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

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/sandbox3 currently "Handyman" (from WP which I revamped). HB moved it to Handyman. Added some new material. Wondering what else to do here.

Also working on Philosophy of Spinoza. Waiting Curley's Spinoza translation to arrive; when it does hopefully I'll upgrade this article, perhaps with more spinoffs.

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:

My biases: Politically I'm non-partisan but see a need for serious political reform; there's a part of me which is libertarian, but there are socialist parts too, but overall I'm a reformer who advocates peaceful reform of American government. 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.

• 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.

• 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.