User talk:Thomas E. Nutter

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 12:41, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Matt, this is my first go at answering anyone, so be kind! Anyway, I thank you for your help, and look forward to having you mentor me on the do's and don'ts of Citizendium. I am still befuddled. I anticipate being a little slower than other new folks, since my family and I are about to move to another home. Please do not take my absence as an indication of lack of interest. I will be contributing as much and as soon as I can. TomThomas E. Nutter 02:35, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Just in time!

Hi Thomas, you seem to have showed up just in time for our German and WWII discussions! Your input on copyright is also much in demand. If you have any questions or difficulties, it is my job to help you work through them, so just drop a note on my talk page and I'll do my best to answer them for you! D. Matt Innis 12:44, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Unquestionably, just in time! There have been some heated arguments on presentation if not content. While I've certainly done OOB work as an intelligence analyst, my German interests tend to be more at the politicomilitary and policy levels. One frankly tense area is introducing historiography, especially the intentionalist vs. structuralist/functionalist schools in the analysis of Hitler, and also comparative analysis (with due respect to its limitations), such as Hitler vs. Stalin. An interesting social dynamic, I suspect, is involved, When, for example, I wrote on Japanese militarism or Vietnamese Communist grand strategy, there were few complaints and some positive contributions, but German equivalents are more generally familiar and seem to generate more concern about "the right way to present it."

OOB is lightly mentioned in the intelligence analysis and human-source intelligence articles, but I'd be quite open to working on an explicit OOB technique article. My experience probably runs more in electronic OOB with conventional forces, and "wiring diagrams" for covert forces.

A fresh point of view would be very welcome. At the moment, I am revising and splitting up a previous Hitler article that caused excessive controversy. I'm also filling in a good deal of background, both biographical and relationship. You may not immediately find the relationship: look for Related Articles subpages of articles (e.g., German Resistance, Einsatzgruppe), pull up a name, and then click (left toolbar) "pages that link here". This allows iterative refinement of the article as, for example, it reveals that someone was a resister and a Gauleiter, or a Eisatzkommando and SD man, etc. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:09, 30 December 2010 (UTC)