request for CZ citizenship and approval. My approval took three days. Why so long? I've learned that my email address was a free one (which caused concerns). At one point I thought my application may have been rejected or forgotten. I realize there's a risk in allowing a nooB into CZ to edit stuff without approval, but I'm wondering if there isn't some technological way to counter this which meets both goals -- giving possibly new contributors a chance to contribute, while making the "undo" or "cleanup" task easier if it turns out their edits are destructive or incorrect or mistaken. It's this: let unconfirmed users edit (pending approval) BUT let Constables be able to revert all their edits if it turns out they're no good. That is, one click by a Constable and all edits coming from a foreign computer get reverted. Is this possible? (I propose a related strategy farther down in this section.)

• Related articles versus See also:. The Citizendium solution is to have a tiny little tab at the top of each article which only says "Related article"; I bet few readers have the patience to hunt for this little tag which obscures the names of the actual articles or subjects that are, indeed, related. My sense is the Wikipedia "See Also" solution wins hands down because it only requires ONE click -- boom -- a reader gets the information wanted -- AND it highlights the specific related information, and these tags can be placed anywhere in the article where the information may be needed.. The Wikipedia "See Also" solution is speedier, direct. Further, it's EASIER for us writers to put in a "See Also" than wade through the extra steps of creating an article entitled "Related articles" with the dubious "subpages" command.

• CZ is less user-friendly The whole "subpages" system is complex. Why not use the Wikipedia system? Are we stuck with the current system? Isn't the code free? If so, why not use it? I'm not a techie here but after several weeks on CZ, I still don't feel comfortable with the article tags such as "bibliography", "definitions", etc. Generally I feel the whole related articles system adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to the project.

• Referencing. This is one area where Wikipedia falls apart as well as CZ. It's tricky doing referencing. I'm talking about the mechanics of inserting a reference into an article being written. When at Wikipedia, I tried working with others to come up with simpler instructions (but believe it or not, there were some administrators who felt very strongly about which reference method they preferred, and fought me on this!) At the very least, we need simpler instructions here on CZ to explain the mechanics of referencing using the template method, or whatever methods make it easier. But ideally, the best way would be this: if contributors are using a split screen (word processing file on the left, google search on the right). And they strategically place their cursor within the article where the reference should go; next, they hit a button and boom -- the "reference" to the right gets sucked into the article (including url, name of publication, date, author, date of accessing etc) and formatted properly without all the copying and pasting. That would be great! I bet it's possible to write something close but it wouldn't be perfect, but that tool would be really great to have.

• Quick guide for converts from Wikipedia. This is something I hope to write when I learn more stuff, but I'd like some kind of simple, quick guide which gets converts from Wikipedia up to speed about how to work here. Like, what's different from WP (such as subpages, related articles, brief overview of policies). Right now there are too many guidelines here on CZ in too many places; ideally what I'm envisioning is one document with all the basic pointers which enables a WPian to start contributing right away without hunting for guidelines.

• Automatically start users with the Wikipedia SKIN. A CZ user showed me how to use this, but why not start off all Wikipedian converts to CZ with the same Wikipedia page layout, typeface, and look? It would make them feel more comfortable here, perhaps.

• Put the IDENTIFY YOURSELF PLEASE roadblock after the first five edits. Think of the requirement of "reveal your real name" requirement as a roadblock, like a guard house at the border guarding Citizendium-land. This keeps a lot of people out, including vandals, as well as well-meaning and possible constructive contributors. The proper place for this roadblock, perhaps, is NOT before a user has contributed anything whatsoever, but AFTER they've had a chance to contribute a few edits, perhaps, say five edits. This will give a possible new user a chance to see what it's like here -- plus it gives us a chance to see whether the new user is any good or not. A policy like this would cut down on the huge amount of work for the constables which involves approving people who never do anything (Hayford said 50 approvals = 1 contributor). There would be fewer applications to review, and more likelihood that the applicant would, indeed, if approved, continue to contribute. Then we'd ask the contributor to provide proof somehow of their identity: if they pass, they're IN; if they fail to convince us they are who they say, then all of their previous five edits should be automatically undone, so there's no work for us to try to repair any damage -- that is, this happens automatically, and Citizendium goes back to the way it was before the five edits happened.

• Actively solicit quality WP contributors by leaving messages for them on their user pages. It should be fairly straightforward to identify who they are by examining the past history of their edits, and invite them here. Another way to identify them: see which ones have become inactive after a few months (which means they're possibly disaffected) and either send them an email or pitch them on the WP user page. I found out about CZ after a discussion on WP Supreme Court of the US's talk page.

• Enable Google web crawlers to find our user names. This increases the internal linking, and would probably help boost Citizendium's web presence. If I search for "sulcer" and "wikipedia", my old wikipedia user page comes up in a jiffy, top spot. If I search for "sulcer" and "citizendium" nothing comes up; nor does it come up for any other CZ users I tried (I checked about five names). Obviously this is something that community users would have to approve of. But I have nothing to hide.

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